In a town submerged with secrets and corruption, there are those who seek the truth…
Seka Torlak, now a journalism cadet, relocates to the tranquil town of Riverwood in 1998, seeking a fresh start. However, her peace is short-lived when she stumbles upon a cold case involving the murder of a former Vietnam Vet. Driven by a grieving mother's plea for justice, Seka begins to uncover a web of secrets that this seemingly idyllic town has buried deep. In her quest for truth, Seka befriends Dawn Winter, a fellow Bosnian woman haunted by the loss of a friend and ostracized by the townspeople for her tributes to the fallen. As Seka digs deeper, she finds herself entangled in a dangerous game of deceit and loyalty, facing ghosts of the past and present. Will she unravel the truth and deliver justice before it’s too late, or will the town's dark secrets consume her? Please be aware that trigger warnings could contain spoilers and so I have included them on my themes page For publicity information please view Mad Dawn Winter Media Kit below Bonus content-only available to newsletter subscribers
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Mad Dawn Winter Sample
Mad Dawn Winter Trailer
Click on the cover to find out about the prequel in the Seka Torlak Series.
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Click on the cover to find out about Book 1 in the Seka Torlak Series.
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Click on the cover to find out about the Book 2 in the Seka Torlak Series.
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Click on the cover to find out about Book 3 in the Seka Torlak Series.
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Click on the cover to find out about Book 4 in the Seka Torlak Series.
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Click on the cover to find out about Book 5 in the Seka Torlak Series.
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Click on the cover to find out about Book 6 in the Seka Torlak Series.
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Mad Dawn Winter Tropes
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The Regrets of Ben Hayes Tropes
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Media Kit
Title: Mad Dawn Winter
Pub date: 1 May 2026
ISBN Print: 9781922871619
ISBN Ebook: 9781922871602
BUY LINKS:
Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FTZ3CWTP
Amazon (AUS): https://www.amazon.com.au/Dawn-Winter-Seka-Torlak-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0FTZ3CWTP
Universal (International Amazon ebook & Wide Print): https://www.amrapajalic.com/dawn.html
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242446018-mad-dawn-winter
Prices (in USD):
Print: $19.99
E-Book: $3.99
Length: 240 Pages
Prices: (in AUD)
Print: $24.99
E-book: $4.99
Rating: Historical Mystery
Hashtags: #MadDawnWinter #SekaTorlakSeries #AmraPajalic #AustralianCrimeFiction
#HistoricalCrime #Nashos #NationalService #PostnatalPsychosis
Tagline: In a town submerged with secrets and corruption, there are those who seek the truth…
Short: Riverwood, 1998, in a small Australian country town that is close-knit and peaceful, Seka discovers a cold case of a former Vietnam Vet and unearths the layers of secrets hiding the truth behind his murder.
Medium tagline: In 1998, journalism cadet Seka Torlak arrives in the seemingly tranquil town of Riverwood seeking a fresh start, only to uncover a cold case surrounding the murder of a former Vietnam veteran. Driven by a grieving mother’s plea for justice, she begins to expose a web of silence, corruption, and loyalties rooted in the long aftermath of war. Will she unravel the truth and deliver justice before it’s too late, or will the town's dark secrets consume her?
Blurb:
In a town submerged with secrets and corruption, there are those who seek the truth…
Seka Torlak, now a journalism cadet, relocates to the tranquil town of Riverwood in 1998, seeking a fresh start. However, her peace is short-lived when she stumbles upon a cold case involving the murder of a former Vietnam Vet. Driven by a grieving mother's plea for justice, Seka begins to uncover a web of secrets that this seemingly idyllic town has buried deep.
In her quest for truth, Seka befriends Dawn Winter, a fellow Bosnian woman haunted by the loss of a friend and ostracized by the townspeople for her tributes to the fallen. As Seka digs deeper, she finds herself entangled in a dangerous game of deceit and loyalty, facing ghosts of the past and present. Will she unravel the truth and deliver justice before it’s too late, or will the town's dark secrets consume her?
Lead In Post
A Cold Case Crime Novel Confronting the Aftermath of Vietnam and Australia’s Culture of Silence, and the silenced reality of postnatal psychosis
Australian author Amra Pajalić releases Mad Dawn Winter, the third novel in her Seka Torlak mystery series—a crime novel that refuses to separate personal collapse from national history. Set against the long afterlife of the Vietnam War, the novel draws on the legacy of Australia’s National Service scheme (Nashos), returning soldiers, and the quiet devastation carried into suburban homes long after the fighting stopped. The book interrogates what happens when war trauma is never treated, never named, and instead mutates inside families, marriages, and communities.
