Soak up the summer sun while enjoying 3 heart-warming Australian bestsellers that transport you to a tiny coastal village in the 1950s, to a nostalgic waterside idyll and to a dusty gold rush town in the 1870s. Stillwater Creek: It's 1957 and widow Ilona Talivaldis and her daughter Zidra travel to the remote coastal town of Jingera in NSW. Ilona, a concentration camp survivor, plans to set herself up as a piano teacher in her beautiful vine-covered cottage. The weeks pass, and mother and daughter get to know the townsfolk - including kind-hearted butcher George Cadwallader; Peter Vincent, former wartime pilot and prisoner-of-war; and Cherry Bates, the publican's wife who is about to make a horrifying discovery...And at risk is the one thing Ilona holds dear...The Briny Cafe: Ettie Brookbank is the heart and soul of Cook's Basin, a sleepy cluster of dazzling blue bays where the only way home is by boat. However, as idyllic as her surroundings are, she yearns for excitement, the chance to live dangerously while her blood still runs hot. Then fate offers her a lifeline - breathing new life into a beloved local landmark. Ettie's salvation, it seems, is a lopsided little cafe on the water's edge...Mr Chen's Emporium: In 1872, 17-year-old Amy Duncan arrives in the Gold Rush town of Millbrooke, daydreaming about glittering pavilions and gilded steeples. What she finds is a dusty main street lined with ramshackle buildings - until she walks through the doors of Mr Chen's Emporium, and her life changes forever. In present-day Millbrooke, Angie Wallace rents the Old Manse where Amy once lived. When her landlord produces an antique trunk of Amy's keepsakes - both Oriental and European - Angie resolves to learn more about this mysterious girl from the past.
About the Author
Alison Booth was born in Melbourne and grew up in Sydney. She is a professor at the Australian National University and the author of three novels: Stillwater Creek, The Indigo Sky and A Distant Land, all set in the fictional town of Jingera. She lives with her husband in Canberra's inner north, and has spent two decades living and working in the UK. Susan Duncan enjoyed a 25-year career spanning radio, newspaper and magazine journalism, including editing two of Australia's top selling women's magazines, The Australian Women's Weekly and New Idea. She now lives in her own patch of offshore paradise, Pittwater, with her second husband, Bob, in the beautiful home built for poet Dorothea Mackellar in 1925. She has written two bestselling memoirs: Salvation Creek and The House at Salvation Creek; and two novels: The Briny Cafe and Gone Fishing. Deborah O'Brien is a teacher, visual artist and writer. Although she was born and educated in Sydney, she has family links to rural New South Wales by way of her father and her maternal grandmother. Together with her husband and son, she divides her time between the city and a country cottage, overlooking a creek frequented by platypuses. She has authored several non-fiction books, and two novels, Mr Chen's Emporium and The Jade Widow.
