Showing results by narrator "Taryn Ryan" in All Categories

The neighbours look on in shock as two stretchers are wheeled past gated homes on a quiet suburban street. Handcuffs are clipped on a young woman with fear in her face. The Cordells were the perfect family. But now, in a beautiful home where happy photos line the walls and flowers adorn the dinner table, it looks like a daughter has killed her loving parents. Everyone tuts and shakes their heads, saying there was always something strange about Juliet. And one person watching from the sidelines has triumph in their eyes. Someone who knew this would happen all along.

A completely gripping psychological thriller that will leave you not knowing who to trust, from million-copy best-seller Nicole Trope. Anyone who loves Shari Lapena or Lisa Jewell will be totally addicted!

It’s the phone call every mother dreads. I’m climbing into the car after a trip to the grocery store. As the engine starts, my phone rings. It’s my stepdaughter, Shelby, who is babysitting my three-year-old Millie. "I only went upstairs for a second," she says through her sobs. "She’s gone." When the police turn up, Shelby’s story starts to unravel. What is she hiding? Then I get a message saying, "Your husband is not who you think he is." Suddenly, my family feel like strangers. Everyone has a secret - even me.

I am cooking spaghetti, his favourite, while he plays in the garden. But when I look up, he’s gone. I call the police, my hands shaking so much that I hit the wrong digits twice. "My son is missing." When the police turn up, I’m trapped in the web of my lies. I have hidden the truth from eight-year-old Riley, my little boy who loves climbing trees and always has scraped knees. I have hidden my secret from everyone.

Every family has secrets, and on the hottest day of the year, the truth is about to come out. As a tragedy unfolds behind closed doors, the dawn chorus is split by the wail of sirens. And one by one the families who tried so hard to welcome the Wests begin to realise: Hogarth Street will never be the same again.

Dawn Grave is a career detective who's holding on to a dark past—one that destroys relationships and wreaks havoc on her personal life. For more than twenty years, she's tried to forget the horrors of her youth—while her sister has spent all that time digging for answers. Now a cryptic text message threatens to throw it all back into the light. Dawn attempts to call her sister, but when Lisa can't be reached, she knows something terrible has happened. But finding Lisa means returning to the remote tropical town in northern Australia where her nightmares all began.

From the outside the parents of the kindergarten class at Darley Heights primary school seem to have it all. Living in the wealthy Sydney suburbs, it's a community where everyone knows each other - and secrets don't stay secret for long. The big date in the calendar is the school's annual fundraising trivia night, but when the evening gets raucously out of hand, talk turns to partner-swapping. Initially scandalised, it's not long before a group of parents make a reckless one-night-only pact. But in the harsh light of day, those involved must face the fallout of their behaviour.

When June Marlow was arrested for the murder of her husband nearly thirty years ago, she feared she would never see her daughters again. Terrorised by the man who claimed to love her, and too ashamed and humiliated to admit to years of abuse, June was found guilty, despite her claim that she’d acted in self-defence. Now as June’s release date nears, she’s excited to be reunited with her girls. But the little girls she left behind are now grown up, and while Lu is desperate for June’s homecoming, longing to feel her mother’s arms around her once again, her sister, Cole feels differently.

Detective Dawn Grave is a career cop - a workaholic, hiding from a tumultuous past. A recent threat to her sister's life forced Dawn back to the place where her nightmares began. She's since managed to overcome most of her demons, but a local murder investigation threatens to unearth a secret she's worked hard to keep buried. When a woman's remains are found in croc-infested waters, mauled and unrecognisable, Dawn finds herself working alongside a ghost from her past. One who could be the lynchpin she needs to solve the case. Or her prime suspect...

Kree Garrett's younger brother Seth is all the family she has left, so when he goes missing while working in the Australian outback, she races from America to join in the search. To everyone's relief, Seth is rescued just in time by local volunteers and Kree finds, in an abandoned historic Cobb & Co coach house, the opportunity to thank the community she's fallen in love with. But it isn't only the town she's fallen for....

2019: Bethany Kristensen faces her toughest challenge to date, skippering the family charter business. With rivals doing their utmost to undercut her prices and reputation, the Kristensens' operation hangs by a thread. Winning the tender for a new scientific research program headed out to the farthest edge of the reef is her last chance to keep the business going. But when rumour and vandalism turn to outright sabotage, things take a drastic turn...

They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth. A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman's disappearance 25 years ago. After years of living overseas, Emily returns to New Zealand to care for her father who has dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time - and to glimpse shattering truths about his past.

In Western Australia, Sarah chuckles as she describes her final will and testament—which will throw the metaphorical cat among the family pigeons—whilst sharing a bottle of wine with her neighbour Thomas as they sit on the terrace of her luxurious waterside home. Six months later, at the age of 95, she peacefully passes on. Married and widowed three times, Sarah has had a great life as a successful businesswoman. Now she's left her Australian house to her two great-nieces—on the condition that they live in it together for a year.

If you passed Alice on the street, you couldn’t help but smile. At how she holds hands with her husband, Jack, who she has been with since she was at university. At the way she admires her three boys, the center of her universe. But if you looked very closely, you’d see how tightly she holds Jack’s hand, afraid to let go. You’d see how carefully she watches her boys, scared to look away. She has told Jack that she ran away from home when she was younger - but she didn’t tell him the whole story.

My hand trembles as I stare at the anonymous text. On this sunny Saturday morning, our twin ten-year-old boys were playing in the park just down our tree-lined street. But only one of them has come home… and it’s all my husband’s fault. I race to Leo’s study and demand answers. As his face turns white, I know: one of his affairs has turned deadly. I always smell the unfamiliar perfume on his shirt. I try to pretend we are a happy family, for the sake of the children… but now, my child is in terrible danger.

I gaze at my husband’s once handsome face, so still and pale in the hospital bed. The doctors say I should keep talking. He might be able to hear me even after the terrible accident that left him fighting for his life. But all I have to whisper to my husband is this: "I know what you did."

Angela and Nellie plan to live with a family friend in Western Australia. When their ship from England docks, they learn that she has died in a tragic accident. What will the future hold for the young sisters?

She knows everything about you… but can you trust her? I walk in to my interview with Ava Green and carefully hand over my application. It’s all made up, of course, but Ava doesn’t have to know that. There is so much worry in her blue eyes. Her phone pings with constant messages and a small stain marks her crisp shirt. Breakfast with her two little girls before heading out to this high-flying job every morning can’t be easy. Ava needs me, I think. More than anything.

The Kane family, Lorcan, Naiyana and their young son, relocate from Perth to Kallayee, an abandoned mining town in the Great Victoria Desert to start over again, free from their chequered past. The town seems like the perfect getaway: peaceful, quiet, remote. Somewhere they won’t be found. But life in Kallayee isn’t quite as straightforward as they hope. There are noises in the earth, mysterious shadows and tracks in the dust, as if the town is coming back to life. But the family can’t leave. No one can talk sense into them. And now, no one can talk to them at all.

Elizabeth is Joe’s foster mother, but she loves him like her own. The five-year-old, who adores superheroes and watching the birds outside, is the child she has dreamed of. As she looks into the garden, where he was playing just moments ago, her heart feels like it has been ripped from her chest. She was meant to save Joe from his birth mother who almost harmed his chances at life. The woman who has been trying to desperately get him back. She was meant to protect Joe from her husband. The man who, right now, lies to the police, saying he was making breakfast when Joe disappeared.