After a six-year estrangement from her troubled family, Simone Parker returns home to the small Australian town of Brownbeck to attend a funeral. She hopes to reconcile with her younger sister, Claire. Their father, now dead, was a violent and abusive drunk yet Claire always pretended otherwise, which is one of the reasons why Simone cut all ties. When Simone is the only witness to a brutal and near-fatal bashing, she discovers that Brownbeck harbours a criminal gang trafficking in illegal firearms. At the funeral, she recognises Claire’s new partner as one of the assailants. How can she help police officer Mitchell Ross in his investigation if her own sister might somehow be involved? To complicate matters, Simone is falling for Mitchell.
Author
I'm an award-winning author from Melbourne, Australia. I write poems, short stories, novelettes, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. My award-nominated titles include the novels Body Farm Z, Contrition and Devil Dragon; the novella Thylacines; and the collections Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories and Liminal Spaces: Horror Stories. My collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows 'Best Collected Work' Award, was nominated for an Aurealis Award, and long-listed for a Bram Stoker. My short fiction has appeared in many well-respected magazines, been shortlisted for numerous awards, translated, and included in various 'best of' anthologies such as Year's Best Hardcore Horror. I've won the Australian Shadows 'Best Edited Work' Award twice: for Midnight Echo 14, and for the anthology I conceived and edited, Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies. Other credits include TV scripts such as NEIGHBOURS, feature articles for national and international magazines, non-fiction books published by Reed Books and Random House, stage plays, poetry and award-winning medical writing including Better Health Channel.
