NCW Libraries

"Theo Benton decides to move to the United States to finally finish her novel, and she is soon drawn into a literary labyrinth where identity is something that can be lost and remade for the sake of sales and readership. When her mentor and lover is brutally murdered, Theo wants the killer to be found and justice to be served. But when the prime suspect turns out to be her older brother, Gus, Theo does what is necessary to protect him--to save him....

"A form-shifting and soul-crunching chronicle of grief and crisis, Venita Blackburn's debut novel, Dead in Long Beach, California, is a fleet-footed marvel of self-discovery and storytelling that explores the depths of humankind's capacity for harm and healing. With the daring, often hilarious imagination that made her an acclaimed short-fiction innovator, Blackburn crafts a layered, page-turning reckoning with what it means to be alive, dead, and...

Forced from her home in postwar Paris, aspiring young writer Delphine Auber embarks on a journey to New York's Harlem, and then to Havana and Key West, in search of her father, whom she believes is famed luminary Ernest Hemingway. "When tragedy forces Delphine Auber, an aspiring writer on the cusp of adulthood, from her home in postwar Paris, she seizes the opportunity to embark on the journey she's long dreamed of: finding the father she has never...

Who wouldn't want to live in a treehouse? Especially a 13-story treehouse that has a bowling alley, a see-through swimming pool, a tank full of sharks, a library full of comics, a secret underground laboratory, a games room, self-making beds, vines you can swing on, a vegetable vaporiser and a marshmallow machine that follows you around and automatically shoots your favourite flavoured marshmallows into your mouth whenever it discerns you're hungry....

A local author down on his luck asks his home device to play a record. It ends up playing him a recording of a murder that inspires his next novel. When the killer reads the author's published piece, the cat-and-mouse chase begins.

"On a famous Australian train between Darwin and Adelaide for the Mystery Writers' Society one of the attendees is murdered for real"-- Provided by publisher. "When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously,...

"When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sanctuary for their true narratives."--...

"The once-rising literary star Olivia Fitzgerald is down on her luck. Her most recent novel, a retelling of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, was a flop, her boyfriend of nine years just dumped her and she's battling a bad case of writer's block. So when her agent calls her with a high-paying ghostwriting opportunity, Olivia is all too willing to sign the NDA. At first, the write-for-hire job seems too good to be true. All she has to do is interview Henry...

When Fumi started her job as the live-in housekeeper for the acclaimed--and very crabby--author Akatsuki Kibikino, she never thought in a million years that she'd get along with him... yet here she is, her heart fluttering at every tiny gesture! Not that she's got time to dwell on what it could all mean--with the new kid at school treating her like a gofer, her dad stuck in bed with an injury, and the ever-present loan looming over her head, Fumi's...

Searching for meaning and purpose in life, a writer takes a spur-of-the-moment Christmastime train trip across the United States, making connections with his fellow passengers that will affect his, and their lives for years to come.