Lisa Kenway in-conversation with Ashley Kalagian Blunt

Set between the Blue Mountains and a Sydney hospital, Lisa Kenway’s All You Took from Me is a thriller brimming with great characters and nail-biting tension.

Anaesthetist Clare Carpenter has just lost her husband and her memory in a single-vehicle accident. So why is a stranger following her? After questioning patients about their dreams, she becomes convinced that an anaesthetic drug might help her access missing memories. But there’s no way to be certain without jeopardising her career or her life.

As unexplained threats escalate, Clare realises she must take matters into her own hands to learn the uncomfortable truth about her secretive husband, his connection to a mysterious club and what she did to trigger a stranger’s crusade for vengeance. But how far will she go?

Lisa Kenway is an Australian writer and anaesthetist, and her debut novel was inspired by her longstanding fascination with memory and consciousness. An earlier version of All You Took From Me was listed for the 2020 Richell Prize and was runner-up in the 2022 CYA conference competition (stories for adults). Lisa was awarded a Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre fellowship for 2023 and was highly commended in the 2022 Writing NSW Varuna fellowships. Her work has been published widely in journals and anthologies including Island Online, the Meanjin blog and Meniscus Literary Journal.

Ashley Kalagian Blunt is a writer, speaker and podcaster. Her bestselling psychological thriller, Dark Mode, is out now in Australia and the UK, and forthcoming in Germany. She is the author of two previous books, How to Be Australian, a memoir, and My Name Is Revenge, a thriller novella and collected essays. Her writing appears widely across Australian and international publications. Ashley is a frequent speaker and panel moderator, and co-hosts a podcast on writing, creativity and health.