Sandra

"The demon of speed is often associated with forgetting, with avoidance...and slowness with memory and confronting," observes Milan Kundera in his novel Slowness. With that purpose in mind - a search for slowness and tranquility - Andy Merrifield sets out on a journey of the soul with a friend's donkey, Gribouille, to walk amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of southern France's Haute-Auvergne.

In 1982, the famous paranormal expert Grant Peters went missing while filming his TV show Legendary Australia. His wife, Melissa, was never able to find him. When Melissa herself disappears nearly 40 years later, her daughter, Fiona, and grandson Ethan trace her to the small outback town of Boulia. There they discover a collection of old audio tapes that Melissa left behind: a set of clues they must follow if they’re to solve this mystery in time.

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.