1 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
Curtis Brown Australia
May Newsletter
Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd | Literary Agents
PO Box 19 | Paddington NSW 2021 | Australia
T: [61 2] 9361 6161 | F: [61 2] 9360 3935
E: [email protected] | W: www.curtisbrown.com.au
2 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Fiction | 320 pp | April 2015 |
THE FALLS Cathryn Hein
An uplifting story of healing and hope from the
author of Promises, Heart of the Valley, and Rocking
Horse Hill.
Published by: Penguin | Paperback
Rights available: World excl. ANZ; Film/TV
Agent: Clare Forster ([email protected])
Description: For as long as she can remember,
Teagan Bliss has wanted to manage her family's
property. She's invested everything in the farm,
knowing that when her parents retire she'll be ready to
take the reins. But when a family betrayal leaves her
reeling, Teagan is forced to rethink her entire future.
Heartbroken, Teagan flees to her aunt's property in the idyllic Falls Valley. Vanessa is warm
and welcoming and a favourite of the locals who drop in regularly for cocktail hour.
Teagan soon catches the attention of sexy local farrier Lucas Knight, and with a new job,
new friends and the prospect of a new relationship, she slowly begins to open up again.
But the village is a hotbed of gossip and division and when Teagan gets caught up in town
politics, Lucas and Vanessa become concerned. As the tension in town escalates, Teagan
must decide who to trust. But when she realises those close to her have been keeping
secrets, the fallout may split Teagan apart forever.
Praise for Promises:
'Uplifting . . . A moving emotional journey towards forgiveness and hope.' Bronwyn Parry
'A top read . . . Cathryn Hein had me from the first page.' Toowoomba Chronicle
'Take two feuding families with a dark history, add two beautiful offspring from those families,
and let the angst-ridden romance begin.' Cosmopolitan
Cathryn Hein was born in South Australia’s rural south-east. Armed with a Bachelor of Applied
Science (Agriculture), she moved to Melbourne and later Newcastle, working in the
agricultural and turf seeds industry. Her partner’s posting to France took Cathryn overseas for
three years where she began to write. Her novels include Promises, Heart of the Valley,
Heartland, Rocking Horse Hill, The French Prize and The Falls.
3 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Fiction | 478 pp | May 2015 |
Season of Shadow and
Light Jenn J McLeod
Are some secrets best kept for the sake of others?
Published by: Simon & Schuster |Paperback
Rights available: Film/TV, Audio
Agent: Clare Forster ([email protected])
Description: Sometime this season ...
The secret keeper must tell.
The betrayed must trust.
The hurt must heal.
When it seems that everything Paige trusts is beginning to betray her, she leaves her
husband at home and sets off on a road trip with her six-year-old daughter, Matilda,
and Nana Alice in tow.
But stranded amid rising floodwaters on a detour to the tiny town of Coolabah Tree
Gully, Paige discovers the greatest betrayal of all happened there twenty years earlier.
Praise for Jenn McLeod:
‘Captivating’ The Australian Women’s Weekly
When Jenn J. McLeod quit Sydney’s corporate communications chaos, she bought a
little café in a small town and ran a unique, dog-friendly B&B in country NSW. Home
now is a fifth wheeler caravan, her days spent writing heart-warming tales of Australian
country life. Readers and reviewers alike enthusiastically received Jenn’s debut, House
for all Seasons, placing it at #5 on the 2013 Nielsen’s Best Selling Debut Novel list.
Season of Shadow and Light is the third book in her Seasons Collection, with a fourth
Seasons Collection novel due in 2016.
4 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Fiction | 384 pp | May 2015 |
NORTHERN HEAT Helene Young
A story of love and courage in Australia’s tropical
north.
Published by: Penguin |Paperback
Rights available: Film/TV
Agent: Clare Forster ([email protected])
Description: In steamy northern Queensland,
Conor is rebuilding his shattered life. Working at
Cooktown's youth centre has given him the
chance to make a difference again, and the
opportunity to flirt with Dr Kristy Dark. The local GP
is hiding her own secrets and struggling to raise
her feisty teenage daughter alone.
