Showing results by narrator "Wren" in All Categories

The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley. When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister.

It's 1972 in Gibber's Creek, and across the nation, the catchcry is "It's time". As political ideals drift from disaster to the dismissal, it's also time for Jed Kelly to choose between past love, Nicholas, the local Labor member, and Sam from the Halfway to Eternity commune. It's time, too, for Matilda Thompson to face her ghosts and the life that took a young girl from the slums of Grinder's Alley to being the formidable matriarch of Gibber's Creek. During this period of extraordinary social change and idealism, modern Australia would be born.

Twelve-year-old Ming Qong is convinced that girls must have changed the world, even if they are rarely mentioned in history books. So when Ming gets the chance to go back in time, she imagines herself changing destinies from a glittering palace or an explorer's ship. Instead, she ends up in Australia in 1898, living a tough life as Flo Watson on a drought-stricken farm.

At the age of nine, Finnikin is warned by the gods that he must sacrifice a pound of flesh in order to save the royal house of his homeland, Lumatere. And so he stands on the rock of three wonders with his childhood friend Prince Balthazar and the prince's cousin, Lucian, and together they mix their blood. Lumatere is safe, Until the 'five days of the unspeakable'.

A body has been found in the burned-out wreckage of the church at Gibber's Creek—with older skeletons lying beneath it. The corpse is identified as that of Ignatius Mervyn, the man who attempted to kill Jed Kelly and her unborn child. Newcomer Fish Johnstone is drawn into the investigation, convinced that the police are on the wrong track. But as she digs beneath the warm and welcoming surface of the Gibber's Creek community, more secrets emerge. And Fish must also face her own mystery—the sudden appearance and then disappearance of her father, a Vietnamese refugee she never knew.

In this sequel to the critically acclaimed and bestselling The Key to Rondo, Mimi and Leo return to Rondo and join in a quest to find a mysterious missing wizard. They are haunted by fears of the gloriously wicked Blue Queen and this time face an even more ancient and mysterious danger - the terrifying cloud monster known as the Strix! Studded with funny characters, this rollicking adventure story is also full of belly laughs. There's more to Rondo than meets the eye.

Emily was an aspiring literary writer, forced to make a living from editing annual reports, when she met Scott, a screenwriter in similar circumstances. With Scott’s punchy plot and Emily’s luminous prose, they crafted an international hit - and fell in love doing it. Three years later, Scott’s own novel has flopped, Emily’s struggling with her literary manuscript, and their relationship is falling apart. Can they overcome their creative differences to produce another masterpiece?

Blue Laurence has escaped the prison of her aunt's mansion to join the Magnifico Family Circus, a travelling troupe that brings glamour and laughter to country towns gripped by the Depression. Blue hides her crippled legs and scars behind the sparkle of a mermaid's costume; but she's not the only member of the circus hiding a dark secret. The unquenchable Madame Zlosky creates as well as foresees futures. The bearded lady is a young man with laughing eyes. A headless skeleton dangles in the House of Horrors. And somewhere a murderer is waiting...to strike again.

The year is 1919. Thirty years have passed since the man from Snowy River made his famous ride. But World War I still casts its shadow across a valley in the heart of Australia, particularly for orphaned 16-year-old Flinty McAlpine, who lost a brother when the Snowy River men marched away to war. Why has the man Flinty loves returned from the war so changed and distant? Why has her brother Andy "gone with cattle", leaving Flinty in charge of their younger brother and sister and with the threat of eviction from the farm she loves so dearly?

Jed Kelly has finally persuaded her great aunt Nancy to tell the story of her grandparents. The tale that unfolds is one of Australia's greatest romances—that of Clancy of the Overflow, who gave up everything for Rose, the woman he adored, and yet still gained all he'd lost and more. But Nancy's story is not the history that Jed expects. More tales lurk behind the folklore that surrounds Clancy—the stories of the women hidden in Australia's long history, who forged a nation and whose voices need to be heard.

The latest trilogy by a best-selling author.... Mia Montrose is a 21st-century Australian woman with a doctorate in ancient languages who has just scored the most promising job of her career. When Mia experiences mysterious happenings and forces beyond her control, she begins to understand that history does not always stay in the past.

Hannah Tigone, bestselling Australian crime author, is crafting a new novel that begins in the Boston Public Library: four strangers; Winifred, Cain, Marigold and Whit are sitting at the same table when a bloodcurdling scream breaks the silence. A woman has been murdered. They are all suspects, and, as it turns out, each character has their own secrets and motivations—and one of them is a murderer.

In 1917 sixteen-year-old Jean McLain is working as a post-office assistant in England. But when she wins a national Morse code competition, the British army makes a request Jean cannot refuse – to take a secret position as a signaller in France. If Jean can keep the signals flowing between headquarters and the soldiers at the Front, Britain might possibly win the war.

Australian soccer mum Sarah Calhoun keeps the terrifying secrets of her time as an overseas aid worker from everyone she loves. Until two men from Northern Ireland hunt her down - one an obsessive policeman with demons of his own, the other a brutal IRA executioner, too closely connected to her past. She is forced to return to Belfast to testify at a murder trial. But she faces an impossible choice - lie on the stand and allow a vindictive killer to run free, or tell the truth and place her children in the line of fire.

January 1920. Young Englishwoman Margaret Dalton is full of excitement as she arrives to begin a new life in the warm, golden land of Australia. She leaves behind the horrors of WWI and can't wait to see her husband, Frank, after two years' separation. But when Margaret's ship docks, Frank isn't there to greet her, and Margaret is informed that he already has a wife....

“Working Mothers Inspiring Others” is a collective shoutout to all the fierce, unstoppable women who are rewriting the rules of what it means to be a working mother.

Ten years in Maladaan's past, Taren Lennox seizes the opportunity to secure personal financing for the AMIE Project and base the building on Frujia - away from Maladaan and its Secret Service. But when the MSS develop a weapon, from a patent of one of Taren's inventions that counts light - photon by photon - she begins to doubt her ability to keep her ever-growing psychic army a secret. For this new photon-camera can identify a psychic from the more inept by the unmistakable brilliance of their light-field.

The Gossip Girl series is the ultimate in glamour and cool - set in New York's glamorous Upper East Side, the narrative follows the thrills and spills (with Jimmy Choo shoes and shopping at Barneys mixed in along the way) of its richest and most beautiful teenage residents. Gossip Girl is the ultimate in sophistication, scandal and luxury.

With the help of Rondo's seven best witches and wizards, their friends have made plans to combat attacks of the Blue Queen. But it soon becomes clear that defence is no longer enough. The queen has a dragon on her side, and is plotting a terrible revenge on all those who have defied her.

When John Chester returned to England after suddenly inheriting a Dukedom he knew his life had changed forever. But he didn't know just how much. Gina Wilton was like a breath of fresh air. But she was also everything John disapproved of in a young woman, independent, assertive, always ready to contradict him. Yet she had ideas about restoring his dilapidated castle, and he found he needed her help. The more they were together, the more he noticed how pretty she was, how witty and sparkling.