In a city full of strangers, be careful whom you trust...Shanghai, 1935. Black sheep gentleman Rowland Sinclair arrives with his bohemian housemates from Sydney, Australia to explore a new city and take the name Sinclair international with a new class of negotiations. A novice to global commerce, Rowland is under strict instructions from his brother to keep a low profile...but that soon becomes next to impossible. A beautiful Russian taxi girl—who once claimed to be the Princess Anastasia and who danced in Rowly's arms the night before—is found slain in his suite.Out of sympathy for the murdered girl and to clear his name, Rowly and his companions embark upon their own investigation. They soon discover there are many people who may have wanted Alexandra Romanovna dead. As they are drawn deeper into Shanghai society and its underworld, Rowly searches for answers in a strange city determined to ruin him.Exploring the simmering...

Can a house divided against itself hope to stand?Rowland Sinclair doesn't fit with his family. His conservative older brother, Wilfred, thinks he's reckless, a black sheep; his aging mother thinks he's her son who was killed in the war. Only his namesake Uncle Rowly, a kindred spirit, understands him—and now he's been brutally murdered in his own home.The police are literally clueless, and so Rowly takes it upon himself to investigate the crime. In order to root out the guilty party, he uses his wealth and family influence to infiltrate the upper echelons of both the old and the new guard, playing both against the middle in a desperate and risky attempt to find justice for his uncle. With his bohemian housemates—a poet, a painter, and a free-spirited sculptress—watching his back, Rowly unwittingly exposes a conspiracy that just might be his undoing.

A ROWLAND SINCLAIR MYSTERYShanghai in 1935 is a twentieth-century Babylon, an expatriate playground where fortunes are made and lost, where East and West collide, and the stakes include life itself.Into this, Rowland Sinclair arrives from Sydney to represent his brother at international wool negotiations. Rowland is under strict instructions to commit to nothing... but a brutal murder makes that impossible.As suspicion falls on him, Rowland enters a desperate bid to find answers in a city as glitzy as it is dangerous, where tai-pans and tycoons rule, and politics and vice are entwined with commerce.Once again, the only people Rowland can truly trust are an artist, a poet and a free-spirited sculptress."A sparkling crime series... Evelyn Waugh meets Agatha Christie..." – THE AGE

Shortlisted for the Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Fiction for 2013 It's 1933. No less than Europe, Britain, or America, Australia contends with the Left, mostly Communists but also Socialists, and a rising Right, Fascists. Rowland Sinclair, bohemian younger son of the wealthy, influential, conservative clan headed by his powerful brother, Wilfred, has tangled with New South Wales' Right before. It did not go well. New Guard leader Eric Campbell, the man who would be Australia's Führer, is currently in Britain "consorting with Sir Oswald Mosley," the leading British Fascist, making connections over cocktails in aid of bringing European Fascism to Australia. Campbell will soon be moving on to Germany to meet members of the Reichstag and, he hopes, Hitler. The Australian way of life is not undefended. Old enemies have united to undermine Campbell's ambitions. Senator Charles Hardy, now a leading member of this unofficial Old Guard, brings Rowly a...

"As one for whom certain story lines and characters have become as real as life itself, Crossing the Lines was a pure delight, a swift yet psychologically complex read, cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed." -Dean Koontz, New York Times Bestselling author Sulari Gentill, author of the 1930s Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, jumps to the post-modern in Crossing the Lines. A successful writer, Madeleine, creates a character, Edward, and begins to imagine his life. He, too, is an author. Edward is in love with a woman, Willow, who's married to a man Edward loathes, and who loathes him, but he and Willow stay close friends. She's an artist. As Madeleine develops the plot, Edward attends a gallery show where a scummy critic is flung down a flight of fire stairs...murdered. Madeleine, still stressed from her miscarriages and grieving her inability to have a child, grows more and more enamored of Edward, spending more and more time with...

"With each new chapter, The Woman in the Library opens the door to new histories. More murders...more clues...As Gentill's characters grow, the desire to know more about each ensnares us, and the only way out is to read to the end." —New York Journal of BooksNed Kelly award winning author, Sulari Gentill sets this mystery-within-a-mystery in motion with a deceptively simple, Dear Hannah, What are you writing? pulling us into the ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library.In every person's story, there is something to hide...The tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room...

