Collection: Fiction

Dickens' third novel, published in 1839, was a vivid and powerful protest against cruelty to children, and the descriptions of Mr Squeers and his wicked boarding school were to be instrumental in securing educational reform in the early Victorian period.

Percy Drummond's life changes when he meets village girl Gwyneth Barrie. Then Percy catches the eye of his beautiful cousin, Florilyn, and an unexpected request from Percy's uncle changes the future for all three.

Who was John Smith? What was the mystery surrounding his past? Why did he elect to live alone in the bush? The time is the outbreak of the Great War, the place a small town in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

Ruby Cardel has the semblance of a normal life, a loving boyfriend, a fulfilling career, but in one terrible moment, her life unravels. The discovery that the death of her sister, Jamie, was not an accident makes her question all she has known...

When a woman confesses to Father Will, one of the monk-constables at Maddleskirk Abbey, that she has committed murder, he can do nothing but absolve her from her sin. When a body is found in the nearby woodland, his moral dilemma grows...

Set in Sydney in the early 1900s, it contrasts the lives of two larrikins, Jonah and Chook, as they graduate from their 'push', marry and make their ways in the world....

Safari guide and private investigator Hudson Brand hunts people. He's on the trail of Linley Brown who is the beneficiary of a life insurance policy. Linley's friend Kate died in a car crash, but Kate's sister believes it is an elaborate fraud...

Reporter Moira Harrison is lost on a rural road. Startled when a lone figure suddenly appears, caught in the beam of her headlights, she jams on her brakes. The car careens across the wet road. A thump against the vehicle's side tells her she hit someone

Malin Fors, whose personal life is in turmoil, investigates the brutal murder of self-made Internet billionaire Jerry Petersson, who is found floating face-down in the moat surrounding Skogsa Castle...

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here.