At the centre of the novel is Dawn Winter, a Bosnian Australian woman ostracised by her town and haunted by a death no one wants to remember. As journalist Seka Torlak investigates a decades-old murder, she uncovers a web of buried violence that stretches back to Vietnam-era Australia—where men were sent to war by lottery, returned damaged, and expected to resume “normal life” without complaint.
The novel also confronts postnatal psychosis, a condition that has historically been misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or erased from public conversation. Rather than treating maternal breakdown as a personal failing or narrative shock device, Mad Dawn Winter situates it within a broader ecosystem of untreated trauma, gendered silence, and institutional neglect.
“This book exists because certain stories are still too uncomfortable to tell neatly,” Pajalić says. “We like clean war narratives. We like motherhood framed as instinctive and redemptive. We don’t like the mess left behind when both of those myths collapse.”
Blending crime fiction with historical reckoning, Mad Dawn Winter continues the Seka Torlak series’ project of exposing how violence—whether state-sanctioned or domestic—doesn’t disappear. It embeds itself. It waits. And eventually, it demands to be confronted.
The novel will appeal to readers of literary crime, historical fiction, and Australian stories that interrogate national myths rather than celebrate them.
Excerpt
1-Exiled
1998
I eased into my Toyota and turned onto River Road, the main road that ran parallel to the Guru River that hugged the town of Riverwood, the sun winking off the murky surface of the water as I drove. I passed by the Welcome to Riverwood sign, population 2,985, when I saw a woman walking with red roses in her arms. She turned down the path by the river. I stopped the car on the shoulder of the road, took the camera from the passenger seat beside me, and followed.
I’d walked down by the river yesterday with Ninu. I’d been told there was a beautiful gorge for swimming and we’d found it walking from my house, reaching the clifftop overlooking it. We’d had to climb down a winding path among the brush, but now as I followed the woman, I realised this was the other path to get to the gorge that most people from town used.
When Ninu and I had reached the gorge, we’d found a tree with flowers tied to it, a tribute to someone who had passed, probably drowned. I’d thought then it might make a good story about tributes and the people who left them, but to do that I’d need to track down the person leaving the tribute and now she’d landed in my lap, so to speak.
The woman walked to the tree and took down the dry and old flowers, tying the new bouquet with a red ribbon. I lifted the camera to my eye, framing a shot of her standing there, holding her hands up as if she were praying, the clifftop in the background behind her. The woman rubbed her hand over her face in a familiar gesture. I lifted my eye from the camera viewfinder and looked at her. Almost like how Muslims pray.
I let the camera hang around my neck and approached her.
‘Excuse me,’ I called, not wanting to startle her.
The woman glanced at me, but didn’t respond.
‘I work at the Riverwood Times and wanted to talk to you about your tribute.’
The woman walked toward me. I waited, a smile on my face. She brushed past me, continued walking without staying a word. I turned to look, bewildered by her cold shoulder. When she’d vanished from sight back up the road, I turned back around and walked to the tribute. I framed the shot of the red roses tied with the red ribbon to the pole, the yellow grassland on the banks swishing in the wind, the river murky and undulating in the current. I made a note to ask for drowning statistics at the police station. The breeze fluttered over me, raising goose pimples on my arms. I rubbed my arms, feeling as if someone had walked over my grave.
I dawdled at the gorge, giving the woman time to leave so I wouldn’t bump into her, feeling slightly embarrassed like I’d committed a faux pas. Who was she? While the townspeople I’d met so far viewed me as an exotic species with my ethnic name, Seka Torlak, the cause of much curiosity in this mostly Anglo town, everyone had been friendly and hospitable. This was the first time someone had been rude, and I didn’t know what I had done to cause this kind of reaction. Was she one of those who hated refugees and saw me as an interloper because of my migrant background? While no residents had been outwardly rude, I had overheard some conversations in the street and the way some townsfolk viewed migrants.
Author Bio:
Amra Pajalic is an award-winning Australian author, educator, and indie publisher known for crafting compelling stories that blend heart, humour, and heritage. Her work explores themes of identity, belonging, and resilience, often drawing from her Bosnian background.
