Lyn Yeowart for Waurn Ponds Books in Bars

Geelong Booklovers - are you ready to discover your new favourite Aussie crime writer? Lyn Yeowart hails from Melbourne and her second novel is called The Hollow Girl.

The award-winning author of The Silent Listener makes her long-awaited return with The Hollow Girl, a thrilling and devastating crime novel set in a home for unmarried mothers. When a body is discovered at the home, the truth behind the ‘safe haven’ for lost girls is about to be uncovered - with explosive consequences.

It’s 1961 and Jane McEvoy, unaware of how she became pregnant, is sent to Harrowford Hall, an institution that has long claimed to be a sanctuary for girls in crisis. Meanwhile, the newest arrival, Marilyn Pollard, horrified by what she sees and hears, is desperate to escape.

Twelve years later, in 1973, Detective Sergeant Eleanor Smith is assigned her first homicide when the body of Nurse Chapman is discovered at Harrowford Hall. But the home’s overgrown graveyard suggests Nurse Chapman's poisoning may not be the first suspicious death at Harrowford Hall…

Critically acclaimed and award-winning, The Silent Listener was a dark and suspenseful breakthrough, rich with family secrets, multiple gripping timelines and an isolated farm location - and The Hollow Girl follows suit. With its atmospheric prose, themes of trauma, a murder mystery, and an eerie setting in a gothic mansion, it is totally captivating.

Lyn Yeowart’s inspiration for her new novel stems from the true story of a good friend, and the harrowing reality of countless women in Australia. Forced adoption was an epidemic between the 1950s and 1980s, and an estimated 250,000 babies were taken from mothers against their will. The Hollow Girl draws on the brutal truths and abuses in homes for unmarried women and the lasting trauma they caused – all within the pages of a compelling suspense thriller.

About the author:
Lyn Yeowart is a consulting writer and editor who lives on the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation. Her debut novel, The Silent Listener, won the 2022 Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction, was a finalist in the UK People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for three other national awards in Australia. The Hollow Girl, her second novel, will publish in September 2025.