Showing results by publisher "HarperAudio" in Genre Fiction

In the tradition of Sophie Green, Joanna Nell and Tricia Stringer comes an absolutely sparkling, feelgood delight of a novel, set in the Clare Valley, where four very different women are thrown together in a creative writing course in the library of a small country town.

Maz Antonio has spent the last two years in prison so is determined to make the first major family gathering in their new home deep in Australian suburbia as perfect as possible. She owes it to everyone after the terrible mistakes she's made ... mistakes for which she will always be trying to atone. This special lunch is her chance to make things right for her husband and children, to show everyone that she can maintain her sobriety, that things can go back to normal.

1954: When 16-year-old Hungarian Elizabeta arrives in Australia with her family, she is hoping to escape the hopelessness of life as a refugee in post-war Germany. Her first stop is the Bonegilla Migrant Camp on the banks of the Murray in rural Victoria, a temporary home for thousands of new arrivals, all looking for work and a better life. There, Elizabeta becomes firm friends with the feisty Greek Vasiliki; quiet Italian Iliana; and the adventurous Frances, the daughter of the camp's director.

Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family's cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.

1939: Fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated from London to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the Aberdeen family in a charming stone cottage, Hazel distracts her young sister with a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own: Whisperwood. But the unthinkable happens when Flora vanishes near the banks of the River Thames. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister's disappearance, carrying the guilt into adulthood.

On a small island off the coast of Scotland, an isolated community is grieving. Eighteen-year-old Alan Ferguson was found at the foot of the lighthouse—an apparent suicide. DIs Georgina Lennox and Richard Stewart are sent to investigate. A raging storm keeps them trapped on the island for four days. And the locals don't take kindly to mainlanders. As George and Ritchie question the island's inhabitants, they discover a village filled with superstition and shrouded in secrets. But someone wants those secrets to stay buried. At any cost.

A young girl loses both her parents in a tragic event and is taken to live with her grandmother on a flower farm. Growing up, Alice learns the language of Australian native flowers as a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. But she also learns that there are secrets within secrets about her past. An unexpected betrayal leaves her reeling, and she escapes to try to make her own—sometimes painful—way through the world and to find her story.

Isobel Ashworth breezes through life, blissfully accustomed to the privilege which comes with her family name. But that changes when she arrives in the exclusive town of Hartwell. Sent there by her father to complete a controversial property development—and prove herself a serious player in the succession plan—her perfect life is unravelling. Isobel's fiance is telling lies, the project is a disaster and the locals hate her; could her father be setting her up to fail? Buzzing with the promise of a big story, journalist Meg Hunter arrives in Hartwell to expose the Ashworth family dealings.

Journalist and single mother Suzy Hamilton gets a phone call one summer morning, and finds out that the subject of one of her investigative exposes, 25-year-old wellness blogger Tracey Doran, has killed herself overnight. Suzy is horrified by this news but copes in the only way she knows how - through work, mothering, and carrying on with her ill-advised, tandem affairs.

1814 Sydney When Mary Greenway, freshly arrived from the old country, steps into the maelstrom of Sydney Town with three children at her skirts, she has high hopes of a new beginning, despite having little money and a husband in irons. After all, the sudden death of her sadistic first husband has meant freedom from her gilded cage and Francis Greenway is an architect of some promise, under the protection of Admiral Phillip himself.

Scarred by a recent tragedy on Federation Peak, Tess Atherton is reluctant to guide a group of young hikers in the wild Tasmanian winter, but it seems safer than remaining amid the violence that threatens them in Hobart. Little does she know that she has brought the danger with her....Detective Senior Sergeant Jared Denham is closing in on a serial killer, but someone doesn't want him getting to the truth, and the case is becoming personal. He already owes Tess his life and wants to return the favor—but when it comes to enemies, Jared may be looking in the wrong direction.

Maitland, 1889. When nineteen-year-old Constance Montague wakes one Wednesday she expects the day to unfold like any other. Breakfast with her grandmother Nell and her mother Faith, a meeting in Maitland with the ladies of the Benevolent Society, perhaps a gentle stroll along the banks of the Hunter River. But this Wednesday is different. Nell has vanished. Concerned, Connie determines to track Nell down and follows a lead to Old Government House in Parramatta, now a guest house. There, to her astonishment she finds her grandmother holding court.

Kate Webb still grieves over the loss of her young son. Ten years on, she spends her weekends hungover, attending open houses on Sydney's wealthy north shore and imagining the lives of the people who live there. Then Kate visits the Harding house - the perfect house with, it seems, the perfect family. A photograph captures a kind-looking man, a beautiful woman she knew at university, and a boy - a boy that for one heartbreaking moment she believes is her own son.

Food stylist Sophie Crommelin has a beautiful life. Now that their two boys are grown up, she and her husband Matt - an acclaimed artist - are leaving London for a new start on England's fashionably boho south coast. But the day after the house is sold, a series of shocks leave Sophie reeling - and suddenly she's heading off to Hastings on her own.

Shortly before Christmas in 2018, Tess McCarthy, a hard-working English teacher who never does anything out of the ordinary, flies to Western Australia's remote Abrolhos Islands. She's in search of answers—both to the infamous Batavia shipwreck and her personal family crises. Amsterdam, 1628. Saskia, an orphaned young Dutchwoman, boards Batavia with relatives, bound for a new and potentially dangerous life in the East Indies—only for her world to first collide with Aris Jansz, the ship's reluctant under surgeon.

Bree Johnston has given up trying to be the perfect lawyer. It's time to focus on her own dreams, so she decides to leave the city and set up an alpaca farm and wool shop. Her grandmother Rose might be her only supporter, but that's fine. Bree's done trying to win her parents' approval. She finds the perfect property in the charming small town of Wagtail Ridge but gets more than she bargained for when sparks start flying with the handsome real estate agent.

When the recently widowed Melinda Monroe sees this ad, she quickly decides that the remote mountain town of Virgin River might be the perfect place to escape her heartache, and to re-energise the nursing career she loves. But her high hopes are dashed within an hour of arriving - the cabin is a dump, the roads are treacherous, and the local doctor wants nothing to do with her. Realising she’s made a huge mistake, Mel decides to leave town the following morning.

Forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta has returned to Virginia as the chief medical examiner. She and her husband, Benton, are headquartered five miles from the Pentagon, in a post-pandemic world that's been torn apart by civil and political unrest. Just weeks into the job, Scarpetta is called to investigate a woman's body that has been shockingly displayed on railroad tracks. As Scarpetta follows the trail, it leads unnervingly close to her own neighborhood....

Henry "Hal" Courtney has always lived at sea. He watched his own father executed during the Anglo-Dutch naval war, and spent his entire young adulthood avenging his father's death. Now a truce has been made between the warring countries and Hal is captain of his own ship - the Golden Bough. From the slave markets of Zanzibar to the pirate-riddled waters of the Indian Ocean, Hal leads his crew in and out of the waves of danger. But he soon realizes that just because the war is over, does not mean the battle is won, and the more a man achieves, the more he has to lose.

Indulged and wealthy Kat Fitzhubert is sold in an arranged marriage to a colony across the world. Lady Viola Montefiore is the dark-skinned changeling of a ducal family, kept hidden and then shipped away. Titania Boot is as broad as a carthorse and as useful. On the long sea voyage from their homeland of England, these three women are fast bonded in an unlikely friendship.