OUR BOOKS
Books published by Contempo
(so far!)
The Starre, The Moone, The Sunne
by Ron Destro
In 1624 London, a brave printer is executed, a portly poet is kidnapped, a Stratford-upon-Avon grave is emptied, King James is put into a panic, many swashes are buckled, and things are never as they seem, all because brave Nicholas and clever Valentina are about to discover and reveal the true identity of "William Shake-speare.” This is a timely tale that touches on the powerful love of fathers, the perils of the plague, the joys of turnips, and the mysterious life and tragic death of the Bard of Avon. It is a (mostly) true story filled with suspense and humor.
Winner!
This book has already won the following awards:
Historical Fiction Company - Best Audiobook 2023 / Book of the year runner-up, 2023.
Flash 500 (Novel Opening Competition) - Shortlisted.
Rabbit Town
by Kevin Radley
It is 1932 and one in every three men is out of work. Charlie he is desperate to find somewhere for his family to live. He moves them to Happy Valley, a shanty town on Sydney’s eastern fringe.
Tom, just fifteen years old, is mesmerised by a young Catholic, Irish girl, Hazel. Their blossoming love is torn apart by circumstances, and to make life even more difficult for them, Hazel’s mother is infuriated that Tom, the Rabbitoh boy, is a Protestant.
Set against the backdrop of war and social upheaval, a family secret is buried, the damning consequences of which, are manifested in the generations that follow. Many years later, the deception is exposed, and family descendants are faced with the truth. Can they come to terms with history and be willing to forgive those from the past?
Bad Country
by Kim Ulrick
“Remember what I said, Laura. Stay away from that awful place. It’s not safe.”
People and place. A deep and timeless connection
Since European settlement, disturbing things have happened in the small town of Wallaby Rock.
When the bodies of teenage football stars Benny and Jordy Thompson are discovered at the bottom of the local gorge, everyone is shocked.
Everyone except 18-year-old Laura Murray. Laura has the gift of second sight. It’s a gift she’s never wanted and struggles to accept. Laura is drawn to the gorge, ignoring the warnings of her best friend Joanna and her family to stay away.
As Laura’s dreams grow darker, more disappearances and deaths occur, and Wallaby Rock is front-page news for all the wrong reasons.
Bad People - Sequel to Bad Country
By Kim Ulrick
Where do you turn when you don’t know who to trust?
Laura Murray knows how bad, how rotten to the core, people can be. Five years ago, Laura’s psychic dreams helped to catch a serial killer who took the lives of four people in her hometown of Wallaby Rock.
Laura is carving out a career as a canine handler with the New South Wales Police and joins her friend, Leading Senior Constable Erica Martin, to investigate suspicious disappearances of young women across the state.
With the help of a bikie turned police informant, they close in on a human trafficking network. But as Laura’s dark dreams return, the taskforce suspects they have a traitor in their midst.
A traitor who could place all they’ve worked for, and their own lives, at risk.
It’s Because I Love You
by Karin Keays
It was 1988 and Karin had arrived in Melbourne on the first step of her lifelong dream to travel overseas, find excitement and maybe even romance. The path to that dream took an unexpected twist when, only hours after arriving, she met Jim. A devastatingly handsome rockstar and music legend, Jim Keays fell instantly in love when he opened his front door to the beautiful young woman from the Gold Coast.
IT’S BECAUSE I LOVE YOU is the story of Karin Keays’ real-life rock and roll romance and possibly the first such book to be written from the unique perspective of a woman who has lived and worked for 35 years in the inner sanctum of rock and roll royalty.
A gripping read that is at times vastly amusing, fascinating, insightful, and deeply tragic, it is the story of a fairy-tale life that goes suddenly and shockingly wrong, turning into a nightmare of maternal loss and grief.
Crabbe & the King’s Gambit
by E. Atkinson
England 1811. Thomas Crabbe has just entered the ailing George III's navy as a young cadet. After a running battle with an American privateer ship, an injury confines him to the galley as the ship's cook. While there, he befriends an indentured African and the ship’s cat. Their ship is captured and the three friends are seized as prisoners of war, but a twist of fate separates them, changing the course of their lives. Thomas is swept into a world of intrigue, which takes him to the heart of Paris, exciting but treacherous.
In England the Prince Regent waits impatiently to ascend the throne. As political unrest builds, across the channel the former Emperor of the French, Bonaparte, is rattling his sabre.
