In the Quiet

Charlie Johnson is 13 and in her first year of high school. She loves her family, netball and Liam, the cute guy who sits next to her in Science - but most of all she loves horses and horse riding. Charlie's parents have leased her a horse, Tic Tac, from the local pony club, but one day they go out for a ride in the national park and only Tic Tac returns.... Four months later, long after the police and the SES have called off the search, Charlie is found wandering injured and filthy, miles from where she was last seen.

If families are like solar systems - bodies that orbit in time around one another, sometimes close and sometimes far away - what is the force that moves them? And what are the consequences when one planet tugs others off course? Lotte is an astronomer who spends her nights peering into deep space rather than looking too closely at herself. Returning to her hometown after years abroad, and reeling from a devastating diagnosis, she finds that much has changed. Lotte’s father has remarried, and she’s estranged from her former best friend, Eve. 

Jonathon Bridge has the corner office, the tailored suits and the impeccable pedigree. He has a fascinating wife, a child on the way and a string of nubile lovers on the side. He's a man who's going places. His world is our world: the same chaos and sprawl, haves and have-nots, men and women, skyscrapers and billboards. But it also exists alongside a vast, self-sustaining city-state called The Fortress where the indigenous inhabitants - the Vaik - continue to live much as they have always done.

When a body is found buried near the desolate forest road of Kellers Way, Detective Melanie Carter must identify the victim if she is to have any chance of finding the killer. That's no easy task with fragmentary evidence from a crime committed years earlier and a conspiracy of silence from anyone who might have information. The one person who may be able to help is Julie West.

A dark and unsettling tale, set at the turn of the 20th century, that will stay with you long after you finish listening - from a master of Australian literature. Out in that country, the sun smeared the sky and nothing ever altered, except that one day a scrap man came by.... Her name is scarcely known or remembered. All in all, she is worth less than the nine shillings and sixpence counted into her father's hand. She bides her time. She does her work. Way back in the corner of her mind is a thought she is almost too frightened to shine a light on: one day she will run away.