In April 2002, wealthy socialite Margaret Wales-King and her husband Paul King left their home in a leafy eastern suburb, dined with her son and his family and then disappeared into thin air. Twenty-five days later, after an investigation that swamped the front pages, their bludgeoned bodies were found in a shallow bush grave just outside Melbourne. The family's grief was on full public display as speculation raged about the possible culprit and rumours about drugs, gambling and kidnapping did the rounds. Then Margaret's youngest son, Matthew, was arrested for the murders and his wife, Maritza, was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice.
The official claim stated the priceless treasure was destroyed in the aftermath of World War II, but an obscure document in an East German file may tell another story for-The Amber Room. It was a legendary room an ensemble of precious eighteenth-century wall panels that graced a tsarist palace in St. Petersburg. Then it was stolen by Nazi invaders and carried off to a castle in East Prussia.
Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport, anxious to see his wife and seven-year-old daughter. After two years in Europe they are finally settling down. He sees a new life before them, a stable outlook, a cottage in the Irish countryside that he's renovated by hand. He's waited, sweated on this reunion. He does not like to be alone - he's that kind of man. The flight lands, the glass doors hiss open, and Scully's life begins to go down in flames.
In the 1980s Tim Winton made his mark with tough, spare stories about youth and promise, of early parenthood and the challenges of loyalty. Now, almost twenty years since his last collection, he returns to the form with seventeen overlapping stories of second thoughts and mid-life regret set in the brooding small-town world of coastal Western Australia.
Jon Darrow, a man with psychic powers has played many parts - a shady faith-healer, a naval chaplain, a passionate husband, an awkward father, and an Anglo-Catholic monk. Now corruption lies in wait for him and threatens not only his future as a priest, but his happiness with the woman he loves.
