New Releases

Small Hours

Small Hours

If you stood before sunrise in this wild old place, looking through the trees into the garden, here's what you'd see:

A father and son, a fox standing between them.

Jack, home for the first time in years, still determined to be the opposite of his father.

Gerry, who would rather talk to animals than the angry man back under his roof.

Everything that follows is because of the fox, and because Jack's mother is missing. It spans generations of big dreams and lost time, unexpected connections and things falling apart, great wide worlds and the moments that define us.

If you met them in the small hours, you'd begin to piece together their story.

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The Rumor Game

The Rumor Game

A determined reporter and a reluctant FBI agent face off against fascist elements in this gripping historical thriller set in World War II-era Boston from the multi-award-nominated author.

Reporter Anne Lemire writes the Rumor Clinic, a newspaper column that disproves the many harmful rumors floating around town, some of them spread by Axis spies and others just gossip mixed with fear and ignorance. Tired of chasing silly rumors, she wants to write about something bigger.

Special Agent Devon Mulvey, one of the few Catholics at the FBI, spends his weekdays preventing industrial sabotage and his Sundays spying on clerics with suspect loyalties - and he spends his evenings wooing the many lonely women whose husbands are off at war.

When Anne's story about Nazi propaganda intersects with Devon's investigation into the death of a factory worker, the two are led down a dangerous trail of espionage, organized crime, and domestic fascism - one that implicates their own tangled pasts and threatens to engulf the city in violence.

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Burma Sahib

Burma Sahib

Eric Blair stood out amongst his fellow police trainees in 1920s Burma. Nineteen years old, unusually tall, a diffident loner fresh from Eton, after five years spent in the narrow colonial world of the Raj - a decaying system steeped in overt racism and petty class-conflict - he would emerge as the George Orwell we know.

Drawing on all his powers of observation and imagination, Paul Theroux brings Orwell's Burma years to radiant life, tracing the development of the young man's consciousness as he confronts the social, racial and class politics and the reality of Burma beyond. Through one writer, we come to understand another - and see how what Orwell called 'five boring years within the sound of bugles' were in fact the years that made him.

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The Night She Fell

The Night She Fell

A beautiful young law student dies on the concrete below her third-storey window in chilly Dunedin.

It's clear enough how she died. What isn't is why - or who's involved.

Plenty of people had a reason to hate Ashleigh, with her straight As and perfect looks. She's fallen out with her flatmates, and her boyfriend Xander is having second thoughts about their future together. And then there are the weird messages.
 

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Would You Ask My Husband That?

Would You Ask My Husband That?

She's wearing the pants in this family. And washing everyone else's too...

When Sarah's husband, Will, is unexpectedly fired, her first reaction is shock. Then she gets a call offering her his old job.

On principle, she should turn it down. But their young family needs the money and Sarah can't help feeling like her career has taken a backseat all these years. Now it is her turn to shine.

Overnight, Sarah and Will trade places.

She's now the departmental director commuting into the city five days a week and answering client calls on the weekend. He's doing the school run and the laundry. Or at least trying to.

They've always said they are equal partners, so this should be simple, right?

Wrong.

This change was supposed to be the making of them as a family, but as Sarah fights for her chance to have it all, she might end up losing everything...

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Joy Moody is Out of Time

Joy Moody is Out of Time

On her twin daughters' twenty-first birthday, Joy Moody - proprietor of Bonbeach's premier laundromat - is found dead. Yet that is not the strangest thing happening behind the bright pink facade of Joyful Suds.

For much of their lives, Joy has been telling Cassie and Andie one big, fat lie- that they are from the future, and that when they turn twenty-one they will travel back to the year 2050.

What started as a colourful tale to explain how the girls came to live with her has now become a decade-long deception. Worse still, Joy has started to believe it herself.

The lie is certainly preferable to the truth she can't face - about what happened to the girls' real mother, and how far Joy's gone to keep them 'safe' . . .

With the twins' twenty-first birthday fast approaching, and with Andie starting to have doubts, time is fast running out for Joy Moody. In more ways than one.

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The House of Broken Bricks

The House of Broken Bricks

As Tess traces the sunrise over the floodplains, light that paints the house a startling crimson, she yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was. Instead of Max and Sonny tracking dirt through the kitchen - Tess and Richard's 'rainbow twins' - Tess absorbs the quiet. The nights draw in, the soil cools and Richard fights to get his winter crops planted rather than deal with the discussion he cannot bear to have.

Secrets and vines clamber over the broken red bricks and although its inhabitants seem to be withering, in the damp, crumbling soil Sonny knows that something is stirring . . . As the seasons change, and the cracks let in more light, the family might just be able to start to heal.

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The Accident

The Accident

A terrible crash... but the facts don't add up. Worlds converge and two women's lives are torn apart when a devastating accident uncovers a shocking web of lies. A gripping and thought-provoking new mystery from bestselling Australian author Fiona Lowe. Perfect for readers who enjoy Liane Moriarty and Sally Hepworth.

Freya thought she could relax when Ryan's best mate Jamie got engaged to her best friend Hannah. Two couples, four friends - what could be better than that? But a day before the wedding Freya's torn between keeping the peace or blowing it up.

Hannah's perfect wedding is hours away and she's daydreaming of a honeymoon in Tahiti and starting the family she longs for when she hears the first-responder sirens. Is it a grass fire? Worse? And why aren't Ryan or Jamie answering their phones?

When a car veers off the road with devastating consequences, the small wheatbelt town of Garringarup is left reeling, but no one's worlds are more shattered than Hannah's and Freya's.

As disturbing details surrounding the accident emerge and questions pile up, ugly secrets rise to the surface.

Mystery, lies and scandal - it's soon obvious nothing is as it seems in this small town...

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A Court of Betrayal

A Court of Betrayal

Strong-willed heiress Johane de Geneville is married to Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, at just fifteen years old.

Soon Johane finds herself swept up in a world of treacherous court politics and dangerous secrets as her husband deposes Edward II and rules England alongside Queen Isabella.

Yet when Roger is accused of treason, she is robbed of her freedom and must survive catastrophic events in her fight for justice - with her life, and her children's, hanging in the balance...

Will she pay for her husband's mistakes, or will she manage to escape from a terrible fate?

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The School Run

The School Run

For parents living in the beautiful coastal town of Pacific Pines, all their hopes and dreams are pinned on the outcome of the annual Gala Day hosted by St Ignatius Boys' School. To be accepted into the prestigious institution, their sons must battle it out, facing rigorous rounds of physical and mental tests. Their parents will stop at nothing to ensure their sons succeed.

But after one boy is struck down in a hit and run, the scandals, secrets and lies that entangle three mothers threaten to unravel their seemingly perfect lives . . .

How far will the women go to, not just to save their families - but also their reputations?
 

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Shellharbour City Libraries acknowledges the traditional custodians of Dharawal Country and recognises their continued connection to the land. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and the contribution they make to the life of this City.