Venom

by Horsfield, Dorothy (2006), 312pp., ISBN 1 74076 179 0.
AUD$27.23 (Including GST: AUD$29.95) (softcover)

Under mountain skies amidst the ragged litter of the bush are the hidden burrows of one of the world's most deadly creatures: funnel-web spiders. When young mother Madeleine Henderson joins Dr Paddy Jones in his project to find the funnel-webs of Australia's high country, her estranged husband's escalating jealousy enmeshes her in a web of lies, betrayal and political machinations.

Grief, love, funnel-webs and Federal politics are set against the beauty of an ancient landscape in this keenly observed novel that explores the line between human ambitions and frailties, and the venomous impulses we share with the spider-world.