Gina Laurel is ready to move on from her quiet life at Shelly Beach – and she's got the brilliant job offer to prove it. But when her erstwhile lover – and director of the inaugural Shelly Beach Writers' Festival – takes a job in the city, Gina finds herself the last-minute fill-in as director of the chaotic seaside festival.Before she can rejoin the rat race, she must negotiate her way through celebrity-author hissy fits, champagne galas, rogue pirates and giant mice . . . not to ...

What do you do when your husband dumps you for his PA, your company goes broke and your nearly published novel is cancelled?Gina, a barely 50-something corporate high-flier, is counting her losses when a chance meeting throws a sea change her way. A job as a house/dog-sitter – albeit in a minus one-star leaky cottage in windswept Shelly Beach – seems the perfect opportunity to relax and regroup. But Gina hasn't counted on the locals, and soon finds herself ...

Meet Scout Davis.Investigative journalist. Tea enthusiast. Guerilla knitter.When an American cult moves to the Gold Coast, Scout's investigative antennae start quivering. She sets out to expose the cult's bizarre practices, but when she learns the identity of a recent recruit, her quest becomes personal. And dangerous.Meanwhile, her sister Harper, Head of Sport at a posh school, needs a favour regarding a strange case of vandalism.But Scout has her own secre...

Brimming with warmth and wit, Susan Duncan's first novel is a delicious tale of friendship and love, and the search for a place to call home...Ettie Brookbank is the heart and soul of Cook's Basin, a sleepy cluster of dazzling blue bays where the only way home is by boat. However, as idyllic as her surroundings are, she is all too aware of the years slipping by without note.While her good friend Sam, an offshorer born and bred, steadfastly guards the tranquillity of Cook's Basin life, Etti...

WINNER OF THE 2011 AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD****SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2011 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN PREMIER'S BOOK AWARDSSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2011 BARBARA JEFFERIS AWARDMarie King is fifty-nine, recently divorced, and has lived a rather conventional life on Sydney’s affluent north shore. Now her three children have moved out, the family home is to be sold, and with it will go her beloved garden.On a drunken whim, Marie gets a tattoo — an ac...

Intrepid investigative journalist Scout Davis has given herself a holiday, but when Hermione Longfellow accosts her in the supermarket, she stops to listen.Most people in Byron Bay are aware of the eccentric Anemone sisters. Always dressed in black, they rarely leave their home nestled in the hills. When Hermione asks Scout to track down her sister Nemony's AWOL husband, believed to have died at sea thirty years ago but recently popped up again on the Great Barrier Reef, Scout jump...

A page-turning, mysterious, funny and delightful story by the bestselling author of Salvation Creek, The Briny Café and Gone Fishing.When five couples pool their resources to live in a house located where a turquoise lagoon meets the sea, the quirky little offshore community of Cook's Basin is shocked. How will ten people - one in a wheelchair and one with a hauntingly familiar face - survive where the only way in or out is by boat?...

Bestselling Australian author Susan Duncan is famous for making a sea change from a 25-year career in media, which included being editor of two of Australia's top women's magazines, to living in her own patch of paradise in Pittwater. Gone Fishing is Susan's latest novel and is set in tranquil Cook's Basin.For bargeman Sam Scully, life in Cook’s Basin is nothing short of paradise. A wonderland of golden sand and turquoise waters, battered old tinnies and w...

Ralf the Giant Schnauzer was once a small puppy with a big barking problem. He was facing an uncertain future until Caroline Lovick and her loving family came along. They rescued Ralf from Tasmania and welcomed him into their family home in Melbourne.Ralf was the recipient of daily cuddles from Caroline's four children who would spend hours playing with him. He became an important part of their daily walk to school and a celebrity at the school gates where children would stop and p...

Can a city hold the key to happiness?'This isn't a mid-life crisis OK? For a start I'm not old enough yet to have one of those. I'm calling it a happiness project. I've stolen an entire summer from my life and by the time it's over I plan to leave this place with a list in my hand. The ten things that make me happy, that's all I want to know. How difficult can it be? They may be small things - a perfect cup of coffee, a day without rain - or bigger ones. It's s...

“Old landmarks fall in nearly every block ... and the face of the city is changing so rapidly that the time is not too far distant when a search for a building 50 years old will be in vain.” —Herald, 1925.The demolition firm of Whelan the Wrecker was a Melbourne institution for a hundred years (1892–1992). Its famous sign – ‘Whelan the Wrecker is Here’ on a pile of shifting rubble – was a laconic masterpiece and served as a vital sign of the city's progress. It's no stretc...

*A DIGITAL-EXCLUSIVE SHORT STORY*A lot can change in a year . . .The children's books Jenny writes and illustrates from her countryside studio are doing well, and after a lifetime of looking after everyone else, she's finally putting herself first. Meanwhile, Maggie's ordered world is thrown into chaos when her baby son Leo arrives. Candlelit baths have made way for endless night feeds, and she and partner Owen are struggling to find any ti...