AustLit

'The slightly OCD princess was finally headed home.

'Then the felon escaped after kidnapping her champion.

'Home would have to wait.

'Princess Eloise, Future Ruler and Heir to the Western Lands and All That Really Matters, was transporting the jester who'd killed a king back home to face justice.

'Fair enough.

'But when he escapes (taking Eloise's chipmunk champion with him), Eloise, her guard, and her horse companions must traverse two realms to try to get him back.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Three times he will prove his love for her. The third time will kill him.

'In a world where violent magic is punished by the gods, mages have learned to use their powers for manipulation and deception instead.

'Rynold has learned these lessons better than most.

'But when, in a moment of jealousy, he misuses his sacred power to send Princess Mirelda’s lover Damian into exile, he inadvertently rekindles an ancient evil that has lain dormant for a thousand years, waiting for its chance to awaken.

'Chosen by the gods themselves to bring Damian back, Rynold and Mirelda leave their home in desperate pursuit of Damian, the fate of the entire world upon their shoulders. But as their long journey progresses, they come to learn that the greatest threat to them – and to the world – might well come from within…'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'There are many grief holes.

'There's the grief hole you fall into when a loved one dies.

'There's another grief hole in all of us; small or large, it determines how much we want to live.

'And there are the places, the physical grief holes, which attract suicides to their centre.

'Sol Evictus, a powerful, charismatic singer, sends a young artist into The Grief Hole to capture the faces of the teenagers dying there. When she inevitably dies herself, her cousin Theresa resolves to stop this man so many love.

'Theresa sees ghosts; she knows how you'll die by the spirits haunting you. If you'll drown, she'll see drowned people. Most often she sees battered women, because she works to find emergency housing for abused women.

'She sees no ghosts around Sol Evictus but she doesn't let that stop her. Her passion to help, to be a saint, drives her to find a way to destroy him.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Rachel Hudson succumbs to cystic fibrosis at age twenty-seven, leaving behind secrets that push each of her remaining family to question what it is they want from life, and from each other.

'Her father Brian, a Vietnam veteran struggling with the long-term effects of the war, has been missing ever since he walked out on Beth and their two children in the dead of night twenty years ago. Matt dreams of one day finding his own path like his heroic father, as Beth’s religious fervour propagates a childhood of parental disappointment.

'Rachel sets before her family one last request: a journey to the exotic and the unknown. Rachel, ever the free spirit, administers a dose of her notorious wanderlust.

'The Happiness Jar is a story about how tightly you hold on to what you believe in; how one person’s beliefs can affect a family and tear at the already fragile folds where love hides. It’s about faith, and what can endure despite the burdens we place on ourselves and each other.

'Set against the red dust of the Kimberley desert, and the smoky backdrop of the holy River Ganges in India, The Happiness Jar is a novel that reminds us that we continue to live in the memories we leave behind. ' (Publication summary)