When a severe cyclone menaces the coast, threatening to destroy everything in its
path, tensions come to a head – and the weather is not the only danger. Cut off from
the world and with her life on the line, Kristy will have to summon her courage and
place her trust in Conor, or they'll both lose someone they love.
Praise for Helene Young:
'This amazing writer of romantic never ceases to thrill.' Good Reads
'I don't think there's a better romantic suspense writer out there at the moment.' 1 Girl 2
Many Books
'Helene Young just keeps getting better.' Write Note Reviews
'Helene Young has been compared to Nora Roberts . . . and she doesn't disappoint.'
New Idea
Helene Young has won the Romance Writers of Australia Romantic Book of the Year
Award in 2011 and 2012. She was also voted favourite romantic suspense author by the
Australian Romance Readers Association in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014, and was
shortlisted for the same award in 2012. Burning Lies was shortlisted for the 2013 Daphne
du Maurier Award Mystery/Suspense in America. Her new novel Northern Heat, was
published by Penguin in 2015.
5 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Non-fiction | 376 pp | May 2015 |
BLACK WIDOW Carol Baxter
Fast-paced and surprising, this story of Australia's first
female serial killer is as exciting as it is thought-
provoking.
Publisher: Allen & Unwin |Paperback
Rights available: World excl. ANZ, Film/TV, Audio
Agent: Tara Wynne ([email protected])
Description: Two inquests, four trials, three hung
juries and the executioner...but was Louisa Collins
really a husband killer? Was she the callous
adulteress, drunkard and liar known as the Botany
Bay Murderess and the Lucrezia Borgia of Botany Bay? Or was this mother of seven
a spirited and defiant woman who was punished for breaching society's
expectations of womanly behaviour?
Compelling, freshly told and richly detailed, Black Widow uncovers the truth of a
story that challenged the morality, the politics and the notion of law in an Australia
on the edge of nationhood.
Carol Baxter came to history through genealogy and, accordingly, has a different
approach to most academic historians. Her focus is upon narrative history, primarily
the story of ordinary individuals who made an extraordinary impact on our world.
Her first, critically acclaimed work, An Irresistible Temptation, was published by Allen
& Unwin in November 2006. Breaking The Bank, the exciting true tale of Australia’s
biggest bank robbery followed in 2008, and the story of Australia’s most successful
bushranger, Captain Thunderbolt and his Lady, in 2011. In 2013, The Peculiar Case
of the Electric Constable: a true tale of poison, passion, and pursuit was published
to international acclaim. In 2015, Allen & Unwin published Black Widow: the true
story of Australia’s first female serial killer. Carol Baxter is an adjunct lecturer at the
University of New England and a Fellow of the Society of Genealogists.
6 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Biography | 384 pp | May 2015 |
THEA ASTLEY:
INVENTING HER OWN
WEATHER Karen Lamb
Finally, the first biography of one of Australia’s most
beloved novelists.
Published by: University of Queensland Press |
Paperback
Rights available: World excl. ANZ; Film/TV, Audio
Agent: Fiona Inglis ([email protected])
Description: Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own
Weather is the long-overdue biography of
Australian author Thea Astley (1925–2004). Over a fifty-year writing career, Astley
published more than a dozen novels and short story collections, including The Acolyte,
The Slow Natives and, finally, Drylands in 1999. She was the first person to win multiple
Miles Franklin awards – four in total. With many of her works published internationally,
Astley was a trailblazer for women writers.
In her personal life, she was renowned for her dry wit, eccentricity and compassion.
Although a loving mother and wife, she rose above the domestic limitations imposed
on women at the time to carve out a professional life true to her creative drive.
Karen Lamb has drawn on an unparalleled range of interviews and correspondence to
create a detailed picture of Thea the woman, as well as Astley the writer. She has
sought to understand Astley’s private world and how that shaped the distinctive body
of work that is Thea Astley’s literary legacy.
