Angelus is a frontier town with a dark colonial past. And, for a century and a half, it’s been a whaling port first and foremost. Queenie Cookson comes from a long line of whalers, but she loves the majestic creatures that visit every winter, so when citified conservationists descend on her community to protest, she’s torn between loyalties. And everything solid around her begins to come apart.

A series of bizarre and mystifying murders plunges Tessa Vance into a hunt for an obsessive killer while a terrifying shadow from the past threatens to overwhelm her. In her first case with her new homicide division, Tessa has to prove herself, especially to her new partner, Steve Hayden. She knows there won't be any second chances. And this killer is clever, ruthless, and implacable. The grotesque clues left at the crime scenes lead nowhere. The murderer's victims seem to have nothing in ...

When burnt-out pop star Adam Quinn is found grotesquely dead on a secluded mountain property called Haven, it looks like a case of suicide. But is it? As Senior Detective Tessa Vance and her partner Steve Hayden work to penetrate the web of fear, suspicion and deceit that shrouds Haven, and as the dark secrets of the place are slowly exposed, Tessa must fight to stay clear-headed and to come to terms with the truth.

Tim Winton’s characters are ordinary people who battle to maintain loyalty against all odds; women, children, men whose relationships strain under pressure and leave them bewildered, hoping, sometimes fleeing, but often finding strength in forgotten parts of themselves.

The world Tim Winton paints in Scission is often harsh and disturbing, inhabited by isolated, unforgiving characters. It is a world at once familiar, filled with the trappings of home and family, and yet also strangely twisted – a world where casual brutality and unexpected death are never far from the surface. Evident in a young girl’s violent temper once the eggs she has so jealously guarded finally hatch, or in the careless indifference of the woman stepping over a soldier’s spreadeagle...

Jerra and his best mate Sean set off in a beaten-up old VW to go camping on the coast. Jerra’s friends and family want to know when he will finish university, find a girl and make his mark. But they don’t understand the marks he’s already made and those he wears in secret. What happened with Sean’s mother, Jewel? And why is he searching for the fish with the pearl?