Set between the Blue Mountains and a Sydney hospital, Lisa Kenway’s All You Took from Me is a thriller brimming with great characters and nail-biting tension.
Anaesthetist Clare Carpenter has just lost her husband and her memory in a single-vehicle accident. So why is a stranger following her? After questioning patients about their dreams, she becomes convinced that an anaesthetic drug might help her access missing memories. But there’s no way to be certain without jeopardising her career or her life.
As unexplained threats escalate, Clare realises she must take matters into her own hands to learn the uncomfortable truth about her secretive husband, his connection to a mysterious club and what she did to trigger a stranger’s crusade for vengeance.
But how far will she go?
Praise for All You Took From Me:
‘Truly exciting. It’s a rare treat to read a book that I am still thinking about long after the last page – the surprising reveals are both earned and satisfying. Readers are destined to fall in love with the ways Kenway brings such expertise and a unique perspective to the psychological thriller genre.’ Shelley Burr, author of Wake and Ripper
‘A taut psychological thriller with a driving plot, All You Took From Me interrogates the limits of memory, both lost and recovered. From its compelling opening mystery, every page bristles with threat and intrigue.’ Ashley Kalagian Blunt, author of Dark Mode
‘Kenway brings an exciting level of insider authenticity to this simmering drama about an anaesthetist struggling to make sense of a life unspooling in the aftermath of a tragic accident. Tense, twisty and unique, this is an unforgettable debut.’ Anna Downes, author of The Safe Place and Red River Road
‘I found myself first pulled in by the prose – Kenway writes like a dream – but soon I was consumed by the mystery at the heart of the story – the question of where we go and what happens to us under the narcotic oblivion of anaesthesia. Charged with menace and paranoia, this is a masterfully plotted psychological thriller.’ J.P. Pomare, author of In the Clearing and 17 Years Later
Psychological Thriller, Australian story, Literary
About The Author
Lisa Kenway is an Australian writer and anaesthetist. Her debut psychological thriller, All You Took From Me, was published in August 2024 by Transit Lounge Publishing. All You Took From Me was longlisted for the 2020 Richell Prize and was runner-up in the 2022 CYA Conference competition for adult work.
Her current work in progress, East Coast Low, was longlisted for the 2021 Fresh Ink Emerging Writers Prize and was Highly Commended in the 2022 Writing NSW Varuna fellowships. She was awarded a 2023 Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre fellowship to further develop this work.
Her short fiction and creative non-fiction pieces have appeared in journals and anthologies including Island Online, the Meanjin blog, the 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, Meniscus Literary Journal, Brilliant Flash Fiction and X-RAY Literary Journal, and her poetry was published in Grieve Volume 10 (Hunter Writers’ Centre, 2022).
Her microfiction was selected for consideration in the 2020 Microflix Writers Award, run by Spineless Wonders. She was also Highly Commended in the 2018 Peter Cowan 600-word story competition, and was a finalist in the Hunter Writers’ Centre Grieve competition in 2017. Her first full-length novel manuscript, ‘The Jacaranda Tree’, was long-listed for the Varuna Publisher Introduction Program Fellowship in 2017.
Lisa was also thrilled to have an eight-word story displayed on billboards across Southern Queensland in November 2017 as part of their 8-Word Story Competition.
She lives on the Central Coast of NSW with her husband and two sons. Lisa works part-time as an anaesthetist. She is an active member of the Australian Society of Authors and the Australian Society of Anaesthetists, two organisations which unfortunately share the same acronym, resulting in a confusing inbox.
She has a passion for books, loves food in an obsessive, food-snob sort of way and has a cookbook collection that rivals the one in the MasterChef mansion.