A Rowland Sinclair Mystery Sulari Gentill - Winner of Davitt Award for Best Adult Crime Fiction 2012 In early 1933, Rowland Sinclair and his companions are ensconced in the superlative luxury of The Hydro Majestic - Medlow Bath, where trouble seems distant indeed. And then Harry Simpson vanishes. Croquet and pre-dinner cocktails are abandoned for the High Country where Rowland hunts for Simpson with a determination that is as mysterious as the disappearance itself. Stockmen, gangsters and a belligerent writer all gather to the fray, as the investigation becomes embroiled with a much darker conspiracy. As all hell breaks loose, will Rowland be able to save Harry from his captors? And will he be strong enough to save himself and the rest of his companions?

Book 7 in the Rowland Sinclair Mystery Series. When Rowland Sinclair is invited to take his yellow Mercedes onto the Maroubra Speedway, popularly known as the Killer Track, he agrees without caution or reserve. But then people start to die... The body of a journalist covering the race is found in a House of Horrors, an English blueblood with Blackshirt affiliations is killed on the race track... and it seems that someone has Rowland in their sights. A strange young reporter preoccupied with black magic, a mysterious vagabond, an up-and-coming actor by the name of Flynn, and ruthless bookmakers all add mayhem to the mix. With danger presenting at every turn, and the brakes long since disengaged, Rowland Sinclair hurtles towards disaster with an artist, a poet and brazen sculptress along for the ride.

Shortlisted for Best First Book for the Commonwealth Writers' Price for 2011 Meet Rowland Sinclair, gentleman and artist living in 1931 Sydney. Friend of the Left, son of the Right, he paints in a superbly tailored, three-piece suit and houses friends who include a poet, a painter, and a feminist sculptress whom he has painted nude and hung it in the drawing room. Is he perhaps in love with Edna? If so, she isn't having any. Sinclair's fortune and his indifference to politics shelter him from the mounting tensions of the Great Depression roiling Australia and taking it near the brink of revolution. One day in December 1931 comes terrible news: Uncle Rowly has been murdered in his home by unknown assailants. The murder prompts Roland to infiltrate the echelons of the old and new guard. Among them are a few "right thinking men," a cadre of conservatives who became convinced of a Communist takeover and have formed a movement to combat it. In time,...

The Fifth Book of the Acclaimed Rowland Sinclair Mysteries Handsome, the epitome of stoicism and dignity, wry and witty despite his impeccable manners, protagonist Rowland Sinclair is an Oxford educated gentleman artist in his late 20s who enjoys being the black sheep of his conservative and wealthy family. Rowland has narrowly escaped Germany, damaged – physically and emotionally. Having spent time in Germany as a young man in the 1930s, he is horrified by the changes that have come about under the Nazi government. The country which he knew as the centre of modern art and culture is now, under Hitler, oppressed and brutalised. For the first time, he is moved to take a stance, to try and sway the political thought of the time. He doesn't really know what he is doing, or what should be done, but he is consumed with a notion that something should be done. A bizarre murder plunges the hapless Australians into a queer world of British aristocracy,...

The Second Book of the Acclaimed Rowland Sinclair Mysteries, the Historical Crime Series The luxury liner, RMS Aquitania, embodies all that is gracious and refined, in a world gripped crisis and doubt. But elegant atmosphere on board is charged with tension. Civility remains... but how long will the peace hold when people start to die? After months abroad, Rowland Sinclair and his companions begin their journey home on the ship. The heroes dine with a suffragette, a Bishop and a retired World Prophet. The Church encounters less orthodox religion in the Aquitania's chandeliered ballroom, where men of God rub shoulders with mystics in dinner suits. Gentill's razor-sharp voice draws these wonderfully diverse characters, and as the pressure rises, so too does a foreboding sense of intrigue. As the bodies pile up, and Rowland unwittingly finds himself at the centre of it all again, can he unravel the mystery and stop these heinous crimes before he and his...