WINNER OF THE 2016 BARBARA JEFFERIS AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 STELLA PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 MILES FRANKLIN AWARD 'They were inescapable, the tensions of the adult world — the fraught and febrile aura that surrounded Ishtar and those in her orbit, that whined and creaked like a wire pulled too tight.' It is the winter of 1985. Hope Farm sticks out of the ragged landscape like a decaying tooth, its weatherboard walls sagging into the undergrowth. Silver's mother, Ishtar, has fallen for the charismatic Miller, and the three of them have moved to the rural hippie commune to make a new start. At Hope, Silver finds unexpected friendship and, at last, a place to call home. But it is also here that, at just thirteen, she is thrust into an unrelenting adult world — and the walls begin to come tumbling down, with deadly consequences. Hope Farm is the masterful second novel from award-winning author Peggy Frew, and is a devastatingly beautiful story about the broken bonds of childhood, and the enduring cost of holding back the truth. PRAISE FOR PEGGY FREW ‘In its exploration of maternal, sexual, unrequited and platonic relationships, Hope Farm is a finely calibrated study of love, loss and belonging.’ The Sunday Age ‘Frew is a gifted writer, evidenced here by finely balanced observations and atmospheric description … Silver is poised at the beginning of adult understanding and Frew handles the challenge with deftness. Silver’s insight and compassion are juxtaposed with naivety and the idealistic force of her first crushes.’ The Weekend Australian

These are the last days of 1999. At St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as the world waits for the new millennium, Lucy, a young Australian woman looks up at Michelangelo’s Pietà behind its pane of bullet-proof glass; a red kabbalah string circles her wrist. She has come with the mysterious parcel her recently deceased mother asked her to bring to the box marked POSTE VATICANE. But before Rome there is Saint-Cloud. Here, on the outskirts of Paris, Lucy works as an au pair for Jean-Claude and his wife Mathilde. When Mathilde leaves for Central Australia to research the Aboriginal artist Kumanjayi, Lucy’s circle of contacts becomes smaller and strangely intimate: Jean-Claude, the baby Felix for whom she cares, and the couple’s charismatic friend Sébastien, a marble restorer. Yet Lucy’s homesickness for Australia and its vastness haunts her world, surfacing in the memories of her mother, the Australian garden at Empress Joséphine’s Malmaison, and Mathilde’s letters from Alice Springs. Lucy’s mother, Jude, who was a nun in the 1970s, once warned her daughter ‘to be careful what she wished for’. It is a caution that marks but rarely alters the choices these characters make. With lushness and tenderness, and revelation, Fitzgerald’s unforgettable novel Pietà exquisitely captures the glorious and imperfect relationships between parents and children, between art and life. ‘Vivid, clever and moving: Pietà is a timely meditation on art icons, iconoclasm and the mysteries of love and time.’ — Gail Jones, award-winning author of Our Shadows

From the beloved author of A Week in Winter and The Sea Garden, The Songbird is a heartwarming novel about family, yearning, and whether love can bloom where old secrets are buried. When Tim confides in Mattie that he needs a sabbatical from work and a fresh place to live, she suggests he move into one of the cottages at her family's home in the beautiful English countryside. She senses there's something he's not telling her, but she has faith that he'll fit right in with the eccentric but affectionate crowd at Brockscombe. As he gets to know the warm jumble of family who share their lives, Tim discovers that everyone there has their secrets. There's Kat, a retired ballet dancer who longs to take the stage again; Charlotte, a young navy wife struggling to bring up her son while her husband is at sea; and William, who has tried hard to get over his estranged wife—though it's much harder now that she's trying to move into the cottage Tim just occupied. And, even when she's far away, Tim knows there's Mattie...beautiful, engaging, clever Mattie. Can Tim open up to her? Would it matter, he wonders, if he did? Marcia Willett, the master of the charming country novel, once again weaves the stories of her vibrant, lovable characters into this heartwarming read.

The bookseller favourite, must-read rural crime novel of 2019 now in a new format