Modern & contemporary fiction

In the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas is known simply as la divina: the divine one. With her glorious voice, instinctive flair for the dramatic and striking beauty, she's the toast of the grandest opera houses in the world. Yet her fame has been hard won: raise...

Max didn't believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max's death, Hanna...

Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua's College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls. Here, secrets are currency, ambition is lifeblood, and strange ceremonies welcome students into the fold. On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into...

Standing by the mailbox in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her child and husband, an Ivy League academic, inside her house and wonders - is this it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that ends her marriage and upe...

Pippa Mason is ready for a fresh start. She has bought Pumpkin Cottage in the picturesque Wye Valley village of Riverdean, where her late mother grew up, and plans to renovate a run-down bed and breakfast. Despite the complications of the project and a very surly builder, Pippa is settling into v...

London, 2019. It's the hottest June on record and the weekend is about to begin. Maggie is 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with a future in the home town she once fought to escape, she's beginning to wonder if having a baby will be last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, a bike courier, can't wait to...

Alexandra, Lucy, Bridget, River and Natalie. Five friends who wish they'd never met. Because the one thing they have in common is the worst thing in their lives: they are all being stalked. When one of their group is murdered, days after their stalker is released from prison, time stands still fo...

Profiler and therapist Kez Lanyon is shocked when she finds a baby on the backseat of her car, with an unsigned note asking her to take care of him. Kez has a pretty good idea who the mother is - Brandee, a popular social media star with a troubled background, who once lived in Kez's house. Brand...

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that di...

1942. Determined to do her bit for the war effort, Yorkshire lass Evie Sinclair leaves her island home to become an ack-ack gunner girl, defending Britain from Luftwaffe attacks. Evie embarks on a gruelling training programme with fellow recruits Lily and Gloria - and the three become firm friend...