{
    "id": 395533,
    "slug": "the-beach-caves-trevor-shearston",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "The Beach Caves",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "\u2018Please. I\u2019m in hell!\u2019 The truth of that was in his face. The rims of his eyes were red-raw, his hair was matted, he hadn\u2019t shaved since knocking at her door, when he\u2019d been clean-shaven \u2014 one of the few details she remembered of that blurred encounter. \u2018I know why you\u2019re avoiding me. Whoever told the cops told you, too.\u2019\n\nIt\u2019s 1970, and young Annette Cooley is part of a small team working on an archaeological dig on the New South Wales south coast \u2014 a site that appears to prove that Aboriginal societies in the late Holocene were becoming less nomadic, even sedentary. The discovery is thrilling in its significance, and the atmosphere in the group is one of charged excitement. The team is led by a husband-and-wife pair, stars in their field, Aled Wray and Marilyn Herr, and working on their sites promises to be the making of Annette as an archaeologist.\n\nOn a new site, linked to the first, Annette starts to fall for a fellow student, Brian Harpur. But there are strange tensions and a hidden darkness within the group. Then one of their party mysteriously disappears. When police arrive, Annette makes a decision that will irrevocably mark her life, and Brian Harpur\u2019s.\n\nWritten in simple, beautiful prose, and with great depth and moral complexity, The Beach Caves is a powerful story about jealousy, guilt, the choices we make, and the different paths our lives could have taken \u2014 shadow paths, which nevertheless leave a trace.",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 320,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2021-01-01",
    "publication_date_latest": "2021-01-01",
    "cover_url": null,
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    "rating_average": null,
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    "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:38:31+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-29T00:32:21+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4320,
        "slug": "scribe",
        "name": "Scribe",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:10:48+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:10:07+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": []
}