Cirrus@Austlit

'When a young writer is hired to put together the life of an unknown artist from Geelong, of all places, she thinks it will be just another quick commission paid for by a rich, grieving family obsessed with their own past.

'But Edna Cranmer was not a privileged housewife with a paintbrush. Edna’s work spans decades. Her soaring images of red dirt, close interiors and distant jungles have the potential to change the way the nation views itself.

'Edna could have been an official war artist. Did she choose to hide herself away? Or were there people who didn’t want her to be famous? As the biographer is pulled into Edna’s life, she is confronted with the fact that how she tells Edna's past will affect her own future.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Jakarta, 1997, and the city is on the verge of a revolution.

'Even the Jordan children — Petra, Isaak and Paul — can feel it coming, shaking the edges of their privileged, protected expat world.

'Years later, Diana, an Australian development worker, moves to Jakarta and becomes entwined in the powerful Jordans' adult lives. As the monsoon descends, and the Jordans begin to fall apart, Diana sinks into the half-light of their past, where rumour and religion define the contours of the real, and the rules of the game change according to who is playing.

'Set in a global city of poverty, beauty, corruption and extreme wealth, Running Dogs is a novel about power and responsibility; about the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive, and the damage they can do.' (From the publisher's website.)