Dinuka McKenzie - She Lied First

Name: Dinuka McKenzie - She Lied First
Start: 2026-07-27T18:00:00+10:00
End: 2026-07-27T18:00:00+10:00
Location: Upstairs at Gleebooks

About

6pm for 6.30pm Monday 27 July

Dinuka McKenzie in conversation with Ashley Kalagian Blunt

Devika is living her best life, moving out of home in her final year of university. Close to the beach and away from her mother.

Independent and self-sufficient, just like Kalyani. There's just one awful secret that Kal can never find out about.

Kalyani has it made. A new job. A unit she can afford, and her little sister as her roomie. She's finally achieved the life she's always wanted. Except for the one big thing she's yet to confide in Devi. A truth that gets harder to reveal the longer she waits.

When their lives are torn apart by betrayal, and Kal refuses to forgive her sister, Devi must peel back everything she thought she knew to rediscover Kalyani, lie by lie and secret by secret.

'A gripping, confident thriller with a deeply felt emotional core. McKenzie captures the intensity, contradiction, love and damage of family with rare nuance, bringing a fresh and grounded perspective to the genre' Shankari Chandran, Miles Franklin Award-winning author

Dinuka McKenzie is the author of the Detective Kate Miles crime series, The Torrent, Taken and Tipping Point, published in Australia and the UK. She is the winner of the 2020 HarperCollins Australia Banjo Prize. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards, the Bad Sydney Crime Danger Awards, and longlisted for the Richell Prize. Dinuka lives with her family in Southern Sydney on Dharawal country. She Lied First, a standalone psychological suspense, is her fourth novel.

Ashley Kalagian Blunt writes to expose the myriad ways our technology makes us vulnerable. She is the number-one bestselling author of Dark Mode, a psychological thriller published in multiple territories and languages. Dark Mode was shortlisted for the 2024 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year, and was voted number 20 in the Better Reading Top 100. Her most recent crime novels exploring the dangers of contemporary technology are Cold Truth, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Novel, and Like, Follow, Die.