Click the drop down list in the main menu to discover my books.
YOU CAN FIND ALL MY TITLES VIA MY AUTHOR PAGE ON AMAZON:
author.to/IsobelBlackthorn
If you read and enjoy my books, please leave a short review on Amazon. It really helps!
Esoteric Themed Writing
Alice A. Bailey: Life & Legacy
From tragic beginnings as an aristocratic orphan to becoming the mother of the New Age spiritual movement, Alice A. Bailey is one of the modern era’s most misunderstood occult figures.
Bailey’s journey is a story of faith, from orthodox Christian beginnings, through a protracted spiritual crisis, to a newfound belief in Theosophy. A mystic and a seeker, a founder of global spiritual organizations, and a surmounter of adversity, Bailey’s past is rife with injustices, myths, and misconceptions – including that she was an anti-Semite and a racist with a dark agenda.
With scandals and controversies laid bare, Bailey’s extraordinary life is revealed as a powerful, remarkable legacy.
https://isobelblackthorn.com/alice-a-bailey-life-and-legacy/
The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey
Librarian Heather Brown discovers the fascinating life of Alice Bailey – a long forgotten occultist.
Back in 1931, Alice is preparing to give a speech at a Swiss summer school. But how can she stave the tide of hatred and greed set to bring the world to its knees?
Soon after, Alice is put on Hitler’s blacklist. What she doesn’t realize is the enormity of her influence to the world, and the real enemies who are much closer than she thinks.
A dynamic and complex figure, Alice Bailey’s reach was huge. She was influential among people and organizations of global power, especially the United Nations, and is widely regarded as the Mother of the New Age.
Yet today she is maligned by fundamentalist Christians, Theosophists, Jews, academics and above all, by conspiracy theorists. Are any of these groups justified in rejecting the unlikely occultist?
A Perfect Square
Across two continents, two sets of mothers and daughters are bound by a dark mystery.
On a winter’s day in the Dandenong Ranges, Australia, pianist Ginny returns home to her eccentric mother, Harriet. Ginny tries to prise the truth of her father’s disappearance. In an effort to distract her daughter’s interrogations, Harriet proposes they collaborate on an exhibition of paintings and songs.
Meanwhile, on the edge of Dartmoor, artist Judith paints landscapes of the Australian Outback to soothe her troubled heart, as her wayward daughter Madeleine returns and fills the house with darkness.
“A Perfect Square is a fine novel about the power of art to heal, and to disturb.” – David Whish Wilson, Zero at the Bone
“Similar to Kandinsky’s brush that flawlessly moves from concrete to abstract, and from material to spiritual, the novel delicately blends family romance, art history, esoteric theories, and human drama as it traces the main protagonist’s search for her father that imperceptibly becomes the search for wisdom and transcendence.” – Vladimir Golstein, Professor of Russian literature, Browns University, NY
Canary Islands Collection
The Drago Tree
She wanted to forget; to let this atmosphere of tremendous isolation consume her.
Haunted by demons past and present, geologist Ann Salter seeks sanctuary on the exotic island of Lanzarote. There, she meets charismatic author Richard Parry and indigenous potter Domingo, and together they explore the island.
Ann’s encounters with the island’s hidden treasures becomes a journey deep inside herself, as she struggles to understand who she was, who she is, and who she wants to be.
Set against a panoramic backdrop of dramatic island landscapes and Spanish colonial history, The Drago Tree is an intriguing tale of betrayal, conquest and love.
“This beautifully constructed novel reveals the complexity we invite into our lives when we open our hearts to passion.” Robert Hillman, The Honey Thief
A Matter of Latitude
When local Lanzarote anti-corruption activist, Celestino, is t-boned on a lonely stretch of road, he knows the collision was no accident.
Wounded and fearing for his life, he hides in an abandoned fishing village, waiting for a chance to make it home. Meanwhile his wife, English expat Paula, is distraught. Her pursuit of answers is deflected when her neighbor, troublesome retiree Shirley Mobad, co-opts Paula on her escapades around the Canary Islands.
