NOVEMBER 2024

A father and son. A road trip. They are not alone.

Cairns, Winter, 2024.


Duncan Watson is having a bad day.


He’s getting married at 11am. But he’s woken up by the mangroves, with no idea how he got there, and his wallet and phone are missing. The humidity is thick as he runs to the beach to look for them.


Then he hears a car. Has his best man come to get him? To apologise for the prank gone wrong? He reaches the road just as two men are dragging a body into a ditch. Then they turn – and Duncan is running headlong into a forest of tangled roots.

Later that morning, Duncan gets a lift into town, and goes straight to the police station. He tells them everything. They reassure him that crooks aren’t interested in outsiders. However, he’s unconvinced. He’s seen them up close. And they have his wallet.


Back in Brisbane, on leave from his job and a long way from his honeymoon in Tahiti, Duncan is wondering how it all went so wrong. But his hopes for a quiet afternoon are shattered when the men turn up at his house. Now Duncan is on the run – and he’s taken his eighty-two-year-old father along for the ride. He’s about to learn there’s nothing he won’t do to protect the people he loves.

SHALIMAR

by Samantha Wood
The Song of Clouds, a novel by Samantha Wood

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