About This Author
Request Author Booking
Please note: Lian is fully booked for Book Week 2024. However does have availability in the weeks around it.
Lian Tanner is the best-selling author of the Keepers trilogy, A Clue for Clara, Rita’s Revenge, and picture book Ella and the Ocean (illustrated by Jonathan Bentley). Her books have been translated into eleven languages, and have won two Aurealis Awards for Best Australian Children’s Fantasy, a NSW Premier’s Literary Award, a Tasmanian Literary Award, a Sisters-in-Crime Davitt Award for Best Children’s Crime Novel, and the Russell Prize for Humour Writing for Young People.
Books by Lian Tanner

A Dragons of Hallow Book 1: Spellhound
Best Suited 7-11 Years
There are Three Great Secrets in Hallow, a country that loves secrets almost as much as it loves green jellybabies. No, I’m not going to tell you anything more about them. I am a loyal citizen of Hallow, and would never betray-
Oh, you have jellybabies?
Green ones?
Well, I suppose I could tell you a little more.
Come closer. Open your ears and your heart, and pass the green jellybabies.
I will tell you a story about an enormous magical pup, a child Queen and a very small minch-wiggin with the unfortunate title of Destroyer-of-Dragons.

Rita’s Revenge
Best Suited 8 – 12 years old
The ducks of Little Dismal are angry. A scruffy chicken called Clara has been telling lies about them. They need revenge.
Enter Rita – a duck with the soul of a poet. After an embarrassing talent night, Rita sees revenge on Clara as a chance to restore her reputation.
But Rita finds more than revenge on her mission. She uncovers a dastardly plan to chook-nap the clever chicken that will take them both a long way from home.
Luckily, it’s Rita’s unlikely friendship with a small human and the help of some street-smart birds that just might save the day and inspire an epic poem!

A Clue for Clara
Best Suited for 8 – 12 years
Clara wants to be a famous detective with her own TV show. She can read claw marks, find missing feathers and knows morse code and semaphore.
There’s just one problem. She’s a small scruffy chook, and no one takes her seriously.
But when she teams up with Olive, the daughter of the local policeman, they might just be able to solve the crimes that have been troubling the town of Little Dismal.

Ella and the Ocean
Best Suited for 4+ years
Ella lived in the red-dirt country
where the earth was as dry as old bones
and it hadn’t rained
for years
and years
and years.
One night, Ella dreamt of the ocean…

The Keepers 1: Museum of Thieves
Best suited for 9 – 13 years
Goldie Roth lives in the city of Jewel, where impatience is a sin and boldness is a crime. But Goldie is both bold and impatient. She runs away to the mysterious Museum of Dunt, where she meets a boy named Toadspit and discovers dangerous secrets. A monstrous brizzlehound stalks the museum’s corridors, and only a thief can find the way through its strange, shifting rooms.
Goldie and Toadspit have a talent for thieving. Which is just as well, because the treacherous Fugleman has his own plans for the museum, plans that threaten the lives of everyone Goldie loves. And it will take a very bold thief to stop him.

The Keepers 2: City of Lies
Best suited for 9 – 13 years
Goldie Roth is a trained thief and a skilful liar. She’s supposed to be one of the keepers of the mysterious Museum of Dunt, along with her friend Toadspit. But although she desperately wants to be a keeper, her parents are ill and she will not leave them. Then Toadspit’s sister Bonnie is stolen, and Goldie is forced into action. She and Toadspit follow the child-stealers to the neighbouring city of Spoke. Along the way, Toadspit is also captured, and Goldie discovers some dangerous secrets – secrets that the child-stealers will kill to protect. She will need all her skills as a thief and a liar if she is to survive and save her friends. But survive she must. Because the Fugleman has returned to Jewel, and the Fifth Keeper will soon be needed more than ever .

The Keepers 3: The Path of Beasts
Best suited for 9 – 13 years
When Goldie, Toadspit and Bonnie steal into Jewel in the middle of the night they find their city under the heel of the Fugleman, and the streets controlled by the Blessed Guardians and an army of ruthless mercenaries. The Museum itself is seething with danger, and only the older Keepers prevent it from spilling out into the city. Goldie, Toadspit and Bonnie must use all their clever tricks and hard-won bravery to undermine the Fugleman’s brutal regime before he rounds up the children of Jewel and sells them into slavery.
In order to stop the bombardment of the museum, save the children and defeat the Fugleman once and for all, Goldie must walk the Beast Road, an ancient pathway deep inside the museum, a pathway so secret and perilous that no one has ever returned from it. And according to the old stories, she can take only two companions, and they must be mortal enemies .
