Showing results by narrator "Jennifer Vuletic" in All Categories

Poets had always lived there, the locals claimed. When Sadie inherits Poet’s Cottage in the Tasmanian fishing town of Pencubitt, she sets out to discover all she can about her notorious grandmother, Pearl Tatlow. Pearl was a children’s writer who scandalised 1930s Tasmania with her behaviour. She was also violently murdered in the cellar of Poet’s Cottage and her murderer never found. Sadie grew up with a loving version of Pearl through her mother, but her aunt Thomasina tells a different story, one of a self-obsessed, abusive and licentious woman. And Pearl’s biographer, Birdie Pinkerton, has more than enough reason to discredit her.

Four-and-20 extraordinary women; one chance to save a kingdom. What would you sacrifice to save your family, your loved ones, yourself? In September 1486, the reign of King Henry VII of England is again threatened by York loyalists. The only things standing in the way are a 400-year-old Sidhe who just wants to be left alone and a group of London women with a lot to lose if England is plunged back into war. But, in 1486, women have no power. Only the ability to make difficult choices and sometimes-heartbreaking sacrifices. 

A powerful debut, harmonising Australian-born and immigrant voices, contrasting and connecting their thoughts and struggles. What if moving to a crumbling Australian coastal town meant giving up your only dream? In 1974, Nayeema reluctantly leaves Sydney's inner city to move to Burraboo, a tired coastal town, with her husband, Fawzy. In doing so, Nayeema surrenders her only dream, but once there she falls under the sway of new infatuations.

New Year’s Day 1901 sees the birth of Australia as a nation, eager to claim her place on the world stage. Clytie Hart, a daring equestrienne, is travelling with her mother in a wagon train along the back roads of Victoria’s Gold Triangle. Once world-famous, Wildebrand Circus is now struggling to survive. But a chance meeting with Rom Delaney, a wild young adventurer, changes everything. His invitation to play in Hoffnung, an isolated gold-mining town, promises to restore the circus’ fortunes. To Clytie, the roving life is all she has ever known.

Vianna Francis, known in the colony as ‘The Sydney Venus’, is a notorious young mistress in keeping to a former gentleman convict, who uses her to entice wealthy men to his gaming tables. A woman of mystery, Vianna is a magnet for scandal. Was she the mistress of a Royal duke? A lady’s maid who learned the tricks of the world’s oldest profession when in service to a Parisian courtesan? Or the widow of a young man executed on the gallows? Men of high rank are determined to possess this passionate, mercenary beauty. 

After a troubled childhood and two failed marriages, Rena has achieved success as a photographer. She specializes in infrared techniques that expose her pictures’ otherwise hidden landscapes and capture the raw essence of deeply private moments in the lives of her subjects. Away from her lover, and stuck in Florence, Italy, with her infuriating stepmother and her aging, unwell father, Rena confronts not only the masterpieces of the Renaissance but the banal inconveniences of a family holiday.

Jo returns to South Africa after ten years in the UK to cover the riots sweeping the Jo’burg township of Alex. Nico, her estranged Afrikaner father, reappears and asks her to help prove his innocence in the murder of a black man, abducted by the security forces decades earlier. As they set off on a road trip through South Africa’s now-unfamiliar landscape, it becomes clear that Nico knows more about the murder than he is letting on, and Jo begins to wonder whether she is his accomplice, or his captive.

In the cold winter of 1875, two rebellious spirits leave England for the raw heat of Australia: Harriet Rowell - at 22, a champion swimmer in a time when women didn’t go into the sea - and Alice Moon - at 18, a budding scientist and writer. In a time when men coerced women to believe that if they didn’t bind their bodies in whalebone corsets they would collapse and ruin their childbearing purpose, they were athletic and strong. In a time when many women loved each other but held such love secretly for fear of retribution, they openly declared their love.