Glamour, intrigue and two women who will gamble their lives to survive … the compelling new Tasmanian historical fiction from a bestselling Australian author.
December 1939: The grand opening of Australia’s most glamorous and talked about hotel, the Wrest Point Riviera.
The equally glamorous Sabine Winters, recently arrived in Hobart from the Continent, anticipates a safe port from the storm that rages in Europe along with a few select items of jewellery to add to her (stolen) collection. What she doesn’t expect is to be blackmailed into becoming a spy, torn from the safety of Tasmania and taken to the viper’s nest of intrigue and plots that is South America during the rise of Nazi power. Her instincts and charms will only get her so far …
February 1973: The grand opening of Australia’s most glamorous, talked about and controversial hotel, the Wrest Point Hotel Casino.
Jenny Davies anticipates a night surrounded by dizzying decor and thrilling action. What she doesn’t expect is an invitation to become a Ladybird, one of the casino’s croupiers. But Jenny’s choice to pursue this exclusive career creates a devastating chain of events that could destroy her life as she knows it. Can a mysterious letter and the gift of a key from a relative Jenny has never heard of somehow be the answer to all of her problems?
December 1939
Hobart Waterfront
The gangplank shudders under Sabine’s feet. She grips the handrail. Steadies herself.
Damn these heels.
She’d hoped to make an impression, as if descending a grand staircase in Monte Carlo or strolling off a yacht onto the promenade in Saint-Tropez. Sabine takes in her surroundings. The waterfront bustles with fishing boats and cargo ships. The stench of fish and fuel mixes with the sickly scent of boiling fruit and sugar from the IXL factory. Making an impression is of no importance. The effect would have been wasted. Her jaw tightens. Hobart. Tasmania. She hasn’t yet set foot on land and already she feels like a fraud. All her years in Europe, all the determination and grit, the desperation and fight to carve herself into the woman she has become – beloved, envied, imitated – all of it falls away with one glimpse at the hills of Hobart, the looming presence of Mount Wellington. She is a child again, a rifle in her hands. The smell of gunpowder and blood.
Sabine forces her features into a smile. It is her choice to be on this isolated island. A place she’d vowed never to return to. She straightens, sets back her shoulders, and pauses on the gangplank as if posing for a photograph, unrecognisable from the young woman who left this backwater over ten years ago.
‘Mrs Sabine Winters.’ A liveried chauffeur waits beside a black Bentley. Within a moment Sabine is embraced by the car’s leather interior. She settles into the luxury and comfort she’s accustomed to. The car slides away from the waterfront and glides through the streets towards Sandy Bay.
It’s an unexpected event that sees Sabine in Tasmania. The siren song of the grand opening of Australia’s most glamorous and sophisticated hotel. Sabine had thought it a joke at first. In Hobart? Unthinkable. Even the name seemed satirical – the Wrest Point Riviera Hotel. And yet the gala opening is the most sought-after invitation in Australia, perhaps the Commonwealth. It was all anyone in Sydney could talk about. Her island home, part of the greater world at last. She presses her fingers against the leather seat. Feels the pressure against her tapered and painted fingernails. Her island home? No. This is merely a pause. An opportunity. The chance to snare a sparkling prize.
The Bentley peels off Sandy Bay Road, through stone gate posts, and comes to a halt at the entrance of the hotel. Mimicking the curves of an ocean liner, its white lines sit sleek on the contours of Wrest Point, as if poised to set sail on the sparkling waters of the Derwent River that surround it. The chauffeur opens her door. Sabine emerges into the dazzling light reflected from the white walls. She slides her sunglasses into place to better take in the bas-relief decorating the front of the hotel – a yacht in full sail surrounded by scalloped columns topped with seahorses. The effect has more of the showiness of Los Angeles than the stylish charm of the Mediterranean. Even so she finds it endearing.
As the bellhop deals with her luggage the doorman opens a wide glass door and Sabine enters the cool comfort of the foyer. Immediately her shoulders relax. There is an air to all fine hotels, of elegance without effort combined with the knowledge that every desire will be attended to without fuss or delay. Of safety, privacy and calm. Much to her surprise and relief the Wrest Point Riviera has it. The reservation clerk welcomes her in a manner that mirrors the best in Europe, her luggage is en route to her suite, there is a maid to help her unpack. All is well.
