The Leap

Publisher details

Author
Paul Daley
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Genre
Fiction
Released
29 July, 2025
ISBN
9781761632525

The Leap

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Synopsis

Welcome to The Leap, an outback town fuelled by fear, churning with corruption, prejudice and misogyny – and blighted by its inescapable history of frontier violence. Into this nightmarish morass falters traumatised British diplomat, Benedict Fotheringham-Gaskill. He’s on his first Australian mission, one seemingly straightforward enough – until he arrives in The Leap to battle a town conspiring against him.

The Leap is baying for vengeance over the alleged murder of the celebrated daughter of a powerful local grazier. But Benedict is on an impossible quest for the opposite: mercy for the young woman’s two accused female killers. The townspeople will challenge and threaten him at every turn as he fights for justice, his future, his sanity – and ultimately his life.

Reviews

A Pulse-Pounding Literary Thriller: Read an Extract from The Leap by Paul Daley

Review | Extract

12 August 2025

A Pulse-Pounding Literary Thriller: Read an Extract from The Leap by Paul Daley

    Paul Daley
    About the author

    Paul Daley

    Paul Daley is an author, journalist, essayist and short story writer. His books have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s History Prize and ACT Book of the Year. He has won two Walkley Awards and the National Press Club Award for Excellence in Press Gallery Journalism. His essays have appeared in Meanjin and Griffith Review, and he writes ‘Postcolonial’, a column for The Guardian about Australian national identity, history and Indigenous culture. His literary novel Jesustown was published to great acclaim in 2022. Author website pauldaleywrites.com and Instagram @pauldaleywrites

    Books by Paul Daley

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