Showing results by narrator "Casey WIthoos" in All Categories

Jodie Garrow is a teenager from the wrong side of the tracks when she falls pregnant. Scared, alone and desperate to make something of her life, she adopts out the baby illegally - and tells nobody. Twenty-five years on, Jodie has built a new life and a new family. But when a chance meeting brings the adoption to the notice of the authorities, Jodie becomes caught in a nationwide police investigation, becoming the centre of a media witch hunt. What happened to Jodie's baby? And where is she now?

A clear-eyed, insightful and wildly entertaining look into the complicated, emotional world of mothers and their teenage daughters. Four mothers. Four teenage daughters. An isolated tropical paradise with no internet or mobile phone reception. What could possibly go wrong? There's tension, bitchiness, bullying, sex, drunken confessions, bad behaviour and breakdowns - and wait till you see what the teenagers get up to. How can we let our daughters go to forge lives of their own when what we most want to do is hold them close and never let them go?

Daisy's in trouble. Her car is stalled in the middle of a flooded creek, with the water rising quickly. Dale is in no mood to rescue the woman about to be swept away by a raging tropical storm, who's clearly a city girl, unfamiliar with the country roads, and driving a completely unsuitable car. He has half a mind to leave her right where she is. Stranded on the wrong side of the creek, Daisy has no other option than to accept Dale's offer to spend the night at the luxury resort, Stormcloud Station.

In 1999, art dealer Alex Clayton stumbles across a lost portrait of Molly Dean, an artist’s muse brutally slain in Melbourne in 1930. Alex buys the painting and sets out to uncover more details, but finds there are strange inconsistencies: Molly’s mother seemed unconcerned by her daughter’s violent death, the main suspect was never brought to trial despite compelling evidence and vital records are missing. Alex enlists the help of her close friend, art conservator John Porter, and together they sift through the clues and deceptions that swirl around the last days of Molly Dean.

I’m the most authentic version of myself when I’m around Jack. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and our relationship was always one of mudpies and mocking. Then everything changed. Beautiful Kate, my best friend, disappeared on a moonlit beach after Jack dumped her for me. Jack was a suspect and, sure of his innocence, I lied to protect him. I know Jack didn’t kill her. Our betrayal did.

World War II is over, and Hiroshima lies in a heap of poisoned rubble when young Quaker Wesley Cunningham returns home to Almond Tree. He served as a stretcher-bearer; he’s seen his fair share of horror. Now he intends to build beautiful houses and to marry, having fallen in love with his neighbour’s daughter, Beth Hardy. Beth has other plans. An ardent socialist, she is convinced the Party and Stalin’s Soviet Union hold the answers to all the world’s evils. She doesn’t believe in marriage, and in any case, her devotion is to the cause.

Without any warning, Justin Kowalski drives his vehicle across a line of traffic and through the front wall of Cafe 64, killing himself and three other people—and taking the reasons for this shocking act to the grave. Unable to locate any evidence of criminal behaviour or mental illness in Justin's past, and with no one left to prosecute, the police have no choice but to label it "an isolated incident".

A moving, tender and compelling story about a life lived on the edges of society, of poverty, of certainty, of love. Filled with beautifully realised descriptions of life seen through a child's eyes - a child who gradually comes to realise her adored parents are all too tragically flawed and broken - Velocity packs the emotional impact of Angela's Ashes with the surreal humour and razor-sharp observations of Running with Scissors.

In present-day Melbourne, a group of power-hungry academics are trying to reassemble a 19th century grimoire designed to summon Satan. For centuries magicians have compiled grimoires to call up demons. In Victorian London an ambitious warlock called Peter Owling designs a book to summon the Lord of Demons himself and thereby achieve eternal life. But not even his beautiful young acolyte Christian grasps the full extent of his master’s plans....

Even though we’d grown up in vastly different cultures and countries, we’d both known poverty, domestic violence and the expectation that neither one of us would ever amount to anything. That was probably what united us more than anything: our shared defiance of that prediction. She tap-danced on street corners for people’s small change. He was an out-of-work university teacher, poet and Vietnam vet. She was white and from Australia. He was black and from the Deep South. They met at Mardi Gras, New Orleans, in 1985. She was 22. He was nearly 40. They fell in love.

