* In Preservation , Jock Serong turns his talents for rollicking narrative to historical fiction, combining dazzling prose with all the momentum of the very best thrillers into what is certain to become a classic Australian novel * Sydney, 1797. Lieutenant Joshua Grayling is deputised by Governor Hunter to interrogate three shipwreck survivors after they're found by a fishing boat, crawling along a beach thirty miles south of town. Their stories conflict, and he must determine which of them is lying, and why * Months earlier, at Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria, seventeen seamen had swum ashore after their longboat was ripped apart in a storm. Sydney, a town of barely 1,500 people, was over 700 kilometres to the north. Meanwhile, their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove were stranded further south, on a tiny island in the Bass Strait. To get help and save their own lives, the 17 sailors had no alternative. They set out to walk to Sydney--but only three of the men arrived * This gruesome and thrilling novel, based on the true story of the Sydney Cove shipwreck, will enthral and grip fans of Peter FitzSimons's history writing and Ian McGuire's The North Water * Jock Serong won the Ned Kelly Award for his first novel Quota , and was shortlisted for the 2017 Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction for The Rules of Backyard Cricket . His most recent novel, On the Java Ridge , was shortlisted for the 2018 Indie Awards * This page-turner will receive a major publicity and marketing campaign, including phone box advertising in capital cities and print advertising in literary and current affairs publications.