Poet's Cottage

Poets had always lived there, the locals claimed. It was as if the house called to its own...

When Sadie inherits Poet's Cottage in the Tasmanian fishing town of Pencubitt, she sets out to discover all she can about her notorious grandmother, Pearl Tatlow. Pearl was a children's writer who scandalised 1930s Tasmania with her behaviour. She was also violently murdered in the cellar of Poet's Cottage and her murderer never found.

Sadie grew up with a loving version of Pearl through her mother, but her aunt Thomasina tells a different story, one of a self-obsessed, abusive and licentious woman. And Pearl's biographer, Birdie Pinkerton, has more than enough reason to discredit her.

As Sadie and her daughter Betty work to uncover the truth, strange events begin to occur in the cottage. And as the terrible secret in the cellar threads its way into the present day, it reveals a truth more shocking than the decades-long rumours.

Poet's Cottage is a beautiful and haunting mystery of families, bohemia, truth, creativity, lies, memory and murder.

About the Author

Josephine Pennicott is an award-winning writer. In 2001 she won the Scarlet Stiletto for a short story, and she has won the Kerry Greenwood Domestic Malice Prize twice in 2003 and 2004. Josephine has written three novels, Circle of Nine, which named as one of the year's best debut novels, Bride of the Stone and A Fire in the Shell, which was short-listed for Best Horror Novel in the 2005 Aurealis Awards.

Josephine was born in Tasmania and lives in Sydney with her partner David and their daughter Daisy.