AustLit

'Following the clues doesn't always lead you where you might expect ...

'A witty, warm-hearted and appealing novel about how stepping out of our comfort zones can sometimes be the best – and worst – thing that can ever happen to us.

'Rory's life is perfectly predictable, ordered and on track – just the way she likes it. She walks her 12,000 steps a day, writes her to-do list, and each night she prepares her breakfast chia pods and lays out her clothes for the next day. She's doing everything right. So why does everything feel so wrong?

'Deep down, she knows her life and career – not to mention her relationship – are going nowhere, and so Rory, in a moment of desperation, takes an uncharacteristic step: letting the clues of The New York Times crossword puzzle dictate all her decisions for a week. Just for a week, she reasons. Just to shake things up a bit. What could possibly go wrong?

'A delightfully witty, deliciously original and astringently refreshing romcom that reads like you're inhaling a zingy citrus cocktail made by Nora Ephron, at a party thrown by Dolly Alderton and Beth O'Leary.' (Publication summary)

'Some secrets you try to hide. Others you don’t dare let out … Twin Peaks meets The Dry in a deliciously dark and twisted tale that unravels a small town

'Ambitious young journalist Marlowe ‘Lo’ Robertson would do anything to escape the suffocating confines of her small home town. While begrudgingly covering the annual show for the local paper, Lo is horrified to discover the mutilated corpse of Lily Williams, the reigning showgirl and Lo’s best friend. Seven strange symbols have been ruthlessly carved into Lily’s back. But when Lo reports her grisly find to the town’s police chief, he makes her promise not to tell anyone about the symbols. Lo obliges, though it’s not like she has much of a choice – after all, he is also her father.

'When Lily’s murder makes headlines around the country and the town is invaded by the media, Lo seizes the opportunity to track down the killer and make a name for herself by breaking the biggest story of her life.

'What Lo uncovers is that her sleepy home town has been harbouring a deadly secret, one so shocking that it will captivate the entire nation. Lo’s story will change the course of her life forever, but in a way she could never have dreamed of.'(Publication summary) 

'The bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton, returns with All Our Shimmering Skies - a glorious novel destined to become another Australian classic.

'Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain overhead, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: a razor-tongued actress named Greta and a fallen Japanese fighter pilot named Yukio. ‘Run, Molly, run,’ says the daytime sky. Run to the vine forests. Run to northern Australia’s wild and magical monsoon lands. Run to friendship. Run to love. Run. Because the graverobber’s coming, Molly, and the night-time sky is coming with him. So run, Molly, run.

'All Our Shimmering Skies is a story about gifts that fall from the sky, curses we dig from the earth and the secrets we bury inside ourselves. It is an odyssey of true love and grave danger; of the darkness and the light; of bones and blue skies. A buoyant, beautiful and magical novel abrim with warmth, wit and wonder, a love letter to Australia and the art of looking up.' (Publication summary)

'A compulsive, note-perfect debut for fans of The Virgin Suicides and Picnic at Hanging Rock

''We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn't the one we were trying to recall to begin with.'

'Tikka Molloy was eleven and one-sixth years old during the long hot summer of 1992, growing up in a distant suburb in Australia surrounded by encroaching bushland. That summer, the hottest on record, was when the Van Apfel sisters – Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth – mysteriously disappeared during the school's Showstopper concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river.  Did they run away? Were they taken?  While the search for the sisters unites the small community, the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved.

'Now, years later, Tikka has returned home, to try to make sense of that strange moment in time. The summer that shaped her.  The girls that she never forgot. 

'Brilliantly observed, spiky, sharp, funny and unexpectedly endearing, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is part mystery, part coming-of-age story – with a dark shimmering unexplained absence at its heart. '  (Publication summary)

'It is 1970, and the Kremlin is struggling to quell dissent. Though censored at home, Alexander Solzhenitsyn is lauded in the West for exposing the underbelly of communism. Now the Nobel laureate is rumoured to be writing his most devastating work yet.

'The KGB turns to Leonid Krasnov, an aspiring young writer. It promises to make him Moscow’s next literary star if he can infiltrate Solzhenitsyn’s inner circle and uncover what the great author is hiding. At first Leonid complies, but when he falls in love with Klara, a dissident musician, his allegiances waver. By then he is enmeshed in a plot that is more sinister than he could ever have imagined.

'Many years later, Leonid is a recluse living in Canberra under an assumed name. Haunted by his past, he seeks one last, desperate chance to make amends.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.