This temptations is upcoming releases, or books that are out now.
Gone Guru
Gone Guru is a cosy mystery that punctures the writing bubble with a sharp pen and an even sharper look at an industry often accused of peddling unrealistic dreams.
Noni Barlow is broke, jet-lagged and alone in New York with nothing but a dream and a manuscript.
When her idol Joyce Carol Oates tells her that Born Again memoirs are so 'last year', Noni's big break starts to feel like a big mistake.
To add to the general weirdness, she meets her new flatmate only once before he vanishes into thin air - and that's even before Noni discovers he is a transcendental meditation guru with a massive following, and a million-dollar trust fund.
Aided by an octogenarian social worker, and the sarcastic daughter of her Puerto Rican landlady, Noni finds herself deep in the case of the disappearing guru.
Is this the new plot line she needs to save her writing career?
For All the Dead Girls
Tough and gutsy PI Lou Alcott returns with a terrifyingly gritty new case that takes her deep into the dark web. Perfect for fans of Jacqueline Bublitz and Jane Caro.
While juggling a missing person case with unexpected ties close to home and saving an innocent woman and her child from a dangerous domestic situation, Lou ends up in the line of fire of a mysterious dark-web hate group, known only as SYB.
As Melbourne simmers through a relentless heatwave, the murders of more women are connected to SYB and Lou becomes the number one target of their vicious campaign of incited violence. #GetLou #killthebitch
Lou lurches between a fire-bombed safe house, car chases and stalkers, as her private investigation firm races against time to uncover the core of the group and work out just how far their tentacles stretch...
The Picasso Ransom
'Can we try escaping just a little slower?'
Fact: In 1986, Picasso's Weeping Woman was stolen from the National Gallery of Victoria. To this day, the culprits have never been identified.
Here's what happened.
Maybe.
Phoebe is about to turn 70, and has grown sick of retirement. She enrols in an evening art course, where she befriends fellow retirees Eva and Dave. They also happen to be studying across the road from a two-million-dollar Picasso.
The trio make a promising start, only to find that the school is to be closed due to arts cuts implemented by a blundering government minister. The protests of a student activist group - under 30s only - fall on deaf ears.
The Picasso Ransom, A.T. Prewett
Back in 1986 I wouldn't have had as much understanding of the opening line of this blurb as I do have today, as 70 year old Phoebe and her two similarly aged friends Eva and Dave are escaping from the back of the arts school near the National Gallery of Victoria, stolen painting in hand:
'Can we try escaping just a little slower?'
Nowadays I get it 100%. As would a lot of us who distinctly remember, and were in Melbourne, at the time of the real life heist of Picasso's Weeping Woman. (At this point can I highly recommend Marc Fennell's investigative TV series - Framed, which the author of this fiction based on real life story mentions in his acknowledgements).
As the blurb puts it - Fact: In 1986, Picasso's Weeping Woman was stolen from the National Gallery of Victoria. To this day, the culprits have never been identified.
The culprits at the time referred to themselves as the Australian Cultural Terrorists, and their demands were about the lack of funding for the Arts in Victoria, including some massive (abusive alas but funny with it), of the then Minister for the Police and Arts (I kid you not), Race Matthews. The names of the main players - the Minister, the Head of the National Gallery of Victoria etc have all been changed in this novel, but it will be very very easy for readers of a certain age to instantly recognise the bouffant hairstyles, and the flamboyant dress senses of some of the then main players.
The idea that three retiree art students - Phoebe, Eva and Dave - are the real perpetrators is, one assumes, a work of fiction, but there was something gloriously appealing about the idea that somebody of a certain age could hide out in a major cultural institution, luck out on moving around the gallery dodging a couple of older security guards, find the right sort of screwdriver, snaffle a painting worth a few million, and stroll out of the building with it, all on a whim. There is also something very telling about the age gap between the "right on student activist group" who spend a lot of time talking about what they want to do, whilst actively rejecting the older three as too old to be anything but plants. All the while it's the older ones who have actually done something very radical about the funding cuts, and the threat to their beloved art school.
THE PICASSO RANSOM is cleverly done - being based on a still unsolved real life case - the author has had the opportunity to mix the known in with speculation in a way that makes the whole story sing. Having created three terrific central characters helps as well, although Phoebe is the star of the show. An older woman who has spent her life being conventional until retirement from teaching, a divorce, and the realisation that her life has devolved into nothing much, enrols in art school to follow a lifelong passion for painting, only to find herself in a situation she would never, ever have dreamed of. In her personal life, her criminal endeavours and her future.
This book is quite an undertaking, enormous fun, hugely entertaining and cleverly constructed, it also has that little kick in the messaging - about age, capacity and openness to new experiences. Filled with references to Melbourne in the late 1980's when it was still fun, vibrant, slightly chaotic (or at least it seemed that way to me at the time - not so now), this is serious mum, when it wasn't (TISM reference - read the novel).
The Cruise
The revenge fantasy novel that every woman secretly wishes for: that her closest, most loyal group of female friends would do anything to take down the man who hurt her.
I HAVE A MISSION.
They're the four words every member of the Squad has pledged never to ignore. Bonded by a bone-deep understanding that healing from trauma takes more than meditation and positive self-talk, this group of ride-or-die sisters-for-life survivors will stop at nothing to secure justice for one of their own.
It's thanks to the Squad that Bailey Collins is not defined by what Eli Murphy did to her in high school. Ten years on, she's changed her name and overhauled her appearance, and she's just been promoted to senior producer for the reality TV show The Cruise.
When Eli's audition tape lands in Bailey's inbox, it's an opportunity too good to miss. She's perfectly positioned to cast him and her undercover Squad sisters as contestants on the show.
As the new season of The Cruise sets sail, Bailey plays her own game for the ultimate prize: revenge.
The Girl in the Story
Only she knows the truth. But does she want to believe it?
Matilda Andrew is just trying to survive.
She was only fourteen when she climbed the stairs out of the basement she'd been locked in by her father. It's been fifteen years since she walked across to her neighbour's house, knocked on the door and asked them to call emergency services. Fifteen years and at least, by now, the media has well and truly lost interest in telling stories about her family.
Only - it turns out they haven't.
Because there's a journalist who won't leave Mattie alone. A journalist who claims she has uncovered something groundbreaking about the time Mattie spent trapped in her own house, something that everyone else missed. Who insists there is more to this story, and will stop at nothing to be the one to tell it.
With her life thrust once more into the spotlight, and the precarious stability of her existence again shaky beneath her feet, Mattie finds herself forced to examine the stories surrounding those dark years of her life - both those told by others, and those she's told herself. What is truth? What is fiction? And what do we do when the two have become so entangled it's impossible to tell which is which?
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