Mark Smith
Mark Smith lives on the west coast of Victoria, Australia, He is the author of four novels: The Road To Winter, Wilder Country, Land of Fences and If Not Us (all Text Publishing). Wilder Country won the 2018 Australian Indie Book Award for YA. Mark is also an award winning writer of short fiction. He is the co-curator of Mind Went Walking, The Songs of Paul Kelly Reimagined and Into Your Arms, The Songs of Nick Cave Reimagined (both Fremantle Press). HIs first adult novel will be published by Pan Macmillan in January 2025
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Candice Fox
Candice Fox is the middle child of a large, eccentric family from Sydney's western suburbs composed of half-, adopted and pseudo siblings. The daughter of a parole officer and an enthusiastic foster-carer, Candice spent her childhood listening around corners to tales of violence, madness and evil as her father relayed his work stories to her mother and older brothers.
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As a cynical and trouble-making teenager, her crime and gothic fiction writing was an escape from the calamity of her home life. She was constantly in trouble for reading Anne Rice in church and scaring her friends with tales from Australia's wealth of true crime writers.
Bankstown born and bred, she failed to conform to military life in a brief stint as an officer in the Royal -
B.M. Carroll
Librarian Note: B.M. Carroll also writes under the name Ber Carroll.
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Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is an author, speaker and podcaster. Her number one bestselling psychological thriller, Dark Mode, was published in Australia/NZ, the UK, South Korea and Germany. It was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year, the Ned Kelly Awards and the Danger Awards.
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Her latest thrillers are Cold Truth and Like, Follow, Die.
She has two earlier books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. Her writing appears widely across Australian and international publications.
Ashley is a frequent speaker and panel moderator, and co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health. She has taught creative writing across Austr -
Christine Gregory
Christine Gregory is an Australian writer of crime and general fiction. An earlier version of The Community, was runner up for the 2022 Banjo Prize. Christine has previously been shortlisted in the Sisters in Crime, Scarlett Stiletto Awards.
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Christine is a former international aid worker and now works as a Director in a national-not for-profit, working on the prevention of violence against women and children. She lives and works in Naarm (Melbourne) with her husband and two children. -
J.P. Pomare
J. P. Pomare is a New Zealand author who lives in Melbourne, Australia.
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He is the author of a number of critically acclaimed and best-selling novels including Seventeen Years Later, Tell Me Lies, and The Wrong Woman.
His novel In The Clearing was adapted for the screen as an eight part miniseries by Disney (The Clearing) and The Last Guests (Watching You) has been adapted as a series by Stan. -
Kirsten Alexander
Kirsten Alexander is the author of three novels: Half Moon Lake (PRH, Australia & NZ, 2019; published as Lost Boy Found by Grand Central/Hachette, US & Canada 2020), Riptides (PRH, 2020) and After the Fall (Ultimo Press, 2025).
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Kirsten has worked as a nonfiction book editor, copywriter (inhouse four years for Aesop, also for Crumpler, M.L. Vintage, House + Universe), and occasional article writer (for the Age, the Daily Beast, Notebook, the Melbourne Weekly, Atticus Review and others). She’s worked as a reviewer for ABC Radio National’s The Book Show, a magazine section editor, and content manager for several websites.
She was co-founder and editor of three-volume digital journal Open Field.
Currently she works as an editor and tutor for the -
Sherryl Clark
Some of my first short stories were crime fiction, and although in the last 20 years I have focused a lot more on writing children's and YA books, I've kept going with my crime writing. The first two novels are now stowed somewhere in the back of my filing cabinet!
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But "Trust Me, I'm Dead", first draft written in 2009, was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger and then published by Verve Books in the UK. What a journey with that novel. I love the character, a grumpy woman (secretly modelled on a young Judi Dench), and couldn't let go of the story. Nine drafts later ...
There are two more Judi novels ("Dead and Gone" and "Mad, Bad and Dead") - but my brand new character is PI Lou Alcott, with "Woman, Missing" published in 2024 by HQ/Harlequin.
M -
Michael Trant
Michael Trant is a WA country boy just beginning his new life as an author, following a wide range of careers from marine draftsman to farmer, and pastoralist to FIFO pot-washer. Michael is now based in Perth, having grown up on the family farm at Eneabba, before moving to Geraldton then out to Yalgoo. His debut novel Ridgeview Station was inspired by his time on Gabyon Station, and he highly recommends a visit for those curious about life on a sheep station.
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Michael writes with an authentic rural voice, drawing on his experiences to open readers to places and lifestyles foreign to many. He has a passion for farming, writing, and gaming, the order of which vary throughout the year. He still works on farms as a tractor driver, mainly to annoy -
Carole Wilkinson
Carole was born in England in 1950. Her family moved to Australia when she was 12. She now lives in Melbourne, with her husband John.
