All it took was a lapse...a momentary lapse...to bring Clementine Jones' world crashing down. Now she's living like a hermit in small-town Katinga, coaching the local footy club. She's supposed to be lying low, but here she is, with her team on the cusp of their first premiership in fifty years—and the whole bloody town counting on her, cheering her on.So why the hell would her star player quit on the eve of the finals?It's a question she wishes she'd left alone. Others are starting to ask questions too—questions about her. Clem's not the only one with a secret, and as tension builds, the dark violence just below the town's surface threatens to erupt. Pretty soon there'll be nowhere left for Clem to hide.

Looking out over an ebb tide from the back verandah was like watching God paint stripes...Disgraced former lawyer Clementine Jones is on the shores of paradise—Queensland's Great Sandy Straits—trying to outrun her past. Bored with her house-sitting gig, she becomes a reluctant recruit to the local environmental group, campaigning to save an endangered turtle as developers close in. Then a body is found at the base of a quarry, and Clem's world is turned upside down.The police say suicide. Clem's convinced it was murder. She's also knows she's the only one interested in tracking down the killer. Well, the only one apart from her friend Torrens, ex-con and reformed standover man. And he's got his own fight on his hands.Sarah cast off the lines to her law career not long after being awarded Australian Corporate Lawyer of the Year in 2016. She now lives with her husband aboard a 43-foot sailing catamaran, exploring this most...

This compelling narrative goes behind the scenes with the world’s most important living artists to humanize and demystify contemporary art.The best-selling author of Seven Days in the Art World now tells the story of the artists themselves―how they move through the world, command credibility, and create iconic works.33 Artists in 3 Acts offers unprecedented access to a dazzling range of artists, from international superstars to unheralded art teachers. Sarah Thornton's beautifully paced, fly-on-the-wall narratives include visits with Ai Weiwei before and after his imprisonment and Jeff Koons as he woos new customers in London, Frankfurt, and Abu Dhabi. Thornton meets Yayoi Kusama in her studio around the corner from the Tokyo asylum that she calls home. She snoops in Cindy Sherman’s closet, hears about Andrea Fraser’s psychotherapist, and spends quality time with Laurie Simmons, Carroll Dunham, and their daughters Lena and Grace.Through these intimate scenes, 33 Artists in 3 Acts explores what it means to be a real artist in the real world. Divided into three cinematic "acts"―politics, kinship, and craft―it investigates artists' psyches, personas, politics, and social networks. Witnessing their crises and triumphs, Thornton turns a wry, analytical eye on their different answers to the question "What is an artist?"33 Artists in 3 Acts reveals the habits and attributes of successful artists, offering insight into the way these driven and inventive people play their game. In a time when more and more artists oversee the production of their work, rather than make it themselves, Thornton shows how an artist’s radical vision and personal confidence can create audiences for their work, and examines the elevated role that artists occupy as essential figures in our culture.44 illustrations, 3 maps**

A fly-on-the-wall account of the smart and strange subcultures that make, trade, curate, collect, and hype contemporary art.The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion.In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.