Bondi, 1947. Siobhan Murphy is a dance teacher with a studio above the arcade, an Irish setter called Rory at her heel, and rent she insists on paying herself. When something goes missing in her corner of Sydney — ration coupons, private letters, a children's recital fund — people come to the woman who notices what a face is trying not to say.
These are gentle, atmospheric mysteries in the key of Maisie Dobbs and Molly Murphy: no murders, no gore, just crimes of livelihood and dignity solved with patience and a sharp eye. And running under all eight books, one steady spine — a woman in a marrying decade who keeps choosing herself.
The Books
Book 1
The Pavilion Pilfering
It starts with sugar: ration coupons gone from the Pavilion kitchen, and every neat explanation pointing at somebody who cannot afford the blame. Finding a thief and naming one, she learns, are different acts.
Coming soon
Book 2
The Waverley Correspondence
Letters are missing from the Waverley lending library, hidden once inside hollowed-out books and now gone altogether. Then a well-dressed man offers to pay her debts if the whole affair quietly disappears.
Coming soon
Book 3
The Recital Caper
Eighteen pounds vanish from the children's recital fund, a tin every mother in Bondi has fed a shilling at a time. Finding the thief means suspecting the very people who fill her classes.
Coming soon
Book 4
The Bondi Arrangement
A war widow's pension is bleeding away a few shillings a week, and the men collecting call it protection. The arrangement offered to make it all stop carries a price she refuses to pay.
Coming soon
Book 5
The Dancer’s Dilemma
The stolen music-box retainer seems small until it isn't: her most gifted student is being bartered into marriage to settle a family debt. Buying the girl her freedom means guarding her own.
Coming soon
Book 6
The Solo Dance
A chalice hidden, a collection ledger that will not add up, and a parish certain that faith and arithmetic never disagree. When a suitor offers marriage in exchange for silence, she posts a letter instead.
Coming soon
Book 7
The Rafferty Bequest
Nobody in Bondi has met the strangers named in old Rafferty's will, and nobody trusts the signature on it. Untangling forged paper and a faked adoption record means deciding what the living owe a poor man's memory.
Coming soon
Book 8
The Murphy Method
The finale. Ticket receipts run short, a petty-cash tin is plundered, and the trail leads through invented fees charged to families too new to Australia to question them. This time the method itself is on trial.
Coming soon
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