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Carole didn't start writing until she was nearly 40. Before that, she worked as a laboratory assistant, working with a lot of blood and brains. Once she’d decided to try and become a writer, she went to university. She wrote a lot while she was there including her first novel. She showed it to a friend who worked in publishing who asked if she could write a teenage novel. Her first published book was based on something her daughter, who was at high school at the time, was doing.
Carole says she has lots of ideas and so far she’s never had 'writers' block'. She might have got a late start, but she’s been trying -
Lucy Treloar
Lucy Treloar was born in Malaysia and educated in Melbourne, England and Sweden. A graduate of the University of Melbourne and RMIT, Lucy is a writer and editor and has plied her trades both in Australia and in Cambodia, where she lived for a number of years.
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Her short fiction has appeared in Sleepers, Overland, Seizure, and Best Australian Stories 2013 and her non fiction in The Age, Meanjin, Womankind and elsewhere. She won
the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific), the WAUM award, and has also been awarded an Asialink Fellowship to Cambodia and a Varuna Publishers' Fellowship.
Lucy’s debut novel, Salt Creek,was published by Picador (Pan Macmillan) in August 2015 and the UK, USA, CAN and Europe in 2017. It won the Matt Richell ABIA -
Christian White
Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Nowhere Child, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. He co-created the television series Carnivores, currently in development with Matchbox Pictures and Heyday TV, and co-wrote Relic, a psychological horror feature film to be produced by Carver Films (The Snowtown Murders, Partisan).
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Born and raised on the Mornington Peninsula, Christian had an eclectic range of ‘day jobs’ before he was able to write full-time, including food-cart driver on a golf course and video editor for an adult film company. He now spends his days writing from his home in Melbourne where he lives with his wife, the filmmaker Summer DeRoche, and their adopt -
Hannah Tunnicliffe
Hannah Tunnicliffe is the author of several books for kids and adults including The Pool, The Colour of Tea, Season of Salt and Honey, A French Wedding and the trilingual picture book, Marjory and the Mouse. She is the co-creator of the Detective Stanley series published by Flying Eye Books. Her work has featured in the New York Times Book Review and she is the founder and host of the body acceptance podcast, Bod Almighty. She is an eating disorder survivor, career and youth counsellor and holds a degree in social sciences and psychology.
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Robbi Neal
Robbi Neal's first book SUNDAY BEST, a memoir was developed as part of the HarperCollins/Varuna awards program and published by HarperCollins in 2004. AFTER BEFORE TIME, which told stories of indigenous life in a remote community, was published in 2016. THE ART OF PRESERVING LOVE, a story that spanned 25 years from 1905 to 1930 was published in 2018 under the pen name Ada Langton.
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Robbi also paints and is currently working towards an exhibition scheduled for 2022 at Redot Fine Art Gallery, Singapore. She is a mama of five wonderful humans (you're welcome world).
She has lived in country Victoria, Australia, for most of her life and lives only a few of blocks from where her novel THE SECRET WORLD OF CONNIE STARR (2022) is set. She loves to w -
Clare Fletcher
Clare Fletcher was born and raised in regional Queensland, Australia. Her debut novel, romantic comedy FIVE BUSH WEDDINGS, was published in 2022 by Penguin Random House, with a follow up due in 2023. Clare also works part-time in communications for the Walkley Foundation for Journalism, and lives in Sydney with her husband and daughter.
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Follow Clare on Instagram for updates (@clarefletcherwriter) or visit her website to sign up for her monthly newsletter. -
Riley James
Riley James lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her partner and two children. She was born and raised in north-west Tasmania and trained as a journalist before becoming an academic. The Chilling is her first novel.
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Martin Flanagan
Martin Flanagan is the author of twenty books, a play and two movie treatments. He is one of Australia’s most respected sports journalists and wrote for The Age from 1985 to 2017.
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Ali Lowe
Ali Lowe is the author of bestselling novels The Trivia Night, The Running Club, The School Run and The Private Island. Ali is a journalist by profession: she was Features Editor at OK! in London and has written widely for magazines, websites and newspapers. She has dual Australian and British citizenship and lives in Sydney with her family. Follow Ali on Instagram @ali_lowe_author
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Kylie Ladd
Kylie Ladd is a novelist and freelance writer. Her essays and articles have appeared in The Age, Griffith Review, O Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Medicine, Kill Your Darlings, The Hoopla and MamaMia, among others. Kylie's first novel, After the Fall , was published in Australia, the US and Turkey, while her second, Last Summer, was highly commended in the 2011 Federation of Australian Writers Christina Stead Award for fiction. Her previous books are Naked: Confessions of Adultery and Infidelity and Living with Alzheimer's and Other Dementias. Kylie’s third novel, Into My Arms, has been selected as one of Get Reading’s Fifty Books You Can’t Put Down for 2013. She holds a PhD in neuropsychology, and lives in Melbourne, Australia,
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Michelle Prak
Coming in April 2025: BARREN CAPE.
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Michelle Prak's debut thriller THE RUSH was published by Simon & Schuster ANZ; Crooked Lane Books (US); and by HarperCollins France, as LE DELUGE. It's a road trip thrill ride that takes place over two frantic days.
