Showing results by narrator "Caroline Lee" in All Categories

It was summer in the mountains when five small children vanished from their nursery school picnic. The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air.... Three-and-a-half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned to their families...one by one. All except for Ivy—the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead.

A decade ago, the Lullaby Man preyed upon young girls in Tallman's Valley. He stole into their lives, whispered in their ears, spoke of love. Abby Wakeland was 14 then. Now 24, she's found the courage to tell her mother - Senior Detective Kate Wakeland - about what happened. The Lullaby Man was her teacher. What Abby reveals next will lead Kate down dark, twisting tunnels of discoveries that will blow this small town apart.

Thirty-eight year old Cassandra is lost, alone, and grieving. Her much loved grandmother, Nell, has just died and Cassandra, her life already shaken by a tragic accident 10 years ago, feels like she has lost everything known and dear to her.

In a country town, an arsonist is burning homes down. Their signature move is placing an identical model of the house on the front porch before setting the fire. But no one is there to witness this in the silence of each dark winter night. A happy couple is out celebrating their anniversary when they receive a chilling phone call—a recorded children's verse warning them their house is on fire and their children are gone. They race home to an inferno and missing children.

She's glimpsed a silent town lying beneath the valley " a place where the streets and landscapes are the same, but where daylight never reaches. But as Kate begins to investigate the silent town, a shocking multiple shooting occurs on the mountain that bookends the valley, Witness Mountain. Kate is forced to suspend all else and focus on the case at hand. How did a frail, elderly man manage to shoot his family? Did he have the help of his grandson, a teenage boy who can't account for his whereabouts that morning?

Four children by her father. Thirty years of horrific sexual abuse. In March 2009, Joseph Fritzl was sentenced to life in jail for the systematic imprisonment, torture and rape of his daughter, Elisabeth, over 24 years, fathering seven children. The case shocked the world. But just a month before, the story of Australia’s own house of horrors was emerging in a Victorian country town.

Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long consigned to the dark reaches of Grace's mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks.

After backpacking her way around Europe journalist Sarah Turnbull is ready to embark on one last adventure before heading home to Sydney. A chance meeting with a charming Frenchman in Bucharest changes her travel plans forever. Acting on impulse, she agrees to visit Fredric in Paris for a week. Put a very French Frenchman together with a strong-willed Australian girl and the result is some spectacular - and often hilarious - cultural clashes.

A mysterious stranger known as 'The Wolf' leaves an infant with the sisters of Santo Spirito. A tiny silver key hidden in her wrappings is the only clue to the child's identity and so begins a story as intriguing and beautiful as the city of Florence itself. Belinda Alexandra's new novel, Tuscan Rose, is set in Italy during the time of Mussolini. This richly woven tale of passion, love, longing, witchcraft and magic promises to be everything her readers love and more.

'I'm okay!' The bestselling author of The Anti-Cool Girl returns with a devastating, heartbreaking, brilliant, brave and laugh-out-loud funny memoir of telling lies and being on the brink... 'I had made it! All my dreams had come true. I had an operating fridge, I was doing brilliantly, and I...

When five couples pool their resources to live in a house located where a turquoise lagoon meets the sea, the quirky little offshore community of Cook's Basin is shocked. How will ten people – one in a wheelchair and one with a hauntingly familiar face – survive where the only way in or out is by boat? When a member of the household is found floating face down in the bay, the police insist the death was accidental but the bizarre circumstances have locals scratching their heads.

One family. Nine momentous days. An unforgettable novel of love and folly and heartbreak. It is 1939, and although Australia is about to go to war, it doesn’t quite realise yet that the situation is serious. Deep in the working-class Melbourne suburb of Richmond it is business - your own and everyone else’s - as usual. And young Kip Westaway, failed scholar and stablehand, is living the most important day of his life.

A spectacular, nail-biting race across Ancient China. Don't miss a wingbeat.... Ancient China, Han Dynasty. A slave girl saves the life of an ageing dragon and escapes her brutal master. Pursued by a ruthless dragon hunter, the girl and the dragon make an epic journey across China carrying a mysterious stone that must be protected. This is the story of a young slave girl who believes she is not worthy of a name but finds within herself the strength and courage to make this perilous journey - and do what must be done.

Here are turnings of all kinds - changes of heart, nasty surprises, slow awakenings, sudden detours - where people struggle against the terrible weight of the past and challenge the lives they have made for themselves. Beautifully crafted, and as tender as they are confronting, these elegiac stories examine the darkness and frailty of ordinary people and celebrate the moments when the light shines through.

Discovery. Desire. Deception. A wondrously imagined tale of two female botanists, separated by more than a century, in a race to discover a life-saving flower . . . In Victorian England, headstrong adventuress Elizabeth takes up her late father's quest for a rare, miraculous plant. She faces a...

Jacinta McLeod met Dr Jonah Armstrong delirious with malaria, and, even then, she needed to fight off the urge to know more about this fascinating patient. When the chance came to follow him to the wilds of Papua New Guinea and into a dangerous medical mission up the Sepik River, she took it, despite Jonah’s absolute ‘no’! Jonah had already lost his baby sister in the unsafe world of PNG. Now headstrong Jacinta had arrived, and he had to keep her safe. Despite his efforts, very soon they were both held captive in the jungle with a death sentence over their heads.

Brutal, brave, hilarious -- a full-frontal memoir about surviving the very worst that life can throw at you. Rosie Waterland has never been cool. Growing up in housing commission, Rosie was cursed with a near perfect, beautiful older sister who dressed like Mariah Carey on a Best & Less budget...

Ancient China, Han Dynasty. Ping thinks she is safe hiding in the shadow of the Tai Shan mountains. Here she struggles to care for Kai, the baby dragon she is responsible for. But even in her remote mountain hideout, Ping's enemies find her. It is Kai they want. Who can Ping trust? It is impossible to distinguish friend from foe. The easy road beckons. Will they find sanctuary in the Garden of the Purple Dragon? Will Ping embrace her true destiny?

A silver brumby is special, but he will be hunted by man and horse alike, and must be stronger than both.... Thowra, the magnificent silver stallion, is king of brumbies. But he must defend his herd from the mighty horse, The Brolga, in the most savage of struggles. That is not the only danger. Thowra needs all his speed and cunning to save his herd from capture by man. In a desperate chase through mountains, it seems there is no longer anywhere for him to run to....

A silver brumby is special, but he will be hunted by man and horse alike, and must be stronger than both... Thowra's speed and courage have always saved him from the men who want to capture him - until now, when the men come on skis quickly and silently over the mountains. This time Thowra must protect his daughter from the hunters who prize the silver brumbies above any other horse.