'The rural crime fiction wave continues with this brilliant new arid drama.' - Australian Women's Weekly'The writing is generous and whip-smart, with sentences that will stop readers in their tracks to savour them ... Heart-racing twists propel the novel to its denouement, while the oppressive heat and arid landscape add an extra layer of threat to the unfolding drama.'- Books + PublishingTwo bodies. One long hot summer. A town that will never be the same. When Adam Lawson's wrecked car is found a kilometre from Daisy Baker's body, the whole town assumes it's an open and shut case. But Jesse Redpath isn't from Canticle Creek. Where she comes from, the truth often hides in plain sight, but only if you know where to look. When Jesse starts to ask awkward questions, she uncovers a town full of contradictions and a cast of characters with dark pasts, secrets to hide and even more to lose. As the temperature soars,...

Something has drawn Emily Tempest back to Central Australia - to Moonlight Downs, the community she left half a lifetime ago. Not much has changed; the barefoot kids are bush mechanics now, but Emily still doesn't know if she belongs in the Aboriginal world or the white. And trouble still seems to follow her. Within hours of her arrival an old friend lies brutally murdered and mutilated, an old enemy the only suspect. Until Emily starts asking questions.

"Packs a real wallop. . . . An epic and ambitious mystery set against the vast backdrop of Central Australia, where indigenous and white people live side by side in an uneasy truce."--Vogue (Australia) "Incorporates geophysical data, race politics and aboriginal spirituality into a seamless, often hilarious stream of narrative. [It] has all the hallmarks of a first of a very successful series with the potential to forge a new sub-genre of detective fiction--that of a feisty, female indigenous sleuth whose intelligence and tenacity prove superior to force and ignorance."--The Sydney Morning Herald "Witty, knowing, at times downright hilarious. The plot is absorbing and Hyland's characters are originals. . . . As Emily Tempest untangles the knot of a murder, she also comes to rediscover her past, her belonging and her self."--Brisbane Courier Mail Emily Tempest, a feisty part-aboriginal woman, left home to get an education and has...

Emily Tempest is appointed an aboriginal community police officer for the Moonlight Downs station. Investigating the possible murder of an elderly geologist, she encounters Danny, an emotionally fragile Stonehouse mob teenager who is traumatized by the image of "poison flowing green." The terrain of Australia, a Japanese rock garden painter, a rash of unexplained illnesses, and the implausibility of two elderly friends killing each other present Emily with a unique puzzle.From the Hardcover edition.

Black Saturday. February 7, 2009. Roger Wood is the cop on duty at Kinglake when the most devastating fire in the nation’s history roars through the ranges onto his beat. His task is to defend his town against the colossus that threatens to destroy it. And, over the course of one nightmarish day, that is what he will do. Even at the risk of his own life. Even after he receives the dreadful phone call telling him his own wife and kids are caught on the front line of the inferno.