THE RUSH was voted into Better Reading's annual Top 100 reads (2024), and longlisted in the Sisters of Crime Australia Davitt Awards.
Also a short story writer, Michelle was runner-up in the Furphy Literary Prize, 2021.
Between 2019 and 2020, Michelle self-published three women's contemporary novels. Now she's turned to the thriller genre and hopes fans will follow along.
Long before Michelle began writing professionally she was a reader and continues to share on Goodreads.
If you don't want to miss -
Petronella McGovern
Petronella McGovern writes psychological thrillers focusing on everyday characters and contemporary issues.
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Petronella is fascinated by what makes us tick, the lies we tell, and the secrets we keep. She is the best-selling author of Six Minutes, The Good Teacher, The Liars and The Last Trace. Her books have been nominated in the Ned Kelly Awards, the Davitt Awards and the Australian Independent Bookseller Awards. The Liars was selected in the Top 100 Big W/Better Reading list for 2023.
Petronella grew up in a large family on a farm in New South Wales. Australian landscapes and the bush feature strongly in her stories. Among other adventures, she has worked on a summer camp in America and travelled in eastern Africa which inspired parts of h -
Penny Junor
Born in Leatherhead, Surrey, Junor was educated at the independent Benenden School in Kent and read History at St Andrews University, but left in her second year to get married.
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Junor has worked for the Evening Standard and a column for Private Eye lasted five years.
Best known for her books on the British Royal Family, she has written biographies of Diana, Princess of Wales (1982) and Charles, Prince of Wales (1987 and 1998), and Charles and Diana: Portrait of a Marriage (1991). The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor followed in 2005. Her work on the Waleses "alienated" both of them and she reportedly considers the experience the worst of her career. She has also written and had published a book titled Prince William: The Man W -
Rosalie Ham
Rosalie Ham was born, and raised in Jerilderie, NSW, Australia. She completed her secondary education at St Margaret's School, Berwick in 1972. After travelling and working at a variety of jobs (including aged care) for most of her twenties, Rosalie completed a Bachelor of Education majoring in Drama and Literature (Deakin University, 1989), and achieved a Master of Arts, Creative Writing (RMIT, Melbourne) in 2007. Rosalie lives in Brunswick, Melbourne, and when she is not writing, Rosalie teaches literature. Her novels have sold over 50,000 copies.
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Hannah Richell
I wrote my debut novel, Secrets of the Tides, around the time my first child was born. Since then, I’ve written four novels, with my fifth, The Search Party, to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2024. My work is available in twenty-four territories and has been translated into nineteen languages. My books have been selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club, the Waterstones Book Club, WHSmith Book of the Week, shortlisted for two ABIAs and an Indie Book Award in Australia, as well as shortlisted for the Bonniers Bokklubb Book of the Year Award in Sweden.
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While each of my novels is a stand-alone story, what connects them all is my fascination with families and secrets, my desire to dive below the surface and explore the darker recesses of th -
Holly Throsby
Holly Throsby is a songwriter, musician and novelist from Sydney. She has released four solo albums, a children’s album called See! and her most recent album in 2011 was called Team. Holly has been nominated for four ARIA Awards – two for Best Female Artist, one for Best Children’s Album, and one as part of Seeker Lover Keeper, her band with Sally Seltmann and Sarah Blasko.
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Holly is also a council member for the animal protection institute, Voiceless.
She likes good books, cryptic crosswords, small towns and dogs. -
Maggie Alderson
Maggie Alderson is a British-Australian author (that’s how I’m supposed to write it, but I’m not very good at talking about myself in the third person, so I’m going to can it).
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I was born in London, brought up in rural Staffordshire, and educated at the University of St Andrews - and then at the University of Life, Sydney campus.
I spent many years covering the fashion shows in Paris, Milan, London etc which is the best people watching ever (I had to remind myself to look at the models…).
An obsessed bookworm since childhood, all I wanted to do from the age of six was write books. I also hoovered up every magazine and newspaper I could lay my hands on and by the time I was a teenager was determined to edit a magazine and be a newspaper colu -
Shirley Barrett
Shirley Barrett is best known for her work as a screenwriter and director. Shirley's first film, Love Serenade won the Camera D'Or (Best First Feature) at Cannes Film Festival in 1996. The script for her film South Solitary won the Queensland Premier's Prize (script) 2010, the West Australian Premier's Literary Prize (script) 2010, and the West Australian Premier's Prize 2010. Rush Oh! is Shirley's first novel. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
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Polly Phillips
Polly is originally from South West London but after visiting Australia in 2011, she fell head over heels for the lifestyle, even though she doesn’t drink coffee and rarely goes to the beach! Polly currently lives in Perth with her husband, daughter and much-loved dog. My Best Friend’s Murder won the writing prize at the Emirates Literature Festival and is her debut novel. She hopes that after they read it, her friends will still be talking to her…
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Ella Ward
Ella Ward has worked in advertising for twenty years. This means she has a proclivity for profanity and doesn’t respect punctuation.
