The Valley of Lost Stories

Beautiful, beguiling and treacherous ... Big Little Lies meets Picnic at Hanging Rock in a secluded valley over the Blue Mountains.

Four women and their children are invited to the beautiful but remote Capertee Valley, west of the Blue Mountains.

Once home to a burgeoning mining industry, now all that remains are ruins slowly being swallowed by the bush and the jewel of the valley, a stunning, renovated Art Deco hotel. This is a place haunted by secrets. In 1948 Clara Black walked into the night, never to be seen again.

As the valley beguiles these four friends, and haunts them in equal measure, each has to confront secrets of her own: Nathalie, with a damaged marriage; Emmie, yearning for another child; Pen, struggling as a single parent; and Alexandra, hiding in the shadow of her famous husband.

But as the mystery of what happened seventy years earlier unravels, one of the women also vanishes into this bewitching but wild place, forcing devastating truths to the surface.

About the Author

Vanessa McCausland has worked as an entertainment and fashion reporter, interviewing many Hollywood actors in person, including Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington and Kate Hudson, as well as a News Limited journalist for the Daily Telegraph and has written articles for Mamamia. The Lost Summers of Driftwood is her second novel. Her first, Star Attraction , was published under her previous name, Vanessa Stubbs, in 2013. Vanessa lives in Sydney with her husband and daughter.