Can a cat-loving cook save Europe from impending war? Will the unlikeliest of friendships endure and stand the test of time?
Uncovering Ancient Wisdom
—The hidden links between the Pyramids & Native American Ways, by Bearcloud
Come take a journey into the mystical world of Spirit, one that reveals a spiritual path regarding the nature of Earth. Learn how Bearcloud has uncovered unusual, common threads between the Native Americans and Egyptians of 5000 years ago.
Born a seer, spiritual artist and vision seeker, through a series of visions, Bearcloud discovers primordial secrets and symbols, hidden inside the Egyptian pyramids that explain our higher spiritual journey on Earth. These ancient Egyptian ways are remarkably similar to the Native manner of seeing Spirit and Earth. These secrets are what people have been searching for and trying to understand about the pyramids for thousands of years and are the same mystical ways found in the Native American path of Spirit.
The Polly Watson Mysteries -
The Woman in White
by Jo Jo Winternitz
Polly grew up in sunny, warm Sydney, Australia but for the last two years she has been trapped in an isolated, cold and draughty boarding school in England that she hates. She’s lonely and has little in common with her stuck-up companions.
It’s 1983 and Polly is now entering her third year at Atherton Castle and there is no such thing as the internet, smart phones or social media. Instead, Polly has to rely on her imagination, telling herself stories to get through miserable lonely nights in the bleak Castle. One winter’s night as she’s lying awake, she hears piano music playing on the landing below her dormitory. She goes to investigate but the piano player has vanished before she can get there.
Polly is determined to find out who the mystery piano player is. Her investigations lead her to places and discoveries she could never have imagined and in the process she learns a lot about herself and what happens if you dare to be brave and hold your head up.
Fostered Minds
by Ryan Gary Joel
Alex has lived his entire life in fragments. As a private investigator with dissociative identity disorder, he relies on his alters to help him solve the kinds of local cases that slip through the cracks. But when he wakes in prison with no memory of why he’s there, the world he’s carefully built begins to unravel. Flashbacks from his troubled youth blur the lines between past and present, and the faces of people he thought he’d left behind return to haunt him.
Meanwhile, the city of Adelaide is under siege. A series of coordinated, brutal attacks has thrown the state into chaos, and someone is determined to make Alex believe he’s involved. As his memories resurface and his identities collide, Alex must piece together the truth about his past. Because buried somewhere inside his fractured mind lies the key to stopping the terror—and uncovering who he really is.
Facing the Monkey’s Grin
by Bill Pezzimenti
Facing the Monkeys Grin offers a genuine picture of employee and employer politics in real life business settings. The author shares real-life experiences from his extensive and extraordinary sales career that has spanned the globe for over 30 years.
The book uses dark humour offering a reprieve from the serious side of your work life. It’s a guide through the follies of humanness in our perceived professionalism with advice on how to navigate a career in an environment of chaos, fear and disorder, which is ubiquitous in most companies around the world.
Extraordinary Stories
by Katherine Owens
Extraordinary Stories shows that everyone has a story powerful enough to feature in a published book. Through 17 real-life adventures, readers meet people whose lives are shocking, heartwarming, inspiring, and everything in between. These stories prove you don’t need to be rich or famous to live a meaningful, successful life.
Jumping between different times, places, and perspectives, you’ll discover how much there is to learn from the people around you. This book encourages stronger connections, honest conversations, and a deeper sense of kindness and empathy.
The more we understand each other, the better we all become.
The Glass Carpet
By Marjorie Cardwell
Dinah is a fan. From as long as she can remember she has been obsessed by ballet and is in love with its superstar, Rudolf Nureyev. Her devotion is the one thing people remember about her, because otherwise, she is small, quiet and quite unremarkable. Dinah is anonymous and so she is just the woman for Pavel - the exuberant Soviet official with a taste for silk ties and the arts, who finds himself working as an unlikely double agent in 1970s Australia.
The Glass Carpet weaves recognisable tales of love and family through the real life politics and prejudices that conspire to jeopardise ordinary people’s hopes and dreams. Dinah’s saga moves from Ireland, to Australia, the USSR and France and is punctuated by encounters with her dancing hero which seem to have magical effects on her life and the lives of those around her. Funny, tragic and moving, The Glass Carpet ultimately reveals that everyone is remarkable, whether they realise it or not.