Books in Bars with Emma & Jessica

Name: Books in Bars with Emma & Jessica
Start: 2026-08-27T18:30:00+10:00
End: 2026-08-27T18:30:00+10:00
Location: Waurn Ponds Hotel

About

Good friends Emma Babbington and Jessica Mansour-Nahra will be interviewing one another during our August Books in Bars events. Their new books The Gardens and The Burn are both shaping up to be fantastic psychological thrillers. Join us at the Waurn Ponds Hotel for this fascinating look in to the world of authors who also happen to be friends!

Emma's book The Gardens - It might look idyllic, but the secrets buried there are deadly…

When human bones are found in the garden attached to the glamorous London home where she grew up, Jess McIntyre prepares to receive the news she has dreaded for thirty-four years: that her sister, Nina, is dead and now here is the proof.

Nina disappeared without a trace in 1992, aged eighteen, the summer she fell in with a charismatic group of friends who squatted in a vacant house on the other side of Willow Gardens.

Having moved to Australia years ago, widow and single mum Jess arrives back in London to provide a DNA sample to help the investigation, with her teenage son, Ollie, in tow.

As they try and unravel the secrets of Nina's past, and her connection to a sinister cult, will they discover that some bodies are best left buried…?

Jessica's book asks who and what we cling to when everything starts to burn.

2030. Devastating bushfires have plunged Australia into lockdown. When stay-at-home orders lift, Carmen isn't relieved. Solitude has suited her too well.

Carmen's best friend, Eleni, convinces her to join her and her boyfriend, Dan, and their friend Rhett on a road trip. After months apart, Eleni says they need an unplugged week away together: a chance for escape and reconnection, laughter and shared history.

But the trip isn't what Carmen expects. Stuck in isolated cabins in dense national parkland, secrets spill out, new ideals are challenged and bitter arguments erupt. On the final morning, new fires are racing towards them, forcing the group to find another way out. But how, when the friends no longer trust each other with their lives?

Tense, timely, propulsive and unnerving, The Burn examines the myths we believe about ourselves and the people we love. With survival at stake, who do we become?