She won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Civic Choice Award for her debut novel The Good Daughter, re-released as Sabiha's Dilemma (Pishukin Press, 2022). The anthology she co-edited, Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 Children's Book Council of the year awards and her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award.
She is the author of the Sassy Saints series and the Seka Torlak historical-mystery series, beginning with Time Kneels Between Mountains, and the second book Ghosts Among the Gumtrees, and companion essay collection that examine the legacy of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide
When she's not writing, Amra is podcasting on Amra’s Armchair Anecdotes, mentoring emerging writers, and delivering workshops across Australia on self-publishing, writing craft, and creative resilience.
Social media handles
Website: http://www.amrapajalic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amrapajalicauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmraPajalic
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amrapajalic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmraPajalicAuthor/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/amra-pajalic
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3310015.Amra_Pajalic
Author Central: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B005C8AIDY
Newsletter sign up (receive a FREE ebook copy of bonus story Art’s Fall and essay about Vietnam War Vets in Australia) https://www.amrapajalic.com/my-newsletter.html
Please be aware that trigger warnings could contain spoilers and so I have included them on my themes page
Pub date: 1 May 2026
ISBN Print: 9781922871619
ISBN Ebook: 9781922871602
BUY LINKS:
Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FTZ3CWTP
Amazon (AUS): https://www.amazon.com.au/Dawn-Winter-Seka-Torlak-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0FTZ3CWTP
Universal (International Amazon ebook & Wide Print): https://www.amrapajalic.com/dawn.html
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242446018-mad-dawn-winter
Prices (in USD):
Print: $19.99
E-Book: $3.99
Length: 240 Pages
Prices: (in AUD)
Print: $24.99
E-book: $4.99
Rating: Historical Mystery
Hashtags: #MadDawnWinter #SekaTorlakSeries #AmraPajalic #AustralianCrimeFiction
#HistoricalCrime #Nashos #NationalService #PostnatalPsychosis
Tagline: In a town submerged with secrets and corruption, there are those who seek the truth…
Short: Riverwood, 1998, in a small Australian country town that is close-knit and peaceful, Seka discovers a cold case of a former Vietnam Vet and unearths the layers of secrets hiding the truth behind his murder.
Medium tagline: In 1998, journalism cadet Seka Torlak arrives in the seemingly tranquil town of Riverwood seeking a fresh start, only to uncover a cold case surrounding the murder of a former Vietnam veteran. Driven by a grieving mother’s plea for justice, she begins to expose a web of silence, corruption, and loyalties rooted in the long aftermath of war. Will she unravel the truth and deliver justice before it’s too late, or will the town's dark secrets consume her?
Blurb:
In a town submerged with secrets and corruption, there are those who seek the truth…
Seka Torlak, now a journalism cadet, relocates to the tranquil town of Riverwood in 1998, seeking a fresh start. However, her peace is short-lived when she stumbles upon a cold case involving the murder of a former Vietnam Vet. Driven by a grieving mother's plea for justice, Seka begins to uncover a web of secrets that this seemingly idyllic town has buried deep.
In her quest for truth, Seka befriends Dawn Winter, a fellow Bosnian woman haunted by the loss of a friend and ostracized by the townspeople for her tributes to the fallen. As Seka digs deeper, she finds herself entangled in a dangerous game of deceit and loyalty, facing ghosts of the past and present. Will she unravel the truth and deliver justice before it’s too late, or will the town's dark secrets consume her?
Lead In Post
A Cold Case Crime Novel Confronting the Aftermath of Vietnam and Australia’s Culture of Silence, and the silenced reality of postnatal psychosis
Australian author Amra Pajalić releases Mad Dawn Winter, the third novel in her Seka Torlak mystery series—a crime novel that refuses to separate personal collapse from national history. Set against the long afterlife of the Vietnam War, the novel draws on the legacy of Australia’s National Service scheme (Nashos), returning soldiers, and the quiet devastation carried into suburban homes long after the fighting stopped. The book interrogates what happens when war trauma is never treated, never named, and instead mutates inside families, marriages, and communities.
At the centre of the novel is Dawn Winter, a Bosnian Australian woman ostracised by her town and haunted by a death no one wants to remember. As journalist Seka Torlak investigates a decades-old murder, she uncovers a web of buried violence that stretches back to Vietnam-era Australia—where men were sent to war by lottery, returned damaged, and expected to resume “normal life” without complaint.
