The Letter Girl

Jet Black has left her barmaid duties behind to run some valuable merchandise to the next city.

The merchandise? Drugs? Stolen Goods? Nope, something much much better. She's managed to get hold of the world's only copy of Julius Caesar's long-lost masterpiece, Dr Analogia. All she has to do is deliver it to a black market dealer known as the Polymath and she'll finally have made herself a fortune.

But there's a catch or two along the way.

You see, books are banned and if Jet is caught with it - well, death would be the best way out. Another catch is that there's some unpleasant thugs on her tail. There's the insane head of a huge corporation that spans the world and his trusty deputy, two head-kickers in a red sports car and an all-male singing group. They all want to get their hands on Jet ASAP.

Can Jet make it to the next city in her clapped-out old van with only her laptop computer for company? She's determined to reach the other side where her fortune awaits, but she'll have to enlist the help of an old man who has spent 20 years living in a telephone box, gun-toting Ferals and a pilot who just happens to be blind.

Shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Division, Best Novel, 1999