Showing results by narrator "Taryn Ryan" in All Categories

I gaze at my husband’s once handsome face, so still and pale in the hospital bed. The doctors say I should keep talking. He might be able to hear me even after the terrible accident that left him fighting for his life. But all I have to whisper to my husband is this: "I know what you did."

Elizabeth is Joe’s foster mother, but she loves him like her own. The five-year-old, who adores superheroes and watching the birds outside, is the child she has dreamed of. As she looks into the garden, where he was playing just moments ago, her heart feels like it has been ripped from her chest. She was meant to save Joe from his birth mother who almost harmed his chances at life. The woman who has been trying to desperately get him back. She was meant to protect Joe from her husband. The man who, right now, lies to the police, saying he was making breakfast when Joe disappeared.

From the outside the parents of the kindergarten class at Darley Heights primary school seem to have it all. Living in the wealthy Sydney suburbs, it's a community where everyone knows each other - and secrets don't stay secret for long. The big date in the calendar is the school's annual fundraising trivia night, but when the evening gets raucously out of hand, talk turns to partner-swapping. Initially scandalised, it's not long before a group of parents make a reckless one-night-only pact. But in the harsh light of day, those involved must face the fallout of their behaviour.

My hand trembles as I stare at the anonymous text. On this sunny Saturday morning, our twin ten-year-old boys were playing in the park just down our tree-lined street. But only one of them has come home… and it’s all my husband’s fault. I race to Leo’s study and demand answers. As his face turns white, I know: one of his affairs has turned deadly. I always smell the unfamiliar perfume on his shirt. I try to pretend we are a happy family, for the sake of the children… but now, my child is in terrible danger.

The neighbours look on in shock as two stretchers are wheeled past gated homes on a quiet suburban street. Handcuffs are clipped on a young woman with fear in her face. The Cordells were the perfect family. But now, in a beautiful home where happy photos line the walls and flowers adorn the dinner table, it looks like a daughter has killed her loving parents. Everyone tuts and shakes their heads, saying there was always something strange about Juliet. And one person watching from the sidelines has triumph in their eyes. Someone who knew this would happen all along.

When Mara Gregory receives a letter from the father whom she believed to have died when she was a child, her world is turned upside down. Aaron Buchanan only discovered that he had a daughter a couple of years ago and now he's desperate to play a part in her life. In the face of her mother's opposition, Mara arranges to meet her father and his family. In a breath-taking corner of the world, amid a waterfront community on Australia's west coast, will Mara find him the disappointment that her mother promises?

Kree Garrett's younger brother Seth is all the family she has left, so when he goes missing while working in the Australian outback, she races from America to join in the search. To everyone's relief, Seth is rescued just in time by local volunteers and Kree finds, in an abandoned historic Cobb & Co coach house, the opportunity to thank the community she's fallen in love with. But it isn't only the town she's fallen for....

A completely gripping psychological thriller that will leave you not knowing who to trust, from million-copy best-seller Nicole Trope. Anyone who loves Shari Lapena or Lisa Jewell will be totally addicted!

Dawn Grave is a career detective who's holding on to a dark past—one that destroys relationships and wreaks havoc on her personal life. For more than twenty years, she's tried to forget the horrors of her youth—while her sister has spent all that time digging for answers. Now a cryptic text message threatens to throw it all back into the light. Dawn attempts to call her sister, but when Lisa can't be reached, she knows something terrible has happened. But finding Lisa means returning to the remote tropical town in northern Australia where her nightmares all began.

Every family has secrets, and on the hottest day of the year, the truth is about to come out. As a tragedy unfolds behind closed doors, the dawn chorus is split by the wail of sirens. And one by one the families who tried so hard to welcome the Wests begin to realise: Hogarth Street will never be the same again.

It’s the phone call every mother dreads. I’m climbing into the car after a trip to the grocery store. As the engine starts, my phone rings. It’s my stepdaughter, Shelby, who is babysitting my three-year-old Millie. "I only went upstairs for a second," she says through her sobs. "She’s gone." When the police turn up, Shelby’s story starts to unravel. What is she hiding? Then I get a message saying, "Your husband is not who you think he is." Suddenly, my family feel like strangers. Everyone has a secret - even me.

An unexpected inheritance is most people's dream, but not so for Paula. She's happy and secure in Western Australia with her own business, a complete contrast to her rootless childhood, and has little interest in the minor stately home in Wiltshire of which she is apparently now the owner. Persuaded to at least visit the property, she travels to the UK but from the journey to what awaits her at the other end, complications personal, romantic and financial abound, which will test the adage that home is where the heart is.

A FARMING LIFE shares the uplifting stories of women from six rural families as their resilience is tested by personal loss, illness, fractured relationships, natural disasters and the challenges that come with working in a traditionally male-dominated world. These women are all hands-on farmers - in fact, most are responsible for managing their own farms - and their defiance, tenacity and genuine humility shines through, as does their hope for the next generation of young women already lining up to follow in their footsteps.

Detective Dawn Grave is a career cop - a workaholic, hiding from a tumultuous past. A recent threat to her sister's life forced Dawn back to the place where her nightmares began. She's since managed to overcome most of her demons, but a local murder investigation threatens to unearth a secret she's worked hard to keep buried. When a woman's remains are found in croc-infested waters, mauled and unrecognisable, Dawn finds herself working alongside a ghost from her past. One who could be the lynchpin she needs to solve the case. Or her prime suspect...

I am cooking spaghetti, his favourite, while he plays in the garden. But when I look up, he’s gone. I call the police, my hands shaking so much that I hit the wrong digits twice. "My son is missing." When the police turn up, I’m trapped in the web of my lies. I have hidden the truth from eight-year-old Riley, my little boy who loves climbing trees and always has scraped knees. I have hidden my secret from everyone.

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey's music career with the Marine Girls had just begun, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by activism and agitprop theatre, lesbian punk bands and rock 'n' roll love affairs. Morrison came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn, a strong female role model in a male dominated industry. They both faced a chauvinist music media wanting them to behave to type.

When Olivia Molly Rogers was crowned Miss Universe Australia, she knew exactly what she wanted to shine a light on: her struggles with disordered eating and anxiety. While many of her Instagram followers are eager for her fashion, art and insanely cute dog content, the heart of Olivia's audience is there for her refreshingly honest voice on body positivity and mental health.

I never thought I would end up here. Alone, in a cold one-bedroom apartment, only seeing my precious daughter once a week. Another woman is living the life that was once mine. I wish I was still married to my ex-husband, the love of my life. I dream of tucking my five-year-old child into her ballerina bed sheets every night. I miss living in a beautiful house, the perfect family home, with a winding staircase and a sprawling garden. I’d do anything to be with my family again. To start over and prove to them that I’ve changed, that I won’t lose control like before.

They say it takes 28 Questions to fall in love. Then what? ‘Reader, imagine yielding to someone with a power so strong she has the ability to slice time. Before. Her. After.’ When first-year music student Amalia stumbles into her Oxford college bar, she has no idea that everything is...

They find her just as the sun is beginning to rise in the early morning mist. They had begun at dawn, the group of searchers keen to get going. A missing child spurred everyone on. In the end, it was a flash of color, a bright neon pink that caught her eye. They had been looking for pink. Nothing tests your faith like being a mother. The first time your children walk to school alone, their first sleepover, when they finally fly the nest. As a parent, you have to believe that everything will be ok.