Showing results by narrator "Casey Withoos" in All Categories

Jenny's family think pastoral agent John Downing would make the perfect husband for her. But Jenny knows that she is not in love with him and never will be. Thanks to her childhood friend Geoff Hallam, Jenny gets a job on an opal safari. It's an ideal opportunity to get away for the pressures of home in Yaraandoo. Safari boss Drew Carey has a magnetic effect on Jenny. Yet it seems the beautiful and wealthy Nicole Armstrong has already staked her claim on him. Then Jenny makes a discovery that changes everything for the safari party.

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.

Birdie McBride has it all: a fulfilling job, five healthy daughters and a doting husband, Ned. But then Ned dies. He leaves behind a document for Birdie—‘Things I Need You To Know'—a guide to everything from household maintenance to each daughter's emotional landscape. Reading Ned's manual, Birdie falls in love with her husband in a way she never did when he was alive. Yet the presence of his best friend, Marcello, complicates things.

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....

In this memoir, Mandy Sayer recounts the fascinating years she spent performing on the streets of New York and New Orleans with her father. Gerry Sayer was a jazz drummer, a beguiling Irish charmer with a million stories and an insatiable love for jam sessions and all-night parties. Mandy grew up captivated by his outrageous tales even after he left the family for good and her mother descended into the distance of drink. She learned to tap-dance and they set off together to satisfy their grand ambitions on the toughest stage in the world - New York.

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.

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.

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.

When Aisha met Ryan she fell hard for his good looks and easy charm. Why worry that he didn’t want children or a nine-to-five job? Nothing, and no one, would come between them. But with the birth of their high-needs son, Eli, their extraordinary love is shackled into an ordinary life, their passion blunted by responsibility. Until Ryan can’t take it anymore. Then, following a mysterious phone call late one night, Aisha leaves four-year-old Eli in the care of her elderly father, Patrick - and doesn’t come back.

Art dealer Alex Clayton travels to Victoria’s Western District to value the McMillan family’s collection. At their historic sheep station, she finds an important and previously unknown colonial painting - and a family fraught with tension. There are arguments about the future of the property and its place in an ancient and highly significant indigenous landscape.

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.

It’s the 1980s, and in their small coastal town, Ali and her best friend, Jessie, are on the cusp. With The Golden Book, a journal of incantation and risk-taking as their record, they begin to chafe at the restrictions put on them by teachers, parents, each other. Then Jessie suffers a devastating accident, and both their lives are forever changed. When Ali is an adult, with a young daughter herself, the news of Jessie’s death brings back the intensity of that summer, forcing her to reckon with her own role in what happened to Jessie so many years ago.

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.

The beautiful Snowy Mountains are Kylie Harris' home. An expert, daring skier, Kylie once dreamed of instructing the rich and famous who come to the Victorian Alps each winter. But when tragedy strikes, she is forced to reassess her life. In the wilds of Papua New Guinea, Kylie, now an aid worker, is reunited with the man she believes is her soul mate. But it turns out happiness is an elusive gift. Heartbroken, Kylie is convinced she will never again love so deeply. Can she find the courage to let go of her past?

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.

Curl Curl, Sydney, January 1978. Angie's a looker. Or she's going to be. She's only 14, but already, heads turn wherever she goes. Male heads, mainly...Jane worships her older cousin Angie. She spends her summer vying for Angie's attention. Then Angie is murdered. Jane and her family are shattered. They withdraw into themselves, casting a veil of silence over Angie's death. Thirty years later, a journalist arrives with questions about the tragic event. Jane is relieved to finally talk about her adored cousin. And so is her family.

Violet Black and Ethan Wright are both in a coma after contracting the lethal M-fever. They have never met: I couldn't speak, but I was trying so hard to communicate and then...then.... I pushed. And something, someone, pushed back. Her name is Violet. Violet, but she is sunshine-yellow, and I need to find her because I think she might be just like me. But there is a far more serious reason for Ethan to find Violet - the sinister Foundation is trying to hunt them down.

We all carry stories within us - wrenching, redemptive, extraordinary, and laced with unexpected and hard-won wisdom. These are the real-life stories that a group of women tell each other when they gather for a deep and structured conversation - once a month in a suburban living room - about the things that really matter. They discover that life can be a heartbeat away from chaos; that bad things happen to good people; that good people do outrageous things; that the desire for transformation is enduringly human.

Winter 1852. Adam has just returned from the Californian goldfields and is heading for Bendigo in Victoria, the new El Dorado. He comes across Ella, injured, penniless and with only the clothes she is wearing. Adam is the son of a convict with the determination and intelligence to ‘better’ himself. Despite her current circumstances, it is obvious to him that Ella is a lady, and although Adam might believe himself as good as any man, the class divide remains.

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.