The sedentary and impractical Hoyle meets Sybil Alvaro in a used bookstore, and she invites him to follow in the footsteps of her favourite author in a search for the mysterious Bloodwood Staff. He’s spent his entire life reading vintage adventure action, and thinks he knows how these things should go.In the mountains west of Sydney, his expectations are almost immediately derailed, as nobody – not Sybil, and certainly not the irrepressible Ada Drake, stand-in for the obligatory plucky urchin – behaves the way they’re supposed to.As they gradually realise that their lighthearted adventure has put themselves and their loved ones in dire peril, Hoyle is forced to face the fact that he is woefully unsuited to be the stereotypical hero.A deliberate subversion of adventure, fantasy and satire tropes, After the Bloodwood Staff is a brilliant and unexpected ride.

Life is fairly workaday for Dr Celeste Carlucci, a professor at Krasnia’s finest university, until her best friend and colleague Pace involves Celeste in her research. Before long, Celeste is being shot at from a hovering helicopter, attacked on a moonlit mountain path, and followed by shadowy minions – on the trail of the Littoral Codex, an ancient and indecipherable book. The race is on to figure out its secrets. On one side are Celeste and her colleagues, armed with nothing but enthusiasm, brilliant minds, and the principles of geography. Against them are the repressive university governors and their jackbooted campus security guards; the rich and power-hungry Praxicopolis family; and a renegade group of researchers, the Littoral League. Will this ragtag bunch outwit their foes before it’s too late?