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Small Towns, Big Crimes. Now online

February 25, 2022 @ 8:00 pm 9:00 pm

What happens when crime leaves the mean streets of our big cities to stalk small-town Australia? Whether it is at the beach or in the bush, these small communities all harbour more than their fair share of deadly secrets and criminality. Three authors, Emma Viskic, Aoife Clifford, and Maryrose Cuskelly, will explore all this with award-winning short story writer, Jacqui Horwood, host of the conversation.

$10 to be included in a draw for three packages of books. Register with Eventbrite by Friday 25 February, 5 pm and you will be sent the Zoom link by 6 pm.

Emma Viskic

Emma Viskic’s, Those Who Perish –  the thrilling finale of the ground-breaking Caleb Zelic series – is due out in March (Echo Publishing).

Caleb, a profoundly deaf private eye, has been searching for his addict brother, Anton, for months. He receives an anonymous message alerting him to Ant’s whereabouts, and warning him that Ant is in danger. Caleb tracks his brother to an isolated island where he finds a secretive community under threat from a sniper, and a cult-like doctor with a troubling background. When body parts begin to wash up on shore, it looks as though the sniper is becoming more desperate.

Emma’s critically acclaimed Caleb Zelic novels have been published worldwide. The series has won a Ned Kelly Award and an unprecedented five Davitt Awards. Her debut novel, Resurrection Bay, was shortlisted for the UK’s prestigious Gold Dagger and New Blood Awards, and for a Barry Award in the US. Viskic learned Auslan in order to create the character of Caleb. She was formerly a classical clarinettist whose musical career ranged from performing with José Carreras and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa to busking for beer money in St Kilda.

Aoife Clifford

Aoife Clifford’s third crime novel, When We Fall, is also out in March (Ultimo Press). Alex Tillerson has returned to the coastal town of Merrittto to care for her ageing mother. Her marriage is over and her career has stalled. Her life becomes even more complicated when she and her mother make a shocking find on the beach, connected to the death of the local art teacher. The police dismiss the death as an accident but the townspeople aren’t so sure.

Alex gets caught up in a murder investigation, with ties to an older crime, and discovers more than one secret lies hidden within the town’s history—and some may be closer to home than she realises. Aoife is the author of the best-selling literary crime novels, Second Sight, highly commended in Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards, and All These Perfect Strangers, which was long-listed for both the ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year and the Voss Literary Prize. She has won a Ned Kelly Award, the 2007 Scarlet Stiletto Award, followed by six category awards in the subsequent six years. Aoife also took out the S D Harvey Award (part of the Ned Kelly Awards) and, has been shortlisted for the UK Crime Association’s Debut Dagger among other prizes. Her award-winning stories have been published in Australia, the UK, and the US.

Maryrose Cuskelly

Maryrose Cuskelly’s debut novel, The Cane (Allen & Unwin), out in February, is set in Quala, a North Queensland sugar town, in the 1970s. A sixteen-year-old girl has been missing for weeks but the police have no leads. The locals are divided by dread and distrust. But the sugar crush is underway and the cane must be burned. As the smoke rises and tensions come to a head, the dark heart of Quala will be revealed, affecting the lives of all who dwell beyond the cane. Maryrose is the author of Wedderburn: A true tale of blood and dust (Allen & Unwin, 2018), which was longlisted for Best Debut and Best True Crime in the 2019 Davitt Awards. In 2016, she won the New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing (non-fiction) for her essay “Well Before Dark” about the disappearance of Mackay schoolgirl Marilyn Wallman in 1972. The Cane returns to some of the themes and preoccupations of that essay.

Jacqui Horwood headshot

Jacqui Horwood is a librarian at the State Library Victoria. She has won the 2003 Scarlet Stiletto Award, the 2005 Award for Best Crime in Verse, and the 2016 Silver Stiletto.

She was shortlisted for the 2019 Scarlet Stiletto Awards, and the 2015 and 2016 Ada Cambridge Biography in Prose Awards.

Her stories have been published in anthologies and e-zines. Jacqui is a former Sisters in Crime convenor and was a Davitt Awards judge for ten years.

Help us to keep supporting women crime writers

Please support Sisters in Crime Australia and the work it does for Australian women crime writers, by donating $10 via Eventbrite before Friday 25 February, 5pm.

Three lucky donors will win a pack of crime books to the value of $150, kindly donated by publishers. Unfortunately, this bonus is restricted to Australian residents – international postage is just too expensive!

The pack will include:

  • Those Who Perish, by Emma Viskic (Echo Publishing)
  • When We Fall, by Aoife Clifford (Ultimo Press)
  • The Cane, by Maryrose Cuskelly (Allen & Unwin)

And one of these book pairs:

  • Missing Pieces, by Caroline de Costa (Wild Dingo Press)
  • Gorgeous Girl, by Mary K. Pershall (Penguin Random House)

Or

  • The Cottage at Rosella Cove, by Sandie Docker(Penguin/Michael Joseph)
  • Nature of the Lion, by T.M. Clark (Mira)

Or

  • Breaking Point, by Edel Coffey (Sphere Books)
  • Mindcull, by K H Canobi (Ford Street Publishing)

A video link to our Small Towns, Big Crimes author panel will be posted on the Sisters in Crime website, and social media – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It will be available to watch on YouTube on Sunday 27 February, after 7pm.

Supported by the Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Office.

Additional information: Carmel Shute, 0412 569 356, admin@sistersincrime.org.au