Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Vuletic" in All Categories

This book is about ghosts and gods and flying saucers and certainty in the absence of knowledge. From award-winning author Sarah Krasnostein comes an exploration of the power of belief. Weaving together the stories of six extraordinary ordinary people, The Believer looks at the stories we tell ourselves to deal with the distance between the world as it is and the world as we’d like it to be. How they can stunt us - or save us.

Earth has joined the Galactic Empire, a vast interstellar society ruled by dragon-like aliens where everybody is immortal. Pain, famine, and disease have been eradicated, but this doesn't mean the end of conflict. A cruel alien Republic has been watching from afar and wants to take the empire's progress for its own. Jian Choumali, ex-British forces and now colonel in the Imperial space force, must fight to keep her friends, family, and fellow citizens in the empire safe.

Vivian Molloy hardly expected to retire early from teaching, but for her husband, Dave, she'd do anything. But when Dave abandons her after a weekend away, she returns home to their picturesque town in Tasmania, shell-shocked and alone with nothing to fill her days. When an old colleague tries to rope her into teaching a writing class at the local library, Vivian is hesitant. How can she teach with her life falling apart? But it is the people she meets that help her remember who she is.

On the surface Elsie Jones, country music superstar, has it all. But after a brush with death she is forced to re-evaluate her life. Events soon take her back to her home town in the wheat belt of western NSW, where she reconnects with her childhood friend Tara Green. Elsie and Tara were misfits together, eventually running away from their small town to muster cattle.

Howard and Elsie Manning were born on the same day, met at kindergarten, and have been married for 59 years. They have lived sensible, productive lives, and raised two self-sufficient daughters. Now, at 78, they are bored with the predictability of life, fed up with contemporary society, have aching joints and dwindling finances, and - funeral by funeral - their circle of friends is shrinking. Worst of all, they are grieving for their beloved, recently deceased dog Maisie.

When current affairs reporter Nicola Harvey arrives in the little town of Nowhere Else on an extended assignment to investigate the effects of a long-term drought, nothing is as she expected: there's no spa in town, the locals are tight-lipped, and she senses it's not just the drought that is making the town nervous. So why has her boss sent her out here? The deeper Nicola digs into the town's history, the more she realises coming to Nowhere Else wasn't a mistake after all. In fact, it may just unlock the mystery of her own past - and hold the key to her future happiness.

Up-and-coming American winemaker Tess Harrison is temporarily working at an Australian vineyard where her family now has a financial stake. She’s excited to make her mark away from her dominant family and the outback’s premier organic winery seems like the perfect training ground. One problem: no one told her the small town Wirralong was a premier wedding destination. When a new hire upends Tess’s careful plans for her life and her career, she finds herself reluctantly rethinking her dislike for the M word.

In 1934, the three Miss Allens - Ruby, Adeline and Clara - arrive in the seaside town of Remarkable Bay for their annual summer holiday. It's the last time they'll spend summer as a family. Adeline is engaged, Ruby is weighing up an offer, and Clara is just eighteen and about to start her life. But by summer's end, the lives they have known will change irrevocably and a mysterious secret will tear the family apart.

The sequel to the much-loved Wattle Creek. Former city girl Jacqueline Havelock, Wattle Creek's newly arrived psychologist, has settled in to country life and is slowly coming to terms with the town's quirky ways. Farmer Damien McAllister's plans with his animal welfare venture are falling into place nicely and it finally feels like he has a future to look forward to. But everything can change as quickly as the fickle weather - and it does.

Claire McIntyre has it all: an adoring husband, a bubbly best friend, a chic townhouse and a high-flying corporate career in the city. But somehow she's forgotten what really makes her happy. After receiving tragic news, closely followed by the loss of her job, Claire's world is thrown into turmoil. She is then forced to reconsider everything that matters to her. Claire soon finds herself back at the very place she's been running from - the family property.

Fighting her way from humble beginnings in a foster home to CEO of her own highly respected international company hasn't been easy for Hilary Brand. Even after she seems to have reached the top, troubles abound: her business in China, always fraught with problems, is in peril; and her archnemesis, Haskins Gould - once her closest business associate but now her greatest enemy - is gaining traction in his unceasing determination to destroy all she has created.

'The only way to comprehend this tragic story of mine is to write it.' On the 10th of February 2017, there was a sentencing hearing for murder in the Victorian Supreme Court. The young woman in the dock, who sat quietly with her hands in her lap, had perfect skin and light-brown hair tied back as neatly as a private school prefect's. When the judge asked her to confirm her plea, the young woman answered in a clear and polite voice. 'Guilty, Your Honour.' That killer is Mary K. Pershall's beloved daughter, Anna.

Life seems settled for Jian in the Dragon Empire. She's comfortable in her position as Captain of the Imperial Guard and content with her unusual domestic arrangements. But when trouble stirs at the edge of the Empire, they discover that the Cat Republic has been hiding a powerful and dangerous force that could destroy everything the Empire represents. Jian and her family must work together to save the Empire - and travel further than any dragon has ever gone.

It's 1956, and while Melbourne is in a frenzy gearing up for the Olympics, the women of Australia are cooking up a storm for their chance to win the equivalent of a year's salary in the extraordinary Australian Women's Weekly cookery contest. For two women, in particular, the prize could be life-changing. For war widow and single mum Ivy Quinn, a win would mean more time to spend with her twelve-year-old son, Raymond.

Grace Middleton knew that her ex-husband, Jake, was a lying, cheating, wife-abandoning bastard. What she didn't know - until his untimely death - was that he was also the owner of a secret vineyard in the heart of the Margaret River wine region. And, much to the chagrin of his new wife, he's left the property to Grace's three young sons. With the intention of putting it up for sale, Grace takes the boys to view Gum Leaf Grove. And immediately finds herself embroiled in mysteries from Jake's past and the accidental target of the resident 'ghost'.

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.

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.

A long-forgotten secret, a scandalous attraction and a place where two women's lives are changed forever. 1926: Violet Armstrong is one of the few remaining members of staff working at the grand Evergreen Spa Hotel as it closes down over winter. Only a handful of guests are left, including the heir to a rich grazing family, his sister and her suave suitor. When a snowstorm moves in, the hotel is cut off and they are all trapped. No-one could have predicted what would unfold.

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.

When Esther wakes with a breathing tube down her throat, she has no idea where she is or how she got there. In terrible physical condition, Esther is tended to by Grace, the only other person in the building. In the half-consciousness of her recovery, Esther is desperate to get back to her young kids and grapples with the events of her life as they come flooding back: a childhood spent between warring parents; the demise of her marriage; the struggles she faced when her children were born.