'The Missing' by Tim Gautreaux

After World War I, Sam Simoneaux returns to New Orleans determined to leave mayhem and destruction behind, and to start anew with his wife years after losing a son to illness. But when a little girl disappears from the department store where he works, he has no recourse but to join her musician parents on a Mississippi excursion steamboat, hoping to unearth clues somewhere along the river.

Steeped in the music and langorous rhythms of prohibition...  More details.

'Sunnyside' by Glen David Gold

America is on the brink of war, but the only battle Charlie Chaplin is fighting is against himself. Sunnyside follows three overlapping fortunes: Leland Wheeler, son of the last (and worst) Wild West star, as he heads to the battlefields of France; intellectual Hugo Black, drafted to fight the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin himself, contending with accusations of cowardice, his (very) young lovers, and his struggle for self-worth. Chaplin is a fascinating...  More details.

'Dust' by Christine Bongers

Twelve-year-old Cecilia Maria was named after saints and martyrs to give her something to live up to. Over my dead body, she vows. In the blinding heat of 1970s Queensland, she battles six brothers on her side of the fence, and the despised Kapernicky girls, lurking on the other side of the barbed wire.
Secrets are buried deep, only to surface decades later when Cecilia drags her own reluctant teenagers back home to dance on a grave and track...  More details.

'Brown Skin Blue' by Belinda Jeffrey

Barry Mundy has brown skin and a blue birthmark and, at seventeen, those two colours define his life. When he gets a job at the Croc-Jumping cruises on the Adelaide River in the Northern Territory, he carries a list of names of the men who could be his father. They're all dark for different reasons and Barry hungers to know whose blood flows inside him. All he sees when he looks in the mirror is a brown mask that hides a blue secret. Brown Skin Blue...  More details.