Truth is not a destination – it's a magical ride. Addy Loest is harbouring a secret – several, in fact. Dedicated overthinker, frockaholic and hard-partyer, she's been doing all she can to avoid the truth for quite some time. A working-class girl raised between the Port Kembla Steelworks and the surf of the Illawarra coast, Addy is a fish out of water at the prestigious University of Sydney. She's also the child of German immigrants, and her broken-hearted widower dad won't tell her anything about her family's tragic past. But it's 1985, a time of all kinds of excess, from big hair to big misogyny, and distractions are easy. Distractions, indeed, are Addy's best skill – until one hangover too many leads her to meet a particular frock and a particular man, each of whom will bring all her truths hurtling home. Told with Kim Kelly's incomparable warmth and wit, The Truth & Addy Loest is...

A murder. A missing manuscript. An undying love. Thisbe Chisholm wants to be a writer. It's 2007, a time of digital revolution and skyrocketing property prices, but she's an old-fashioned girl. She doesn't even own a mobile phone. She has no stars-in-her-eyes desire for fame, to see her name on the cover of a book, either. She longs only to tell of the stories written on her heart. While her best friends, Penny and Jane, and her darling boyfriend, John, seem set for stellar careers in their chosen fields, Thisbe works nights as a hostess at a glitzy harbourside Sydney club - a job she despises but it's paid the rent for the last three years since university graduation. Just as she completes her novel, though, she is brutally killed at the end of John's street. Who murdered Thisbe? What will become of her novel? From the gritty glamour of Bondi Beach to the cold streets of London, here is a tale of tragedy and literary betrayal, of a publishing...

It is 1914 and Lithgow is booming. Daniel is a young German-Australian, a coalminer and a socialist; Francine is the bourgeois, Irish-Catholic, too-good-for-this-place daughter of one of the mine's owners. When their paths collide, they fall in love despite themselves - raising eyebrows all around town.But before the signatures on their marriage certificate are dry, war erupts, confronting them with a new and much more terrifying obstacle. Against his principles but driven by a sense of solidarity, Daniel enlists; Francine, horrified, has no choice but to support him.As they hurtle towards a daunting world of war, separation and grief, they learn things about themselves and one another that they would never have expected in more certain times - about heroism, sacrifice, the thin line between courage and stupidity, and, most of all, about the magical power of love.

As 1900 draws to a close, Berylda Jones, having completed her university exams for entry to medicine is heading home to Bathurst for Christmas. Tragically, 'home' is where she and her beloved sister Greta live in terror, under the control of their sadistic Uncle Alec. Then, on New Year's Eve, just as Alec tightens his grip over the sisters, a stranger arrives at their gate - Ben Wilberry, a botanist, travelling west in search of a particular native wildflower, with his friend, the artist Cosmo Thompson. Ben is at first oblivious to what depravity lays beyond this threshold and what follows is a journey that will take him and Berylda, Greta and Cosmo, out to the old gold rush town of Hill End in search of a means to cure evil and a solution to what seems an impossible situation. Against the tumultuous backdrop of Australian Federation and the coming of the Women's Vote, Paper Daisies is a story of what it means to find moral courage, of a crime that must...

It's November 1939, another war in Europe. And Bernie Cooper is wondering what's ahead for her. She knows Gordon Brock is going to ask her to marry him – any second now. An honest country boy about to graduate from university as a geologist, he's a good catch by anyone's standards, too. And she's going to say no. The harsh realities of this Second World War have other plans for Bernie, though, and once her adored father is commissioned to serve again, she accepts Gordon's proposal ­- mostly to please her dad. In any event, with Gordon off to New Guinea for the job of a lifetime, she'll be glad of a temporary reprieve from walking down the aisle, won't she? As Gordon braces for the inevitable Japanese invasion of Rabaul, Bernie finds herself in the midst of the battle being fought on home soil – against the worst drought in living memory, against the menace of an unseen enemy, and against the unspeakable torment of not knowing if those dear to...

Wild Chicory is the story of a journey from Ireland to Australia in the early 1900s, along threads of love, family, war and peace. It's a slice of ordinary life rich in history, folklore and fairy tale, and a portrait of the precious bond between a granddaughter, Brigid, and her grandmother, Nell. From the windswept, emerald coast of County Kerry, to the slums of Sydney's Surry Hills; and from the bitter sectarian violence of Ulster, to tranquillity of rural New South Wales, Brigid weaves her grandmother's tales into a small but beautiful epic of romance and tragedy, of laughter and the cold reality of loss. It's Nell's tales, tall and true, that spur Brigid to write her own, too. Ultimately, it's a story of finding your feet in a new land – be that a new country, or a new emotional space – and the wonderful trove of narrative we carry with us wherever we might go. In many ways Brigid and Nell are Kim and her grandmother Lillian Kelly, and many snippets of story in this work...

The week before Christmas, 1929, Eoghan O'Keenan loses his factory job, and has to flee the slums of Chippendale with his seven-year-old sister Agnes.On the north side of Sydney at Lavender Bay, Olivia Greene is working on her latest millinery creations and dreaming of becoming the next Coco Chanel.A job on the Harbour Bridge for Eoghan, designing couture for the Governor's wife for Olivia, and a chance meeting in the Botanic Gardens sees the beginning of an unconventional romance. From vastly different backgrounds, with absolutely nothing in common - from faith to wealth and class - it seems that the blue mile of harbour between Olivia and Eoghan will be the least of the obstacles ahead.By mid-1932, as the construction of the Bridge is completed, the city is in chaos as the Great Depression begins to bite hard and the unemployed edge ever closer to a violent revolt.And then Eoghan disappears.Set...