Cirrus@Austlit

'A witty, profound and painfully relatable debut novel exploring solitude, desire, and the allure of chasing something that promises nothing.

'Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers and a dog-eared novel collection.

'While everyone around her seems to have slipped effortlessly into adulthood, Hera has spent the years since school caught between feeling that she is purposefully rejecting traditional markers of success to forge a life of her own and wondering if she's actually just being left behind. Then she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Intoxicated by the promise of ordinary happiness he represents, Hera falls headlong into a workplace romance that everyone, including her, knows is doomed to fail.

'With her daringly specific and intimate voice, Madeleine Gray has created an irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing; about the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century; and the winding, torturous and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.' (Publication summary)

'A searing debut crime novel where the grief and guilt surrounding an unsolved disappearance still haunt a small farming community . . . and will ultimately lead to a reckoning

'The small town of Nannine lies in the harsh red interior of New South Wales. Once a thriving outback centre of stockyards and sheep stations, years of punishing drought have petrified the land. Now nearly a ghost town, Nannine has been whittled down to no more than a stoplight, a couple of pubs and a police station. But it has another, more sinister claim to fame: the still-unsolved disappearance of young Evelyn McCreery nineteen years ago from the bedroom she shared with her twin sister. The details seem impossible - the intruder left no evidence. No forced entry. No fingerprints. No footprints. No tyre tracks. Evelyn simply vanished.

'Mina McCreery's life has been defined by the intense public interest in her sister's case, which is still a hot topic on social media and in true-crime chat rooms. Now an anxious and reclusive adult, Mina lives alone on her family's sunbaked destocked sheep farm.

'Enter Lane Holland, a private investigator who dropped out of the police academy to earn a living cracking cold cases. Before she died, Mina's mother funded a million-dollar reward for anyone who could explain how Evelyn disappeared from her bed in the family's farmhouse. The lure of cash increased the public obsession with Evelyn and Mina, yet has never led to an answer.Lane needs money to pay for his little sister's university education, and he wins Mina's trust when some of his more unconventional methods show promise. But Lane also has darker motivations for wanting to solve the case, and his obsession with the search will ultimately risk both their lives - and yield shocking results.

'Compulsively readable, with an unforgettable setting and cast of characters, WAKE is a powerful, unsparing story of how trauma ripples outward when people's private tragedies become public property, and how it's never too late for the truth to set things right.' (Publication summary)

''I am from a family of strong women.'

'Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder.

'After her mother's death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents' relationship. They had been so unhappy for so long - should she have known that it would end like this? A lawyer by profession, she also saw the holes in the justice system for addressing and combating emotional abuse and coercive control.

'Amani also had to reckon with the weight of familial and cultural context. Her parents were brought together in an arranged marriage, her mother thirteen years her father's junior. Her grandmother was brutally killed in the 2006 war in Lebanon, adding complex layers of intergenerational trauma.

'Writing with grace and beauty, Amani has drawn from this a story of female resilience and the role of motherhood in the home and in the world. In The Mother Wound, she uses her own strength to help other survivors find their voices.' (Publication summary)

'Sonny and Vince have always known each other. It took two years of juvie, a crazy mother (her), a violent father (him) and a porn stash for them to meet again.

'Sonny is in her last year of school and with protective parents she is forced to watch the world from her bedroom window. She has a habit of falling hopelessly in love with just about anyone. Vince is handsome, brash, a leader in the gangs, who became a legend after he was taken away by juvenile justice two years ago. Now, Vince is back. One problem – they have not been friends since they were children. Growing up in the vertigo of 1990's Cabramatta, of households which harbour histories and parents who are difficult to love, they stumble upon each other once more.

'While sharing the ugly and scary details of Western Sydney in this time, Vivian Pham also illuminates the beauty, hope, possibility, kindness and love that can spring from small gestures and strong friendships.' (Publication summary)

'Clare Bowditch has always had a knack for telling stories. Through her music and performing, this beloved Australian artist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. But what of the stories she used to tell herself? That 'real life' only begins once you're thin or beautiful, that good things only happen to other people.

'Your Own Kind of Girl reveals a childhood punctuated by grief, anxiety and compulsion and tells how these forces shaped Clare's life for better and for worse. This is a heart-breaking, wise and at times playful memoir. Clare's own story told raw and as it happened. A reminder that even on the darkest of nights, victory is closer than it seems.

'With startling candour, Clare lays bare her truth in the hope that doing so will inspire anyone who's ever done battle with their inner critic. This is the work of a woman who has found her true power— and wants to pass it on. Happiness, we discover, is only possible when we take charge of the stories we tell ourselves.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.