FICTION

Arcana AcademyClara Graysword has survived the underworld of Eclipse City through thievery, luck, and a whole lot of illegal magic. After a job goes awry, Clara is sentenced to a lifetime in prison for inking tarot cards - a rare power reserved for practitioners at the elite Arcana Academy.Just when it seems her luck has run dry, the academy's enigmatic headmaster, Prince Kaelis, offers her an escape - for a price. Kaelis believes that Clara is the perfect tool to help him steal a tarot card from the king and use it to re-create an all-powerful card long lost to time.In order to conceal her identity and keep her close, Kaelis brings Clara to Arcana Academy, introducing her as the newest first-year student and his bride-to-be.Thrust into a world of arcane magic and royal intrigue, where one misstep will send her back to prison or worse, Clara finds that the prince she swore to hate may not be what he seems. But can she risk giving him power over the world - and her heart? Or will she take it for herself?

Lessons In Love At The Seaside Salon Four women. Four loves. Four life-changing stories. At a little salon by the sea - on the windblown coast of 1980s Australia - four different women with intertwined lives will find themselves through love, heartbreak and learning to love again.Lost love: Trudy, 57, owns Summertime Salon in the sun-soaked Central Coast town of Terrigal. She loves her job and her clients. Her colours, perms and Princess Di cuts bring joy and confidence to regulars and tourists alike. But since Laurie died, life hasn't been the same.Love on the rocks: Anna, 42, brings her mother to Summertime Salon every Monday morning but never gets her own hair done. With two children and an absent husband, she doesn't have time for vanity. When Anna kicks Gary out, will she also rediscover the joys of caring for herself, starting with highlights?Unrequited love: Hairdresser Evie, 33, has never had much luck with men. As a single mother, love is the last thing on her mind. Then, new hire Sam joins the salon - he's handsome and kind, and he and Evie hit it off immediately. But is their relationship all that it seems?First love: Apprentice Josie, 19, is seeking independence. She's determined to make her own way in the world, especially when she meets sweet surfer and mechanic Brett, who she can't quite believe is silly over her. How long can she keep him a secret from her overprotective parents?Uplifting and heartwarming, Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon follows four women on their journeys for love - in all its beautiful and bittersweet forms. Sophie Green is the bestselling author of The Shelly Bay Ladies Swimming Circle and Weekends with the Sunshine Gardening Society.'A cosy, comforting read' BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS'A great read. Relatable and realistic characters in a relatable setting with lovely interwoven yet independent story arcs' STARTS AT 60Praise for Sophie's novels:'Uplifting' WOMAN'S DAY'Delightful' BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS'A warm treat of a novel' WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN'Reading a Sophie Green book is the greatest escape' WHO MAGAZINE'Fulfilling and Australian as a lamb roast and full-bodied shiraz' THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY'Reading this book was like snuggling beneath a warm beach towel after a bracing dip in the ocean' JOANNA NELL

<p>Murder Most Foul is a dark, witty and fast-paced novel, from one of Britain's best-loved screenwriters.</p><p>It's 1593, Elizabeth I is Queen and everyone is terrified of the worst outbreak of plague in a generation. Shakespeare has only written six plays and is lagging behind his friend Christopher Marlowe, London's leading playwright. When Marlowe is stabbed to death in mysterious circumstances, rumours abound but the one that won't go away is that Shakespeare did it to remove his greatest rival.</p><p>Will is determined to clear his name, and teams up with his old flame, Marlowe's sister Ann, who has plenty of secrets of her own. In their search to solve the crime, Will and Ann uncover a dark world of treachery, murder, and corruption which in turn provides Shakespeare with scenes and characters which will appear in his greatest plays.</p><p>'Clever, funny, ingenious and endearing' Lissa Evans</p>

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025- An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge<p>It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season...</p><p>In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known...</p>

In a small town in New Zealand, lifelong friends, Rachel, Julia and Chicky, are celebrating the end of school, enjoying the liminal space of the summer holidays before their lives will be transformed by university, careers and adulthood.The arrival of Miranda, an exotically beautiful and charismatic woman, will have a profound effect on the ostensibly concrete bond between the girls, revealing long-ignored cracks in their friendships.In The New Girl, Emily Perkins employs her sharp wit and incisive eye to demonstrate the profoundly destructive effects of resentment, mistrust and lies.