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In 2018 she was hit with the cancer stick, which apart from being rather frightening also encouraged a foray into oversharing on Instagram, and then – magically – writing.
Her words have been published in places like Frankie, Lunch Lady, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Ella lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband, child, dog, cat and many (many) neuroses.
She’s also writing this about herself in the third person, which she acknowledges is both pretentious and a bit weird. -
Jack Davis
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Jack Davis is better known as a poet and a playwright than as a writer of short stories. He has had four volumes of poems published and has written eight plays. His plays have toured both in Australia and overseas In 1991 his memoir, A Boy's Life, was published. He has been awarded several times for his contribution to the arts and for his welfare work among his own people. -
Jack Davis
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Jack Davis is better known as a poet and a playwright than as a writer of short stories. He has had four volumes of poems published and has written eight plays. His plays have toured both in Australia and overseas In 1991 his memoir, A Boy's Life, was published. He has been awarded several times for his contribution to the arts and for his welfare work among his own people. -
Sara Foster
Sara Foster is a critically acclaimed, bestselling fiction author with a passion for psychological suspense and a keen interest in exploring zeitgeist issues and strong female characters in her nail-biting novels. Her latest, When She Was Gone (2025), begins when an au pair and two small children vanish from a remote Australian beach, and is a race-against-time thriller, exploring themes around misogyny, wealth, power and control.
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Sara is also the author of dystopian thriller The Hush and seven more bestselling novels. Two of her books have been optioned for television, and You Don’t Know Me was adapted into a chart-topping podcast series by Listnr. Sara has a PhD in creative writing (studying maternal representations in fiction) and lives i -
Margaret Hickey
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities. She is the author of Cutters End and Stone Town.
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Bronwyn Rivers
Bronwyn Rivers grew up in Newcastle, Australia with the mystery-novel gateway drugs of The Famous Five and Trixie Belden, before developing a solid addiction to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and PD James. She moved to the UK to take a doctorate at the University of Oxford on nineteenth-century women’s novels, and was an academic researcher and book reviewer in England and Australia.
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Bronwyn now lives in Sydney with her husband and two children. -
Jane Caro
Jane Caro wears many hats; including author, lecturer, mentor, social commentator, columnist, workshop facilitator, speaker, broadcaster and award-winning advertising writer. Jane runs her own communications consultancy and lectures in Advertising Creative at The School of Communication Arts at UWS. She has published three books: The Stupid Country: How Australia is dismantling public education co-authored with Chris Bonnor (2007), The F Word. How we learned to swear by feminism co-authored with Catherine Fox (2008), and Just a Girl (UQP, 2011). She has also appeared on Channel 7’s Sunrise, ABC’s Q&A and ABC’s The Gruen Transfer.
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Kylie Ladd
Kylie Ladd is a novelist and freelance writer. Her essays and articles have appeared in The Age, Griffith Review, O Magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, Good Medicine, Kill Your Darlings, The Hoopla and MamaMia, among others. Kylie's first novel, After the Fall , was published in Australia, the US and Turkey, while her second, Last Summer, was highly commended in the 2011 Federation of Australian Writers Christina Stead Award for fiction. Her previous books are Naked: Confessions of Adultery and Infidelity and Living with Alzheimer's and Other Dementias. Kylie’s third novel, Into My Arms, has been selected as one of Get Reading’s Fifty Books You Can’t Put Down for 2013. She holds a PhD in neuropsychology, and lives in Melbourne, Australia,
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Fleur McDonald
After growing up on a farm near Orroroo in South Australia, Fleur McDonald’s first job was jillarooing in the outback. She has been involved in agriculture all her life, including helping manage a 8000-acre station for twenty years. Today Fleur and her energetic kelpie, Jack, live in Esperance, Western Australia,
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Fleur is the author of 23 bestselling novels and two children's books.
Fleur chats about her daily writing life on her blog http://fleurmcdonald.com,
Facebook - Fleur McDonald Author
Instagram @fleurmcdonald
Tiktok @fleurmcdonaldauthor -
Maryrose Cuskelly
Maryrose Cuskelly is a writer of fiction and non-fiction.
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She is the best-selling author of The Cane (Allen & Uwin 2022), shortlisted for best debut in the 2023 Davitt Awards.
In 2019, her book Wedderburn: A True Tale of Blood and Dust (Allen & Unwin, 2018), was longlisted for Best Debut and Best True Crime in the 2019 Davitt Awards.
In 2016, she was awarded the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing (non-fiction) for her essay on the 1972 abduction and murder of Marilyn Wallman.
She is the author of Original Skin: Exploring the Marvels of the Human Hide (Scribe 2010) and The End of Charity: Time for Social Enterprise (Allen & Unwin 2008) co-written with Nic Frances, and winner of the Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues.
