Showing results by publisher "Penguin Random House Australia Audio" in Genre Fiction

Orphan Fleur Appleby is adopted by a loving undertaker and his wife, and she quickly develops a special gift for helping bereaved families. Her ambition to be the first female mortician in the country is fuelled by her plan to bring more women into the male-dominated funeral industry. Raised in the outback of South Australia's Flinders Ranges, Tom Catchlove is faced with a life-changing tragedy as a young boy. He works hard but dreams big, striving for a future as a wool classer. A chance encounter between the two children will change the course of their lives.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world's largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts...

Khadija is packing up her home of fifty years. In her box of special belongings are the last reminders she has of her son Ahmed, missing for more than twenty years. Her belongings take her back to her village childhood, her marriage and move to Marrakesh, and the birth of Ahmed when she was just thirteen.

How far you would you go for love? Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica. As animal populations plummet and commercial fishing faces prohibition, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny's life begin to unspool.

A young Anne flees Wattle Island in 1950, heartbroken and desperate to make her own way in the world. As she begins to forge a life for herself in the city, a forbidden love returns, and she is faced with a choice that could destroy all she has built. When disaster changes her life forever, starting the Wattle Island Book Club is the only thing that offers her solace.

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They're exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they've seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work. Problem is, they're not alone.

Meg Morrissey has just lost her job and her partner to an overseas assignment, when she is called back to the family home of Hunters Reach in the picturesque Adelaide Hills. Her ailing grandmother, who raised her when she was orphaned as a child, has always been a formidable figure in her life and this is hardly a welcome summons. When Meg arrives at the ramshackle old homestead, she learns that the place is up for sale. She is expected to care for the property with its extensive garden, while packing up the contents of the house.

Deep in the heart of Australia's high country, along an ancient, hidden track, lives Molly Johnson and her four surviving children, another on the way. Husband Joe is away months at a time droving livestock up north, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly's children are her world, and life is hard and precarious with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for protection - but it can be harder when Joe's around.

Birdsville, outback Queensland: the most remote town in the world, population 110. What the people lack in numbers they make up for in community spirit. When midwife and emergency nurse Phoebe McFadden fled her family dramas at age sixteen, she thought she'd left Birdsville for good. But when her cousin Scarlet asks her to be bridesmaid in her wedding party, Phoebe knows it's time to make her way home and face the past.

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing 14 grey wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska. Inti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she's witnessed - inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love.

Long past its heyday and deep in drought, the riverside hamlet of Nowhere River is slowly fading into a ghost-town. It's a place populated by those who are beholden to it, those who were born to it and those who took a wrong turn while trying to go somewhere else. City-born Carra married into Nowhere River, Lucie was brought to it by tragedy, Josie is root-bound and Florence knows nowhere else. All of them, though familiar with every inch of their tiny hometown, are as lost as the place itself.

In a near-future Australia, the death penalty is reinstated. The catch: the family of the victim must carry out the sentence. One family member gets twenty-four hours in a room with the condemned. No cameras. No microphones. They can dole out whatever punishment they decide. The only rule: at the end of the twenty-four hours, the criminal must be dead. When ten-year-old Lucy is murdered, her family is doubled over with grief. While her killer waits them to decide on his fate, psychologist Octavia Tate is assigned to guide the family through their decision.

Orphaned at sixteen, James Wakefield was determined to be a gun shearer like his father. Now he's killed twice, changed his name, and is on the run from the law. He had his reasons for both murders, and he felt no joy in taking life. Or did he? Ben McKinnon, meanwhile, is heir to the vast Glenfinnan sheep property near Goulburn, New South Wales. He too has a secret that, if ever revealed, would shatter the privileged lives of his father, Alastair, and his sisters, Jenna and Adele. When fate brings James and Ben together, a powerful friendship is forged.

Marnie Sellick is adrift when she lands a job at the coveted, mysterious beauty brand rytual cosmetica. The enigmatic founder and CEO, Luna Peters, takes a liking to Marnie, and as the two grow closer Marnie becomes intoxicated by the life that Luna, and rytual, can offer her. But all is not what it seems at rytual. Luna has a cult-like hold over the all-female staff, and that's not to mention what happens at their weekly Friday Night Drinks. As Marnie edges closer to the darkness at the centre of rytual's millennial pink facade, cracks begin to show.

In a little coffee shop in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different women come together. Sunny, the proud proprietor, who needs an ingenious plan to keep her cafe and customers safe. Yazmina, a young pregnant woman stolen from her remote village and now abandoned on Kabul's violent streets. Candace, a wealthy American who has finally left her husband for her Afghan lover. Isabel, a determined journalist with a secret that might keep her from the biggest story of her life. And Halajan, the sixty-year-old den mother, whose long-hidden love affair breaks all the rules.

When the lives of four very different women become entangled in a boutique Venice hotel, dark secrets unravel and not everyone who checked into the hotel will check out again. Set against a backdrop of the romance and tragedy of magical Venice, The Venice Hotel explores the powerful bonds that develop between women in times of crisis, and the healing power of female connection.

History teacher Gwen is driving to school when she hears a news report about a man on his regular morning swim, taken by a Great White. She races to the beach, but all that remains of Jason is his swimming cap, a flipper with a bite taken out of it and a bit of torn, blood-stained wet suit found floating on the other side of the island. Her private heartbreak is interrupted by a woman screeching to a stop on a motor bike. A frantic Tish screams for information, convinced it's her husband who's been taken by the man-eater. Gwen tries to reassure her that it's Jason who's been killed.

Sydney is full of climate refugees. Food and water insecurity have created tension. There is poverty, suspicion and cultural disharmony. A world of have and have nots.

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car he'd return it washed and polished, with a full tank of petrol. The problem is, he has no one left to borrow from. At 82 he's desperately lonely, broke and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred's luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of cranky Bernard Greer at Wattle River Nursing Home. Suddenly he has a roof over his head, warm meals in his belly and, most importantly, the chance to be part of a family again.

Thirteen-year-old Tilly's world is torn apart when her single mother dies suddenly and she is sent a million miles from everything she has ever known to a small country town and a guardian who's a total stranger. In the picturesque mountains of Far North Queensland, Kate is trying to move on from a failed marriage by renovating a van and making plans for an exciting travel escape. The fresh start she so desperately craves is within reach when an unexpected responsibility lands on her doorstep.