The wild date palm

Diane Armstrong
During a train journey across Turkey’s Anatolian Plain in 1915 during World War I, Shoshana Adelstein witnesses the slaughter of the Armenians and knows she has just come face to face with her destiny. Convinced that her Jewish community in a small outpost of the Ottoman Empire will soon meet a similar fate, she is desperate to save her people. With Turkey and Britain locked in a global conflict, she orchestrates an audacious plan.

Enlisting a group of co-conspirators who include her charismatic lover Eli and her impetuous brother Nathan, this young woman forms a clandestine spy ring. Conquering almost insurmountable obstacles, they risk betrayal, torture and death to spy on the Turks and pass on intelligence to the British to help them win the war.

This epic novel explores the fate of ordinary people whose mission collides with the secret agenda of powerful countries, people ready to risk everything to rescue their communities. But can individuals affect the fate of nations? And when life is at stake, how far will we go to reach the limits of our dreams?

Broken girl: a true story

Bradley Grieve
Sometimes the whole truth is the death of everything.Caroline Laner Breure was on holiday in Spain with her boyfriend when her skull was crushed. A year later, following starless months in a coma and painful rehabilitation, Caroline returned to her beachside apartment in Sydney, only to find that her home was not her home, her lover was not her lover and her friends were not her friends. Everyone and everything she’d loved had vanished.

Physically broken and no longer able to trust her own mind, she painstakingly searched for clues to explain the cruel disparity between her past and present.This is the true story of how Caroline solved her own mystery and reclaimed her life. A jagged and luminous survivor’s account and a defiant celebration of imperfection, Broken Girl is a powerful and poetic work of staggering loss and betrayal, fierce beauty, dark humour, love and rage.

The missing guest

Diana Wilkinson
What happens when the safety of your home is no longer safe? Every Friday night during lockdown, six friends meet onscreen to take part in a quiz. But when it’s Barton Hinton’s turn to host the event, he introduces a set of personal questions that clearly aren’t random and which set off a fatal chain of events.

When the police start to ask questions, the friends agree to hide the truth. Is it possible that one of the six guests killed a fellow member? Everyone has their secrets. Some are worth dying for. Some are worth killing for…

Every little breath

Keri Beevis
I was nineteen when I discovered my boyfriend’s father was a serial killer. I stumbled upon his latest victim tied up in the basement of the house he was renovating, and it was my evidence that helped convict him to a life in prison.

My boyfriend never forgave me for turning against his dad and a couple of years later took his own life. That was fifteen years ago.

I am now a local evening radio presenter, but it seems I can’t escape my past.
Late one night, when I’m alone, the phone rings. The caller wants me to solve a riddle, and tells me a life depends on it.

‘Only you can save her’
‘If she dies it’s your fault’ And so, the deadly game begins. Someone wants revenge.

Sisters under the rising sun

Heather Morris
In the midst of World War II, an English musician, Norah Chambers, places her eight-year-old daughter Sally on a ship leaving Singapore, desperate to keep her safe from the Japanese army as they move down through the Pacific. Norah remains to care for her husband and elderly parents, knowing she may never see her child again.

Sister Nesta James, a Welsh Australian nurse, has enlisted to tend to Allied troops. But as Singapore falls to the Japanese she joins the terrified cargo of people, including the heartbroken Norah, crammed aboard the Vyner Brooke merchant ship. Only two days later, they are bombarded from the air off the coast of Indonesia, and in a matter of hours, the Vyner Brooke lies broken on the seabed.

After surviving a brutal 24 hours in the sea, Nesta and Norah reach the beaches of a remote island, only to be captured by the Japanese and held in one of their notorious POW camps. The camps are places of starvation and brutality, where disease runs rampant. Sisters in arms, Norah and Nesta fight side by side every day, helping whoever they can, and discovering in themselves and each other extraordinary reserves of courage, resourcefulness and determination.

Weyward

Emilia Hart
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family’s grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart’s Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.

The Belbird River country choir

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.

The murder inn

James Patterson
Returning to the rocky shores of Massachusetts, Bill Robinson has to solve a string of murders if he wants to save his inn. Murder House, The Beach House, Honeymoon –James Patterson is the master of thrills on the water. The Inn at Gloucester is the lone structure on a rocky Massachusetts shoreline. Former Boston police detective Bill Robinson runs the place as a refuge from life’s cruel disappointments. When two strangers arrive for a temporary stay among the permanent residents, they’re welcomed with no questions asked by Sheriff Clayton Spears, who lives on the second floor.

There’s another new resident in town. A crime boss. And he doesn’t like the close watch Robinson and Spears keep over Gloucester.

Local criminals are turning up dead. The Inn is under surveillance. Teaming up with Sheriff Spears and three fearless residents—Army veteran Nick Jones; former FBI agent Susan Solie; and mysterious groundskeeper Effie Johnson—Robinson begins a risky defense of his town, his chosen family, and his home.

The antique hunters guide to murder

Cara Miller
What antique would you kill for? Freya Lockwood is shocked when she learns that Arthur Crockleford, antiques dealer and her estranged mentor, has died under mysterious circumstances. She has spent the last twenty years avoiding her quaint English hometown, but when she receives a letter from Arthur asking her to investigate—sent just days before his death—Freya has no choice but to return to a life she had sworn to leave behind.

Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Freya follows clues and her instincts to an old manor house for an advertised antiques enthusiast’s weekend. But not all is as it seems. It’s clear to Freya that the antiques are all just poor reproductions and her fellow guests are secretive and menacing. What is going on at this estate and how was Arthur involved? More importantly, can Freya and Carole discover the truth before the killer strikes again?

The night watch

Neil Lancaster

He’ll watch you.

A lawyer is found dead at sunrise on a lonely clifftop at Dunnet Head on the northernmost tip of Scotland. It was supposed to be his honeymoon, but now his wife will never see him again.

He’ll hunt you.
The case is linked to several mysterious deaths, including the murder of the lawyer’s last client – Scotland’s most notorious criminal… who had just walked free. DS Max Craigie knows this can only mean one thing: they have a vigilante serial killer on their hands.

He’ll leave you to die.
But this time the killer isn’t on the run; he’s on the investigation team. And the rules are different when the murderer is this close to home.

He knows their weaknesses, knows how to stay hidden, and he thinks he’s above the law…

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