Jodie Garrow is a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks when she falls pregnant. Scared, alone and desperate to make something of her life, she adopts out the baby illegally - and tells nobody.Twenty-five years on, Jodie has built a new life and a new family. But when a chance meeting brings the adoption to the notice of the authorities, Jodie becomes caught in a nationwide police investigation, and the centre of a media witch hunt.What happened to Jodie's baby? And where is she now? The fallout from Jodie's past puts her whole family under the microscope, and her husband and daughter must re-examine everything they believed to be true.Potent, provocative and compulsively readable, The Mistake cuts to the heart of what makes a family, and ask us whether we can ever truly know another person.Praise for The Mistake'Sharp, incisive and compassionate . . . full of insight, humour, intelligence and honesty. A profoundly satisfying read.'...

Somebody is lying. After eighteen-year-old Ellie Canning is found shivering and barely conscious on a country road, her bizarre story of kidnap and escape enthrals the nation. Who would do such a thing? And why?Local drama teacher Suzannah Wells, once a minor celebrity, is new to town. Suddenly she's in the spotlight again, accused of being the monster who drugged and bound a teenager in her basement. As stories about her past emerge, even those closest to her begin to doubt her innocence.And Ellie? The media can't get enough of her. She's a girl-power icon, a social-media star. But is she telling the truth?A powerful exploration of the fragility of trust and the loss of innocence, from the author of The Golden Child and The Mistake.PRAISE'James brilliantly takes this historical true crime and updates it to the internet age' Cameron Woodhead, Sydney Morning Herald'This...

Can bad children happen to good mothers? A totally absorbing novel, for readers of Liane Moriarty, Lionel Shriver and Christos Tsiolkas. Blogger Lizzy's life is buzzing, happy, normal. Two gorgeous children, a handsome husband, destiny under control. For her real-life alter-ego Beth, things are unravelling. Tensions are simmering with her husband, mother-in-law and even her own mother. Her teenage daughters, once the objects of her existence, have moved beyond her grasp and one of them has shown signs of, well, thoughtlessness ... Then a classmate of one daughter is callously bullied and the finger of blame is pointed at Beth's clever, beautiful child. Shattered, shamed and frightened, two families must negotiate worlds of cruelty they are totally ill-equipped for. This is a novel that grapples with modern-day spectres of selfies, selfishness and cyberbullying. It plays with our fears of parenting, social media and Queen Bees, and it asks the question: just how well do you know...

Why She Loves Him is a collection of short stories by award-winning novelist Wendy James. 2 of 5 includes the stories: 'Bad Blood'; 'Cold'; 'Divertimento'; 'Ground Zero'; and 'The Witch's Daughters'. Holding a discerning mirror to seemingly ordinary lives, James captures recurring themes of love, betrayal, passion and guilt to show just how vulnerable and intricate the human heart really is. Whether narrating from the living room of a contemporary marriage, from the wheel of a desperate getaway car, or while composing an elaborate diversion in 18th century Salzburg, James has the rare ability to wryly comment on humankind with unnerving clarity and precision.

Susan and Ed Middleton are perfectly content with their lives. Two kids, two cars, a solid brick bungalow in a respectable beaches suburb. They're good people, model citizens. There's barely a ripple in the surface of their happy existence. But when Susan's older sister, who vanished as a teenager, reappears to claim an inheritance, everything is set to change... Karen – now known as Carly – has had a tough time during the past twenty years: drugs, prostitution, prison. At least that's what she tells them. As Carly insinuates herself further and further into the Middleton's lives, suspicions are aroused – is she really Susan's sister, returned from the dead? If she isn't Karen, who is she? And, imposter or not, why is the Middleton's relaxed and comfortable world suddenly spinning way out of control?