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Shallow Breath
How far would you go to save someone you love?
Two years ago, Desi Priest made a horrific mistake and destroyed her family.
Now, she is coming home to make amends: to her daughter Maya, who’s nurturing her own dangerous plan; to her brother Jackson, who blames himself; and to her close friend Pete, who has spent years shielding her from a devastating truth.
But as Desi returns to her beloved house by the ocean, there is a stranger waiting for her. Someone who needs her help. Someone whose arrival will reveal a chain of secrets hidden for over twenty years.
And one by one the family will be forced to confront the possibility that they have somehow got things terribly, tragically wrong …
Set across five continents, Shallow Breath is a compelling novel of dashed dreams and second chances. But most of all it is a story about love, and what it really means to be free.
‘The narrative burden shifts between characters, all of whom have winning strengths and credible frailties, and the action emanates from these qualities with effortless suspense and dramatic power…’
Sydney Morning Herald PICK OF THE WEEK
‘well-crafted psychological suspense’
Saturday Age PICK OF THE WEEK
‘set quite uniquely against a fascinating and intelligent backdrop of Australian wildlife and it’s struggle for survival in the modern world’
Australian Women’s Weekly
‘a love letter to the ocean’
Bookseller and Publisher
Praise for Shallow Breath
‘Gripping, touching, and close to my heart. I was hooked from start to finish.’
FAVEL PARRETT, author of Past the Shallows
‘Shallow Breath invites breathless anticipation, building towards a shocking climax. It is a really satisfying read.’
‘…the steady unveiling of all that lies below the surface is suspenseful, complicated and deeply mired in oceanic metaphors … Foster is a gifted writer who has much to teach us in amongst this intriguing family saga.
‘a thrilling novel about love and freedom’
Green Lifestyle magazine
‘compelling, emotional and graphic’ 5/5 stars
‘Shallow Breath is a beautifully written novel that quite easily draws you in to this somewhat broken family and the fragile relationships that are struggling to knit themselves back together … It further cements Sara Foster as a writer with a real talent for suspense and pacing and the ability to flesh out her novels with characters that are so real you can imagine yourself living next door to them.’
‘… with Western Australian author Sara Foster’s skilled pen, there is a vitality and urgency to the pace of Shallow Breath than catapults the reader right into the heart of the action.’
Australian Women’s Weekly
‘…beautifully researched and written with enormous passion … the perfect holiday companion for those wanting to lose themselves in a good story.’
Writing WA review in the West Australian
‘Shallow Breath is a fast-paced read which interweaves drama, intrigue, loss and the fate animals can face at the hands of humans. The author’s clever use of psychological suspense played out in this book reeled me in and delivered the animal conservation message with a powerful punch.’
Port Macquarie News
‘Shallow Breath is a modern Australian saga, written by an author who knows how to breathe life into characters. The story reaches through the pages pulling you into its watery depths and when it is over the characters will stay with you as if you’ve connected deeply with new friends.’
‘An engaging novel that is sure to haunt you, this is an absorbing read. Dive into Shallow Breath – you won’t regret it.‘
‘…an absorbing novel about the loneliness of secrets and how love yearns to be free of them.’
Canberra Times
‘a double whammy of suspense coupled with some nicely nuanced characters…‘
Geelong Advertiser
‘Foster has such a knack for intrigue and is so engaging with her storytelling…,and this, her third novel – set in her adopted WA – is sharper and more mysterious than ever.’
The West Australian
‘another taut, suspenseful read bursting with family secrets and hope… Shallow Breath is one of those books you want to dive into and not come back out of until it’s finished.’
MONIQUE MULLIGAN, Write Note Reviews
For Bookclubs
Book Club Questions (downloadable PDF)
If you’d like to read Shallow Breath for your book club, this downloadable PDF reading guide includes discussion questions for your group. Do you have a burning question that you want to ask Sara about the book, or would you like a personalised video for your book club? Use the contact form to get in touch. You can find downloadable PDFs for all Sara’s books on the Book Club page. Add this book to your GoodReads library:
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME
I live in Perth, Western Australia, with my husband, two daughters, three cats called Missy, Ruby and Cocoa, a bearded dragon called Sunny and Luna the cavoodle.
