Archive | New Releases

Megan Reed
The residents of Point Heed keep nice houses and sign up as parent help at the local school. Occasionally they cheat on their taxes. Sometimes they fantasise about having sex with someone other than their partner. And every now and then they do drugs. But that doesn’t make them bad people, does it?

When a local father is convicted of the possession and distribution of child pornography, the tight-knit, middle-class community is quick to unravel. He is granted permanent name suppression, and soon friend turns on friend, neighbour delivers up neighbour, and hysteria rapidly engulfs them all. Who among them was capable of such moral trespass?

Bridget, Roz and Lucy have been friends forever. Their lives revolve around their children, their community, each other. With their husbands and kids, they holiday together every year. Every year, until last summer, when everything went so terribly wrong.

They tell you things are never as bad as you fear, but what if they’re worse? Worse than you could have ever imagined.

Were they all complicit? Certainly, they were guilty of looking in all the wrong places.

Sophie Green
Bellbird River, 1998: Teacher and single mum Alex is newly arrived in the small NSW country town of Bellbird River after escaping the city in search of a change of pace and the chance to reconnect with her young daughter. Across town, well-known matriarch Victoria and her globe-trotting, opera-singing cousin Gabrielle find themselves at a crossroads in their personal and professional lives, while local baker Janine and newcomer to the district Debbie are each secretly dealing with the consequences of painful pasts.

With its dusty streets, lone pub and iron-lace verandahs, Bellbird River could just be a pit stop on the road to somewhere else. But their town holds some secrets and surprises – and it has a heart: the Bellbird River choir.

Amid the melodies and camaraderie of the choir, each of the women will find the courage to leave the past behind. And together, they’ll discover that friends are much closer to home than they’d ever realised.

Ingrid Seward
The story of the real relationship between King Charles III and his mother, by the esteemed royal biographer, Ingrid Seward. The relationship between the late Monarch and her son, the King, has long been a subject of fascination. The upbringing of an heir is especially important and places an extra burden on top of all the cares of motherhood. The demands placed on the monarch are unique and there was no one better placed to know this than the late Queen.

She knew that not only must they be figureheads, but they must be seen to care for others less fortunate than themselves. They are also expected to uphold family values. Princess Elizabeth made it a point of maternal honour to try and build her routine around her young son while doing her duty.

When she became Queen, it was a more delicate balance, but one which she eventually learnt to sustain. Unlike his self-contained mother, who always put duty above personal happiness, King Charles needed love and support to function properly. This is the story of how Charles was shaped and moulded by his heritage. His mother was the woman he always loved but could never be close to. As Queen she held the Pandora’s box of the crown and all he could do was wait and learn. In his mother’s old age, he finally received the affection and respect from her he had craved for so long.

This book documents his life through many personal anecdotes from his family and his friends, from the moment the guns saluted his birth to the day he was officially declared as the King at his Coronation.

Sima Samar
The impassioned memoir of Afghanistan’s Sima medical doctor, public official, founder of schools and hospitals, thorn in the side of the Taliban, nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and lifelong advocate for girls and women. “I have three strikes against me. I’m a woman, I speak out for women, and I’m Hazara, the most persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan.”

Dr. Sima Samar has been fighting for equality and justice for most of her life. Born into a polygamous family, she learned early that girls had inferior status, and she had to agree to an arranged marriage if she wanted to go to university. By the time she was in medical school, she had a son, Ali, and had become a revolutionary. After her husband was disappeared by the pro-Russian regime, she escaped. With her son and medical degree, she took off into the rural areas—by horseback, by donkey, even on foot—to treat people who had never had medical help before.
Sima Samar’s wide-ranging experiences both in her home country and on the world stage have given her inside access to the dishonesty, the collusion, the corruption, the self-serving leaders, and the hijacking of religion. And as a former Vice President, she knows all the players in this chess game called Afghanistan.
With stories that are at times poignant, at times terrifying, inspiring as well as disheartening, Sima provides an unparalleled view of Afghanistan’s past and its present. Despite being in grave personal danger for many years, she has worked tirelessly for the dream she is convinced is an achievable justice and full human rights for all the citizens of her country.

Barry Shaw
Brisbane and World War II is the Brisbane History Group’s 24th volume of papers. The volume is divided into three sections. The first focuses predominantly on the home front, the second on front line activity and the third on various ways in which the war is recorded and remembered.

Written by amateurs, professionals and academics, the book presents a fascinating insight into Brisbane’s contribution during and after the tumultuous years of World War II.

Glenna Thomson
A missing girl … a cold case … a sister who won’t give up … ‘I was there on the day Rebecca disappeared. I watched her hurry away. If I close my eyes I can still see her…’

When Rebecca Bundy fails to return home after the last day of school in 1984 her father reports her missing. But the teenager has run away before and recently she’s been bragging about going to Queensland, so the police tell the family to wait it out.

Days pass. Rumours swirl. A man seen loitering near the bus stop might have followed her. Was there something going on between Rebecca and a male teacher? What about the sheep farmer on Glen Lochan Road where she babysat? And why is her boyfriend, the rough cattle guy Bull Tennant, so sure something sinister has happened?

Then a shocking murder-suicide at a local farm diverts police attention and Rebecca’s disappearance all too quickly becomes a cold case.

But her younger sister Eliza has never forgotten, and for almost forty years she’s been looking for answers.

Ashley Tate
Phoebe Dean was the most popular girl alive and dead. For the last ten years, the small, claustrophobic town of West Wilmer has been struggling to understand one thing: Why did it take young Grant Dean twenty-seven minutes to call for help on the fateful night of the car accident that took the life of his beloved sister, Phoebe?

Someone knows what really happened the night Phoebe died. Someone who is ready to tell the truth.

With Phoebe’s memorial in just three days, grief, delusion, ambition, and regret tornado together with biting gossip in a town full of people obsessed with a long-gone tragedy with four people at its heart—the caretaker, the secret girlfriend, the missing bad boy, and a former football star. Just kids back then, are forever tied together the fateful rainy night Phoebe died.

Fiona Lowe
A terrible crash… but the facts don’t add up. Worlds converge and two women’s lives are torn apart when a devastating accident uncovers a shocking web of lies. Freya thought she could relax when Ryan’s best mate Jamie got engaged to her best friend Hannah. Two couples, four friends – what could be better than that? But a day before the wedding Freya’s torn between keeping the peace or blowing it up.

Hannah’s perfect wedding is hours away and she’s daydreaming of a honeymoon in Tahiti and starting the family she longs for when she hears the first-responder sirens. Is it a grass fire? Worse? And why aren’t Ryan or Jamie answering their phones?

When a car veers off the road with devastating consequences, the small wheatbelt town of Garringarup is left reeling, but no one’s world is more shattered than Hannah and Freya’s. As disturbing details surrounding the accident emerge and questions pile up, ugly secrets rise to the surface.

Mystery, lies and scandal – it’s soon obvious nothing is as it seems in this small town…