One Sunday (43 page)

Joy Dettman

Jacaranda Blue

For forty-four years Stella Templeton has been a dutiful daughter and a good citizen, living in Maidenville, population 2,800, a town where nothing happens. Until one hot summer afternoon . . .

 

An ugly act has lifted the respectable skirts of Maidenville and mystery starts to surround the daughter of the local minister. Then the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old boy adds to the neighbourhood's confusion. Does something sinister lurk behind the neatly trimmed hedges and white picket fences that divide this sleepy town?

 

No one comes close to knowing the horrifying truth – but after forty-four years of self denial and duty, Stella Templeton is finally beginning to blossom.

 

From the best-selling author of
Mallawindy
, comes a tale of dark secrets, shameful lies and unexpected salvation.

Joy Dettman

Goose Girl

Sally De Rooze is almost thirty. She has survived the accident that killed her father and brothers. Her mother never forgave her for that. But she survived her mother too. Surviving is what she does best.

 

Farmer Ross Bertram, who offers her his acres and safety, is the answer for a while. Until he starts pushing for a wedding. Sally wants . . . wants more. Wants to know great love. Wants to find herself. One year. That's what she wants. One year of freedom in the big, bad city.

 

Her survival skills are tested in the urban sprawl and she discovers more about herself than she had ever dared to imagine.

 

From the bestselling author of
Mallawindy
and Jacaranda Blue, comes a moving story about being set free.

 

‘ . . . a can't-put-it down story'
NW

 

‘
Goose Girlis not just a story to read about – it's one to think
about'
THE EXAMINER

 

‘Dettman knows how to tell a story'
THE SUNDAY AGE

Joy Dettman

Yesterday's Dust

Only the strong survive Mallawindy. Some get away, but even they fight to escape the town's dark legacy.

 

Jack Burton escaped. For six years he has been missing, presumed dead. Still, memories of him continue to dominate the lives of his family.

 

His wife, Ellie, stands at the gate each night, waiting for him to return – until a man's body is found.

 

Once again, the Burtons' turbulent history will be unearthed . . .

 

‘At the heart of this absorbing tale . . . is the writer's ability to interweave the country-town propensity for rumour and allegation into a gothic narrative . . .
Yesterday's Dust
is lightened by its pinpoint descriptions of people and places, as well as the occasional touch of humour, some of it with a country flavour and some delightfully black'
AUSTRALIAN BOOKSELLER
&
PUBLISHER

 

‘Is there such a thing as winter beach reading? If so, Joy Dettman's
Yesterday's Dust
fits the bill nicely . . . an author who's well in tune with her subject and audience'

WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

Joy Dettman

The Seventh Day

The world as it was has been all but destroyed. Those few who survived the Great Ending are now ruled by an all-powerful group known as the Chosen, whose walled city encloses a diminishing population riddled with plague and threatened with extinction. Desperate to repopulate, the Chosen send searchers to capture every surviving female still living in the wild lands beyond the city for their new breeding stations.

 

There is a girl with a name neither of her companions can remember, who is found by the Chosen's searchers living on a remote property. Since then, she has known little more than the life they enforce – a life dominated by their breeding program and genetic experimentation – while they immunise her and prepare to take her to their city.

 

Then one afternoon a son of one of the Chosen arrives at the girl's farm, a boy who has fled from a life that he has come to find unbearable. His arrival sets in motion a chain of events which change the girl's life in ways she could not possibly have imagined – offering her a chance to regain the unthinkable – freedom.

Joy Dettman

Henry's Daughter

She had felt a sad pulling feeling in her stomach that day as the car had driven off, like there was a bit of elastic tied around her insides, sort of joining her to those brothers like it went right through that door, and as the car had driven further up the road, that elastic got pulled so tight, it hurt.

 

Lori Smyth-Owen is balancing on the edge of adolescence but feeling years older. She has eleven brothers, nine living at home and the twins, who live with Aunty Eva . . . which is lucky for them because there is never enough of anything to go around at home. Except Mavis, Lori's mother, who is so overweight she can barely move. That doesn't stop her plotting to get those twins back. She'll do anything to get them back.

 

Then tragedy strikes and the Smyth-Owen children take desperate measures to save themselves . . . and in so doing, discover that blood ties mean everything.

 

From the bestselling author of
Mallawindy
,
Jacaranda Blue
,
Goose Girl
and
Yesterday's Dust
, comes a story of love and rescue.

 

‘[Dettman's] unnerving ability to maintain unflinching focus on the corroding effects of a ghastly marriage on a tribe of children is an achievement that bears more than fleeting comparison with Christina Stead's
The Man Who Loved Children
'
WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN

 

‘[
Henry's Daughter
] doesn't follow any predictable story arc. It's as if Elizabeth Jolley wrote a girl's own adventure inspired by a welfare story on
A Current Affair
'
SUNDAY AGE