Cirrus@Austlit

'Sarah and Marco Moretti are the perfect couple. Together they have travelled the globe building high-profile careers as archaeologists. Now, at a dig in Florence, they are on the brink of the discovery of a lifetime.

'However their marriage is not what it seems.

'On the very evening that Sarah uncovers the San Gennaro necklace - a long-lost antiquity that will bring them worldwide fame - she witnesses Marco kissing another woman. Blinded by tears, she drives home alone in the dead of night . . .

'When Sarah wakes up in hospital, she has no memory of the car accident that brought her there - or the 48 hours preceding it.

'Gone is the knowledge of her husband's infidelity. But gone too is all recollection of finding the precious necklace.

'And the loss of those two crucial memories will have devastating repercussions.

'"Memory can be the difference between love and hate, survival and death, forgiveness and revenge" ' (Publication summary)

'The Ties That Bind is an emotionally riveting debut novel about the power of a mother's love and the bonds among family that, though severed, can never be fully broken.

'On opposite sides of the world, two lives are changed forever. One by the smallest bruise. The other by a devastating bushfire. And both by a shocking secret . . .

'Miami art curator Courtney Hamilton and her husband David live the perfect life until their ten-year-old son Matthew is diagnosed with leukaemia. He needs a bone-marrow transplant but, with Courtney being adopted, the chances of finding a match within his family are slim.

'Desperate to find a donor, Courtney tracks the scattered details of her birth 15,000 kilometres away, to the remote town of Somerset in the Victorian bush.

'Meanwhile Jade Taylor wakes up in hospital in Somerset having survived the deadly bushfire that destroyed the family home and their beloved olive groves. Gone too are the landmarks that remind her of her mother, Asha, a woman whose repeated absences scarred her childhood.

'As Jade rallies her fractured family to rebuild their lives, Courtney arrives in the burnt countryside to search for her lost parents - but discovers far more . . . ' (Publication summary)