AustLit

'The Crying Room movingly explores family boundaries and stories, finding original ways to express the contradictory experience of belonging to a family, and being an individual at the same time.

'When Bernie Rodgers and her husband move to the coastal town of Ballina, she finds that there is more than a physical distance separating her from her adult daughters. Bernie loves her daughters, but the problem she realises is with the way she loved them.

'Bernie's daughter Susie is professionally successful, but her feelings remain distant, even to herself. When she takes on the responsibility for caring for her niece, the pieces of her life finally snap into place. The inexplicable disappearance of an aeroplane though, plunges her life into mystery once again.

'Morally acute and dazzlingly accomplished, this is an affecting novel about loneliness, love, family and the need to feel.' (Publication summary) 

'An expat photographer returns to Australia to make sense of his traumatic childhood and the disappearance of his former girlfriend.

'Where the Light Falls tells the story of Andrew, a photographer in his 30s who comes back to Australia when he hears that his former girlfriend has disappeared. By the time he gets back, her body has been found, and everything points to suicide, though the coroner's findings are left open. As Andrew unravels the mystery of her death, he puts his current relationship at risk for reasons he barely understands. At the same time he meets a damaged teenage girl whom he knows will be a riveting subject for his new series of photos. As he struggles to understand why his ex's death has affected him so viscerally, Andrew realises that photography has become an obsession predicated on his need to hold on to the things he has lost in his life. He finds himself re- evaluating his past, his art, and what he wants his life to mean.

'This is a stunning, gripping and deeply moving novel from a young writer whose star is on the rise.' (Publication summary)