Karen Lamb teaches literature and communication at the Australian Catholic University
and has held teaching and research positions at the University of Queensland, Monash
University and the University of Melbourne, where she taught in literary studies, media
and communication, and cultural studies. Her research interests include Australian
literature, life writing, and the cultural context of authorship. She has edited a book of
Australian short stories, and published book chapters and articles on Australian authors,
including a book on Peter Carey. She lives in Sydney.
7 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Memoir | 336 pp | May 2015 |
NELLIE’S VOW Leonie Binge
A poignant tribute to one young woman’s
extraordinary fortitude in the face of unimaginable
misfortune
Published by: Arbon | Paperback
Rights available: World excl. ANZ; Film/TV, Audio
Agent: Clare Forster ([email protected])
Description: Nellie’s Vow is an uplifting true tale of
triumph over tragedy. Confronted by one
devastating blow after another – including the
sudden death of their beloved father, the
crippling mental illness suffered by their mother, the vicious abuse dished out by
their stepfather and years of loneliness and deprivation at a Narellan orphanage –
the four Peisley girls seem destined for a life of despair and hardship. But with
courage and conviction, Nellie is able to lead her three younger sisters – Kathleen,
Clare and Millie – to lives filled with love, optimism and the strength and enduring
comforts of family.
Brimming with historical detail – from fascinating chronicles of country life to heart-
rending descriptions of Depression-era Sydney – Nellie’s Vow is a rich tapestry that
interweaves a tragic family saga with national and global events of the early
twentieth century. Sepia photographs of the people and places in the story bring
the narrative to life.
History enthusiasts and those who enjoy moving family dramas will be enraptured
by the twists and turns within Nellie’s Vow. From 11-year-old Nellie’s powerful
promise that she would take care of her sisters to the moment she is finally able to
welcome her youngest siblings into her marital home.
Leonie Binge grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney in a typical middle-class family.
After listening to tales of her mother and aunt growing up in an orphanage during the
Depression and how their older sister tracked them down, determined to find and care
for them, Leonie promised she would one day write their story. Leonie, a teacher, lives
in Melbourne with her husband and three children.
8 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Fiction | 480 pp | April 2015 |
Secret Keeping for
Beginners Maggie Alderson
Is it ever better to tell?
Published by: Harper Collins |Paperback
Rights available: Film/TV, Audio
Agent: Fiona Inglis ([email protected])
Description: Even the closest families have secrets
... it's when they are shared that things begin to
change. The lives of three very different sisters
collide in this witty new novel from bestseller
Maggie Alderson. Recently divorced Rachel is
juggling her new dream job in interior design PR
with the demands of two young daughters. She's
full of creative ideas but - even with a colourful childminder or two - some days she can't
make it into the office on time and in matching shoes.
Tessa, a talented muralist, is feeling flat. Her kids are growing up and she's feeling upstaged
by her husband's new-found celebrity as the host of a reality TV fireplace restoration show.
Everything turns on its head when she gets a surprise from her past.
Youngest sister Natasha leads a glamorous jet setting life - she's one of Vogue's favourite
make-up artists who regularly creates the looks for the biggest shows in Paris and Milan.
Single and childless, she's been focused on her career - but when the lie she's concealed
for years threatens to come to light, the truth will make her question everything.
Meanwhile their mother, Joy, a hippy vegetarian caterer, is carefully ignoring the letters
that keep arriving at her door... And everything lurking beneath the surface of this
seemingly happy family is about to come out...
Maggie Alderson is the author of seven novels and four collections of her columns from
Good Weekend magazine. Her children's book Evangeline, The Wish Keeper's Helper was
shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award. Before becoming a full-time author she
worked as a journalist and columnist in the UK and Australia, editing several magazines,
including British ELLE. She writes 'The Rules' style column for the Sunday Age and a blog at
maggiealderson.com.
9 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Memoir | 320 pp | May 2015 |
OUTBACK MIDWIFE Beth McRae
Call the Midwife meets In the Middle of Nowhere in
this heartwarming memoir of an adventurous Aussie
midwife's life 'catching babies'.