The novel also confronts postnatal psychosis, a condition that has historically been misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or erased from public conversation. Rather than treating maternal breakdown as a personal failing or narrative shock device, Mad Dawn Winter situates it within a broader ecosystem of untreated trauma, gendered silence, and institutional neglect.
“This book exists because certain stories are still too uncomfortable to tell neatly,” Pajalić says. “We like clean war narratives. We like motherhood framed as instinctive and redemptive. We don’t like the mess left behind when both of those myths collapse.”
Blending crime fiction with historical reckoning, Mad Dawn Winter continues the Seka Torlak series’ project of exposing how violence—whether state-sanctioned or domestic—doesn’t disappear. It embeds itself. It waits. And eventually, it demands to be confronted.
The novel will appeal to readers of literary crime, historical fiction, and Australian stories that interrogate national myths rather than celebrate them.
Excerpt
1-Exiled
1998
I eased into my Toyota and turned onto River Road, the main road that ran parallel to the Guru River that hugged the town of Riverwood, the sun winking off the murky surface of the water as I drove. I passed by the Welcome to Riverwood sign, population 2,985, when I saw a woman walking with red roses in her arms. She turned down the path by the river. I stopped the car on the shoulder of the road, took the camera from the passenger seat beside me, and followed.
I’d walked down by the river yesterday with Ninu. I’d been told there was a beautiful gorge for swimming and we’d found it walking from my house, reaching the clifftop overlooking it. We’d had to climb down a winding path among the brush, but now as I followed the woman, I realised this was the other path to get to the gorge that most people from town used.
When Ninu and I had reached the gorge, we’d found a tree with flowers tied to it, a tribute to someone who had passed, probably drowned. I’d thought then it might make a good story about tributes and the people who left them, but to do that I’d need to track down the person leaving the tribute and now she’d landed in my lap, so to speak.
The woman walked to the tree and took down the dry and old flowers, tying the new bouquet with a red ribbon. I lifted the camera to my eye, framing a shot of her standing there, holding her hands up as if she were praying, the clifftop in the background behind her. The woman rubbed her hand over her face in a familiar gesture. I lifted my eye from the camera viewfinder and looked at her. Almost like how Muslims pray.
I let the camera hang around my neck and approached her.
‘Excuse me,’ I called, not wanting to startle her.
The woman glanced at me, but didn’t respond.
‘I work at the Riverwood Times and wanted to talk to you about your tribute.’
The woman walked toward me. I waited, a smile on my face. She brushed past me, continued walking without staying a word. I turned to look, bewildered by her cold shoulder. When she’d vanished from sight back up the road, I turned back around and walked to the tribute. I framed the shot of the red roses tied with the red ribbon to the pole, the yellow grassland on the banks swishing in the wind, the river murky and undulating in the current. I made a note to ask for drowning statistics at the police station. The breeze fluttered over me, raising goose pimples on my arms. I rubbed my arms, feeling as if someone had walked over my grave.
I dawdled at the gorge, giving the woman time to leave so I wouldn’t bump into her, feeling slightly embarrassed like I’d committed a faux pas. Who was she? While the townspeople I’d met so far viewed me as an exotic species with my ethnic name, Seka Torlak, the cause of much curiosity in this mostly Anglo town, everyone had been friendly and hospitable. This was the first time someone had been rude, and I didn’t know what I had done to cause this kind of reaction. Was she one of those who hated refugees and saw me as an interloper because of my migrant background? While no residents had been outwardly rude, I had overheard some conversations in the street and the way some townsfolk viewed migrants.
Author Bio:
Amra Pajalic is an award-winning Australian author, educator, and indie publisher known for crafting compelling stories that blend heart, humour, and heritage. Her work explores themes of identity, belonging, and resilience, often drawing from her Bosnian background.
She won the 2009 Melbourne Prize for Literature's Civic Choice Award for her debut novel The Good Daughter, re-released as Sabiha's Dilemma (Pishukin Press, 2022). The anthology she co-edited, Growing up Muslim in Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2014), was shortlisted for the 2015 Children's Book Council of the year awards and her memoir Things Nobody Knows But Me (Transit Lounge, 2019) was shortlisted for the 2020 National Biography Award.