Paula’s search for her husband quickly descends into mayhem, danger and intrigue. Before long, she realizes she’s being followed. She needs answers, and fast.
But where is Celestino, and will he ever make it back alive?
Clarissa’s Warning
A lottery jackpot changes Claire Bennett’s life.
She buys an ancient stone ruin on the island of her dreams. Her mystic aunt Clarissa warns her of danger, but Claire pays no heed.
Soon after moving to the idyllic island, Claire is confronted by a mystery. As the sinister story of her home slowly uncovers, Claire enters a world of inexplicable events and ordeals. Someone or something doesn’t want her there.
But is it really a curse, or is there something else behind the events?
A Prison in the Sun
After millennial ghostwriter Trevor Moore rents an old farmhouse in Fuerteventura, he moves in to find his muse.
Instead, he discovers a rucksack filled with cash. Who does it belong to – and should he hand it in… or keep it?
Struggling to make up his mind, Trevor unravels the harrowing true story of a little-known concentration camp that incarcerated gay men in the 1950s and 60s.
https://isobelblackthorn.com/canary-islands-novels/a-prison-in-the-sun/
THE GHOST OF VILLA WINTER
English psychic Clarissa Wilkinson is holidaying in the Canary Islands. Hoping to have an adventure, she boards a tour bus bound for Villa Winter, a secret Nazi base on the idyllic island of Fuerteventura.
Instead, she discovers a body in a chest and finds herself teamed up with hapless crime writer Richard Parry. What unfolds is an edge of seat mystery brimming with intrigue, as they try to unravel the clues together, and find the killer.
Setting rich with a colourful cast of characters, The Ghost of Villa Winter is a delightfully gripping read with plenty of twists and turns that will appeal to all good mystery lovers. https://isobelblackthorn.com/the-ghost-of-villa-winter/
historical fiction
Emma’s Tapestry
At the dawn of World War Two, German-born nurse Emma Taylor sits by the bedside of a Jewish heiress in London as she reminisces over her dear friend, Oscar Wilde.
As the story of Wilde unravels, so does Emma’s past. What really happened to her husband?
She’s taken back to her days in Singapore on the eve of World War One. To her disappointing marriage to a British export agent, her struggle to fit into colonial life and the need to hide her true identity.
Emma is caught up in history, the highs, the lows, the adventures. A deadly mutiny, terrifying rice riots and a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan bring home, for all migrants, the fragility of belonging. https://isobelblackthorn.com/emmas-tapestry/
Dark Fiction
The Legacy of Old Gran Parks
Set in Cann River in Australia’s rugged southern wilderness, The Legacy of Old Gran Parks is a tale of a remote town haunted by a legacy, a legacy with ominous consequences.
It’s a warm evening in the autumn of 1983 when Miriam Forster rolls into town in her broken down car.
Frankie the deer hunter, is up in the forested hinterland with her gun. Old Pearl the fisherwoman sits on her front deck down by the lagoon with her whisky and her dog. And Emily, the English backpacker, scrubs out the pie-encrusted kitchen at the roadhouse.
All is not well. There’s a hoon doing donuts at the crossroads and screaming down the fire trails in the woods; a suspicious-looking city-slicker with two small children, squatting in Fred’s shack down by the lake; a beanie-headed gaunt guy convalescing at the lighthouse; and an acne festooned creature in the hotel room next to Miriam, thrashing about in the night.
Gran Parks is stirring. Who will survive? Who will get away? Who will stay?
The Cabin Sessions
It’s Christmas Eve when hapless musician Adam Banks stands on the bridge over the river that cleaves the isolated village of Burton. A storm is rolling into the narrow mountain pass. He thinks of turning back. Instead, he resolves to fulfill his obligation to perform the guest spot at The Cabin Sessions.
Fear stirs when he opens the door on The Cabin’s incense-choked air. Local plumber Philip Stone is already there, brooding.
Meanwhile, Philip’s sister Eva prepares to take a bath. Memories begin to surface concerning one fateful day by the river, and the innocence of her beloved brother.
Twerk
“Twerk is a page-turning rollercoaster of a ride.”
