Events with Paperbark Merchants

PBBC July - Safe Haven : in conversation with Shankari Chandran

The new novel from the Miles Franklin award-winning author of Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

It was a beautiful evening. The wind gathered speed, lifting the frangipanis from the grove behind him, pink and yellow petals defying gravity. Beyond the trees, hidden by the foliage and rows of towering palm trees, the detention centre slept fitfully in the heavy summer heat. The palms blocked the ocean gust that now swirled around him, filling his lungs with the taste of temple flowers and salt. It reminded him of home. He took a deep breath, stepped off the escarpment and felt the red sand rush up towards him.

Arriving in Australia seeking asylum, Fina dedicates herself to aiding the refugees who are held in Port Camden, a remote island outpost. Over time she settles into a life within a community of like-minded people, finding a new family, far from her original home. After she speaks out for those being detained, Fina becomes the focus of a media storm that leads to her arrest, and the threat of deportation.

When a security officer dies under suspicious circumstances, Lucky, a special investigator, arrives to uncover the truth. The mystery is tied to Fina’s fate—and the secrets she reveals will divide the town and the nation.

Safe Haven is about displacement and seeking refuge—but ultimately it is a story about finding home—and the lengths you’ll go to find safety and love.

PBBC August - Shadows of Winter Robins : in conversation with Louise Wolhuter

Sometimes you must shine a light on the dark places to see what was always there​.

‘Nancy won’t be coming home.’

And there it is: that pip of a moment. That instant. That fraction of a second. That weightless stillness at the very top of a ball’s bounce, between its going up and falling down.

My brother and I held hands, suspended somewhere in between the life we’d led as Nancy’s children, and the one we were destined to live thereafter.
Winter Robins is a happy enough child, growing up in the north of England, with parents who love her and the constant companion of a twin brother, but a cold wind blows through when her mother dies. Her father turns to the bottle, her grandmother struggles to cope, and she and her brother are sent to live in Western Australia with family their mother had never mentioned.
Although Winter quickly settles in Australia and comes to love her life and the people in it, she notices strange happenings in the shadows of her new home. When a news story prompts her to look back as her past, she begins to wonder whether things were as idyllic as she had thought at the time.
As she uncovers secret after secret, she realises a much darker narrative may have been – and perhaps still is – playing out ...

Book Launch - Milk : with Matthew Evans

We are delighted to announce that Matthew Evans will be joining Paperbark Merchants at 6 Degrees to launch his new book Milk!

Matthew is an Australian chef and food critic turned farmer-food activist and will be celebrating his latest book "Milk: The truth, the lies and the unbelievable story of the original superfood".

About Milk

Milk. It's in our coffee, on our cereal. We see it in processed form – yoghurt, butter, cheese, skimmed and lactose free. It's there in almond form, or made from oats or soy, and is as lauded as the 'perfect' food or lambasted as not fit for human consumption and a toxic planet killer, depending on who you trust. Which type you drink, whether you were raised on breastmilk, what you think of it, is affected by culture, biology and fashion. How you view it is driven by your gender and your politics, as well as your geography.
The miracle liquid has suffered an image problem. It has been used to keep people poor, to keep women subjugated, and to build corporate and medical careers. It's been blamed for climate change, the breakdown of human health, and an enabler of the industrial revolution. From perfect food to pariah, milk's role in life has often been debased.Milk celebrates the majesty of this noble liquid, and delves into the many pretenders to its throne, from formula to mylk. It looks at the transformation of what a milk-producer eats into one of the most nutrient dense foods available, and how that can be transformed again into the butter, cheese and clotted cream that we know and love today. It's an exploration of the science, history and politics of what makes mammals different from every other life form on earth.

PBBC September - The Venice Hotel : in conversation with Tess Woods

Set over the twelve days of Christmas at a boutique Venice hotel, this deliciously twisty novel by acclaimed Australian author is ideal for fans of Nine Perfect Strangers and The White Lotus.

When the lives of four very different women become entangled in a boutique Venice hotel, dark secrets unravel and not everyone who checked into the hotel will check out again.

Signora Loretta Bianchi, the world famous cook at Venice’s Hotel Il Cuore, is forced to choose between once-in-a-lifetime passion and her devoted husband.

Sophie, on assignment in Venice as a food writer, finds a lot more than Signora Bianchi’s secret recipes to love, but what is the charming Rocco hiding?

Law graduate Elena is sinking just like the endangered city she’s returned home to, and she’ll stop at nothing to be free from her marriage.

Grandmother Gayle’s dream Venetian holiday turns sinister as she finds herself embroiled in a life or death escape.

Set against a backdrop of the romance and tragedy of magical Venice, The Venice Hotel explores the powerful bonds that develop between women in times of crisis, and the healing power of female connection.

PBBC October - Cutler : in conversation with David Whish-Wilson

Paul Cutler is a former undercover operative, now working off the books for his handler, Malik Khalil. When Cutler is tasked with investigating the disappearance of an Australian marine scientist on a Taiwanese distant water fishing vessel, Cutler realises that the apparent murder he’s investigating points to a slew of much darker crimes. Onboard, Cutler discovers that the vessel’s crew members are kept as slaves, subject to brutal punishment and forced to work long hours with little rest. And when he learns of the recent massacre of the crew of an Indonesian fishing vessel in the same waters, he realises his quest for the truth will be meaningless if he cannot escape with his life.

PBBC November - Dusk : in conversation with Robbie Arnott

In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.

'Dusk is a sublime novel of loss and redemption, fight and surrender, that left me in absolute awe. Robbie Arnott's prose is incandescent, his storytelling mythic and filled with a wisdom that extends beyond the page. With Dusk, he asserts himself as one of Australia's finest literary writers.' Hannah Kent

PBBC February - Blood and Gold : in conversation with Michael Trant

Someone is stalking gold hunters. Now a bushman is stalking them . . .

