Diamond dove - Adrian Hyland

Winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel (2007).

Emily Tempest has been away from Central Australia's outback for a long time - uni, travel, dead-end jobs... finding trouble all over the world. Now she's back at Moonlight Downs, the community where she grew up, half in the Aboriginal world, half in the white. And true to form, there's trouble. Within hours of her arrival an old friend is brutally murdered and mutilated and an old enemy is the only suspect... until Emily starts asking questions.

Take a nail-biting mystery, an epic setting and a heroine with a talent for stirring things up. Throw in an affectionate flogging of outback Australia's melanoma-encrusted hide - and
Diamond Dove just might be the wittiest and most gripping debut of the year.