The digital edition!
Here are some of Carolyn’s top picks for May.
eBooks on BorrowBox
The Lost Jewels by Kirsty Manning
In the summer of 1912, a workman’s pickaxe strikes through the basement floor of an old tenement house in Cheapside, London, uncovering a cache of unimaginably valuable treasure that quickly disappears again.
Present day. When respected jewellery historian, Kate Kirby, receives a call about the Cheapside jewels, she knows she’s on the brink of the experience of a lifetime.
As Kate peels back the layers of London’s stories of plague, fire and political turmoil, she is forced to explore long-buried family secrets. Secrets concerning Essie, her great-grandmother, and her life in Edwardian London. Soon, Kate’s past and present threaten to collide and the truths about her family lie waiting to be revealed.
Inspired by a true story, The Lost Jewels unfolds an incredible story of mystery, thievery, sacrifice and hope through the generations of one family.
Sheer Water by Leah Swann
Ava and her two young sons, Max and Teddy, are driving to their new home in Sheerwater, hopeful of making a fresh start in a new town, although Ava can’t but help keep looking over her shoulder. They’re almost at their destination when they witness a shocking accident – a light plane crashing in the field next to the road. Ava stops to help, but when she gets back to the car, she realises that somewhere, amongst the smoke, fire and confusion, her sons have gone missing.
For readers of Mark Brandi’s Wimmera, Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World and Emily Maguire’s An Isolated Incident, this is a beautifully written, propulsive, tense, gut-wrenching and unputdownable novel that grips the reader from its powerful opening chapter to its devastating, gasp-out-loud, nail-biting conclusion. This is an aching, powerful story from a substantial new Australian writing talent of the insidiousness of domestic abuse and the heroic acts we are capable of in the name of love.
Torched by Kimberley Starr
A small Yarra Valley town has been devastated by a bushfire, and Reefton Primary School principal Phoebe Warton can’t sleep. She’s the single mother of eighteen-year-old Caleb who is accused of starting the fire – on purpose. Twelve people are dead, students from her school among them; only a monster would cause such carnage. But where was her son that day? No one knows but Caleb, and he’s not talking.
Against mounting community rage, Phoebe sets out to clear her son. But every avenue leads back to Caleb. Why did he vanish from his Country Fire Authority shift? Who else was at the abandoned goldmine that day? Why is Caleb refusing to speak?
Phoebe will be forced to confront the nature of guilt and redemption, and decide what boundaries she is willing to cross to save the son she loves.
Torched is an explosive, haunting and compelling crime novel about mothers and sons and the ties that bind them.
eAudio on BorrowBox
The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan
Some lines should never be crossed.
Police corruption, an investigation that ends in tragedy and the mystery of a little girl’s silence – three unconnected events that will prove to be linked by one small town.
While Detective Cormac Reilly faces enemies at work and trouble in his personal life, Garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway with the threat of prosecution hanging over his head. But even that is not as terrible as having to work for his overbearing father, the local copper for the pretty seaside town of Roundstone.
For some, like Anna and her young daughter, Tilly, Roundstone is a refuge from trauma. But even this village on the edge of the sea isn’t far enough to escape from the shadows of evil men.
The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie
This is a memoir about a dysfunctional family, about a mother and her daughters. But make no mistake. This is like no mother-daughter relationship you know.
When Vicki Laveau-Harvie’s elderly mother is hospitalised unexpectedly, Vicki and her sister travel to their parents’ isolated ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, Vicki and her sister are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. For years, Vicki’s mother has camouflaged her manic delusions and savage unpredictability, and over the decades she has managed to shut herself and her husband away from the outside world, systematically starving him and making him a virtual prisoner in his own home. Vicki and her sister have a lot to do, in very little time, to save their father. And at every step they have to contend with their mother, whose favourite phrase during their childhood was: ‘I’ll get you and you won’t even know I’m doing it.’
A ferocious, sharp, darkly funny and wholly compelling memoir of families, the pain they can inflict and the legacy they leave, The Erratics has the tightly coiled, compressed energy of an explosive device – it will take your breath away.
eAudio on RBDigital
The White Girl by Tony Birch
A searing new novel from leading Indigenous storyteller Tony Birch that explores the lengths we will go to in order to save the people we love. Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families. When a new policeman arrives in town, determined to enforce the law, Odette must risk everything to save Sissy and protect everything she loves. In The White Girl, Miles-Franklin-shortlisted author Tony Birch shines a spotlight on the 1960s and the devastating government policy of taking Indigenous children from their families.
The Note through the Wire by Doug Gold
A WWII prisoner of war, a resistance heroine and their incredible true story. In the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe, two people meet fleetingly in a chance encounter. Josefine Lobnik is a Yugoslav underground resistance fighter; Bruce Murray a New Zealand soldier and prisoner of war. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever. This is an extraordinary true account of two ordinary people living through the unimaginable hardship of Hitler’s barbaric regime. Woven through their tales of near-impossible coincidences, great bravery, daring escapes, betrayal, torture and retaliation is their remarkable love story that survived against all odds. “An unforgettable love story set in perilous circumstances. It is a reminder that even in the most horrific times love will find a way and ultimately conquer. I can’t recommend it enough.” HEATHER MORRIS, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
eBooks, eMagazines & eAudio from Blue Mountains library
Readers in the Mist 