Showing results by narrator "Casey Withoos" in All Categories

Summer, 2000. In the tranquil town of Queen's Point in southern Australia, the Whitlam family marks the end of every season with a lavish party in their clifftop mansion. Here, clutching her first glass of real champagne, the summer breeze intoxicating on her skin, sixteen-year-old Lucy Ross is kissed for the very first time. And then, in the shadows of the rose garden, she sees something she shouldn't.

After a traumatic assault, Hannah Novak returns to her home-town hoping for a fresh start. However, when strange gifts turn up on her doorstep, and a stalker fixates on her, she discovers that Blackbridge isn’t the safe haven it once was. With no family left to turn to, she’s forced to seek help from the broody new cop in town. Ryan Kilpatrick has travelled across the country to create a stable home for his young son, but being a police officer makes that hard. He doesn’t need Hannah’s problems added to his own, yet her courage and vulnerability awakens the protector in him.

When a fire in a remote trailer park community kills nine people, including 17-year-old Sabine Kelly’s mother and sister, Sabine confesses to the murders. Shortly after, she escapes custody, flees her broken hometown, and disappears into the thick forest and winding backwaters of her childhood refuge, the river.

Tasmania, 1874. Growing up in the impoverished tenements along the Hobart Rivulet, Harriet Brown is used to doing whatever it takes to survive. Including, at just twelve years old, shearing off her hair and pretending to be a boy to secure a job as label-paster at the George Peacock and Sons jam factory. Four years later, the deceit becomes too much to bear and Harriet risks everything on the chance at a future with her ambitious friend and workmate Henry Jones. But this decision forces her into a new deception: play the role of expert jam maker, or else be cast out onto the streets.

It happened the day of the Moon Festival. It could have been left behind, they all could have moved on with their lives. But secrets have a habit of rising to the surface, especially in small towns. Two couples, four ironclad friendships, the perfect coastal holiday town. With salt-stung houses perched like lifeguards overlooking the shore, Lago Point is the scene of postcards, not crime scenes. Wife and mother Abbi, town cop Blake, schoolteacher Hannah and local doctor Will are caught in their own tangled webs of deceit.

A gripping historical mystery for fans of Kate Morton and Natasha Lester’s The Paris Seamstress, The Cartographer’s Secret follows a young woman’s quest to heal a family rift as she becomes entangled in one of Australia’s greatest historical puzzles.

Sylvia Knight is losing hope that the person who killed her husband will ever face justice. Since the night of the hit-and-run, her world has been shrouded in hazy darkness—until she meets Theo St. John, the discoverer of a rare comet soon to be visible to the naked eye. As the comet begins to brighten, Sylvia wonders what the apparition might signify. She is soon drawn into the orbit of local mystic Joseph Evans, who believes the comet’s arrival is nothing short of a divine message.

After a whirlwind romance, London teashop waitress Fleur Richards can’t wait for her new husband, Hugh, to return from the Great War. But when word of his death arrives on Armistice Day, Fleur learns he has left her a sizable family fortune. Refusing to accept the inheritance, she heads to his beloved home country of Australia in search of the relatives who deserve it more.

Australia, 1906: Orphan Jane Piper is nine years old when philanthropist siblings Michael and Elizabeth Quinn take her into their home to further her schooling. The Quinns are no strangers to hardship. Having arrived in Australia as penniless immigrants, they now care for others as lost as they once were. Despite Jane’s mysterious past, her remarkable aptitude for mathematics takes her far over the next seven years, and her relationship with Elizabeth and Michael flourishes as she plays an increasingly prominent part in their business.

Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy's mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets. Will opening their hearts to the rabbit help them to heal or only invite further tragedy?

Mai On is devastated when her landlord sells her building to a property developer and the bakery she’s worked so hard to build is threatened. The last thing she needs is an outsider tearing down everything that matters to her. She’s determined not to be swayed by the sexy, charming developer. After costing his company millions of dollars, Nicholas Shadbolt is desperate to prove himself. Taking on the re-development of a rundown building is just the stepping stone he needs towards redemption.

Sara's employer sends her to work as temporary secretary to his cousin, Greg Camden. But the master of Ransome station has little time for his new secretary. Meanwhile, the beautiful and sophisticated Julia has no problem getting Greg's attention. Through hard work Sara shows Greg how indispensable she is. But she is shocked when he suddenly proposes a marriage of convenience. Will the arrangement be enough for a young girl with romantic dreams? And how will Julia react to their union?

So by the grace of a photograph that had inexplicably gone viral, Tony had found me. Or: he'd found Maggie. I had no way of knowing whether he was nuts or not; whether he might go to the cops. Maybe that sounds paranoid, but I don't think it's so ridiculous. People have gone to prison for much lesser things than accusations of child-killing . . .

In present-day Melbourne, a group of power-hungry academics are trying to reassemble a 19th century grimoire designed to summon Satan. For centuries magicians have compiled grimoires to call up demons. In Victorian London an ambitious warlock called Peter Owling designs a book to summon the Lord of Demons himself and thereby achieve eternal life. But not even his beautiful young acolyte Christian grasps the full extent of his master’s plans....

Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister, Rose, three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life, and disrupting her routine can be...dangerous. When Rose discovers that she cannot fall pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple.

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further—into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Reserved high school teacher Keely Mitchell is more than ready for her holiday on the west coast of Australia, so when a medical emergency turns over all her plans and an intervention by a kind stranger finds her recovering in a Margaret River vineyard, she is at first downcast. Keely had wanted to put recent traumatic events out of her mind, and recuperating alone in a stranger's house won't help that. But slowly the lovely food, spectacular wine and beautiful landscape of the area begin to work their spell.

Dairy farmer Tabitha Cooper-Jones has a heart of gold, yet she's the eternal bridesmaid. Everyone's best mate. Despite facing some serious challenges over the years, she's built a successful ice-cream business and cafe, she's adored by her family and is an integral part of her hometown - there's just one thing missing from her life. But the last thing Tab wants is a man - or worse, love - to stop her achieving her dream. In town for a temporary teaching contract, Fergus McWilliams thinks the small community of Walsh will be the perfect place to stay under the radar....

Best mates Teddy and Alice are hired hands with flexible moral boundaries. Whatever the mess, they can be relied upon to fix it with no questions asked. But sometimes it's not as simple as cleaning up. Teddy is searching the suburbs for a missing teenager with her occasional sidekick Art, while Alice's mission is to drive one of Australia's richest men along Victoria's east coast to his final resting place before anybody finds out he's dead. But when a surprise revelation sees their cases collide, Teddy and Alice turn the tables on their wealthy employers to shake out the truth.

Faith Forrester is at a crossroads. Single, thirty and living on a farm in a small Western Australian town, she's sick of being treated like a kitchen slave by her brother and father. Ten years ago, her mother died of breast cancer, and Faith has been treading water ever since. She wants to get her hands dirty on the family farm. She wants to prove to herself that she's done something worthwhile with her life. And she wants to find a man...