Published by: Random House Australia | Paperback
Rights available: World excl. ANZ, Film/TV, Audio
Agent: Pippa Masson ([email protected])
Description: Outback Midwife is the story of Beth
McRae's 40 years as a midwife, from her terrifying
first day witnessing a birth as a naïve student nurse
to her training as a midwife – the days when the
words ‘birth plan' were unheard of and what
women wanted was a long way from being part of any plan – to the outback.
Beth's career of catching babies takes her from the city to the bush, bonding with
people from all walks of life at one of the most important moments in their lives. But
there was one more frontier she was determined to conquer.
At an age when most people are thinking about slowing down, Beth decides to
move to a remote Aboriginal community in Arnhem Land to embark on a whole
other adventure.
Beth McRae began her training as a midwife at Preston and Northcote Community
Hospital in Victoria, and went on ‘catch babies' all over Australia. After 30 years as
a midwife and many trips to the outback corners of Australia, Beth was ready to
embrace life living and working in a remote community. This leap of faith led to
some unforgettable and unbelievable experiences working with Australia’s first
people and Beth has loved every minute. She married her army boyfriend 41 years
ago and is mother to two daughters, Lauren and Clare, and grandmother to four
grandchildren, Eva, Declan, Layla, and Chloe.
10 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Non-fiction | 336 pp | May 2015 |
AUSTRALIAN FARMING
FAMILIES Deb Hunt
Inspiring true stories of life on the land from all
across Australia.
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia |Paperback
Rights available: Film, Audio
Agent: Pippa Masson
Description: The inspiring true stories of
Australian farming family living and working
our great brown land.
Through fires and floods, draughts and
dramas, these multi-generational families thrive and survive in some the harshest
conditions in the country. As they say, there's no sick pay out in the bush. On million
hectare properties hours from the nearest town, these families face the elements as
they plant, harvest, graze and muster battling the bush to eke out a living from the
toughest climate of them all.
In this moving and enjoyable portrait of bush battlers, Deb Hunt explores the spirit of
the outback through its hard worn inhabitants. From ringers, gardeners and cooks to
jackeroos, jillaroos and stockmen all are like family and everyone has a story to tell.
Deb Hunt has worked as an actor, writer and journalist in the UK and Australia. Her
work has appeared in House & Garden magazine, Sunday Telegraph, Body+Soul
and Esprit. She spent two seasons with Shakespeare in the Park in London and five
years writing stories for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Her story The Man with No
Eyebrows was runner up in the Alliance Cornhill Short Story competition and her
play Clean Sweep won Best Script, Best Production and People’s Choice Award in
the Broken Hill Short and Sweet Play Festival. Her memoir, Love in the Outback, was
published by Pan Macmillan in May 2014, and she is currently working on a book
about Australian farming families.
11 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Adult | 304 pp | April 2015 |
GUILT Matt Nable
A powerful novel about the hope of childhood and
the disappointment of adulthood.
Published by: Penguin | Paperback
Rights available: World excl. ANZ; Film/TV
Agent: Pippa Masson ([email protected])
Description:
Guilt starts off with a group of friends getting ready for
an eighteenth birthday party. Life is exciting and the
world is at their feet. Jump forward twenty years and
they are all struggling with where they are at. Tommy
has just got out of prison. Lani, the girl he loved at school, is unhappily married to a
cheating husband. Another friend, Julia, has only just moved out of home to live with
her fiancé. And Paul – the high school hero of whom everyone expected great things
– is living a totally ordinary life of marriage, mortgage, kids. Where did it all go wrong?
Something happened at that party that changed their lives forever. This agonising
novel examines the layers of loyalty and jealousy, the headiness of youth, and the
inescapable taste of guilt.