Her -
Hannah Tunnicliffe
Hannah Tunnicliffe is the author of several books for kids and adults including The Pool, The Colour of Tea, Season of Salt and Honey, A French Wedding and the trilingual picture book, Marjory and the Mouse. She is the co-creator of the Detective Stanley series published by Flying Eye Books. Her work has featured in the New York Times Book Review and she is the founder and host of the body acceptance podcast, Bod Almighty. She is an eating disorder survivor, career and youth counsellor and holds a degree in social sciences and psychology.
Buy books on Amazon -
Hannah Richell
I wrote my debut novel, Secrets of the Tides, around the time my first child was born. Since then, I’ve written four novels, with my fifth, The Search Party, to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2024. My work is available in twenty-four territories and has been translated into nineteen languages. My books have been selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club, the Waterstones Book Club, WHSmith Book of the Week, shortlisted for two ABIAs and an Indie Book Award in Australia, as well as shortlisted for the Bonniers Bokklubb Book of the Year Award in Sweden.
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While each of my novels is a stand-alone story, what connects them all is my fascination with families and secrets, my desire to dive below the surface and explore the darker recesses of th -
Darcy Tindale
Darcy is an author, drama teacher, actor, theatresports player, and director. Her versatile talents have seen her appear in television commercials, films, and on stage.
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In 2022, Darcy was one of six finalists in the Penguin Books Literary Prize for her adult crime novel, The Fall Between. This accolade led to a literary contract with Penguin Books for her Detective Giles series. Her first novel, The Fall Between, was released in May 2023, and her second novel, Burning Mountain, followed in April 2025.
In 2024, The Fall Between was nominated for The Davitt and The Ned Kelly Awards for Best Debut Crime Novel, further cementing Darcy's talent in the literary world.
Her work extends to writing comedy for radio, stage, media personalities, comedian -
Tanya Scott
Tanya Scott is an Australian writer, doctor and educator. She is an accomplished survivor of near misses, including escaping from an engineering degree out of high school, crashing a car with a huntsman (spider, not human) on her lap and getting caught in a rip off the coast of Cocos Island. She also managed to finish medical school with her sense of humour intact.
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Over a varied medical career, she has learned more from her patients than from any textbook – not just about physical and mental health, but about humanity, resilience and the absurdity of life. While these themes inform her writing, her love of twisty mysteries has made her an accidental crime writer.
After growing up on the coast in western Victoria, Tanya studied and worked in -
Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is an author, speaker and podcaster. Her number one bestselling psychological thriller, Dark Mode, was published in Australia/NZ, the UK, South Korea and Germany. It was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year, the Ned Kelly Awards and the Danger Awards.
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Her latest thrillers are Cold Truth and Like, Follow, Die.
She has two earlier books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. Her writing appears widely across Australian and international publications.
Ashley is a frequent speaker and panel moderator, and co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health. She has taught creative writing across Austr -
Kate Horan
Author | Domestic Suspense
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I write stories about complicated families with dark secrets. -
Mark Brandi
Mark Brandi's bestselling novel, Wimmera, won the coveted British Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger, and was named Best Debut at the 2018 Australian Indie Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards Literary Fiction Book of the Year, the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime.
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Mark's second novel, The Rip, was published to critical acclaim in 2019, and his third novel, The Others, was shortlisted for the Best Fiction prize in the 2022 Ned Kelly Awards. His fourth novel, Southern Aurora, was Highly Commended in the 2024 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. His fifth novel, Eden, was published in July 2025.
Mark's shorter work has appeared in The Guardi -
Dervla McTiernan
Number one internationally bestselling author Dervla McTiernan is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of six novels, including the much-loved Cormac Reilly series and two number 1 bestselling standalone thrillers, The Murder Rule and What Happened to Nina?, both New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year and both currently in development for screen adaptation. Dervla is also the author of four novellas, and her audio novella, The Sisters, was a four-week number one bestseller in the United States. Before turning her hand to writing, Dervla spent twelve years working as a lawyer in her home country of Ireland. Following the global financial crisis, she relocated to Western Australia where she now lives with her husband, two chil
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Cassie Hamer
Cassie Hamer has a professional background in journalism and PR, but now much prefers the world of fiction over fact. She has published four novels, which focus on the dark side of suburbia.
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Cassie lives in Sydney with her terrific husband, three, mostly-terrific daughters, and a labradoodle, Charlie, who is the least demanding member of the family. In between making school lunches and walking the dog, Cassie is also working on her next novel but always has time to connect with other passionate readers via her website – CassieHamer.com – or through social media.
You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. -
Christian White
Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Nowhere Child, won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. He co-created the television series Carnivores, currently in development with Matchbox Pictures and Heyday TV, and co-wrote Relic, a psychological horror feature film to be produced by Carver Films (The Snowtown Murders, Partisan).
