Bondi, 1939–1944. Dorothy ‘Dot’ Campbell teaches the children of the neighbourhood while the war empties the streets of their men, her husband James among them: first home, then away, then missing. She has no badge and no agency, only a classroom of children who see everything and a habit of keeping quiet account of the things that will not add up.
Each book brings one small, bloodless puzzle — vanishing pets, a stolen comforts tin, forged ration books, a coded page in the ordinary post — solved fairly and gently, with the great war kept at the edge of the page. Warm home-front mysteries in the vein of Jacqueline Winspear and AJ Pearce: no murder, no body, and kindness usually hiding in plain sight.
The Books
Book 1
The Missing Pets
One by one the neighbourhood's dogs and cats are slipping away, and the street has settled on its answer before Dot has finished asking the question. What waits at the end of the fence is no crime at all.
Coming soon
Book 2
The Last Summer
The comforts-fund tin vanishes from the school carnival, coins a whole street saved for its boys at the front. Suspicion lands on the swagman nobody knows; the truth is harder and kinder than theft.
Coming soon
Book 3
The Forged Books
A ration book with a crooked stamp, a truck keeping wrong hours in the blackout, and a fortnight left before James's ship sails. The home front's sums are lying, and Dot always checks the sums.
Coming soon
Book 4
The Quiet Homefront
The street has taken a widow to its heart, and something in her grief will not add up. A tired town is a generous one, and a generous town is easy to fool.
Coming soon
Book 5
The Code Room
Something arrives in the ordinary post that reads like more than it says. Alone with the lamp and the late mail, Dot learns to tell a private code from a guilty one.
Coming soon
Book 6
The Homecoming
Comfort is for sale in Bondi: news of the missing, warm and particular, priced at whatever is in the tea tin. Dot can find something true for every family on her street but her own.
Coming soon
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