Upstairs Sabine inspects her suite while the maid busies herself with the suitcases. The sitting room is tastefully furnished with a tawny-coloured sofa and matching armchairs, a round glass-topped table with two chairs, and an arrangement of roses, deep pink with a blush of gold, on the side table. The bedroom is large – a double bed, dressing table and wardrobe. Telephones in both rooms. And in the bathroom a deep tub and the promise of endless hot water. Sabine longs to erase the irritations of two days’ travel on a steamship from Sydney with a relaxing soak. She closes the bathroom door. Not yet.
After unpacking, the maid leaves with Sabine’s clothes that need a press, a hefty tip and the smallest hint of a curtsy. Alone, Sabine takes in the view of the Derwent from the expanse of windows in the sitting room. Upriver, not visible from here, is the place where she was raised. Her father was a man of the bush and a survivor of the Great War. Taciturn and tough as old hide. After her younger sister was born, when it was clear there’d be no further offspring, no son, her father taught her to ride and hunt in the fields and bush where they lived outside New Norfolk, miles from Hobart. She’d first fired a rifle at nine. A shotgun at ten. The recoil knocked her off her feet. Left her bruised. Her father scowled at her weakness and abandoned her deep in the bush to find her own way. He branded into her the necessity of being self-sufficient, strong, dependent on no one. Those lessons held her in good stead when she escaped this island at the age of nineteen. First Sydney, then the Continent. With relentless focus her life became one of parties, wealth, gossip and glamour – all opportunities to further her ambitions. And then the brutal end to it all. The Spanish Civil War. Her hand touches her chest above her heart. Oh, that familiar hitch in her breath at the ever-present pain of all she lost in Spain.
And now the recently ignited war in Europe. Her companions there thought she was a fool to flee the playgrounds of the Mediterranean. Surely no harm would come to them, protected as they were by their beauty and wealth. But Sabine knows the brutality of war makes no concessions. She senses that what is to come will eclipse the ravages of Spain.
A restlessness takes hold. Sabine selects an apple from the bowl on the sitting room table, a reminder that Tasmania is the Apple Isle. She rubs her thumb across the skin, releasing the familiar scent. When she landed back in Australia she’d planned to wait out the war in Sydney and continue her lifestyle of poolside cocktails, yachting, parties and dinner dances. But the lure of this invitation proved irresistible. Has she made a mistake in returning to a place where memories can ambush her without warning? She rolls the apple in her hand. Her father is dead and so is her childhood. Spain is far behind her. She is a woman of her own creation.
She must focus. The gala opening is in two days. On that night the influential and wealthy of Australia will gather to be seen in their baubles and finery. Before then she must study the guest list and familiarise herself with the hotel – the back ways, the staff entrances, where the head housekeeper keeps the keys and, most importantly, the make and model of the main hotel safe. She places the apple back in the bowl without taking a bite. It’s December. Summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Despite cool storage the apple will be past its best.
In the bedroom she opens the wardrobe and draws her fingers across the silk, satin, lace and velvet of her dresses and gowns. Pride hums under her skin. She’s earned this finery through her own efforts and cunning. She is independent, successful and always beautifully dressed. Returning to Tasmania cannot take that from her.
On one of the wardrobe shelves, towards the back, is the room safe. ‘Hah!’ She laughs, stretches her fingers and cracks the safe within moments. Now if only the rest of her plan unfolds as easily.
Glamour, intrigue and two women who will gamble their lives to survive … the compelling new Tasmanian historical fiction from a bestselling Australian author.
December 1939: The grand opening of Australia’s most glamorous and talked about hotel, the Wrest Point Riviera.
The equally glamorous Sabine Winters, recently arrived in Hobart from the Continent, anticipates a safe port from the storm that rages in Europe along with a few select items of jewellery to add to her (stolen) collection. What she doesn’t expect is to be blackmailed into becoming a spy, torn from the safety of Tasmania and taken to the viper’s nest of intrigue and plots that is South America during the rise of Nazi power. Her instincts and charms will only get her so far …
February 1973: The grand opening of Australia’s most glamorous, talked about and controversial hotel, the Wrest Point Hotel Casino.
Jenny Davies anticipates a night surrounded by dizzying decor and thrilling action. What she doesn’t expect is an invitation to become a Ladybird, one of the casino’s croupiers. But Jenny’s choice to pursue this exclusive career creates a devastating chain of events that could destroy her life as she knows it. Can a mysterious letter and the gift of a key from a relative Jenny has never heard of somehow be the answer to all of her problems?
Praise for The Hobart Hotel
‘This dual-time, glamorous story of intrigue, spies, trust, deceit, friendship, daring and luck – and so much more – will absolutely sweep you off your feet.’ KAREN BROOKS, bestselling Australian author
On Sale: 31/03/2026