These are the six people the Tilly Sommerfeld Mysteries rest on, before Tilly needs any of them: a hotel housekeeper, a librarian, a girl on a jetty, a farm wife, a deckhand and a country sergeant, each telling in their own voice the one story the novels never get to tell. The South Coast of Queensland between 1935 and 1945, before it was the Gold Coast and while the holdouts still called it Elston.
Every origin is a complete six-chapter case, and nobody dies in any of them. The trouble is always a concealed situation rather than a body, and the person who works it out is the one it costs. For readers of Kerry Greenwood and T. E. Kinsey. They are being written one at a time; each stands alone, and none of them requires a novel to make sense.
The Books
Book 1
The Standing Account
A stock and station man drives out along a road that goes nowhere, wallet open, pen already out: an advance against the coming sale, enough for a second tank. Her husband will not sign, and will not say why.
Not yet on sale
Book 2
The Uncut Pages
The South Coast of Queensland, 1936. Mr Tonge has been a class A subscriber for eleven years and takes a book home every Saturday without fail. The one he has just handed back across the counter is joined at the fore-edge, first leaf to last, never once cut. So are all the others. Nobody dies in this one, and nobody is to blame.
Not yet on sale
Book 3
The Washed Tin
The South Coast of Queensland, 1939, and a church picnic Edie Larcombe has been cooking for since four in the morning. The tins are borrowed and they always come home dirty. One comes home washed, in a soap she has never smelled, and no soap left the shore that day. She has until Wednesday to take it back. Nobody dies in it.
Not yet on sale
Book 4
The Room That Was Not Slept In
Nobody has rung a bell in room fourteen, taken a meal, or climbed that stair, and the office has it let and paid three weeks running. She has until Friday to account for a guest no one can describe.
Not yet on sale
Book 5
The Landing Marks
A tear in the far bank that was not there on Thursday, made by a boat driven at the mud by somebody who cannot handle her. Twice inside a week, in the dark, on a shore with no landing and nobody living on it.
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Book 6
The Night Cleaner
The electoral roll's revision gives one line a place instead of a person: a boat on the reach, lived on, occupant unknown. He knows exactly who lives aboard, and he knew her father.
Not yet on sale
The complete collection
Elston: Six Origins
Six origin stories from the Tilly Sommerfeld Mysteries, set on the South Coast of Queensland between 1935 and 1945, when the maps still said Elston. A farm wife, a librarian, a girl at the picnic trestle, a hotel housekeeper, a deckhand and a country sergeant, each with one small case and one week they did not talk about again. Nobody dies in any of them.
Not yet on sale
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