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Born and raised on the Mornington Peninsula, Christian had an eclectic range of ‘day jobs’ before he was able to write full-time, including food-cart driver on a golf course and video editor for an adult film company. He now spends his days writing from his home in Melbourne where he lives with his wife, the filmmaker Summer DeRoche, and their adopt -
Fiona Hardy
Fiona Hardy is a bookseller (and was in fact shortlisted for ABA Young Bookseller of the Year in 2017). She is a reviewer published in Books+Publishing, The Big Issue, and Readings Monthly, and was a committee member of the Australian Crime Writers Association, which organises the Ned Kelly Awards. Her short fiction has been published in The Big Issue Fiction Edition 2017, Gargouille, and other journals; her short story 'Green Thumbs' won the 2024 Scarlet Stiletto HQ Best Thriller Prize.
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Her first book, 'How to Make a Movie in Twelve Days', was longlisted for the ABIA and Indie Book Awards, and was a CBCA Notable Book for 2020. Her second book, 'How to Write the Soundtrack to Your Life', won the 2021 Children's Peace Literature Award. -
Michelle Prak
Coming in April 2025: BARREN CAPE.
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Michelle Prak's debut thriller THE RUSH was published by Simon & Schuster ANZ; Crooked Lane Books (US); and by HarperCollins France, as LE DELUGE. It's a road trip thrill ride that takes place over two frantic days.
THE RUSH was voted into Better Reading's annual Top 100 reads (2024), and longlisted in the Sisters of Crime Australia Davitt Awards.
Also a short story writer, Michelle was runner-up in the Furphy Literary Prize, 2021.
Between 2019 and 2020, Michelle self-published three women's contemporary novels. Now she's turned to the thriller genre and hopes fans will follow along.
Long before Michelle began writing professionally she was a reader and continues to share on Goodreads.
If you don't want to miss -
Shelley Burr
Shelley Burr works at the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment in Canberra, Australia. She grew up splitting her time between Newcastle and Glenrowan, where her father's family are all sheep farmers.
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Ali Lowe
Ali Lowe is the author of bestselling novels The Trivia Night, The Running Club, The School Run and The Private Island. Ali is a journalist by profession: she was Features Editor at OK! in London and has written widely for magazines, websites and newspapers. She has dual Australian and British citizenship and lives in Sydney with her family. Follow Ali on Instagram @ali_lowe_author
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Angie Faye Martin
Angie Faye Martin is a writer and editor of Kooma, Kamilaroi and European heritage. With a Bachelor of Public Health from the Queensland University of Technology and a Masters of Anthropology from the Australian National University, Angie spent many years working in policy roles in state and federal government before launching Versed Writings in 2019. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Garland, The Saltbush Review and The Rocks Remain. She is a member of the First Nations Australia Writers Network and accredited with the Institute of Professional Editors. Melaleuca is her debut novel.
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Nikki Gemmell
Nikki Gemmell has written four novels, Shiver, Cleave, Lovesong, The Bride Stripped Bare and The Book Of Rapture, and one non-fiction book, Pleasure: An Almanac for the Heart. Her work has been internationally critically acclaimed and translated into many languages.
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In France she's been described as a female Jack Kerouac, in Australia as one of the most original and engaging authors of her generation and in the US as one of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time.
The French literary review "Lire" has included her in a list of what it calls the fifty most important writers in the world - the ones it believes will have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century. The criteria for selection included a very indiv -
Kelli Hawkins
Kelli Hawkins writes reports for a private investigator, as well as working on novels for adults and children. She lives in Newcastle with her two teenagers. Over the years she’s travelled whenever possible and worked all kinds of jobs. Kelli’s been a political journalist, a graphic designer, a mystery shopper – even a staple remover. When she’s not writing she’s planning a holiday – or dreaming of one. Or reading, of course.
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She writes under the name Kelli Hawkins for her adult novels, and Kelli Anne Hawkins for her children’s books. -
Kate Horan
Author | Domestic Suspense
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I write stories about complicated families with dark secrets. -
Susan Duncan
Susan Elizabeth Duncan was an Australian author, journalist and editor of The Australian Women's Weekly and New Idea.
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Alex Noble
Alex Noble was a sixteen-year-old rugby star with a promising sporting career ahead of him when an on-field accident landed him in a four-day coma in the ICU. Diagnosed with C4 quadriplegia, Alex was not expected to have any movement from the chest down.
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Defying the odds, Alex’s mental strength and resilience have seen him make incredible gains – from standing with minimal assistance to walking with the aid of an exoskeleton.
At twenty-one, he now has a successful public speaking career, and between intensive weekly training regimes and university classes, he also works in a law firm, travels the world and runs his own boat charter business. Alex’s achievements, perspective and message have inspired thousands to strive for their own goals a -
Diane Connell
DIANE CONNELL was born and educated in New Zealand and has lived and worked in Japan, France and the UK. She began her writing career in a newspaper office in Tokyo before becoming an advertising copywriter and writing for the international non-profit sector. For many years she lived in Paris, where she began writing as a novelist. She later moved to London, where her first two books, Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar and Sherry Cracker Gets Normal, were published under the name of D.J. Connell. She now lives in Sydney.
