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Her first books, The Clothesline Diet series were published by Pan Macmillan in Australia and Harlequin in the United States. In 2015 she won a prestigious Sassy Award for her book Behind Closed Doors, published by Simon & Schuster, which was also a finalist in the 2016 Davitt Awards.
The highly acclaimed Blood on the Rosary was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018 followed by the epic Australian outback memoir A Diamond In The Dust, which will also be published in Germany in 2020.
Sue’s next book is the highly-anticipated The Freedom Circus, a deeply personal story of how her husband’s grandparents used the cover of a Polish circus to escape the Nazis. The Freedom Circus will be published by Penguin Random House in 2020.
‘A story of extraordinary bravery, resilience and love that needed to be told.’
Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz
‘We haven’t had a WWII book with this much potential in years,’
Ruth Ellis WH Smith
‘ What endures most throughout The Freedom Circus us an abiding sense of love,’
The AU Review
‘ Meticulously researched, powerful and incredibly moving,’
Better Reading
‘ Even in a genre defined by its outrageous, and often heart-breaking twists of tragedy and fortune, a new book recounting one Jewish family’s daring escape from wartime Poland has left both the general public and critics enthralled,’
The First News, Poland
‘ The book reads like a historical drama, thick with intensity and marked by horrifying prison scenes, night-time hideouts in the forest and other miraculous feats of survival. Smethurst is a compassionate, sharp writer, offering a unique angle of the war too often described only by men on the front line,’
Jessie Tu, The Age/SMH