The enthralling new novel from the 10-million-copy, No. 1 bestselling author<p>London 1941</p><p>When Mary meets a glamorous stranger named Elizabeth she realises their lives couldn't be more different.</p><p>But when an air raid forces them to take shelter underground Mary's life is set in change forever.</p><p>After waking up in hospital, injured but alive, the nurse mistakes her for Elizabeth and hands over her suitcase with Elizabeth's money and tickets to Ireland inside.</p><p>This is Mary's chance to escape the hardship of her life and start afresh.</p><p>What could go wrong?</p>

Harlow Hayes- the pop star. I'm a global sensation adored by millions, and my star only seems to keep rising. The icon. My fans say I speak directly to them through my music, that I know who they are. How else could I write such visceral, personal lyrics? They love me, and I love them right back.The murderer. Then, at the height of my fame, I was arrested on suspicion of murder.The world thinks they know who I am.But they have no idea. * Told from the perspective of Naomi Barnes, an investigative journalist with a personal interest in the case, this exhilarating thriller is Daisy Jones & the Six meets Pretty Little Liars.

A sweeping historical story of love, family and friendship that highlights the richness and vitality of Torres Strait Islander culture. For readers of Anita Heiss.'This is the kind of book you'll want to read again immediately, and will appeal to fans of Kate Grenville, Pip Williams and Anita Heiss.' READINGS MONTHLYA heart-warming and ultimately triumphant story of the life of a young Torres Strait Islander woman from Tagai Town, a shantytown on the northeastern coast of Australia, in the decades before, during and after World War II.Growing up in the 1930s, Pearl strives for a place in the wider world, battling deep-seated prejudices. When she rescues a white shopkeeper trapped under a fallen beam, a bond forms between the two women, and Pearl becomes the first Ailan woman, Islander woman, to work front-of-shop in the nearby white town. Not everyone is happy, of course, least of all the affronted white customers. But Pearl is quietly determined. Her budding romance with the bank manager's son, though, must always be kept secret for her to retain her position and for the security of Tagai Town. Like Ama Rose says, 'We leave them koles, white people, alone and they leave us alone!'When war arrives and Teddy suddenly enlists in the army, Pearl faces a cruel punishment. But her quest to recover the child she had with Teddy reveals much more than she'd bargained for. Lenora Thaker's debut novel, The Pearl of Tagai Town, brings a fresh angle to Australian historical fiction with a First Nations wartime love story.PRAISE-'Readers of Kate Grenville and Anita Heiss and those drawn to lesser-told stories will find much to admire in this striking debut.' BOOKS + PUBLISHING'The Pearl of Tagai Town reclaims history through storytelling.' NATIONAL INDIGENOUS TIMES

The perfect read to surpass the wildest dreams (and nightmares) of the most dedicated cosplay fanatic.Bodkins Point is a tiny town with a big secret and an annual, screwball medieval festival. And Agincourt will make you a hero if it doesn't kill you.And this year's festival is more dangerous than ever. If the mock battles don't get you killed and there are no bushfires on the horizon, you still have to watch you don't fall prey to a vengeful former-Olympic archer and stuntwoman.Because Joy Robyn, is on a quest is about to use Agincourt as her platform for vengeance after her granddaughter is killed in a bushfire started by someone in the town.

A captivating coming-of-age novel about love, sisterhood, secrets and betrayal'A subtle, clever, evocative book' Joanna Quinn, Guardian Book of the Day'Gorgeous and sad and gripping and moving' Marian Keyes'Slender, perfect and sparkling ... I'm stricken with love for this book' Meg Mason'Details the profound and complex nature of love and family ... Spare, moving and beautifully written' Jojo Moyes'Freud brings us directly inside the beating hearts of her characters. I loved this' Miranda Cowley Heller'Both delicate and profound about how relationships bind us together and pull us apart' Tracy Chevalier____________________________________________________From the author of Hideous Kinky comes a captivating novel about sisterhood, secrets, betrayal and love.For as long as Lucy can remember, she's been caught between loyalty to her rootless, idealistic mother and devotion to her fierce and exacting sister, Bea. From her unsettled childhood to her turbulent teenage years, she's been forced to make a choice.But as the sisters come of age and embark on their own experiments in love, drugs, work, motherhood they find their lives, and their relationships, increasingly in turmoil.Can the love they have for each other transcend the damage of the past? Or is the past too dangerous to examine?

Set in a dystopian near-future in which surveillance and isolation dominate daily life.One summer's day in 2056 in the mountains of southern France, a warning siren goes off- inside the belly of the receding glacier above the spa-centre village, a large pocket of water is about to give way-just as it did 150 years earlier. Hundreds of people died in the floods that followed.My Sister is a novel about the ancestral fear of environmental disaster, and the narrator Lucie's fear for her twin sister Clemence, who has returned to the village after a thirty-year absence.The two women shelter together beneath the glacier, waiting for the worst, surviving on dwindling supplies. Day by day, Clemence becomes more controlling of Lucie, as the ultimate catastrophe looms over them.My Sister is a spine-chilling story of sibling rivalry. Emmanuelle Salasc offers us a profound examination of the future of our relationship with nature-and of those close to us.

