Showing results by narrator "Casey Withoos" in All Categories

Thrust into a foreign environment as the cook's hand with a shearing team, after her father passes away, Maysa must fight for survival. She finds herself both loving and being terrified by all the Australian outback has to offer, the country, the wildlife, but mostly the people. She meets the love of her life, but she must fight against an undercurrent of evil just to survive, let alone live happily ever after.

Diana McIntyre and her four boys have had a tough eighteen months but, with the love and support of her family, she believes their lives are finally back on track. Diana’s dream of starting a flower farm has been the perfect diversion, with an elderly dahlia expert showing her the ropes. She won’t have to do this alone. Locum pharmacist and single dad Ned Gardiner hasn’t called Victoria home for years. However, his father’s death forces Ned to return to the family farm, a place that holds few happy memories for him.

The Carrington family owns the only pub in the small country town of Kangaroo Ridge. It’s been eight years since the five siblings became orphans and since twins Sebastian and Tamara stepped up to look after their younger brothers and sister with the help of their aunt, Maddie. Seb and Tam gave up their teenage years to make sure the family stayed together, but that’s been hard and they’ve grown apart. Seb is silent and stoic; Tam, on the other hand, wants to kick over the traces and catch up on the life she missed out on.

Country-girl Cressida Knight fills her days with her farm, a mischievous pet bull called Reggie and her volunteer emergency services work. The busier she keeps, the less she thinks about the cowboy who left her behind. She's convinced the small-town Woodlea grapevine that she's moved on, but now it's time to move on for real. Champion bull rider Denham Rigby shares Cressy's deep love for the land and all he's ever wanted was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Cressy through life. But three years ago a dark family secret left him no choice but to run.

Romance in rural Australia, three captivating Woodlea novellas from best-selling author Alissa Callen.

The scars country vet Ella Quinlivan hides are not solely on the outside. Men are off limits. She fills her world with her friends, work and the colourful community of small town Woodlea. She also becomes custodian of a sandstone cottage of an elderly friend whose teenage daughter went missing two decades ago. With a broken marriage behind him, Saul Armstrong is determined to recapture his dreams by bringing American bison to the Australian bush. He intends to stick to his side of the high wire fence that divides his farm from his distracting new neighbour, Ella.

For only child Neve Fitzpatrick, family is everything. When she loses her mother, she heads to the bush to rent a farmhouse near her grandmother's family home. To keep herself busy and her grief at bay, she offers to look after two little redheaded cowgirls and adopts a sassy pony and shaggy donkey in need of a refuge. Drover and horse trainer Tanner Callahan may have just found his mother, but he's resolved never to let anyone too close. Abandonment has cursed him all his life, and he won't let it happen again. Only two things unnerve him: children and small-town matchmaking.

After losing a patient, Dr Fliss Knight returns to small town Woodlea and buys a run-down farm, her confidence and city career in tatters. She intends to live a solitary life and hopes that the slow country pace will help her heal. When Fliss meets the cowboy living in the bluestone stables across the garden, all her hopes for a quiet and peaceful life fade. Despite his reserve, Hewitt is impossible to ignore. As they work together to care for an abandoned dog and her puppies, they find themselves drawn to each other.

What does a young footballer do to cut loose? At night, some play what they think of as pranks or games: night games with women. Sometimes these involve consensual sex, sometimes not, and often the lines are blurred. In Night Games, Anna Krien follows the rape trial of an Australian Rules footballer. She also takes a balanced and fearless look at the dark side of footy culture - the world of Sam Newman, Ricky Nixon, Matty Johns and the Croa Sharks.

It’s the 1980s, and in their small coastal town, Ali and her best friend, Jessie, are on the cusp. With The Golden Book, a journal of incantation and risk-taking as their record, they begin to chafe at the restrictions put on them by teachers, parents, each other. Then Jessie suffers a devastating accident, and both their lives are forever changed. When Ali is an adult, with a young daughter herself, the news of Jessie’s death brings back the intensity of that summer, forcing her to reckon with her own role in what happened to Jessie so many years ago.

