Tony Park Professor Denise ‘Doc’ Rado is South Africa’s expert on pangolins, busting poachers and freeing the endangered anteaters in elaborate undercover stings. After a risky operation backfires, Doc’s life is shattered, but she still has to lead an eclectic group of donors on a wildlife tour of southern Africa. But there’s a target on her back.
As the safari ventures deep into Africa, Doc fears they’re being followed and she will do anything to keep them all safe – especially Ian Laidlaw, a handsome Australian businessman turned accidental philanthropist.
Is Doc being hunted by the poachers she once fought, or is there some other bloodthirsty predator prowling the wilderness?
Lloyd Richards A gripping thriller from Lloyd Devereux Richards author of TikTok sensation, Stone Maidens. He’s in too deep… And almost out of time. Martin Gabriel is a runner for Ben. He runs errands. He runs deliveries. And now he is running for his life… When a deal goes wrong, Martin realizes Ben isn’t the legitimate businessman he thought he was.
He flees before Ben catches up with him, unaware that Ben’s criminal network and the FBI are also on his tail. No longer a runner, but still on the run. Is Martin fast enough to get away from his past?
Shirley Barret On a rainy night in 1871, an idealistic school mistress arrives on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. Mrs Hopkins doesn’t know what to expect from the notorious Biloela Industrial School for Girls, but nothing could prepare her for what she encounters inside the high sandstone the conditions are dismal, the rules are largely conceptual, and the girls spend most of their time finding creative ways to outsmart the adults.
Very quickly, Mrs Hopkins realises that noble intentions won’t be enough to plough through the chaos around her. An unconventional school requires unconventional methods, and Mrs Hopkins is going to have to find her own ways to reach her lively, lost charges. But her own ghosts have followed her to Cockatoo Island, and refuse to stay hidden for much longer.
This witty, surreal and poignant final novel from Shirley Barrett is about what destroys us, what sustains us, and what we carry with us from one world into the next.
Gabriel Bermoser The Driver: Ahead he could see only the stretch of unending road, on either side brown-scorched plains of dirt and scrub, above it all a soaring blue sky and blinding sun. Desolation that looked, to him, a hell of a lot like freedom. He wasn’t playing by anyone’s rules anymore.
The Hitchhiker: Have you ever done something bad? The question was like a clawed hand seizing his guts. It had taken everything he’d had not to whimper, to cower away and beg. But as he’d deflected, he’d told himself to stay calm. To be in control. He had to be in control here.
The Fugitive: She’d made a mistake. Wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last. Ever since she’d left, all she’d found was more trouble. More fights. More secrets. More scars. Now here she was, still alive but a long way from anywhere, and with options dwindling fast.
From the award-winning author of The Hunted comes a fast-paced outback thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Hayley Krischer Shade and Jadis are everything to each other. They share clothes, toothbrushes, and even matching stick-and-poke tattoos. So when Shade unexpectedly joins the cheerleading team, Jadis can hardly recognize who her best friend is becoming.
Shade loves the idea of falling into a group of girls; she loves the discipline it takes to push her body to the limits alongside these athletes . Most of all, Shade finds herself drawn to The Three Chloes–the insufferable trio that rules the squad–including the enigmatic cheer captain whose dark side is as compelling as it is alarming.
Jadis won’t give Shade up so easily, though, and the pull between her old best friend and her new teammates takes a toll on Shade as she tries to forge her own path. So when one of the cheerleaders dies under mysterious circumstances, Shade is determined to get to the bottom of her death. Because she knows Jadis–and if her friend is responsible, doesn’t that mean she is, too?
Shelly Davidow It’s 1989 and for a young Jewish-Australian violinist, a scholarship to Berlin is the chance of a lifetime. Germany is on the verge of change as the wall is torn down, and Susanna is swept along by the tumultuous event. Under the careful guidance of Stefan Heinemeyer, her renowned violin teacher and the grandson of a Nazi, she begins a composition in memory of her grandmother, Mirla, who died in the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Second World War, and Susanna is inspired to retrace Mirla’s final footsteps.
It’s a journey that reconnects Susanna to her heritage and propels her musical gift to extraordinary heights. Yet as a forbidden yearning for Stefan begins to unfurl, Susanna’s life is forever changed, and the repercussions will echo through decades and across continents.
In a world where history, society and inherited traumas threaten to silence Susanna and prevent her from ever becoming her true self, can she find the courage to reclaim her power as a woman, a musician, and a composer, and in so doing, lay her haunted past to rest?
Julian Borger In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death. Eighty-three years later, Guardian journalist Julian Borger comes across the advert that saved his father, Robert, from the Nazis. Robert had kept this a secret, like almost everything else about his traumatic Viennese childhood, until he took his own life.
Drawn to the shadows of his family’s past and starting with nothing but a page of newspaper adverts, Borger traces the remarkable stories of his father, the other advertised children and their families, each thrown into the maelstrom of a world at war. From a Viennese radio shop to the Shanghai ghetto, internment camps and family homes across Britain, the deep forests and concentration camps of Nazi Germany, smugglers saving Jewish lives in Holland, an improbable French Resistance cell, and a redemptive story of survival in New York, Borger unearths the astonishing journeys of the children at the hands of fate, their stories of trauma and the kindness of strangers.
I Seek a Kind Person is a gripping family memoir of grief, courage and hope, connecting us with multiple generations, distant continents and the hidden histories of our almost unimaginable past.
Liz Hartfull Making a living on the land in Australia can be tough at the best of times, but the last few years of seemingly endless droughts, floods and bushfires – not to mention a global pandemic – have made it even more difficult. A Farming Life shares the uplifting stories of women from six rural families as their resilience is tested by personal loss, illness, fractured relationships, natural disasters and the challenges that come with working in a traditionally male-dominated world.
These women are all hands-on farmers – in fact, most are responsible for managing their own farms – and their defiance, tenacity and genuine humility shines through, as does their hope for the next generation of young women already lining up to follow in their footsteps.
Skilfully woven together by veteran storyteller Liz Harfull, these accounts are heartwarming and powerful examples of resilience in action, at a time when many of us are searching for inspiration.
Vanessa Pirotta Acclaimed wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta has been mugged by whales, touched by a baby whale and covered in whale snot. In Humpback Highway, Pirotta dives beneath the surface to reveal the mysterious world of humpback whales — from their life cycle and the challenges humans present to these marine giants to why whale snot and poo are important for us and the ocean.
Plus the cutting-edge new technologies (including tagging whales so that they communicate with satellites) that allow us to see where they swim, listen to them talk and even spy on them underwater.
Giles Smith This year is the fiftieth anniversary of Waterloo (the song, not the battle) – a seminal moment in pop history which saw Swedish sensation ABBA burst on to the international music scene.
How is it that half a century later this seventies Eurovision act is bigger than ever – reaching listeners of all ages and spinning off into musicals, museums and holograms?
Giles Smith, writer and music fan, sets out to find out why.
My My! is a celebration of ABBA through the ages. It’s one fan’s way of saying: thank you for the music.