London has ground Daniel down. Grasping for an escape from the urban drudgery of his life, he is enticed by a free trip and the promise of ten thousand dollars, all for the simple delivery of a package for an acquaintance.Finding himself quickly ensnared in the murky netherworld of drug smuggling, Daniel's life descends into a montage of casinos and grungy hotels, stuck in New Zealand when he wins and loses a fortune in one night. Grit and tenacity will be his only redemption in this illicit pressure-cooker of a world. Equally dissatisfied with her life, Kate, an usherette in Auckland, pines for an ex-boyfriend and yearns for genuine fulfilment. Their lives will become indelibly entwined.Sharp and poignant, Emily Perkins' debut novel examines a disenfranchised generation in search of purpose.

The exciting new rural crime novel from the bestselling author of Broken Bay and The Creeper. When a massive wind farm is erected on its outskirts, a small Victorian town is ripped apart in the deadliest of ways.High on a hill above the small Victorian town of Carrabeen, 300 wind turbines constantly spin. Except one is now deadly still - a body hanging from its huge white blade.Detective Sergeants Belinda Burney and Will Lovell are shocked to discover the dead man is Geordie Pritchard, a rich local philanthropist and owner of the wind energy farm.Suicide at first seems the likely explanation, until Geordie's widow Lucinda insists her husband was murdered - and she has the death threats to prove it. Certainly the wind farm has ripped the rural town in two. Some welcome the jobs and prosperity it brings, others are enraged by the loss of farming land. In short, Pritchard was both saint and sinner. But who in the small community hated him enough to want him dead?

The third book in the EPIC Crescent City series from multi-million and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas. Maas has established herself as a fantasy fiction titan - TimeThink Game of Thrones meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a drizzle of E.L. James TelegraphSpiced with slick plotting and atmospheric world-building ... a page-turning delight Guardian Sarah J. Maas does not disappoint - To be devoured with relish Mail ****** A WORLD IN DARKNESS.A BURNING SPARK.A BLAZE OF STARS. Bryce Quinlan is stranded in a strange new world. She's going to need all her wits about her to get home again and return to everything she loves. But that's no easy feat when she has no idea who to trust.Meanwhile, Hunt Athalar is back in the Asteri's dungeons. Stripped of his freedom and the happiness he'd fought so hard for, he's without a clue as to Bryce's fate. Hunt is desperate to help his mate, but until he can escape the Asteri's chains, his hands are quite literally tied.In this breathtaking sequel to the #1 bestsellers House of Earth and Blood and House of Sky and Breath, Midgard is brought to the brink of collapse, and the fate of the world rests on the hope of rebellion. But the fight for survival, freedom, and love may cost everything Bryce and Hunt have.House of Flame and Shadow was ranked #1 in UK TCM charts week ending 6/2/2024

The heartfelt and hilarious new novel from the bestselling author of The Angry Women's Choir.Callie March is fascinated by human absurdity, including the habits of the upper class. So when she pushes her screen-addicted teenage son to join a local rowing club, she is thrilled to discover a whole new world of odd behaviours, irrational obsessions and riverside rooting.Thrust into a support crew and a very silly uniform, Callie has inadvertently volunteered for a season of pre-dawn parenting, endless fundraising, and pandering to insufferable dickheads. But she also finds friendship, intrigue and lust, while her son might just find love.Callie is torn between enchantment and repulsion, until a trail of corruption and scandal leads to deep suspicion. There's something fishy in the rowing shed, and Callie is determined to find out what lurks behind the closed doors of this sports club. In doing so, she will rock the boat - or better still, capsize it altogether.This novel is set in northern Tasmania. It contains profundity, profanity, heart-ache, bum chafe, terrible winners and very good losers.'A wickedly entertaining romp that's hilarious and heart-breaking all at once.' Amanda Hampson'Spit-out-your-tea, wet-your-pants funny!' Tess Woods 'Sharply observed social satire with a slice of whodunit. Set aside a weekend because you'll want to read it in one go.' Maggie Mackellar 'Funny, incisive, clever, but sadly a marriage wrecker... my husband moved out to sleep in another room while I was reading THE GOOD LOSERS, because my snorting was keeping him awake.' Kylie Ladd