Tasmanian schoolteacher Kate Byrne is having an affair with the father of her most gifted fourth grader, Lucien. Her lover's wife has just published Murder at Black Swan Point, a true-crime story about the brutal slaying of a young adulteress in a nearby town. Kate herself has become so obsessed with the murder and so convinced that the published account has it all wrong that she sets about writing her own version -- this one for children, narrated by Australian animals. Though Lucien's father brings Kate to life sexually in encounters of escalating eroticism, he cannot dull her obsession. Fixated on the crime of passion, Kate is becoming less and less aware of the present and of how her behavior may align her fate with that of the dead girl. Chloe Hooper chillingly captures this young woman's unraveling in an intense, witty, superbly crafted novel.

On the scorching Februaryday in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. In the Valley, where the rates of crime were the highest in the state, more than thirty people were known to police as firebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man they didn't know.The Arsonist takes readers on the hunt for this man, and inside the strange puzzle of his mind. It is also the story of fire in this country, and of a community that owed its existence to that very element. The command of fire has defined and sustained us as a species - understanding its abuse will define our future. A powerful real-life thriller written with Hooper's trademark lyric detail and nuance, The Arsonist is a reminder that in an age of fire, all of us are gatekeepers.