AustLit

'The river can take you home. But the river can also drag you under...

''It's something she learned years ago - the hard way - and that she knows she will never forget: even the sweetest fruit will fall and rot into the earth, eventually. No matter how deep you bury the pain, the bones of it will rise up to haunt you ... like the echoes of a summer's night, like the river flowing relentlessly on its course.

'Margot Sorrell didn't want to go home. She had spent all her adult life trying not to look behind. But a text from her sister Lucy brought her back to Somerset. 'I need you.'

'As Margot, Lucy and their eldest sister, Eve, reunite in the house they grew up in beside the river, the secrets they keep from each other, and from themselves, refuse to stay hidden. A wedding brings them together but long-simmering resentments threaten to tear the family apart. No one could imagine the way this gathering would change them all forever. And through the sorrow they are forced to confront, there is a chance that healing will also come. But only if the truth is told.' (Publication summary)

'On a sultry summer's day in 1980, five friends stumble upon an abandoned lakeside cottage hidden deep in the English countryside. For Kat and her friends, it offers an escape; a chance to drop out for a while, with lazy summer days by the lake and intimate winter evenings around the fire. But as the seasons change, tensions begin to rise and when an unexpected visitor appears at their door, nothing will be the same again ...

'Three decades later, Lila arrives at the same remote cottage. With her marriage in crisis, she finds solace in renovating the tumbledown house. Little by little she wonders about the previous inhabitants. How did they manage in such isolation? Why did they leave in such a hurry, with their belongings still strewn about? Most disturbing of all, why can't she shake the feeling that someone might be watching her?' (Publisher's blurb)

Silver Wattle is 'about two exceptional sisters, set in the Australian film world of the 1920s.

'In fear for their lives after the sudden death of their mother, Adela and Klara must flee Prague to find refuge with their uncle in Australia. There, Adela becomes a film director at a time when the local industry is starting to feel the competition from Hollywood.

'But while success is imminent, the issues of family and an impossible love are never far away. And ultimately dreams of the silver screen must compete with the bonds of a lifetime...' (Publisher's blurb)

'Go in search of your mother by all means, but don't count on what you'll find . . . Zelda Madison grew up knowing very little about her mother - only that she had been a dancer, an American, and that she had died. But Zelda learns that her mother was so much more than that. She was an international superstar, an idol - and she is still alive. Leaving behind her quiet life in a remote fishing village on Flinders Island, Zelda sets off on the journey of a lifetime. Piecing together the few clues left to her, she digs deep into a painful past in the hope she can uncover a new future. Moving from the rugged Tasmanian coast to the ashrams of India and the Himalayan foothills,' (Publication summary)