Heather Rose, Omar Musa and Natalia Figueroa Barroso on champagne, ghosts and the disappeared

Heather Rose found writing her latest novel challenging because it's partly based on some murky family secrets. The author of The Museum of Modern Love and Bruny Island among other award winning novels, has now written A Great Act of Love: an historical saga of murder, migration, transformation and enduring familial bonds. It has a surprising effervescent setting;  making French style champagne in colonial Tasmania. 

Poet, visual artist, hip-hop musician and author Omar Musa finds magic in Italian beads, vengeful ghosts and the sound of the Borneo forest in his second novel. Fierceland exposes the dark side of Malay politics and trade in palm oil, but is also a story of family and love.

Australian author Natalia Figueroa Barroso also draws on family and culture in her debut novel Hailstones Fell Without Rain.  From single migrant mothers making a life in Western Sydney to women surviving and resisting political oppression in Uruguay, it's a multigenerational celebration of strength and renewal.