Terry Drage is not the first amateur gold prospector to rock up to the Murchison Hotel, brag about an exciting discovery – and then vanish into thin air. But Gabe Ahern is determined he will be the last.

No one knows the land around the remote Western Australian town of Cue better than Gabe – a wild dog trapper who's in his element in the bush. Feeling responsible for his friend’s fate, he races there to join the search.

But it won’t be an easy ride. For a start the local cops seem sure Terry going missing is nothing more than a tragic accident. It’s down to Gabe to spot the sinister pattern of disappearances and deaths in recent years.

Plus, the last time Gabe was in his old home town it was under the very worst of circumstances. And now, to stop a killer, he’ll need to confront the ghosts from his past . . .

PBBC March - The Bad Bridesmaid : in conversation with Rachael Johns

When serial dater Winifred Darling – Fred – is asked to be the maid of honour at her mother’s sixth wedding, she’s determined to do everything in her power to stop it. As the author of a forthcoming book called 21 Rules for Not Catching Feelings, she knows better than most about the perils of falling in love.
On arrival at the island wedding destination, Fred is delighted to discover that the groom’s hot muso son Leo is just as set against the wedding as she is. Together, they come up with ‘Operation Break-Up’ to prevent their parents from making what they believe will be a catastrophic mistake.
But as Fred and Leo get to know each other better, their unexpected feelings for each other create further complications, and Fred is forced to rethink her own rigid rules about romance and family. Maybe not every relationship has to play by the book, and could Fred become the star in a romcom of her own?
A heart-warming friends-to-lovers romance about the magic and mayhem of weddings – and what happens when everything you thought you knew about love is turned upside down.

PBBC April - By Her Hand : in conversation with Marion Taffe

The engrossing and propulsive historical fiction debut from a talented new writer, for readers of Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet, Lauren Groff's Matrix, Robyn Cadwallader's The Anchoress, Pip Williams's The Dictionary of Lost Words.

She must write her rage ... to win her war.

Peak District, Mercia, AD 910: a young girl, Freda works hard to avoid her father's temper, while longing for his approval. She loves foraging in the woods and hearthside stories of heroes. Secretly she thinks in poetry and dreams of one day being able to write; her quills are grass stalks and sticks, her parchment the sky, the earth, her skin. But Freda's world is at war, and when her village is decimated in a savage raid and her father goes missing, Freda must find the strength to survive.

Taken in by the church, her only options are a life of servitude or prayer. But the cunning bishop sees an opportunity. As well as teaching Freda to write, he uses her survival as evidence of a miracle so as to attract pilgrims who bring wealth. As Freda chafes against the bishop's increasing control, she develops a friendship with the Mercian leader Ethelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, who shows her what it is to lead as a woman in a world that worships warrior kings.

Soon Freda must choose. Does she remain the powerless, subservient quill whose fate lies in the hands of another, or does she fight for the right to create - and write - her own story?

PBBC May - Always Home, Always Homesick : in conversation with Hannah Kent

'In my brief breath of life, might I find a way to fit light to paper?'

In a land of ethereal beauty, within a culture soaked in myth, a young woman discovers the story that will change her life.

In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrives at Keflavík Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter.

That night she sleeps off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, unaware that, years later, she will return to the same building to write Burial Rites, the haunting story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last woman executed in Iceland. The novel will go on to launch the author's stellar literary career and capture the hearts of readers across the globe.

Always Home, Always Homesick is Hannah Kent's exquisite love letter to a land that has forged a nation of storytellers, her ode to the transcendent power of creativity, and her invitation to us all to join her in the realms of mystery, spirit and wonder.

PBBC June - The Unquiet Grave : in conversation with Dervla McTiernan

For years the boglands of Northern Europe have given up bodies of the long-deceased. Bodies that are thousands of years old, uncannily preserved. Bodies with strange injuries that suggest ritual torture and human sacrifice.

When a corpse is found in a bog in Galway, Cormac Reilly assumes the find is historical. But closer examination reveals a more recent story. The dead man is Thaddeus Grey, a local secondary school principal who disappeared two years prior.

There's nothing in Grey's past that would explain why he was murdered, or why his body was mutilated in a ritual manner. At first, progress on the case is frustratingly slow and Cormac struggles to keep his mind on the job. His ex-girlfriend, Emma Sweeney, is in trouble, and she's reached out to him for help - Emma's new husband has gone missing in Paris, and the French police are refusing to open an investigation into his disappearance.

Cormac is sure that he has found Grey's killer, and is within hours of an arrest, when another mutilated body is discovered on the other side of the country. Two days later, a third body is found. Press attention is intense. Is there a serial killer at work in Ireland? Has Cormac been on the wrong trail? And if so, can he find the murderer before they strike again?

PBBC July - The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains : in conversation with Sarah Clutton

For readers who love The Midnight Library and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, here comes your next favourite life-affirming, delightful and funny novel, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains.

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Alfie's mum, Emilia, has been lying to him forever
It's only been the two of them in Ireland, but when Emilia's appendix explodes, she drops a bombshell: they have a family back in Australia, and she and Alfie are going to meet them.
When Penny Bains opens the door of her Tasmanian farmhouse to a boy with an Irish accent claiming to be the son of her missing daughter, Emilia, her life is turned upside down.
Alfie needs to know who his father is, but the residents of the tiny town of Beggars Rock and his newly found grandmother and great-aunts are all staying silent. As Alfie starts to uncover secrets that his family would prefer to keep buried, the one thing he does discover is that no one is willing to tell him the truth.
Unforgettable, funny, life affirming and deeply moving, The Remarkable Truths of Alfie Bains is an absolute joy.