From the bestselling author of Mallawindy and the Woody Creek series "Dettman ... is brilliant at depicting the seemingly inconsequential murmurs of small-town life" Sun-Herald For forty-four years Stella Templeton has been a dutiful daughter and a good citizen, living in Maidenville, population 2,800 where nothing happens. Until one hot summer afternoon. An ugly act has lifted the respectable skirts of Maidenville and mystery starts to surround the daughter of the local minister. Then the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old boy adds to the neighbourhood confusion. Does something rotten lurk behind the neatly trimmed hedges and white picket fences that divide this sleepy town? No-one comes close to knowing the dreadful truth-but after forty-four years of doing the right thing, Stella Templeton is starting to blossom... "Dettman writes compulsively readable stories" The Age Fans of Rosalie Ham's The Dressmaker will love Joy Dettman.

A midsummer's morning. Rhonda Smith is on her way to work. She sees a jacaranda tree and sits under it. As she waits for her bus here, she thinks about her relationship with her husband Sam and former lover Chris. Thoughts simply stream into her mind. Her musings take her back to a convoluted journey of a life of struggles, aspirations, hopes and dreams.She is torn between the two worlds. The only way to resolve this is to deal with it. But to what end?

A stunning debut novel set in post-revolutionary Iran that gives voice to the men, women, and children who won a war only to find their livesNand those of their descendantsNimperiled by its aftermath.

Five friends are feeling bored on a hot sticky day. Just when they think theyll never find anything fun to place, a simple gust of wind changes everything Jacaranda Magic is a unique rhyming picture book that celebrates imaginative play and highlights the value of boredom and nature in inspiring creativity.

37 year old Claire is a woman behaving badly. She pursues bizarre contact with a former lover; tries out an unlikely new one; makes a 'chosen family' out of housemates with problems of their own, and battles the instabilities of part-time work as an academic and filmmaker.

A story of physical hardships and the spiritual experience of a group of Britishers escaping from Japanese-invaded Burma.

A richly imagined story of two sisters' struggle for true freedom in the mid-nineteenth century as their paths diverge in the middle passage—one to the court of Queen Victoria, the other to an American plantation. Salimatu and her sister Fatmata are captured, sold to slavers, renamed and split apart. Forced to change their names to Sarah and Faith, they end up on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Faith is taken to America, where slavery is still legal and she is stripped of all rights. Sarah ends up in a Victorian England and as the goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Can the two sisters reclaim their freedom and identity in a world that is trying to break them down? Will these once inseparable sisters survive without each other? And if they do find each other again, will they find the other changed beyond recognition? Based on the true story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, Breaking the Maafa Chain is by turns epic and intimate and will take the readers on a journey of loss, survival, and hope.