Love Between the Pages: The Roadhouse

The new outback mystery from Australia's authentic and beloved voice of the bush.

When aspiring actress Charlie Carver learns that her cousin Annabelle has died, she immediately leaves Melbourne to fly home to the remote family roadhouse east of Alice Springs. It has been years since her last visit and her relationship with her mother, Molly, is strained but Charlie is determined to patch up their differences.

The reunion, however, is interrupted when Molly suffers a heart attack. With her mother airlifted out for life-saving surgery, Charlie is left to take the reins of the struggling family business, alongside friends old and new, including the captivating local stockman Mike.

The authorities declare Annabelle to have taken her own life, but when a woman's body turns up at an abandoned mine site, Charlie begins to wonder what else is being covered up, and why.

Beginning a search for the truth, a perilous bush chase unfolds that threatens her own life, causing Charlie to wonder whether she ever knew Annabelle at all…

From the bestselling author of The Heartwood Hotel comes the suspenseful new outback mystery from Australia's authentic rural writer and beloved voice of the bush.

Kerry McGinnis was born in Adelaide and at the age of twelve took up a life of droving with her father and four siblings. The family travelled extensively across the Northern Territory and Queensland before settling on a station in the Gulf Country. Kerry has worked as a shepherd, droving hand, gardener and stock-camp and station cook on the family property Bowthorn, north-west of Mt Isa. She is the author of two volumes of memoir, Pieces of Blue and Heart Country, and the bestselling novels The Waddi Tree, Wildhorse Creek, Mallee Sky, Tracking North, Out of Alice, Secrets of the Springs and The Heartwood Hotel. Kerry now lives in Bundaberg.

The Roadhouse
Penguin Australia
Author: Kerry McGinnis
ISBN: 9780143794196
RRP: $32.99

Interview with Kerry McGinnis

Question: What inspired the story of the Roadhouse?

Kerry McGinnis: I knew the Harts Range country as a young girl and on a trip across the Plenty River Highway I called into the GemTree Roadhouse. It is in no way similar to Garnet Springs Roadhouse but when I was searching my mind for an occupation for Charlie I remembered Gem Tree.


Question: Why is it important to you to set your stories in the bush?

Kerry McGinnis: It is what I know. I lived in the bush most of my life. I come from a droving, station owning background so it is inevitable really. Don't they always say: write what you know. I know the bush and it's people intimately.


Question: Are your characters based on anyone you know?

Kerry McGinnis: Not the protagonists but the extras like old Bob are an amalgam of the bushmen I knew in my youth. Capable, often crochety, tough as nanny-goat knees and straight as a gun-barrel. Strangers to the country dismiss them as simple though they are anything but.


Question: What was the best part of creating Charlie?

Kerry McGinnis: Getting a bit of me in there. I am tall and take a size eleven in shoes and as a young girl was frequently told by my brothers that I looked like a mop (skinny as, and lots of hair). So I made Charlie triumph because I had a fellow feeling for her.


Question: What next for you?

Kerry McGinnis: I am currently working on another rural mystery, and then I have another idea which to date is only a title and a place, but I'm sure it will expand when I have time to spend on it.


Interview by Brooke Hunter

The Roadhouse
Penguin Australia Author: Kerry McGinnis
ISBN: 9780143794196
RRP: $32.99