Category Archives: Books

Books, My Story

Get in early for The Watchnight

4 Comments

HISTRIA FICTION., an imprint of Histria Books (US) has acquired global rights for The Watchnight, my second novel.

Described as a Gothic western, The Watchnight is a bold reimagining of the Methodist settlers who colonised Australia’s renowned Jenolan Caves during the Frontier Wars.

BUY NOW

Three lost souls – an Irish settler, a pardoned convict, and a young tutor are recruited by a religious mission during Australia’s gold rush and get caught up in a wild ride of intrigue and murder in a brutal landscape.

Acquisitions manager Dana Ungureanu said the Histria Books team is always excited to find new stories that have not saturated the market. 

“That is the case with The Watchnight, an historical tale exploring places and themes that will be new for much of the world,” she said.

“Michael Burge blended crime, history, and religion into a page-turner, and we’re very glad to work with him to bring this book to our US and international readers.”

Early endorsements for The Watchnight have been effusive.

Poppy Gee, author of Bay of Fires and Vanishing Falls, said, “The Watchnight is a deeply empathetic literary thriller that explores the complexities of human relationships. Subtle, satisfying  and gorgeously atmospheric.”

“Pitch perfect,” said Suzanne Leal, author of The Deceptions and The Watchful Wife. “Written in prose that is at once forensic, visceral and lyrical, The Watchnight is a compelling mystery, a sharp character study and an ode to the land amidst the brutality of colonial NSW. I loved it.”

Thousands of Steps

Before settling on Ngarrabul Country at Deepwater in far northern inland New South Wales, I was a resident of the Blue Mountains for over three decades. This World Heritage site is the location of Jenolan Caves, where I worked as a tour guide from 2008-2012.

STORYTELLING STEPS: Author Michael Burge by Max S. Harding

This novel is a new direction for me, after the publication of Tank Water (MidnightSun Publishing, 2021), a work of contemporary rural noir exploring homophobia in a country town.

The Watchnight is a work of fiction that took years to shape from the thousands of steps I took through Jenolan’s caverns.

Inspired by real people and events, it cuts through 150 years of tourist tales to recreate a time when the caves sat on the colonial frontier, a place settlers viewed with suspicion, not wonder. 

What drove me were the stories few wanted to talk about, particularly the lives of Jenolan Caves’ traditional owners, the Burra Burra clan group of the Gundungurra people; the cattle farmers who gradually occupied the same countryside; the Wesleyan Methodist community of the nearby region once known as Fish River Creek, now Oberon, and the role of women in early cave exploration.

It has been a privilege to work with Gundungurra Traditional Owner Kazan Brown, who assisted me in depicting Indigenous characters in a way that respects Burra Burra history, place and cultural practice within the settings of this novel.

Tenderly Imagined

Like my debut novel, I created The Watchnight as a crime story that explores diverse themes in a dramatic context. In the case of Tank Water, that was the gay-hate crime wave of 1970-2010.

For The Watchnight, I set the story against the backdrop of Australia’s 19th century Frontier Wars, and included an unexpected love story between two central characters.

“Their connection is tenderly imagined, and I was utterly invested,” Poppy Gee said of this thread.

“Themes of LGBTIQA+ empowerment are not frequently portrayed in Australian literature of this era, and their relationship is delightful and heart wrenching,” she said.

The Watchnight is set for a September 2025 release.

Books, My Story

New novel coming to light

2 Comments

ONE OF THE best day jobs I ever had was working as a tour guide at Jenolan Caves, the renowned limestone formation in the World Heritage-listed Greater Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia.

Sixteen years since I earned my guiding boots, I’ve landed an international book deal for a novel that emerged from the thousands of steps I took through the tunnels and chambers of the oldest-known open cave system in the world.

Titled The Watchnight, this historical crime novel is inspired by real people and events and cuts through 150 years of tourist tales to recreate a time when the caves sat on the colonial frontier, a place settlers viewed with suspicion, not wonder. 

Extrapolating a story from this intriguing place has been a long-term challenge. When I trained as a guide in late 2008, there was little written material on hand for new recruits. I was left, like many before me, to glean the stories of the caves from my more experienced peers in the guides’ office.

CAVE FRONTIER Devil’s Coach-house, Fish River Caves, by Lucien Henry, 1883 (Art Gallery of NSW)

What drove me were the stories few wanted to talk about, particularly the lives of Jenolan Caves’ traditional owners, the Burra Burra clan group of the Gundungurra people; the cattle farmers who gradually occupied the same countryside; the Wesleyan Methodist community of the nearby region once known as Fish River Creek, now Oberon, and the role of women in early cave exploration.

Crime was never far from the colonial experience of this region. The massacres and random killings of Aboriginal people and reprisals against settlers, now referred to as Australia’s Frontier Wars, included widespread violence against women, both Indigenous and settlers. The occupation of the land was not possible without the importation of convicts to build roads and towns, a mounted police force to impose British law, and Christian missionaries to impose ethical standards.