Before I was a writer I was a book editor, working in-house at HarperCollins UK for a few years and then going freelance. I have edited and proofread well over 100 books, fiction and non-fiction, including novels by Paullina Simons and Liane Moriarty.
My favourite psychological suspense thriller writers are Lisa Jewell and Heather Gudenkauf. Other favourite authors include Maggie O’Farrell, Toni Morrison, Nicci French, Sara Gruen, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, Wendy James, Kate Morton, Liane Moriarty and Jodi Picoult and Taylor Jenkins-Reid.
My favourite psychological suspense novels are The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides Sister by Rosamund Lupton, and Beneath the Skin by Nicci French. Fave books in other genres include The Secret River by Kate Grenville, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Light Between Oceans by ML Stedman, Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins-Reid, The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton, and After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell. The list goes on and on.
My favourite poetry collection is The Self-Completing Tree by Dorothy Livesay and my favourite poems are ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ and ‘What We Need is Here’ by Wendell Berry.
I was one of the original editors of the Kids’ Night In book series, which has been raising money for War Child since 2003.
I’m a huge fan of dystopian fiction, and studied the genre for my PhD work on maternal representations in dystopian fiction with young adult heroines. My favourites include The Hunger Games series, Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison, and Pure by Julianna Baggott.
As a kid, in addition to devouring Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton books, I loved the Sue Barton nurse stories and Gerald Durrell’s animal adventures. Later on I read everything written by the Brontes, and devoured the dark thrillers of Lois Duncan and Christopher Pike.
I was born and raised in England, but I’ve always had family connections to Australia, and we visited the east coast a few times during my childhood. My introduction to Australian literature was reading All the Rivers Run by Nancy Cato, and after that I wanted to be Delie Gordon for quite a while. In 1999 I made sure I got to stand at the wheel of the Philadelphia paddle steamer when we visited the Murray River region.
My first pop concert, aged 12, was a Stock Aitken and Waterman event featuring my first love Jason Donovan. I was on a high for weeks afterwards. Little did I know that twenty years later I would end up editing his autobiography.
I love marine animals, and I’m a keen snorkeler and sometime scuba diver. I’ve played with baby sea lions, penguins and marine iguanas in the Galapagos and scuba-dived with Galapagos reef sharks and hammerhead sharks. I’ve glided with manta rays in Coral Bay (WA) and the Similan Islands in Thailand, encountered huge potato cod and graceful minke whales on the Great Barrier Reef, and swum with the mighty whale sharks of Ningaloo. I’ve experienced the absolute joy of being surrounded by wild dolphins in New Zealand and WA waters, and once had the very special experience of a dolphin ‘buzzing’ me while I was pregnant (using concentrated echolocation to ‘see’ the baby).
In 2011 I went to Japan while researching Shallow Breath, and visited Taiji, the town famous for its horrific dolphin drives. I was only there for two days, and thankfully I didn’t have to witness the brutal hunt up close, although I watched the banger boats drive the dolphins in from a distance. However, I did encounter the dolphins in captivity in the sea pens, being broken and starved while trained for human entertainment. Those images will stay with me forever.
I met my husband Matt when I was nineteen. We both love to travel, and we tend to pick places where we can pursue our passions for animal encounters and the natural world. Our highlights include four months in South-East Asia, including chartering a tiny vessel to Komodo Island and staying amongst the dragons. We got engaged on an island full of monkeys in Halong Bay, Vietnam, and for our honeymoon we visited Machu Picchu, Iguazu Falls, the Galapagos Islands, and travelled into the heart of the Manu Biosphere of the Amazon to see everything from capybaras to caimans. We have taken our two young girls to Japan, China, Singapore, the UK and Lapland, and on a camping tour around Australia. When life allows, we’re always looking forward to another adventure.
You can download my official short and long bios from my Press Pack page. I also write two substacks, taking readers behind the scenes at Story Matters, and supporting writers at The Resilient Author, exploring themes around storytelling, publishing, culture and creativity. And you can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