“Addictive and thoroughly entertaining, Twerk sizzles on every page!”
Desire, a spark, a decision made too fast (in haste), and a Las Vegas stripper is plunged into the depraved world of a psychopath. But is she the only target of his twisted desires?
A regular Sunday night in a Las Vegas strip club is rocked when a local oddball dies mysteriously, during a private dance.
Amber falls immediately in lust with the hot paramedic who arrives, and follows him outside, anticipating sizzling romance. But, her casual encounter quickly descends into a terrifying, twisted nightmare from which she is unable to escape.
Five days later, and it’s Lana’s next shift at the club; she’s a fly-in-fly-out stripper paying her way through law school – she’s also Amber’s best friend.
Where is Amber? And what about the dead client? Was it an accident? Suicide? Or murder?
Finding neither the police, nor the club are taking much interest, Lana conducts her own inquiries, even though she finds herself the victim of a social-media hate campaign, and an ex-boyfriend who is sending her death threats. She’s desperate to uncover the truth about the death, but the person she most needs to speak to is Amber, who has failed to show up for her shift yet again…
Lana is thrust into a web of lies and deceptions she is determined to unravel, in which everyone is a suspect.
An addictively dark, psychological thriller laced with steamy romance, mystery, action and suspense; Twerk exposes the working lives of Las Vegas strippers behind the glamor – the challenges, the rewards, and the deadly risks.
Contemporary Fiction
Nine Months of Summer
Seeking asylum from the wreckage of her life, Yvette Grimm arrives in Australia and overstays her holiday visa.
Desperate to carve a life for herself as an illegal British migrant, she invests her hopes in a palm-reader’s prophecy: she is to meet the father of her children before she’s thirty. But Yvette is already twenty-nine, and the quest takes her on a picaresque journey of self-discovery and transformation.
Set in Perth against the backdrop of Australia’s migrant history present and past, Nine Months of Summer is a moving, relevant and at times comical story of personal growth, purpose and coming of age.
“A rewarding read, rather like a meal when you savour every mouthful instead of gulping it down” – Ann Creber
All Because of You: Fifteen Tales of Sacrifice and Hope
Infused with gentle optimism, these fifteen uncompromising stories explore themes of sacrifice and hope in domestic relationships.
Mum and Nan struggle to contrive a sense of normal family life in the emotionally charged environment of a women’s shelter. A visual artist faces the return of her wayward daughter, who brings home her new boyfriend, the lumbering behemoth, Zol. A bereaved woman lies restless and alone in bed, her thoughts troubled by the cries of the dog locked in next door’s laundry.
At once dark, poignant and witty, All Because of You depicts intimately and honestly the travails and heroic responses of women and men confronting the pith of their lives.
Voltaire’s Garden: A memoir of Cobargo
Voltaire’s Garden is a memoir of creating a sustainable lifestyle, back-to-earth style, on a fifteen-acre cattle paddock in an idyllic pocket of southeast Australia, made famous by the bushfires of New Year’s Eve 2019.
Award-winning author Isobel Blackthorn introduces readers to the wondrous countryside of Cobargo Valley, where in 2005 she bought a parcel of land with spectacular views and built a large villa called Voltaire’s Garden, and surrounded it with swathes of luscious gardens.
With glorious descriptions of gardening, cooking and an exquisite Australian landscape, Voltaire’s Garden will inspire you to reflect on the values formed through a deep connection with the land. Composed in evocative prose, Blackthorn lays bare the hardships, the resilience, and many a hilarious moment in what is a feel-good and at times poignant read.
https://isobelblackthorn.com/voltaires-garden-a-memoir-of-cobargo/
Lovesick
A wild adventure through Thatcher’s Britain, set against a backdrop of the British Indie Music Scene. Naïve, defiant and incisively witty, Isobel Blackthorn fashions her own path through the counter-culture, poverty and politics of the eighties. By turn absurdly funny, sexually charged and heartrendingly sad, Lovesick is an unforgettable, tragi-comic tale of a young woman’s search for her identity.
Isobel Blackthorn 