Tempo

1930s England: and for a group of friends it seems as if the sunny days of sailing, flying and love will never end.

A deepwater sailing ship takes restless young Eliza McKee to a new life in glamorous London, but when she meets the handsome star of a talking film it’s not quite the life she expects.

Eliza’s brother Pete yearns to fly, and pilot Billie Quinn can teach him. Pete calls her a sarcastic, scowling Amelia Earhart, but it’s Billie who knows how much Pete has to learn.

Eliza’s aunt, actress Izabel Peres, hides a secret from the world. Then she falls for lawyer Felix with his buccaneering smile, and a case of shellshock he believes is behind him.

Doctor Harry Bell, Eliza’s old shipmate, loves fascinating Charlotte, but Charlotte just loves flirting and gambling — especially with flyboy Pete’s heart.

And when a great white barque encounters the coast one foggy night, more than an era of sail finds itself tested to the limits.

Testing the Limits is the first book in the Tempo series, by the winner of the Mountbatten Maritime Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Non-Fiction.

In the calm of 1937, who could imagine the storms about to engulf a group of old friends at a sunny wedding? Some things are beyond imagination.

Fierce pilot Billie is glad she's got a job at last — only trouble is it’s in some little dust-up in Spain. Secretive Toby has no wish to volunteer for anything: till he finds out for himself what blitzkrieg means. Newlywed Eliza is posted to Intelligence at Singapore — safer there than in London, she thinks.

But when fortress Singapore is reduced to embers, it is actress Izabel who is forced to play the role of her life.

Embers at Midnight is the second book in the Tempo series, by the winner of the Mountbatten Maritime Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Non-Fiction.

It's the hip 1950s on Sydney's shimmering harbour, but how do you reconcile a past that gave — and stole — so much?

Tina runs Tempo jazz club at shady Kings Cross, keeping secrets with, and from, her beguiling boss Jimmy. And from her lonely husband.

Harry yearns to forget his days in a Singapore prison camp, yet his friends won't let him. Nor will his conscience.

Ex-pilot Billie now works at the flying-boat base. When her old lover Pete turns up with a new wife there's a lot she prefers to conceal. Even from herself.

Yvonne rebuilds a life by the harbour with her beloved Klara. But secrets emerge when she publishes Harry's war memoir, and then no one can postpone the reckoning.