Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Vuletic" in All Categories

On a sweltering day in a clifftop beach shack, Jack and Lou Bright grow suspicious about the behaviour of their charismatic, unpredictable father, Charlie. A girl they know has disappeared, and as the day unfolds, Jack's eruptions of panic, Lou's sultry rebellions and their little sister Phoebe's attention-seeking push the family towards revelation.

Nikki Gemmell's world changed forever in October 2015 when the body of her elderly mother was found and it became clear she had decided to end her own life. After the immediate shock and devastation came the guilt and the horror, for Nikki, her family, relatives, and friends. No note was left, so the questions that Elayn's death raised were endless. Was the decision an act of independence or the very opposite? Was it a desperate act driven by hopelessness and anger, or was her euthanasia a reasoned act of empowerment?

It's 1947, and the war is over, but Juliet Barnard is still tormented by secrets. She was a British agent and wireless operator in occupied Paris until her mission went critically wrong. Juliet was caught by the Germans, imprisoned and tortured in a mansion in Paris' Avenue Foch. Now that she's home, Juliet can't - or won't - relive the horrors that occurred in that place. Nor will she speak about Sturmbannführer Strasser, the manipulative Nazi who held her captive....

Elizabeth Macquarie, widow of the disgraced former Governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, is in mourning - not only for her husband, but the loss of their shared dream to transform the penal colony into a bright new world. Over the course of one long sleepless night on the windswept isle of Mull, she remembers her life in that wild and strange country; a revolution of ideas as dramatic as any in history; and her dangerous alliance with the brilliant, mercurial Francis Greenway, the colony's maverick architect.

In each of these tales, Margaret Atwood deftly illuminates the single instant that shapes a whole life: In a few brief minutes we watch as characters progress from the vulnerabilities of adolescence through the passions of youth into the precarious complexities of middle age. By superimposing the past on the present, Atwood paints interior landscapes shaped by time, regret, and life's lost chances, endowing even the banal with a sense of mystery.

A dramatic crime thriller from the best-selling author of Without Consent. For pathologist and forensic physician Dr Anya Crichton, the death of a gang rape victim hours before she is due to give evidence at trial is more than only a tragedy. The psychotic Harbourn brothers, the girl's accused attackers, now look like they're getting away with two horrific crimes.

It feels like the safest place on Earth. A family-friendly, floating palace. But, as Anya Crichton soon discovers, cruise ships aren’t all that they seem.... Statistics tell us that a woman is twice as likely to be sexually assaulted on a cruise ship than on dry land. Customers aren’t screened, so the ships are a haven for sex offenders and paedophiles. With no policing, and floating in international waters, sexual assaults and passengers ‘disappearing’ are uncommonly frequent.

Forensic physician Dr Anya Crichton is presented with a patient who has returned from her honeymoon with multiple sexually transmitted infections. Her husband has none of them. She tearfully denies having had any other partners and Anya believes her. Is this a medical phenomenon or has something more sinister taken place? Anya’s investigations into the case leads to a ground breaking study that attracts international attention.

Forensic Physician Dr Anya Crichton is on the trail of a serial rapist. When two of the victims are later stabbed to death, police suspicion immediately falls upon Geoffrey Willard, recently released from 20 years in prison for the brutal rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl. Unravelling myriad pieces of forensic evidence, Anya is confronted with the greatest ethical dilemma of her career. If Willard is innocent, she is about to blow the whistle and ruin a fellow pathologist’s reputation. If he is guilty, her involvement has jeopardised the police’s case and ensured a rapist-murderer goes free.

Meet Merlin. He's Lucy's bright, beautiful son - who just happens to be autistic. Since Merlin's father left them in the lurch, Lucy has made Merlin the centre of her world. Struggling with the joys and tribulations of raising her adorable yet challenging child (if only Merlin came with operating instructions), Lucy doesn't have room for any other man in her life. By the time Merlin turns 10, Lucy is seriously worried that the Pope might start ringing her up for tips on celibacy, so resolves to dip a toe back into the world of dating.

