The Rising Sun Hotel, 2 Raglan Street, South Melbourne.

Dinner from 6.30 pm. Show at 8.00 pm.) The price includes a main course meal and the panel. Please order meals by 7.00 pm.

Please book by 12 pm Thursday 4 June. A limited number of tickets are available at the door from 7.30 pm.

Rural Noir — crime fiction set everywhere from dry and dusty farming communities to sleepy seaside towns — has become a global publishing sensation. Breathing new life into this established, sometimes tired, genre are three Australian authors – Vikki Wakefield (To the River), Fiona Lowe (The Accident) and Christine Gregory (The Community). They’ll be thrashing through the issues with award-winning author, Margaret Hickey.

To the River (Text Publishing), the latest thriller by Adelaide author, Vikki Wakefield, focusses on the apparent murder of nine people in a remote caravan community by 17-year-old Sabine Kelly. Sabine escapes custody and disappears. Twelve years after the ‘Caravan Murders’, journalist Rachel Weidermann is determined to track down Sabine whom she suspects made her way back to the river. In her spotlight are class, corruption, love, loyalty, and the vindication of truth and justice . . . and a brave dog called Blue.

A terrible crash opens Fiona Lowe’s novel, The Accident (HQ Fiction) . . . but the facts don't add up. Two women's lives are torn apart when the devastating accident uncovers a shocking web of lies which leaves the small wheatbelt town of Garringarup reeling. Mystery, lies and scandal – it's soon obvious nothing is as it seems in this small town...

Christine Gregory’s debut novel, The Community (Ultimo Press) is set in Steels Creek, an intentional community in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. When a woman's body is found floating in a nearby waterhole and hours later a local teenager is reported missing, local investigative journalist, Lars Nilsson is compelled to investigate. What he finds may not only destroy his tightknit community but also the life he has worked so hard to rebuild.

Host Margaret Hickey is a playwright and award-winning, best-selling author from rural Victoria. Her collection of award-winning short stories, Rural Dreams (2020) is taught in many secondary schools across the country, and her crime novels, Cutters End (2021) and Stone Town (2022), were published by Penguin Random House. Cutters End was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Debut Crime Award and won the DANGER award, for best Australian crime novel using Australia as a setting. Stone Town was shortlisted for the Davitt Award and Broken Bay (2023) was released in June 2023. Margaret's new novelThe Creeper, is due out in July.

Men or ‘brothers-in-law’ welcome.

Sun Bookshop stall: members receive a 10% discount