Cirrus@Austlit

'Every family has its secrets. Some are small, like telling a white lie or snooping through a private drawer. Others are more serious, like infidelity and betrayal. And some secrets are so terrible they must be hidden away in a deep, dark place, for if they ever came to light, they would surely tear a family apart.

'The Tides are a family full of secrets. Returning to Clifftops, the rambling family house perched high on the Dorset coastline, youngest daughter Dora hopes for a fresh start, for herself and the new life she carries. But can long-held secrets ever really be forgiven? And even if you can forgive, can you ever really learn to love again?' (From the publisher's website.)

'Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is on leave, staying with an old friend near Adelaide. Ben Wickham, a meteorologist whose uncannily accurate forecasts have helped farmers all over Australia, until recently lived nearby. But he has died after a three week drinking binge and a doctor certified death resulting from delirium tremens. Yet Bony's host insists that whatever Ben died of, it wasn't alcohol.' (Publication summary)

'LOVE SONG is the story of Lillie Bird, a woman from a locked religious community who one day finds herself in the freedom of a strange new world, England, accused of murdering a man. But it was there, in that land of cold, dark skies and scuffed and tumbling streets that she had first found the pleasure and the sadness, and the love she had, for years, so desperately sought. LOVE SONG is at once a celebration of the human spirit and a powerful story of exile, identity and love.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An Inspector Bonaparte Mystery featuring Bony, the first Aboriginal detective. Why had Luke Marks driven specially out to Windee? Had he been murdered or had he,as the local police believed, wandered away from his car and been overwhelmed in a dust-storm? When Bony noticed something odd in the background of a police photograph, he begins to piece together the secrets of the sands of Windee. Here is the original background to the infamous Snowy Rowles murder trial.'

'The Answerth family's mansion seems to deserve its nickname of Venom House - perhaps because of its forbidding setting, an island in the centre of a man-made lake, its treacherous waters studded by the skeletons of long-dead trees. Perhaps it's because of the unquiet ghosts of the Aboriginals slaughtered by the Answerth ancestors. Whatever the reason, most people are content to give Venom House and its occupants a wide berth... until a couple of corpses turn up in the lake. Inspector Bonaparte has a sudden urge to get to knows the Answerths and their charming home much better... ' (Publication summary)

'The naked body of a man is discovered entombed in the wall of the Split Point Lighthouse on Australia's southeast coast; the murder is two months old, and the identity of the victim is unknown. Of Split Point's suspicious inhabitants, only Ed Penwarden, the coffin-maker, befriends Bony upon his arrival. As he delves into the case, Bony is curious to know why a coffin is moved in the night, who was the girl seen struggling with Dick Lake on the cliff top--and why the Bully Buccaneers came to deal in death.' (Publication summary)