Cirrus@Austlit

'Three couples, friends since high school, rent a luxurious house in the mountains for an unplugged weekend of drinking and bushwalking. No internet, no phones, no stress. On the first night, the topic of partner-swapping comes up. It's a joke - at first.

Not everyone is keen, but an agreement is made. The lights will be turned out. The three women will go into the three bedrooms. The three men will each pick a room at random. It won't be awkward later, because they won't know who they've slept with - or can pretend they don't.

'But when the lights come back on, one of the men is dead. No one will admit to being his partner. The phones still don't work, and now the car key is missing. They're stranded. And the killer is just getting started ...' (Publication summary)

'A deeply moving novel of love and loss set in the majestic mountains of Tasmania's Central Highlands.

'Senior journalist Allira is writing a story for Folk magazine when she meets Nora, a nursing home resident with dementia and a doll cradled lovingly in her arms. Bit by bit, Nora reveals details about her younger life as a spirited teenage girl living beneath the Great Western Tiers in Tasmania's heartland, of stitching linings into coffins, of her illicit romance with a charming Polish-German migrant, and of a family torn apart by heartbreak.

'As the two women form an unlikely friendship, Allira becomes helplessly drawn into the old woman's story. When Allira opens up to Nora about her own recent tragedy, the secrets embedded in the story of a carved Huon pine wren become the key to a life-changing discovery from the past. It is a revelation that finally fills in the missing pieces of Nora's history and has the power to set them both free.

'Set among the picturesque mountain ranges of Tasmania's Central Highlands, and moving between the 1950s and the present day, The Secrets of the Huon Wren is a lyrical and highly evocative story about two lives connected by a shared tragedy, and a universal love.' (Publication summary)

'When a simple mix-up leaves their father Joe’s estate to Eden, their long-absent mother, Clare and Aaron decide it’s finally time to track Eden down. But it’s been over thirty years since she left their remote outback mining town, and they’ve never heard from her again.

'Aaron is dealing with a new marriage that’s currently trapped in immigration limbo, and his teenage daughter Cady is clearly going through a personal crisis of her own. After decades away, Clare has flown home from New York for Joe’s funeral, leaving her high-powered job and her not-quite-fiancé behind for what she thinks will be a short trip.

'Neither Aaron or Clare are prepared for a fight for their inheritance against the mother who abandoned them as children. As they dig through years of secrets and lies in their tiny community to uncover the truth about Eden and Joe, will they notice the more immediate danger that threatens their family?' (Publication summary)

'On 11 November 1982, police were called to a housing estate an hour west of Melbourne.

In the lounge room of an otherwise ordinary brick veneer home, they found a five-year-old boy lying on the carpet.

His arms were by his sides, his palms flat. The paramedics could see no obvious signs of trauma other than an almost imperceptible indentation to the boy's skull, but he died the next day. The boy's mother said a man had attacked her son on the way back from the shops but few people were surprised when she and her boyfriend went to prison for the crime.

Police declared themselves satisfied that justice had been done. And yet, for years, rumours swept the estate and clung like cobwebs to the long-vacant house: there had been a cover-up. The real perpetrator, at least according to local gossip, was the boy's six-year-old sister, Lauren...' Source: www.randomhouse.com.au/ (Sighted 01/10/2009).

'One woman's astonishing journey from unimaginable trauma to becoming a power for good.

'In 1999, Sierra Leone was in the midst of a brutal civil war where mindless violence, vicious amputation and the rape of young enslaved women were the everyday weapons of bloody conflict.

'It was also where rebel soldiers snatched the young Aminata Conteh-Biger from her father's arms, then held her captive for months.

'After she was released, the UNHCR recognised that her captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. So, at just nineteen years of age, she was put on a plane and flown to Australia to start afresh as a refugee in a land she knew nothing about.

'It is here that she has proudly built a life, while never allowing her trauma to define her. Yet it was a near-death experience she suffered during the birth of her child that turned her attention to the women of Sierra Leone - where they are 200 times more likely to die while having a baby than in Australia.

'So she set up the Aminata Maternal Foundation, then returned to the land of her birth to help. This is her story. (Publication summary)