The bond of friendship can unravel when doubt and superstition start to take hold. And the spiritual comfort we seek in such circumstances can also lead to our undoing. Christine Keighery delves into these notions in her novel, 'We're Not Us Without You'.The gold rush made the city of Melbourne rich but women’s lives and choices were still very limited.  Madeleine Cleary has written a historical murder mystery with a brothel and the slums of Little Lon at its centre in ‘The Butterfly Women’.