A family of cat farmers gets the chance to set the felines free. A group of chickens tells it like it is. A female-crewed ship ploughs through the patriarchy. A support group finds solace in a world without men. With her trademark humor, energy, and flair, McKay offers glimpses of places where dreams subsume reality, where childhood restarts, where humans embrace their animal selves and animals talk like humans.

Art dealer Alex Clayton and conservator John Porter are thrilled to be previewing the Melbourne International Museum of Art’s (MIMA) newest exhibition, until they witness a museum worker collapse and badly damage a reportedly cursed painting. Belief in the curse is strengthened when MIMA’s senior conservator, Meredith Buchanan, dies less than 24 hours later while repairing the work. But Alex and John are convinced there is a decidedly human element at work in the museum.

Welsey Cunningham grew up running barefoot through the orchards of his Quaker family farm, working with horses and dreaming of one day building himself a house on his own patch of ground above the river. The Second World War interrupted those dreams: it took Wes to New Guinea as a medic and then sent him home with healing bullet wounds in his legs. While Wes was away, life in Almond Tree continued but everyone's been changed by the war.

Beat. Heartbeat. One, two, three. I only just became aware of the third today, just another complication in an impossible situation. The Foundation is particularly keen to get its hands on the baby. Is freedom an impossible dream?

Someone is hiding a secret - one that could change Berry's life and alter her tragic past. As a child, Berry McCalister's family was torn apart by shocking violence. Eleven years on, she returns to the small town of Harlington, determined to confront the past and, finally, to cut all ties and sell the family farm. Complicating her desire to get out of Harlington, Berry is drawn to her childhood crush, Nate Tarant. He never knew she existed back then, but things change, and this time Nate seems to be very much aware of her presence.

Nessa keeps the world at arm's length. It's easier that way, for everyone. Her orbit is no bigger than her sister, her parents and a solitary work colleague with a penchant for dying wishes. But even these people don't see the real Nessa. Saddled with her father's impossible gift, a rundown homestead in the middle of nowhere, Nessa reluctantly develops a wellness retreat of sorts–a no-frills escape for women. All too quickly, keeping her distance becomes a trickier dance, even for someone so good at it.

From the best-selling author of Under Southern Skies comes the story of one woman's courage in a man's world. Joanna Kingsford is passionate about horses - and it's the world she shares with her father, champion trainer Charlie Kingsford. Jo's socialite mother, Nina, wants Joanna to pursue more ladylike interests, like modelling and finishing school. Jo can't think of anything duller. When a tragic accident changes everything, Jo is determined to prove she has what it takes to become a champion trainer.

On the morning of her wedding, 24-year-old Beth Shaw drives down the peninsula to the Portsea Hotel. She is uneasy and confused because she has just learnt something devastating about her fiancé, Jordan, that completely changes her view of him. As Beth’s old schoolmates and her relatives arrive for the big day at the bayside idyll, Beth contemplates her childhood in suburbia. She worshipped the school relay runners, one of whom was Jordan’s high school sweetheart. Painful memories of earlier disloyalties and betrayals resurface.

Where Have You Been? is a gripping domestic thriller that takes the form of a classic impostor story, with a 21st-century twist. Susan and Ed Middleton are perfectly content with their lives. Two kids, two cars, a solid brick bungalow in the suburbs. There’s barely a ripple in the surface of their happy existence. But when Susan’s older sister, who vanished as a teenager, reappears to claim an inheritance, everything is set to change. Karen - now known as Carly - has had a tough time during the past 20 years: drugs, prostitution, prison.

Rory Buchanan has it all: looks, talent, charisma - an all around good-guy, he's the centre of every party and a loving father and husband. Then one summer's afternoon, tragedy strikes. Those who are closest to him struggle to come to terms with their loss. Friendships are strained, marriages falter and loyalties are tested in a gripping and brilliantly crafted novel about loss, grief and desire.