Cirrus@Austlit

'From award-winning writer Fiona Capp comes a novel about blackmail, risk, corruption and consequences - think Raymond Chandler meets The Great Gatsby - set in the millionaire's playground of Portsea. This is modern Melbourne literary noir at its finest.

'Having lost all his family's money in ill-advised investments during the GFC, Ned is reduced to squatting in a boatshed in wealthy Portsea. He is avoiding the world, particularly his sister, Angela, who after an accident, is now a paraplegic, confined to a wheelchair, and completely dependent on both her carer, Mai, and Ned - not to mention the income from their family investments. But one day, Ned overhears a conversation between a millionaire property developer and a politician, and realizes that this might be his opportunity to restore their fortunes ... if he has the nerve.

'This is a nail-biting and compelling story of risk, blackmail and the corrosive nature of guilt - and how we all have to live with the consequences of our actions.'

'Shy and idealistic, Esther Chatwin is Australia's reluctant First Lady. She longs to return to the anonymity of her old life. But her husband's sudden political success has turned the media spotlight on her and her only escape is to Gotland, the fabled island in the Baltic Sea that she loves. A special place, it's also home to the enigmatic sculptor Sven, another idealist with a troubled past.

'Even on the other side of the world, deeply private events become everyone's business, and Esther must struggle to overcome the forces–within and without–that threaten to destroy her.

'Gotland is a startlingly evocative and timely portrait of the cost paid by those who are drawn into the public spotlight against their will.' (Publisher's blurb)

'"Sometimes in life you get lucky. Someone of rare vision and remarkable gifts crosses your path ." Fiona Capp, novelist and author of the acclaimed memoir That Oceanic Feeling, was 17 years old when she first met Judith Wright. Everything that followed from this encounter led her, 30 years later, on a journey through the landscapes that made Wright one of Australia's greatest poets and environmental visionaries.

Capp follows in Wright's footsteps through the high tableland of New England, the rainforests of Queensland and the austere bushland outside Canberra, uncovering the land out of which the poetry sprang. Her travels also take the reader through the life of the poet - the early tragedy that shaped her childhood, her complex relationship with her family, and the two great loves of her life - while exploring the well-springs of Wright's art and activism.

Judith Wright sensed in her bones that something had gone profoundly wrong with our attitude to the earth, long before the term "conservationist" entered public discourse. In this intimate and moving memoir, Fiona Capp shows how the "country that built my heart" - as Wright called it - became part of the collective consciousness of the nation; how her poetry created a place that belongs to all of us.' (From the publisher's website.)