> Skip to content
  • Published: 30 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143784630
  • Imprint: Bantam Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $26.00

The Painted Sky




Alice Campion is the pseudonym for five members of a Sydney book club who challenged themselves to write a ‘21st Century Thorn Birds’. The result is a captivating rural novel, brimming with romance, mystery and suspense.

Nina never knew what happened to her father, the celebrated artist Jim Larkin. One minute he was her devoted dad, the next he’d disappeared without trace. Seventeen years later, she’s still haunted by the mystery.

Until a call from outback Wandalla changes everything.

At first, Nina’s inheritance of a waterless property and a farmhouse stuffed with junk seems more like a burden than a gift. But this was her father’s childhood home – and possibly her last chance to discover the truth.

So what is the local solicitor, Harrison Grey, not telling her as he hands over the keys? Why does the area’s wealthiest resident, Hilary Flint, seem to hate her so much? What is the significance of the gold locket with cryptic engravings that Nina always wears?

And why, on top of everything, is she inexplicably drawn to her soon-to-be-married neighbour, Heath Blackett?

  • Published: 30 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143784630
  • Imprint: Bantam Australia
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

Alice Campion

The Shifting Light is the work of four friends and members of a Sydney book club, writing under the collective pseudonym Alice Campion.

Jenny Crocker is a communications manager who uses her work to create positive change in the world. She has been a journalist and non-fiction author and likes to escape to her small hazelnut farm in Northern NSW.

Jane Richards is a senior editor and journalist at Fairfax Media. She loves mysteries and secrets.

Jane St Vincent Welch spent her childhood on a rural property in the New England region of NSW. She now works in Sydney as a documentary editor.

Denise Tart is a civil celebrant with a background in performance, comedy scriptwriting and event management. She loves a good yarn.

The first Alice Campion novel, The Painted Sky, was co-written with Madeline Oliver and published in 2015.

Also by Alice Campion

See all

Praise for The Painted Sky

A highly entertaining and page-turning hybrid, part rural romance and part family saga.

Sydney Morning Herald