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Tristan Bancks
Tristan Bancks tells stories for the page and screen. His books for kids and teens include Two Wolves, The Fall, Detention, the Tom Weekly series, and Nit Boy. Ginger Meggs, Tristan’s 100th anniversary book of short stories, is based on characters created by his great-great uncle, Jimmy Bancks, in 1921. His books have won and been shortlisted for many awards, including a Children’s Book Council of Australia Honour Book, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, ABIA, YABBA, KOALA, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and Queensland Literary Awards. His latest release is Cop & Robber, a nailbiting crime story for age 10+.
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Tristan is a writer-ambassador for literacy non-profit Room to Read. He is currently working with producers to develop a number of hi -
Robert Newton
Robert Newton works as a full-time firefighter with the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. His first novel, My Name is Will Thompson, was published in 2001. Since then he has written four other novels for young people, including Runner, which was published by Penguin in 2005. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and three daughters.
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Kathy George
Kathy George is an award-winning writer of short stories and fiction. She is the author of "Sargasso", "Estella" and "The Scent of Oranges". Kathy lives in Brisbane, Australia, with her family.
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Margot McGovern
Margot McGovern lives in Adelaide and has a creative writing PhD from Flinders University. Her debut novel, Neverland, was shortlisted for the Text Prize and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature.
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Her second novel, This Stays Between Us, will be published in March 2025.
Margot's short horror fiction has appeared in issues of The Dark and the Aurealis-Award-shortlisted anthology Hometown Haunts: #LoveOzYA Horror Tales.
You can find Margot on Instagram: @margot.mcgovern -
Bronwyn Rivers
Bronwyn Rivers grew up in Newcastle, Australia with the mystery-novel gateway drugs of The Famous Five and Trixie Belden, before developing a solid addiction to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and PD James. She moved to the UK to take a doctorate at the University of Oxford on nineteenth-century women’s novels, and was an academic researcher and book reviewer in England and Australia.
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Bronwyn now lives in Sydney with her husband and two children. -
Fiona Hardy
Fiona Hardy is a bookseller (and was in fact shortlisted for ABA Young Bookseller of the Year in 2017). She is a reviewer published in Books+Publishing, The Big Issue, and Readings Monthly, and was a committee member of the Australian Crime Writers Association, which organises the Ned Kelly Awards. Her short fiction has been published in The Big Issue Fiction Edition 2017, Gargouille, and other journals; her short story 'Green Thumbs' won the 2024 Scarlet Stiletto HQ Best Thriller Prize.
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Her first book, 'How to Make a Movie in Twelve Days', was longlisted for the ABIA and Indie Book Awards, and was a CBCA Notable Book for 2020. Her second book, 'How to Write the Soundtrack to Your Life', won the 2021 Children's Peace Literature Award. -
Mitch Jennings
Mitch Jennings had always harboured ambitions to write a novel, but he says that working fulltime as a journalist meant that writing at home after work wasn’t very appealing because he had already been writing all day. He knew that he needed structure and accountability, so he enrolled in Novel Writing Essentials at the Australian Writers' Centre.
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Mitch’s debut novel is A Town Called Treachery, a crime novel set in a small town on the NSW North Coast. He had originally been drawn to literary fiction, but discovered a love of crime audiobooks as he went on long walks. The crime fiction struck a new creative nerve and so began the idea for A Town Called Treachery. -
Maryrose Cuskelly
Maryrose Cuskelly is a writer of fiction and non-fiction.
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She is the best-selling author of The Cane (Allen & Uwin 2022), shortlisted for best debut in the 2023 Davitt Awards.
In 2019, her book Wedderburn: A True Tale of Blood and Dust (Allen & Unwin, 2018), was longlisted for Best Debut and Best True Crime in the 2019 Davitt Awards.
In 2016, she was awarded the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing (non-fiction) for her essay on the 1972 abduction and murder of Marilyn Wallman.
She is the author of Original Skin: Exploring the Marvels of the Human Hide (Scribe 2010) and The End of Charity: Time for Social Enterprise (Allen & Unwin 2008) co-written with Nic Frances, and winner of the Iremonger Award for Writing on Public Issues.
Her -
Brooke Hardwick
ABOUT THE BOOK
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In this spine-chilling gothic thriller, a woman on the brink travels to a remote writers’ retreat to uncover the secrets of her past and lands herself in a deadly situation that could destroy her future.
Kate arrives on the wild, remote island of Rathlin in the freezing Irish Channel for a ten-day writers’ retreat. Plagued by memories she can’t unravel and desperate to understand the breakdown of her marriage, Kate is determined to leave the retreat with answers.
