Showing results by narrator "Claire Lovering" in All Categories

Librarian Phoebe Cotton lives with misophonia. The sound of other people crunching an apple, slurping their tea or snapping chewing gum fills her with a rage that she buries deep within. Mortified by her 'Not Quite Right' brain, she hides away inside 6 Salmon Street, the family home that her formidable grandmother Dorothy has abandoned for a more convivial life at the Western Retreat Retirement Village. But when Phoebe begins receiving mysterious postcards in the mail, she slowly, but surely, finds herself being pulled back out into the world and towards Monty, the sweet postal clerk.

After weeks of grieving, a woman books a plane ticket bound for an old villa in the mountains of Abruzzo. Invited to stay with her friends Giulia and Fab—in the weeks before they marry in a village orchard—she lives for a summer in the house's Birthing Room, where generations of women once had their babies. More often, though, she lives in her head: in the past, trying to make sense of her grief and wondering how to go on, or if she can.

Stella is in desperate need of help. With her husband away she’s juggling a full-time job, a tricky stepdaughter and a relentless four-year-old–all while trying to find her footing in her husband’s shiny world. Joining the throng of local mothers, she reluctantly hires an au pair in the hope that it will lighten the load. Stella’s mother-in-law, Elise, thinks this is a terrible idea. But she’s promised her son not to meddle and with her own career battles to slay and her past to contend with, she resigns to let matters lie.