Imagine, if you will: the lost soul of King Richard III; a talking raven; a lonely angel; and a young woman called Molly Stern, who is heartbroken, grieving, and a bit stroppy. When their worlds collide, anything can happen.

Richard III is trapped in the afterlife, waiting with his guide, Raven, for an angel to take his soul to Heaven. Though he's been between worlds for hundreds of years, up in the real world it's 2013 and Molly Stern has a broken heart from losing her father and a recent breakup. Leaving London, Molly goes home to seek solace from her Aunt Peggy and Uncle Frank in Oxenbridge. But there are strange noises in the basement of her childhood house and nothing feels right, not even between Peggy and Frank. When the angel encounters Molly – and Raven at last finds the angel – life and the afterlife meet, with surprising and unexpected consequences.

Inspired by the discovery of the bones of Richard III beneath a car park in England, award-winning poet Christine Paice has fashioned a beautiful, singular, warm, endearing, and funny novel that weaves in and out of time and space and possibility. The Oxenbridge King is a tender and wise meditation on what survives of us when we're gone, and how, in the end, love and family are everything.

Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 16 September 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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Why would my best friend want to destroy my life?

Finn and her best friend, Daphne, have grown up together in the Blue Mountains. Bonded by both having lost a younger sister to suicide, they've always had a close – sometimes too close – friendship. Now in their twenties, their lives have finally started to diverge: Daphne is at university and Finn is working in the Mountains, as well as falling in love with a beautiful newcomer called Magdu.

Unused to sharing Finn, Daphne starts to act up in ways that will allow her to maintain the control over her best friend she's always relished. Then, one fateful day, Finn, Daphne and Magdu all go rock-climbing – and Magdu falls to her death. Is it suicide, or a terrible accident – or something more sinister?

Bold, dramatic and utterly compelling, Girl Falling forces us to confront the stories we tell ourselves about the people we love. Displaying all of Hayley Scrivenor's razor-sharp skills for character, landscape and narrative, this is a breathtaking read.

THIS COMPETITION HAS NOW CLOSED. THANKS FOR YOUR ENTRIES! WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED BY EMAIL AND ANNOUNCED IN OUR NEWSLETTER.

The Girl With The Violin by Shelley Davidow

It's 1989 and for a young Jewish-Australian violinist, a scholarship to Berlin is the chance of a lifetime. Germany is on the verge of change as the wall is torn down, and Susanna is swept along by the tumultuous event. Under the careful guidance of Stefan Heinemeyer, her renowned violin teacher and the grandson of a Nazi, she begins a composition in memory of her grandmother, Mirla, who died in the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Second World War, and Susanna is inspired to retrace Mirla's final footsteps.

It's a journey that reconnects Susanna to her heritage and propels her musical gift to extraordinary heights. Yet as a forbidden yearning for Stefan begins to unfurl, Susanna's life is forever changed, and the repercussions will echo through decades and across continents.

In a world where history, society and inherited traumas threaten to silence Susanna and prevent her from ever becoming her true self, can she find the courage to reclaim her power as a woman, a musician, and a composer, and in so doing, lay her haunted past to rest?

The Death of Dora Black by Lainie Anderson

Summer, Adelaide, 1917. The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands into repentance, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley.

When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister, and determine to take matters into their own hands. After all, who knows Adelaide better than the indomitable Miss Cocks?

*In 1915, Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks became the first policewoman in the British Empire employed on the same salary as men. This novel is a rich exploration of that little-known chapter of Australian history.*

The Echoes by Evie Wyld

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, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max.

Both a celebration and an autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them. It asks what of our past we can shrug off and what is fixed forever, echoing down through the years.

Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 2 September 2024. The winner will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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THIS COMPETITION HAS NOW CLOSED. THANKS FOR YOUR ENTRIES! WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED BY EMAIL AND ANNOUNCED IN OUR NEWSLETTER.

Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe.

In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley – aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless – is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top secret documents – and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that will alter the course of political history.

If you’d like to win a copy, simply enter your details in the form below. Three lucky people will win a copy!

Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 26 August 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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If you’d like to win a copy, simply enter your details in the form below. Three lucky people will win a copy!

Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 19 August 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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For Ava, heading to university in Sydney is her escape from a poverty-stricken upbringing. Her mother is long gone, her father able to provide love but little else. On the other side of the world, Laurie tolerates university only at the insistence of her father, a Marxist professor. Her mother died in childbirth, and Laurie dreams of freedom, far from the Cambridge cloisters.

It is within these college grounds that Ava and Laurie cross paths. They could not be more different, and yet as each grapples with the lasting effects of losing a mother, their lives become entwined in ways neither could have anticipated.

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Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 12 August 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders of backpackers along a highway. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further – into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer's home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

From the acclaimed author of ‘The Sun Walks Down’ and ‘The Night Guest’ comes a captivating account of loss and fear, and their extended echoes in individual lives.

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Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 5 August 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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A customer service assistant spends her long workdays printing letters. Her one friend is the printer and, in the dark confines of her office, she begins to open up to him, talking about her fears, her past, her hopes and dreams.

To her, it seems like a beautiful friendship is blossoming. To her boss, it seems like she's losing her mind.

Diagnosed with burnout and placed on leave, she faces severance and – worse – separation from her beloved printer. But she's not about to give up on her only friend without a fight. And, it turns out, neither is he…

Weird, incisive and unforgettable, Hard Copy is perfect for fans of Sayaka Murata and Halle Butler.

If you’d like to win a copy, simply enter your details in the form below. Three lucky people will win a copy!

Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 29 July 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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Rufus Leung Gresham, future Earl of Greshambury and son of a former Hong Kong supermodel has a problem: the legendary Gresham Trust has been depleted by decades of profligate spending, and behind all the magazine covers and Instagram stories manors and yachts lies nothing more than a gargantuan mountain of debt. The only solution, put forth by Rufus’s scheming mother, is for Rufus to attend his sister’s wedding at a luxury eco-resort, a veritable who’s-who of sultans, barons, and oligarchs, and seduce a woman with money.

Should he marry Solène de Courcy, a French hotel heiress with honey blond tresses and a royal bloodline? Should he pursue Martha Dung, the tattooed venture capital genius who passes out billions like lollipops? Or should he follow his heart, betray his family, squander his legacy, and finally confess his love to the literal girl next door, the humble daughter of a doctor, Eden Tong? When a volcanic eruption burns through the nuptials and a hot mic exposes a secret tryst, the Gresham family plans—and their reputation—go up in flames.

Can the once-great dukedom rise from the ashes? Or will a secret tragedy, hidden for two decades, reveal a shocking twist?

In a globetrotting tale that takes us from the black sand beaches of Hawaii to the skies of Marrakech, from the glitzy bachelor pads of Los Angeles to the inner sanctums of England’s oldest family estates, Kevin Kwan unfurls a juicy, hilarious, sophisticated and thrillingly plotted story of love, money, murder, sex, and the lies we tell about them all.

If you’d like to win a copy, simply enter your details in the form below. Three lucky people will win a copy!

Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 22 July 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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Camryn Lane is living her dream. After years of struggle and rejection, her first novel has finally been published. Her editor is happy; her teenage daughter is proud; and her boyfriend and friends are all excited for her. She’s on top of the world—until she receives a disturbing message from an unknown sender.

Rattled by the accusations she finds there, Camryn swallows the sick feeling in her stomach and resolves to put the missive out of her mind. But when she checks her ratings on a popular book site, she finds a scathing one-star review. The reviewer is so articulate and convincing that soon, Camryn’s book is flooded with bad reviews. Could the reviewer be the same person who sent the ugly email? And why do they want to ruin her?

As the online harassment creeps into Camryn’s personal life, she vows to find out who’s behind it. Is it really a disgruntled reader? Or could it be someone she knows? The troll’s actions are escalating, and when the abuse turns deadly, it will take everything Camryn has to unmask the enemy so intent on destroying her—and finally learn why she's being targeted.  

If you’d like to win a copy, simply enter your details in the form below. Three lucky people will win a copy!

Entries close midday (Syd/Melb time) Monday 15 July 2024. Winners will be notified within a week of the competition closing.

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