Showing results by narrator "Casey WIthoos" in All Categories

Ruby Jones was always an optimist, but the trauma of her past had made her wary. So when she flees to the small rural community of Bunyip Bay to start afresh, she has her sights firmly set on establishing her horse-riding business and rebuilding her life. The last thing Ruby wants is a romance. In fact, after all she has been through, she can't imagine she will ever believe in love again.

Felicity Bell has struggled to move on after her marriage broke down. Her ex has found love again, her children have their own lives, and it's beginning to feel like her only comfort comes from her dog and her job as a taxidermist. So when Flick gets an offer to work in New Orleans for a few months, she's drawn to the chance to make a fresh start.

Interior stylist Grace Davenport has come to the mountains for solitude and a place to heal after her parents' death. Returning to their beloved town of Bundilla, she plans to restore a local bluestone mansion in honour of their memory. She'll just be there for the summer, until she figures out her next step.

In this memoir, Mandy Sayer recounts the fascinating years she spent performing on the streets of New York and New Orleans with her father. Gerry Sayer was a jazz drummer, a beguiling Irish charmer with a million stories and an insatiable love for jam sessions and all-night parties. Mandy grew up captivated by his outrageous tales even after he left the family for good and her mother descended into the distance of drink. She learned to tap-dance and they set off together to satisfy their grand ambitions on the toughest stage in the world - New York.

This book is about a movement. A movement made up of women and men around the world who are no longer afraid to speak out about violence, abuse, harassment, sexism, abuse of power and patriarchy. A movement which started with the courage of a number of women in the media and advertising industries and has spread across countries, industries and social class. This movement has uncovered the global scale of gender discrimination, sexual abuse and exploitation which women and girls face. As the years have passed, the movement has grown.

Reserved high school teacher Keely Mitchell is more than ready for her holiday on the West coast of Australia, so when a medical emergency turns over all her plans and an intervention by a kind stranger finds her recovering in a Margaret River vineyard, she is at first downcast. Keely had wanted to put recent traumatic events out of her mind, and recuperating alone in a stranger's house won't help that. But slowly, the lovely food, spectacular wine and beautiful landscape of the area begin to work their spell.

A moving, tender and compelling story about a life lived on the edges of society, of poverty, of certainty, of love. Filled with beautifully realised descriptions of life seen through a child's eyes - a child who gradually comes to realise her adored parents are all too tragically flawed and broken - Velocity packs the emotional impact of Angela's Ashes with the surreal humour and razor-sharp observations of Running with Scissors.

A quiet small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she's reluctant to revisit: dark memories and unspoken trauma, warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss. She became a new person a long time ago. What happens when buried stories are dragged into the light?

Maitland 1913. Miss Elizabeth Quinn is something of an institution in Maitland Town. For longer than anyone could remember she and her brother, businessman Michael, have lived in the impressive two-story stone house next to the church. When she is discovered cowering in the corner of the exhibition gallery at the Technical College the entire town knows something strange has come to pass. Was it the prehistoric remains or perhaps the taxidermy exhibition that had reduced the whale-boned encased pillar of society to a quivering mess? Or something about a striking painting on loan?

Can you catch a killer or find a missing person? Australia is 'the lucky country'. But not for everyone. Unsolved Australia: Lost Boys, Gone Girls tells 13 stories of people whose luck ran out in the most mysterious of circumstances. It's a journalistic deep dive into Australia's dark heart by one of Australia's premier true crime writers, Justine Ford, the acclaimed best-selling author of Unsolved Australia and The Good Cop.

The Kelly family has always been trouble. When a fire in a remote caravan community kills nine people, including 17-year-old Sabine Kelly's mother and sister, Sabine confesses to the murders. Shortly after, she escapes custody and disappears. Recently made redundant from marriage, motherhood and her career, journalist Rachel Weidermann has long suspected Sabine made her way back to the river—now, twelve years after the ‘Caravan Murders', she has the time and the tenacity to corner a fugitive and land the story of the year.

Evie Shine is adrift. After two decades of marriage, her husband has left her. Possibly for another woman. He isn’t saying. That Evie has spent her career dissecting relationships and mending broken hearts doesn’t help at all—it just makes everything worse. How did she not see this coming? And what’s she meant to do now? Her own worst client, Evie ignores all useful advice and chooses platitudes, wine and hangovers over the prospect of moving on. But soon she realises that the beauty of having the rug ripped from under you is getting to see exactly what’s underneath.

Alice has always been a trailblazer as a scientist, activist, and mother. She knew her choices would involve sacrifices, but now, on the eve of her 80th birthday, she's beginning to wonder if she's sacrificed too much. Alice's daughter, Sappho, rebelled against her unconventional upbringing, choosing to marry young and embrace life as a homemaker, but her status as a domestic goddess has recently taken a surprising turn.

In the freezing Antarctic waters south of Tasmania, a mountain was discovered in 1642 by the seafaring explorer Gerrit Jansz. Not just any mountain but one that Jansz estimated was an unbelievable height of 25,000 metres. In 2016, at the foot of this unearthly mountain, a controversial and ambitious 'dream home', the Observatory, is painstakingly constructed by an eccentric billionaire - the only man to have ever reached the summit.

The 1950s are a carefree time for a young woman like Grace. The war is over and when her family moves to Brisbane, plans are made for her to complete her studies at the University of Queensland. Ewan is also studying the same course and when he meets the beautiful, head-strong Grace, the differences in their backgrounds are pushed aside as they plan their future together. However, not everyone is happy with the romance and when the young couple are forced to separate, decisions are made that will determine their path in life.

Rich, privileged and powerful men have teams of lawyers at their disposal to suppress allegations and prevent newspaper stories from running. Individual women, frontline services, advocacy groups and journalists find themselves fighting against censorship. The weaponising of the law to silence survivors from speaking about their abuse, and anyone who might report on it, has been described as the 'perverse twist' of MeToo. Leading human rights barristers Jennifer Robinson and Dr Keina Yoshida set out to investigate this global problem.

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.

Bush nurse Lara McIntyre and rural journalist Toby Paxton are thrust into the limelight when an accident puts the heart of their community in jeopardy. The small country town of Bridgefield can’t manage without their general store and post office, but Lara can’t stomach the idea of out-of-town buyers revamping it with no regard for what the residents want. She’s also unsure where Toby’s allegiances lie in this fight. Loyalties are put to the test as the locals attempt to save the shop, with personal agendas, old grudges and misunderstandings threatening their best efforts.

We all carry stories within us - wrenching, redemptive, extraordinary, and laced with unexpected and hard-won wisdom. These are the real-life stories that a group of women tell each other when they gather for a deep and structured conversation - once a month in a suburban living room - about the things that really matter. They discover that life can be a heartbeat away from chaos; that bad things happen to good people; that good people do outrageous things; that the desire for transformation is enduringly human.

Natalie King's life is full. Some might say too full. With her teaching job, a farm to run, three grown daughters who have not quite got a handle on things, a reserved husband and a demanding mother-in-law, most days she is too busy to think about whether she is happy. But her life has meaning, doesn't it? After all, she is the one person everyone depends upon. But when an odd gift from her mother-in-law—an old book in the form of stern and outdated advice for young wives—surfaces again, it brings with it memories she thought she had buried deep.