AustLit
The Other Man
Mary Gaunt
'She could only look at him and hope he understood who her heart would miss most.'
A Riches to Rags story, where two orphaned young women are forced to live with pious country relatives in Kooringa, outback Australia. Ruth and Dorothy Grant must adapt to life on a cattle farm with a dozen new siblings. While the pair struggle to accept their new life, their hearts are won and lost by a series of striking characters, leading the sisters to realise they must be true to themselves to achieve happiness.
This heart-warming romance in rural Australia is the first of a new series in recovered nineteenth-century women's fiction published by Corella Press.
From Shadow Land And Other Ghost Stories
Edited by Corella PressTM
There was a buzzing in his ears, and a sudden dizziness came over him. The spectre seemed to dance up and down before his terror-glazed eyes, and the ghastly smile seemed to widen—widen on that deathlike countenance.
A spectre of a woman hides a dagger in her hair. But is she victim or villain?
A miser leaves his fortune to whoever can find it, but with his ghost lurking about, who has the courage to uncover it?
In the emptiness of the Australian bush, no one can hear you scream. So what happens when you come face to face with the ghost of a hanged man?
When shadows come alive and secrets thicken the air, who will remain sane long enough to solve these otherworldly mysteries? This triptych of haunting tales revives the work of forgotten nineteenth-century Australian writers: women whose lives remain as ghostly and mysterious as the stories themselves.
From the English manor to the Australian bush, the Gothic genre comes alive in this book to haunt the reader with its tales of love and tragedy, murder and prejudice, and terror and the supernatural, making it the perfect read for lovers of Australian and Gothic literature.
“Balancing humour, tragedy and romance with beautiful writing and a host of compelling characters, this collection will keep you turning pages until the final chilling word.”
- Kathleen Jennings
Death of a Nom De Plume
Dorothy Blewett
Penney looked across at the harbour. Lashed by the high wind, the waves were breaking angrily against the sea wall and sending showers of spray over it onto the cobbled yard. The sea outside was white-capped and grey-green under its pall of driving rain. Suddenly, Penney was afraid.
A cosy village. A double life. A shocking death.
The sleepy Cornish village of Trenyth is rocked when Roland Richards—known locally as the bestselling but elusive romance author Orlando Ricard—is found dead in his seaside cottage. Superintendent Penney of Scotland Yard arrives on the scene, joined by Ricard’s publisher and his entourage from London, who claim they have no knowledge of Ricard’s true identity.
As Penney navigates the clannish reticence of Cornish villagers and the delicate egos of publishing intellectuals, he discovers a web of crime and lies. Roland Richards is dead, but who was Roland Richards? Does Ricard’s publisher Jonah Waterberry know more than he claims? And is the local constable telling the truth when he swears there were no outsiders in the village that day? Bound by sheer cliffs and a picturesque ocean, the motley group’s secrets begin to unravel over a weekend that will change all of their lives forever.
Death of a Nom De Plume is a previously unpublished gem written in 1958 by Australian novelist and playwright Dorothy Blewett. A story of false appearances, mystery and romance, this classic crime cosy will enrapture with its twists and turns and leave you asking—what happens when the lie you are living dies?
Coming 2020
Death of a Nom De Plume
Dorothy Blewett
Penney looked across at the harbour. Lashed by the high wind, the waves were breaking angrily against the sea wall and sending showers of spray over it onto the cobbled yard. The sea outside was white-capped and grey-green under its pall of driving rain. Suddenly, Penney was afraid.
A cosy village. A double life. A shocking death.
The sleepy Cornish village of Trenyth is rocked when Roland Richards—known locally as the bestselling but elusive romance author Orlando Ricard—is found dead in his seaside cottage. Superintendent Penney of Scotland Yard arrives on the scene, joined by Ricard’s publisher and his entourage from London, who claim they have no knowledge of Ricard’s true identity.
As Penney navigates the clannish reticence of Cornish villagers and the delicate egos of publishing intellectuals, he discovers a web of crime and lies. Roland Richards is dead, but who was Roland Richards? Does Ricard’s publisher Jonah Waterberry know more than he claims? And is the local constable telling the truth when he swears there were no outsiders in the village that day? Bound by sheer cliffs and a picturesque ocean, the motley group’s secrets begin to unravel over a weekend that will change all of their lives forever.
