Alison Booth
Death at Booroomba
Ventura Press, 2025
In 1915, two days before being sent to fight in WWI, Jack O'Rourke dived into Sydney Harbour to save a drowning stranger, Samuel Lomond. Four years later, battle-scarred and weary, Jack returns home only to discover that Samuel has been brutally murdered – and that he's been left his rural property, Booroomba.
When Jack arrives in Warrawolong, a small town near Eden, to claim his inheritance, he finds only hostile stares. Suspected of the crime by the townsfolk and local constable, Jack launches his own investigation into Samuel’s death – and soon discovers the townsfolk aren’t as innocent as they seem.
Now Jack must expose a killer hiding in plain sight – before he becomes the next victim of a decades-old conspiracy.
A neighbour coveting water rights, a struggling newspaper proprietor, a vengeful labourer, a secret affair and two Russian émigrés lead Jack right to the heart of the crime.
A small town hides big secrets, in A L Booth’s deeply evocative historical whodunnit.
The Painting
Red Door Press, 2021
When Anika Molnar flees her home country of Hungary not long before the break-up of the Soviet Union, she carries only a small suitcase - and a beautiful and much-loved painting, of an auburn-haired woman in a cobalt blue dress, from her family's hidden collection. Arriving in Australia, Anika moves in with her aunt in Sydney, and the painting hangs in pride of place in her bedroom.
But one day it is stolen in what seems to be a carefully planned theft, and Anika's carefree life takes a more ominous turn. Sinister secrets from her family's past and Hungary's fraught history cast suspicion over the painting's provenance, and she embarks on a gripping quest to uncover the truth.
Hungary's war-torn past contrasts sharply with Australia's bright new world of opportunity in this moving and compelling mystery from acclaimed novelist Alison Booth.
“Booth keeps up the suspense and brings her mystery to a satisfying conclusion while examining, with delicacy and insight, the corrosive personal cost of living in a Soviet satellite state.”
About the Author
A.L. Booth is a highly accomplished author with seven novels, three of which were published by Penguin Random House, including her debut novel Stillwater Creek. She has contributed short-stories to international collections including Antipodes and New Writing. She is ANU Professor Emeritus of Economics, has a PhD from the LSE and spent over two decades living and working in the UK before returning to her native Australia.