She is the author of the Sassy Saints series and the Seka Torlak historical-mystery series, beginning with Time Kneels Between Mountains, and the second book Ghosts Among the Gumtrees, and companion essay collection that examine the legacy of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide
When she's not writing, Amra is podcasting on Amra’s Armchair Anecdotes, mentoring emerging writers, and delivering workshops across Australia on self-publishing, writing craft, and creative resilience.
Social media handles
Website: http://www.amrapajalic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amrapajalicauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmraPajalic
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amrapajalic
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmraPajalicAuthor/
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/amra-pajalic
Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3310015.Amra_Pajalic
Author Central: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B005C8AIDY
Newsletter sign up (receive a FREE ebook copy of bonus story Art’s Fall and essay about Vietnam War Vets in Australia) https://www.amrapajalic.com/my-newsletter.html
Please be aware that trigger warnings could contain spoilers and so I have included them on my themes page
Questions
What is the central mystery at the heart of this book?
In Mad Dawn Winter, Seka is a journalism cadet in the small town of Riverwood investigating the cold case murder of Ben Hayes, a Vietnam Vet, twenty years before.
What makes this case different from anything Seka has faced before?
In this mystery Seka is investigating two cases, Ben Hayes murder and Dawn Winter’s missing friend. Dawn Winter is a Bosnian migrant who suffered from post-natal psychosis and Seka is reading her diary to uncover what happened to her friend.
Who is Seka Torlak at this point in her life—and what is she struggling with internally
In this book Seka has found her new path as a journalist and she is also caught between her family’s desire for her to embrace Islam and live within her community, and her desire of independence.
How does this story reflect real-world injustice?
This novel is inspired by a small-town journalist who was attempting to uncover a cold case murder by writing stories about the murder, and this is the inspiration for Seka’s latest investigation. She wants to write newspaper stories to draw attention to the murder a Ben Hayes to find justice for his dying mother.
What was the inspiration behind Mad Dawn Winter and her search for her friend?
Like my character Dawn Winter, my mother suffered from post-natal psychosis, and I had the idea of what if a woman who suffered from psychosis, was trying to solve a mystery, but was dismissed because of her mental illness.
How has Seka evolved across the series?
Seka has found a way to reconcile the girl she was before the war, to the woman she is now. She’s given up on certain dreams and found a new dream to pursue. She’s also discovering a way to channel her pain and loss in her investigations.
What threads carry across the books?
What I’m loving about developing a series is the characters that Seka meets along the way, and become a part of her story, and the way that these characters return. I love how the world she’s in is becoming larger and has more depth, and how this allows me to develop her inner world. In Mad Dawn Winter her boyfriend Ninu from Ghosts Among the Gumtrees returns, as does her best friend Phuong-Vy, a Vietnamese refugee who is also finding her way in Australia.
Where is the series heading next?
I’ve always loved ghost stories and when I began writing this series, ghosts appeared as warnings of impending death. In Ghosts Among the Gumtrees they were there as metaphors for violence never processed and lives denied closure. However, in Mad Dawn Winter I wanted to give a voice to a victim and she developed into a ghost, and so now the series is firmly moving into the supernatural mystery genre.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
This book had various incarnations. First, it began as a historical story set in the 1970s, then it shifted to a contemporary story, and then as Seka developed as a character, I wanted this to be one of her cases. Because I’ve written so many different versions of this story I was able to layer intertextuality with Dawn’s story told through first person diary entries, and I have a bonus short story that is based on research I did in setting the story in the 1970s with Art Monday as the investigating journalist, and his story as a Vietnam Vet. I also wrote a short story from Ben Hayes point of view showing the reality of life as a Nasho, National Australian Reserve soldier. I loved the opportunity to bring together all the different threads of research and tell such complex stories into the one case.
Why is this not just a thriller, but a story that stays with you?
There are so many different stories being told in this novel, and different perspectives and layers brought in, and I loved the challenge of developing these voices and layering these stories. There is so much history that this covers in terms of the Vietnam War, Australian servicemen and what happened to them both during the war and the trauma that they lived with afterwards, post-natal psychosis and the treatment in the 1970s with shock therapy that left women like my mother with life-long affects like emotional blunting and cognitive issues, and how homosexuality was stigmatised during the 1970s and the effect on men who had to hide.
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