PR executive Gabrielle Moreau knows she has an easy life, but when her business partner claims she lacks career passion, she takes ownership of a dilapidated pub in a tiny riverside settlement to prove she can be a success without falling back on her privilege. Eighteen months ago, Settlers Bridge stonemason Hayden Paech had it all: a job he loved, good mates and a close family. All he needed was the right woman to come along, and he was ready to settle down. But one poor choice stole that chance, and he'll never risk caring for anyone again.

In 1999, art dealer Alex Clayton stumbles across a lost portrait of Molly Dean, an artist’s muse brutally slain in Melbourne in 1930. Alex buys the painting and sets out to uncover more details, but finds there are strange inconsistencies: Molly’s mother seemed unconcerned by her daughter’s violent death, the main suspect was never brought to trial despite compelling evidence and vital records are missing. Alex enlists the help of her close friend, art conservator John Porter, and together they sift through the clues and deceptions that swirl around the last days of Molly Dean.

I’m the most authentic version of myself when I’m around Jack. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and our relationship was always one of mudpies and mocking. Then everything changed. Beautiful Kate, my best friend, disappeared on a moonlit beach after Jack dumped her for me. Jack was a suspect and, sure of his innocence, I lied to protect him. I know Jack didn’t kill her. Our betrayal did.

Blending the popular genre of crime fiction with the art of the short story, Crime and Other Pastimes reveals the interconnecting lives and deaths of unforgettable characters within an inner-city community. After the corpse of a newborn baby is discovered in a nearby laneway, an adopted girl being raised in a funeral home finally appreciates the sanctity of her own life. A drug dealer goes missing, and his many clients plot an outrageous plan to ensure his safe return, with comically fatal results....

Tales of fugitive lives: dazzling portraits of women and men on the run from their present, their past, their future and from themselves.... Holding a discerning mirror to seemingly ordinary lives, James captures recurring themes of love, betrayal, passion and guilt to show just how vulnerable and intricate the human heart really is.

Where Have You Been? is a gripping domestic thriller that takes the form of a classic impostor story, with a 21st-century twist. Susan and Ed Middleton are perfectly content with their lives. Two kids, two cars, a solid brick bungalow in the suburbs. There’s barely a ripple in the surface of their happy existence. But when Susan’s older sister, who vanished as a teenager, reappears to claim an inheritance, everything is set to change. Karen - now known as Carly - has had a tough time during the past 20 years: drugs, prostitution, prison.

In present-day Melbourne, a group of power-hungry academics are trying to reassemble a 19th century grimoire designed to summon Satan. For centuries magicians have compiled grimoires to call up demons. In Victorian London an ambitious warlock called Peter Owling designs a book to summon the Lord of Demons himself and thereby achieve eternal life. But not even his beautiful young acolyte Christian grasps the full extent of his master’s plans....

When Orla Macrae receives a letter asking her to return to the family cattle property where she grew up, she does so grudgingly. Her estranged uncle, Palmer, may be dying, but he is the last person she wants to see, especially since she's made a new life far away from where she lost so much. But on his deathbed he utters a few enigmatic words about a secret locked away and a clue as to its whereabouts.

Curl Curl, Sydney, January 1978. Angie's a looker. Or she's going to be. She's only 14, but already, heads turn wherever she goes. Male heads, mainly...Jane worships her older cousin Angie. She spends her summer vying for Angie's attention. Then Angie is murdered. Jane and her family are shattered. They withdraw into themselves, casting a veil of silence over Angie's death. Thirty years later, a journalist arrives with questions about the tragic event. Jane is relieved to finally talk about her adored cousin. And so is her family.

In 1928 Evie Woodward is running from a past she barely understands. A widow with a young son, she agrees to become partners with Daniel Roxburgh in a Psychic Detective Agency. But their bogus investigations soon take on a very real turn. Daniel lives his life in the shadows of Melbourne’s gangster world. He’s a dangerous man, but he’d do anything for Evie. Just as happiness is in their grasp, an investigation in a house called Blue Waters goes very wrong. Evie’s past is catching up with her, and Daniel may not be able to save her.