Death of a Nom De Plume is a previously unpublished gem written in 1958 by Australian novelist and playwright Dorothy Blewett. A story of false appearances, mystery and romance, this classic crime cosy will enrapture with its twists and turns and leave you asking—what happens when the lie you are living dies?
Coming 2020
Death of a Nom De Plume
Dorothy Blewett
When bestselling but elusive romance author Orlando Ricard is found murdered in a sleepy Cornish village, Superintendent Penney of Scotland Yard arrives on the scene to investigate. He’s soon joined by Ricard’s publisher and his entourage from London, who insist they have no knowledge of Ricard’s true identity. As Penney navigates the reticence of Cornish villagers and the delicate egos of publishing intellectuals, he uncovers a web of crime and lies. Bound by sheer cliffs and a picturesque ocean, the group’s secrets begin to unravel over a weekend that will change all of their lives forever.
Death of a Nom De Plume is a story of false appearances, mystery and romance that will enrapture with its twists and turns and leave you asking—what happens when the lie you are living dies?
“Today the crime writer tends towards the urban and gritty, but oh my, there’s a place for this cosier, more elegant style of storytelling in the tradition of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.”
- Fiona McIntosh
Man or Devil: Tales of the Australian Gothic
Edited by Corella Press™
"Crime fiction is, above all, a literature of resistance."
Sulari Gentill, award winning author.
Corella Press™ invites lovers of crime and mystery to a twelve-course banquet of early Australian Gothic literature. Swim with the sharks off Stradbroke Island; drink with the gold miners of far north Queensland; scream in the shadows of a rural farmhouse, dockside Melbourne, or a ghost-infested gully in the Grampians.
Be warned: the body count is high, and all is not what it seems.
Exhumed from the pages of Australia’s late nineteenth and early twentieth-century newspapers, these short, twisted tales are distinct in style and told from diverse points of view that bring forgotten Australian literature back to life. Readers will have many questions: was it murder or misadventure, a haunting or a hoax? Ideally read by candlelight, Man or Devil: Tales of the Australian Gothic is sure to whet the appetites of readers young and old, of those curious about early Australian literature, and those seeking insights into Australia’s past and present.
We hope you will sit with us awhile and share these fictional and true-to-life stories, as the lights burn low and the darkness deepens ...
The Millwood Mystery
Jeannie Lockett
Marjory Graham runs panicked into the night, desperate to find help. When she wakes Dr Reade and returns home with him, they find Barbara Graham poisoned. The inquest reveals a wealth of suspects: Barbara's stepdaughter, her fiancé, and her future sister-in-law. Whispers begin to spread through Millwood.
The Millwood Mystery is a psychological thriller set in a small town in the remote Hunter Valley. The crime is a vehicle for our journey into the lives of Millwood society, where appearance is paramount and transgression brings judgement, isolation, and financial ruin—particularly for women. Lockett explores women’s place in society, expectations around marriage and divorce, domestic violence and women’s lack of agency, and the repercussions of loneliness and isolation in small-town Australia.
This recovered gem of Australian mystery is accompanied by Reading Notes, including an essay by the author: 'Divorce Considered from a Woman's Point of View.'
Bridget's Locket and Other Mysteries by Waif Wander
Mary Helena Fortune
Three tales. One of murder, gore and a hint of the supernatural. Another of dramatic reveals, love, and bushrangers. The last of tainted adoration, courage, and a fateful finale. Together, a story of early colonial Australia, sweeping landscapes, and the voice of a silenced female author. A collection of proto-domestic noir crime and mystery stories, Mary Helena Fortune, writing as Waif Wander, entrusts us with Gothic tales that imitate the violent reality of her own life. Fortune subverts the oppression she faced as a female author by writing about nineteenth-century women with exceptional agency.
This beautiful collection awakens readers to a new side of Mary Helena Fortune, one of Australia's most prolific crime-mystery writers between the eighteen-sixties and eighteen-nineties. A newly uncovered novella is bookended by two short stories, showcasing a variety of tales that are united by their writer’s distinctive voice and interests. These are stories of love and murder, of the Australian bush and goldfields, of alcoholism and bigamy, of happy endings and doomed romance.
