Book Launch: Revelation Beach by Susan Francis

Join us in store when we welcome Susan Francis to The Book Cow to celebrate the launch of her second novel Revelation Beach, an evocative Australian thriller exposing the Balibo Five cover-up and a decades old conspiracy about Indonesia's invasion of East Timor.

Susan spent a year in Indonesia in 1980, where she experienced conversations shutting down when she walked into social settings and witnessed chunks of articles in the newspapers blacked out by the censor’s heavy hand as ongoing resistance by the Timorese filled the media. This led her to years of researching this bloody history. In Revelation Beach, Susan intricately weaves fact with fiction to highlight our crucial relationship with our northern neighbours and the devastation when we chose to look away from genocide. With the fiftieth anniversary of the journalists’ deaths in October 2025, Revelation Beach showcases one of the greatest government cover-ups in Australian history. 

ABOUT THE BOOK:

When Eleanor Freeman’s enigmatic stepmother, Ida, dies in a suspicious fire, a lifetime of secrets begins to unravel. Was Ida an Indonesian spy entangled in the murders of the Balibo Five and unspeakable war crimes?

Haunted by the past and pursued by those who would prefer the truth to remain buried, Eleanor flees to a crumbling lighthouse on the mid-north coast of NSW. There, amid salt-lashed cliffs and gathering shadows, she unearths a decades-old conspiracy of betrayal, silence and bloodshed – one that stretches from the halls of Canberra to the ravaged villages of Timor-Leste.

Revelation Beach dares to expose one of Australia’s most shameful cover-ups, where lives were sacrificed for oil, gas and political expediency. At once a literary page-turner and a powerful reckoning, this novel asks the question: How far would you go to uncover the truth?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Susan Francis is an award-winning Australian writer, living in Newcastle, on Awabakal land. Her much-loved memoir, The Love that Remains, was a finalist in Varuna’s Publisher Introduction Program and her short stories have appeared in such places as Island Magazine, The Saturday Paper and The Newcastle Short Story Competition anthology. Revelation Beach is her second book for which she received a Varuna residency, a Neilma Sidney Travel scholarship, and in 2024, an Australian Society of Author’s mentorship. Susan has a graduate degree in Australian Literature and is currently studying for a Masters in Creative Writing. She has worked in education, and the media, and has appeared on SBS Insight and ABC Conversations.