Showing results by narrator "Vivien Carter" in All Categories

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.

The wealthy community of Esperance is picture-perfect. Big houses, stunning views, beautiful people. A brand new running track for the local club to jog around in the evenings. From the outside, it looks like paradise. But the women of the town know the truth: you can hide anything—from wrinkles to secrets from your past—if you have enough money. You could even hide a murder.

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he is still here, he watches his girlfriend, Hannah, lost in grief in the apartment they shared and begins to realize how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah was haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seemed to offer the potential of a fresh new chapter, but the past refused to stay hidden.

Barb Cook and 14 other autistic women describe life from a female autistic perspective, and present empowering, helpful and supportive insights from their personal experience for fellow autistic women. Michelle Garnett's comments validate and expand the experiences described from a clinician's perspective, and provide extensive recommendations. Autistic advocates including Liane Holliday Willey, Anita Lesko, Jeanette Purkis, Artemisia and Samantha Craft offer their personal guidance on significant issues that particularly affect women, as well as those that are more general to autism.

What began as a 90-Day challenge simply to spend less, becomes an exploration of what matters most. I Am Enough contemplates what it means to have enough, do enough and ultimately be enough. Told with insight and humour, this book is an antidote to the constant pressure we are under to do more, have more and be more.

Barista and budding artist Mia Curtis is shocked to receive a package all the way from England informing her she's the heir to her late grandmother's cottage. Feeling lost in her own life, Mia travels across the world to claim her inheritance, where she begins to unravel the secrets passed down through the generations of women in her family.

In Suva, the bustling capital of Fiji, a tropical cyclone is looming. In this city of dazzling contradictions, three strangers are living worlds apart.

Meet the young widows. Together, they’ve shared their grief and emotional healing in the wake of losing their husbands. But whilst these meetings are the only places, they feel they can open up, all is not as it seems. Each woman is hiding something, but one is not who she says she is. In fact, she’s never even been married.

Did anyone know Dr Gabriel Beaufort better than Ruby Rose Gillespie? They were friends at high school. They are secret lovers now. And because he is also the lung-transplant surgeon who saved her life, Ruby will forever be in his debt. But then the body of Dr Beaufort is found in the wetlands next to the hospital, on the same day as cystic fibrosis sufferer Ruby is readmitted with a sudden fever.

Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max’s death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with.

Handywoman Barb Young has lived in the sleepy coastal town of Bullford Point for over fifty years - and frankly, in that time, not much has happened, unless you count that business where a bush turkey managed to board the ferry a couple of years ago. When Joe Griffiths returns from Sydney after six years of drug addiction, jail and, eventually, rehab, Barb offers him a job, hoping to help him turn his life around. However, when another new resident of Bullford Point is murdered, Joe becomes the prime suspect.

Lillian Velvet lives a very lonely life with her cold and remote grandmother. That is, until her tenth birthday, when she is given a pickle jar of gold coins, along with a note with clear instructions: don't go out, don't open the door for anyone, and don't spend all your coins in one day. What happens next seems impossible.

Former fireman Gus Stevens is haunted by the one rescue he couldn't make; he wants nothing more than to disappear into his quiet farm on the outskirts of Forest Gully. The last thing he needs is his new neighbour, Kate Harris, with her happy smile and relentless community spirit, trying to drag him back into a world he's sworn to leave behind. Kate has enough on her plate to raise her nephew Riley and prove to herself—and her parents—that she's capable of being the guardian he needs.

Max didn't believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max's death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden.

Healing the scars of the Bali Bombings–An inspirational story of an Australian mother's journey back from hell and the enduring love for her children that gave her the will to wage her own war on terrorism.

Melbourne, 1868. When dazzling theatre star Marie St Denis dies in the arms of her best friend, fellow actress Lola Sanchez, everyone believes it was suicide by laudanum overdose. Everyone except Lola. On the brink of stardom herself, she risks everything by embarking on a quest to find Marie's killer. When journalist Magnus Scott, writing as 'the Walking Gentleman', publishes a compassionate obituary about her friend, Lola decides to seek his help.

It's Sydney in the early 2000s, and Grub is spending the summer with her universally adored older brother, Elijah, and his magnetic but troubled best friend, Zed. Their days are filled with surfing, swimming and hanging out; life couldn't be better. But years later, Elijah disappears and Grub's family unravels. At first, Grub blames Zed: he was the one who derailed Elijah from a bright future in the arts. But as Grub looks back at those dreamy summer days, the sanctuary of her certainty crumbles. Was Zed really responsible for her brother's disappearance? Was anyone?

Now a major film, distributed by Artificial Eye. Berlin. The once-divided city still holds its share of secrets. One afternoon, near the site of the Berlin Wall, backpacker Clare meets charismatic local Andi. The attraction is instant, and they spend the night together. But when Clare wakes up in Andi’s apartment, she discovers that the door is locked. And it soon becomes clear that he has no intention of letting her go.

In 1916, Rosie Marchand leaves her hometown of Albert on the Somme. A survivor of the war, she finds shelter in the home of her cousin, photographer Louis Thuillier, a shell-shocked veteran of Verdun, who with his wife Antoinette takes pictures of soldiers behind the lines. For Australian Bill Foster, the war is a faraway adventure where he is driven to go and join his brother. Bill is in love with Isabella De Luca, a passionate Queensland woman, and promises to return to her. However, Mick De Luca, Isabella's father, vows to do all he can to ensure this doesn't happen.

Lily works as a cleaner. She moves through houses in inner-city Melbourne, unseen, scrubbing away the daily residue of other people’s privilege. Her partner Janks works the line in a local food factory. With every pay cheque, they inch further away from their former world of poverty and addiction. Lily and Janks are determined that their daughter Jewelee will have a different life. She’ll have a career, not a dead-end job. She’ll have savings, not debt. But precarious lives are easily upended.