Jo returns to South Africa after ten years in the UK to cover the riots sweeping the Jo’burg township of Alex. Nico, her estranged Afrikaner father, reappears and asks her to help prove his innocence in the murder of a black man, abducted by the security forces decades earlier. As they set off on a road trip through South Africa’s now-unfamiliar landscape, it becomes clear that Nico knows more about the murder than he is letting on, and Jo begins to wonder whether she is his accomplice, or his captive.

After a troubled childhood and two failed marriages, Rena has achieved success as a photographer. She specializes in infrared techniques that expose her pictures’ otherwise hidden landscapes and capture the raw essence of deeply private moments in the lives of her subjects. Away from her lover, and stuck in Florence, Italy, with her infuriating stepmother and her aging, unwell father, Rena confronts not only the masterpieces of the Renaissance but the banal inconveniences of a family holiday.

New Year’s Day 1901 sees the birth of Australia as a nation, eager to claim her place on the world stage. Clytie Hart, a daring equestrienne, is travelling with her mother in a wagon train along the back roads of Victoria’s Gold Triangle. Once world-famous, Wildebrand Circus is now struggling to survive. But a chance meeting with Rom Delaney, a wild young adventurer, changes everything. His invitation to play in Hoffnung, an isolated gold-mining town, promises to restore the circus’ fortunes. To Clytie, the roving life is all she has ever known.

Cate Carlton has recently died, yet she is able to linger on, watching her three young children and her husband as they come to terms with their life without her on their rural horse property. As the months pass and her children grow, they cope in different ways, drawn closer and pulled apart by their shared loss. And all Cate can do is watch on helplessly, seeing their grief, how much they miss her and how - heartbreakingly - they begin to heal.

1943: Each night in a bomb shelter beneath the Berlin Zoo an Australian woman, Vera, shelters with her German husband, Axel, the zoo's director. Together, they struggle to look after the animals through the air raids and food shortages. When the zoo's staff is drafted into the army, forced labourers are sent in as replacements. At first, Vera finds the idea abhorrent, but gradually she realises that the new workers are the zoo's only hope, and forms an unlikely bond with one of them.

No matter how far you run, the past will always find you. Juliet's elderly grandparents are killed in their Adelaide home. Who would commit such a heinous crime - and why? The only clue is her grandfather Karl's missing signet ring. When Juliet's estranged sister, Lily, returns in fear for her life, Juliet suspects something far more sinister than a simple break-in gone wrong. Before Juliet can get any answers, Lily vanishes once more.

On 11th February you will kill a man called Arthur Grimm. Of your own free will. And for a good reason. Norah has just moved from Berlin to Vienna in order to leave her old life behind her for good when a homeless woman spits these words at her. Norah is unnerved: many years earlier, something terrible happened to her on 11th February. She shrugs this off as a mere coincidence, however, until shortly afterwards she meets a man called Arthur Grimm. Soon Norah begins to have a dreadful suspicion: does she have a good reason to take revenge on Grimm?

It's time to rethink rape. Centuries of different approaches to rape as inflicted by men on women have got us nowhere. Rape statistics remain intractable: one woman in five will experience sexual violence. Very few rapes find their way into court. The crucial issue is consent, thought by some to be easy to establish and by others impossible. Sexual assault does not diminish; relations between the sexes do not improve; litigation balloons. In On Rape Germaine Greer argues there has to be a better way.

Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With this androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us on a journey into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, a novel that satisfies as much as it challenges. Eddie Twyborn is bisexual and beautiful, the son of a Judge and a drunken mother. With this androgynous hero - Eudoxia/Eddie/Eadith Twyborn - and through his search for identity, for self-affirmation and love in its many forms, Patrick White takes us on a journey into the ambiguous landscapes, sexual, psychological and spiritual, of the human condition.