Praise for Faces in the Clouds:
'Nable vividly brings to life the issues that families must face when confronted with
disability . . . Faces in the Clouds is a very satisfying book.' Mark Rubbo, Readings
'Echoes of Tim Winton's Breath and of the coming-of-age narratives of Peter
Goldsworthy.' Australian Book Review
Matt Nable is a writer and actor. He wrote and starred in The Final Winter (2007), an
independent Australian film that has since been released internationally, and has also
appeared in Riddick alongside Vin Diesel, East West 101, Underbelly: Badness and
Brothers in Arms: Bikie Wars. More recently he has starred in Winter and Gallipoli and
has also secured a major role in the hit US series, Arrow. With his wife and three
children, Matt divides his time between Sydney and Los Angeles. He is the author of
the novels We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2009) and Faces in the Clouds (2011). Guilt is
his third novel.
12 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Non-fiction | 320 pp | May 2015 |
THE DIRECTOR IS THE
COMMANDER Anna Broinowski
A unique journey inside North Korea’s propaganda
machine.
Published by: Penguin | Paperback
Rights available: North America, Translation, Film/TV
Agent: Fiona Inglis ([email protected])
Description: Determined to stop a coal-seam gas mine
being built near her inner-city Sydney home, Anna
Broinowski, in a world first, went to North Korea to meet
the masters of propaganda filmmaking, wanting to learn how to make a revolutionary
drama in which 'heroic workers' overthrow the 'evil gas miners' – all executed in the Dear
Leader's proudly melodramatic style.
The Director is the Commander centres around the bizarre twenty-one day shoot that
Broinowski did in North Korea in 2012. The trip is set against a parallel exploration of the craft
of North Korea's until-now hidden filmmakers and their lives in Pyongyang, and a broader
analysis of propaganda in general: both in its ham-fisted North Korean form and its infinitely
more sophisticated but no less pervasive incarnation in the corporate West.
Funny, multi-layered, and utterly compelling, The Director is the Commander is a gripping
account of an extraordinary trip inside a nation we can usually only see from the outside
looking in.
Anna Broinowski is a filmmaker, writer, and rock violinist, who likes to explode cliches about
the East. She toured her bilingual play The Gap to Tokyo, and uncovered Japan’s queer,
drug and Otaku subcultures in her first documentary, Hell Bento!! Subsequent films include
Forbidden Lie$ (about hoax-author Norma Khouri), and Helen’s War (about anti-nuclear
crusader Dr. Helen Caldicott). Anna’s films have won the Writer’s Guild of America Best
Non-fiction Screenplay, the Rome Film Festival ‘Cult’ Prize, a Walkley Award, Best Director at
Films Des Femmes, an Al Jazeera Golden Award, three AFIs, and a Moscow Film Critics’
prize, which is a hollowed out wooden elephant. The hollow is for burning bad reviews.
Anna was born in Tokyo and grew up in the Philippines, Burma, Iran, and Canberra. At 19,
she hitchiked to Darwin and was kidnapped by truckies. This made her drop law and do
what she does now.
13 Curtis Brown Australia / Rights Newsletter / www.curtisbrown.com.au
| Young Adult | 188 pp | May 2015 |
THE IMPOSSIBLE QUEST #4: THE
DROWNED KINGDOM
Kate Forsyth
The fourth in a five-part series, the journey continues in the
darkness of the Witchwood
Published by: Scholastic Australia | Paperback
Rights held: Film/TV
Agent: Tara Wynne ([email protected])
Description: Quinn, Sebastian, Elanor and Tom have
found a dragon and conquered the dreaded Beast of
Blackmoor Bog. Only one item remains on their impossible quest - the scale of a
sea-serpent.
Now they must journey to the drowned kingdom, where they will face their
deadliest challenge yet. And there they will uncover the truth behind all that has
happened... the truth that will change everything.
Also available in the series:
Kate Forsyth is the bestselling and award-winning author of more than twenty books, ranging
from picture books to poetry to novels for both children and adults. Kate's books have been
published in 14 countries around the world, including the UK, the US, Russia, Germany, Japan,
Turkey, Spain, Italy, Poland and Slovenia. She is currently undertaking a doctorate in fairytale
retellings at the University of Technology, having already completed a BA in Literature and a
MA in Creative Writing. She lives by the sea in Sydney, Australia, with her husband, three
children, a rambunctious Rhodesian Ridgeback, a bad-tempered black cat, and many
thousands of books.