As the retreat’s director uses techniques that tap into the eerie mythology of the island, Kate becomes increasingly fascinated by him and her surrounds. But when the temperature plummets and the strange therapy intensifies, her memories unspool. Triggered into a serie -
Mandy Beaumont
Mandy is an award-winning writer and a researcher in creative writing. Her debut novel The Furies was long-listed for the prestigious Stella Prize and shortlisted for the MUD Literary Prize. The Furies was also shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards Fiction Book of the Year . Her collection of short stories, Wild, Fearless Chests, was shortlisted for the Richell Prize and the Dorothy Hewett Award. Stories from the collection also won the MOTH International Short Story Prize and were shortlisted for other notable awards. She is a convenor in creative writing at Griffith University and holds a PhD and a Research Masters in creative writing. She is also a regular feature writer and book reviewer for The Big Issue.
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Carly-Jay Metcalfe
Carly-Jay Metcalfe was born with cystic fibrosis and has survived a double-lung transplant at the age of twenty-one and faced a rare cancer at the age of thirty. Her debut memoir 'Breath' (UQP) was published in February 2024 to critical acclaim.
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Her writing has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian, Kill Your Darlings, TEXT journal, and she has a forthcoming essay in Griffith Review.
At the 2024 Queensland Literary Awards, Breath won the Queensland Book of the Year People's Choice Award. -
S.E. Tolsen
S. E. Tolsen is the pseudonym of husband and wife writing team Emma Olsen and Vere Tindale. Bunny, their debut novel, was initially adapted from their screenplay Crepuscular, a nominee for Best Feature Screenplay at the 2018 Renegade Film Festival in Atlanta, Georgia before it was turned into a novel and published by Pan Macmillan Australia. It has since gone on to win Best Horror Novel 2023 at the Aurealis Awards in Australia.
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David Dyer
David Dyer grew up near Sydney, Australia. After school, he pursued an eclectic career that included studying medicine, travelling the world in merchant ships, and working as a lawyer in Sydney and London. He was a solicitor for several years at the London legal practice whose parent firm represented the Titanic’s owners in 1912. Upon his return to Australia, he became an English teacher and writer, and in 2013 was awarded a doctorate in creative arts. In 2016, he published The Midnight Watch, a novel about the ship that witnessed the Titanic’s distress rockets but failed to respond. He then turned his attention to space, and in 2019 was lucky enough to meet moonwalkers Buzz Aldrin and Charlie Duke, who inspired him with their vision, darin
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Bronwyn Hall
Bronwyn Hall never intended on being a writer. Her career has been spent working in health and community services, spanning aged care, disability and mental health. She has a bachelor's degree in English Literature (and Psychology-for the day job) and she comes from a family of passionate readers.
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Born and bred in Australia, Bronwyn has a love for new cultures and environments, having lived for several years in both Papua New Guinea and Brazil. She is deeply intrigued by the extraordinary breadth of qualities that make up the complex creatures called humans - not least, their quiet conquering of adversity.
Bronwyn lives and writes on Wurundjeri land in Melbourne, Australia. -
Toni Tapp Coutts
Born and raised in the Northern Territory, Toni Tapp Coutts has had a varied career, from living on cattle stations, riding in campdrafts and barrel racing, to owning a variety store in outback Borroloola and a dress boutique in Katherine. She was shortlisted in the 2002 NT Literary Awards for her story 'Daisy & Dora'. She spent time at Varuna the Writers' House in Katoomba NSW in 2009 to work on A Sunburnt Childhood. One of the chapters from the memoir, 'Walking the Wet', was published in Meanjin Quarterly Review in March 2010.
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Toni is a leader in her community in Katherine, working for the Victoria Daly Regional Council and organising leadership groups for women within the vast council area. She has been an elected member of the Katherine -
James Delargy
James Delargy was born and raised in Ireland but lived in South Africa, Australia and Scotland, before ending up in semi-rural England where he now lives.
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He incorporates this diverse knowledge of towns, cities, landscape and culture picked up on his travels into his writing. He would like to complete a round-the-world series of novels (if only for the chance to indulge in more on-the-ground research).
James is currently working on another novel set in Western Australia. -
Lyn Yeowart
Lyn Yeowart is a professional writer and editor with more than 25 years of experience in writing and editing everything from captions for artworks to speeches for executives. Her debut novel, The Silent Listener, is loosely based on events from her childhood growing up in rural Victoria. She is now happily ensconced in Melbourne, where there is very little mud, but lots of books.
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Sally Murphy
Sally Murphy is an Australian author of over 30 children's books. She's also the slightly crazy mother of six beautiful kids. You'll find bits of her buried somewhere in every one of her books. She loves reading, writing, and speaking about reading and writing.
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PEARL VERSES THE WORLD won the 2010 Australian Family Therapists’ Award for Children’s Literature as well as the 2010 Australian Speech Pathology Book of the Year Award for Best Book for Language Development. It was also an Honour Book in the CBCA Children's Book of the Year Awards.
TOPPLING won the children's book category of both the Queensland and Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, and was short-listed in the CBCA Children's Book of the Year Awards. -
Jane Smith
I’m an author, librarian/archivist and freelance book editor. I love bringing history to life through fiction and non-fiction for all ages. Four of my books have been short- or long-listed for literary awards.
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