It’s from within this volatile battleground that The Watchnight emerged.

Cave Girls

I undertook years of research as The Watchnight came together, and wrote a few articles along the way about my explorations into Jenolan’s past. The first saw me capture the many tales about a young cave explorer called Katie Webb (and her gang of ‘Cave Girls’), whose discovery of a chamber in the Chifley Cave in the 1880s has long been a source of speculation.

A never-before-published collection of letters by English crime writer Agatha Christie was a source of great delight when it appeared in 2013, since it detailed her visit to Jenolan in the 1920s. I published an article about the links between her world tour with husband Archie, their slightly fraught jaunt to Jenolan Caves, and her notorious 11-day disappearance in 1926 back in England.

My guiding days ended in 2012 when I moved interstate, but I was lucky enough to return in 2017 for a private tour of the Arch Cave with a former colleague, in search of historical signatures, including one of early female cave explorer Jane Falls.

The Watchnight’s heroine Oona Farry is inspired by Jane’s explorations, and those of other real-life figures in Jenolan’s history.

BUY

This story is unique because it explores crime, punishment and forgiveness in the context of charismatic faith; tackles stories of the Frontier Wars that don’t often get aired in fiction, particularly toxic masculinity, and emphasises female, LGBTIQ+ and Indigenous empowerment at a time when they were not afforded much agency.

Books, Reviews, Writers

Mary’s turn to fly: gripping new memoir unpacks family baggage 

Leave a comment

PROVIDING A SAFE place to talk about problematic family dynamics is a hallmark of author Mary Garden’s current book tour, and her visit to Glen Innes on Saturday June 15 promises to be no different.

Garden’s latest book My Father’s Suitcase: A story of family secrets, abuse, betrayal and breaking free begins with a heartfelt exploration of growing up in New Zealand in the 1950s and ’60s in the shadow of her father Oscar Garden (1903-1997), a pioneering aviator who had an emotional ‘crash landing’ once his high-flying career came to an end.

BREAKING FREE Author and journalist Mary Garden

But it was Garden’s realisation that this dysfunction created fertile ground for sibling abuse which provides the centrepiece of her third work of non-fiction.

“I only became aware of the term a few years ago,” Garden, a freelance journalist, said. 

“It is the most common form of abuse in the context of family violence, yet it is the ‘forgotten’ abuse. 

“The problem is that sibling abuse is often dismissed as sibling rivalry, but they are very different. There is also this notion that you must get along with your siblings, they’re family, regardless of how they treat you.”

Described as, “a gripping tale of resilience and survival that offers hope to others who have experienced family violence and suffered at the hands of a sibling,” My Father’s Suitcase is Garden’s follow-up to her seminal biography of her father, Sundowner of the Skies.

But Garden’s latest book extends on Garden family dynamics, delving into the troubled relationship between Mary and her younger sister, Anna, who died in 2023. 

Garden confessed to be “very nervous” about sharing her story and the responses it might inspire.

“But I’m so relieved,” she said. 

“Every second or third person I talk to is either a victim survivor of sibling abuse or they know of someone who has experienced this kind of abuse. 

“I’ve had interviewers, photographers and readers share their experiences. A few have broken down in tears.”

‘Pretending everything was fine’  

Garden’s June 15 author morning tea at The Makers Shed will be her third visit to the Glen Innes region.

“I jumped at the chance to attend the High Country Writers Festival in 2020, and also again the next year, which was very exciting as my book, The Serpent Rising, won the High Country Indie Book Award,” she said. 

“I also love the area. Glen Innes is the kind of region I would have liked to have brought my children up in.”

In My Father’s Suitcase, Garden recounts the struggle she had attending the 2020 event, soon after her sister Anna released a second, secret biography of their father. 

“I had been looking forward to a holiday and being in my happy place, among writers and book lovers. How on earth was I going to cope with the long drive, then speaking at the festival, smiling and pretending everything was fine?” she wrote in her new book.

As is true of many literary events, putting writers together generates inspiration and insight, and it was memoirist Mary Moody who gave Garden clues about the true nature of her sister’s memoir, identifying it as a hagiography (a biography that treats its subject with undue reverence).

At this point in her narrative, My Father’s Suitcase becomes a gripping literary mystery as she peels back the layers in search of exactly how and why her sister embarked on a competing book so soon after her own.

It’s a searing journey, played out in the media, publishing and legal industries in Australia and New Zealand, yet Garden’s positive prose outshines every shadow in her search for the compelling truth.

Currently living at Chewton in regional Victoria, Garden has been resident of regional Australia for large parts of her life, and loves the affordability that comes with living outside major cities.

“I’m always hearing about full-time authors living in cities who are struggling to make ends meet,” she said.

“I can’t live in cities. I don’t even like visiting. They are too noisy. 

“I need peace and quiet to write.” 

Mary Garden in conversation with journalist Michael Burge on Saturday June 15 at High Country Books, The Makers Shed, Glen Innes. Book here.

My Father’s Suitcase is out now from Justitia Books.