Eliza Grayling, born in Sydney when the colony itself was still an infant, has lived there all her thirty-two years. Too tall, too stern—too old, now—for marriage, she lives by herself, looking in on her reclusive father in case he has injured himself while drunk. There is a shadow in his past, she knows. Something obsessive. Something to do with a man who bested him thirty-three years ago.Then Srinivas, another figure from that dark past, offers Joshua Grayling the chance for a reckoning with his nemesis. Eliza is horrified. The plan entails a sea voyage far to the south and an uncertain, possibly violent, outcome. Out of the question for an elderly man—insanity for a helpless drunkard who also happens to be blind.Unable to dissuade her father from his mad quest, Eliza begins to understand she may be forced to go with him. Then she sees the ship they will be sailing on. And in that instant, the voyage of the Moonbird becomes Eliza's mission...

Jock Serong, Mark Smith and Nail A. White posed the question: what would happen if a group of Australia's finest writers were invited to let their minds go walking through the Paul Kelly songbook? The writers responded with tales of forbidden love, with the ghosts that inhibit St Kilda and the 'special treatment' of the Noongar people; with the dumb things they did when they crossed the Nullarbor, and how a simple song could bind a father and daughter forever. Contributors include well-known musicians, award-winning novelists, crime writers, children's author and more including Robbie Arnott, Alice Bishop, Zoe Bradley, Sam Carmody, Jake Cashion, Lorin Clarke, Claire G. Coleman, Sarah Drummond, Laura Elvery, Kirsten Krauth, Julia Lawrinson, Matt Neal, Bram Presser, MIrandi Riwoe, Tim Rogers, Angela Savage, Jock Serong, Mark Smith, Neil A. White, Gina Williams and Michelle Wright. Like Paul Kelly's song, these stories will take you anywhere, and everywhere, and they will keep coming...

It starts in a suburban backyard with Darren Keefe and his older brother, sons of a fierce and gutsy single mother. The endless glow of summer, the bottomless fury of contest. All the love and hatred in two small bodies poured into the rules of a made-up game.Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. No surprise that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety—one of those men who’s always got away with things and just keeps getting.Until the day we meet him, middle aged, in the boot of a car. Gagged, cable-tied, a bullet in his knee. Everything pointing towards a shallow grave.The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a novel of suspense in the tradition of Peter Temple’s Truth. With glorious writing harnessed to a gripping narrative, it observes celebrity, masculinity—humanity—with clear-eyed lyricism and exhilarating narrative drive.Jock Serong lives and works on the far southwest coast of Victoria....

Charlie Jardim has just trashed his legal career in a spectacular courtroom meltdown, and his girlfriend has finally left him. So when a charitable colleague slings him a prosecution brief that will take him to the remote coastal town of Dauphin, Charlie reluctantly agrees that the sea air might be good for him. The case is a murder. The victim was involved in the illegal abalone trade and the even more illegal drug trade. and the witnesses aren't talking. And as Dauphin closes ranks around him, Charlie is about to find his interest in the law powerfully reignited. Jock Serong lives and works on the far southwest coast of Victoria. He was a practising lawyer when he wrote Quota and is currently a features writer, and the editor of Great Ocean Quarterly. He is married with four children, who in turn are raising a black dog, a rabbit and an unknown number of guinea pigs. Quota is his first novel.'Pitch-perfect dialogue,...

Amid the furious ocean there was no human sound on deck: some people standing, watching the wave, but no one capable of words. On the Java Ridge, skipper Isi Natoli and a group of Australian surf tourists are anchored beside an idyllic reef off the Indonesian island of Dana. In the Canberra office of Cassius Calvert, Minister for Border Integrity, a Federal election looms and (not coincidentally) a hardline new policy is being announced regarding maritime assistance to asylum-seeker vessels in distress.A few kilometres away from Dana, the Takalar is having engine trouble. Among the passengers fleeing from persecution are Roya and her mother, and Roya's unborn sister.The storm now closing in on the Takalar and the Java Ridge will mean catastrophe for them all.With On the Java Ridge Jock Serong, bestselling author of The Rules of Backyard Cricket, brings us a literary novel with the pace and tension...

On a beach not far from the isolated settlement of Sydney in 1797, a fishing boat picks up three shipwreck survivors, distressed and terribly injured. They have walked hundreds of miles across a landscape whose features—and inhabitants—they have no way of comprehending. They have lost fourteen companions along the way. Their accounts of the ordeal are evasive.It is Lieutenant Joshua Grayling's task to investigate the story. He comes to realise that those fourteen deaths were contrived by one calculating mind and, as the full horror of the men's journey emerges, he begins to wonder whether the ruthless killer poses a danger to his own family.Jock Serong is the author of Quota, winner of the 2015 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction; The Rules of Backyard Cricket, shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction, finalist of the 2017 MWA Edgar Awards for Best Paperback Original, and finalist of the 2017 INDIES Adult Mystery...