Showing results by narrator "Julie Nihill" in All Categories

A story about art, murder and marking your place in history. In 1992, morning sickness drives Jane to predawn walks of her neighbourhood, where she meets an unfriendly woman who sprays her with a hose as she passes by. When they do talk: Muriel Kemp eyes my pregnant belly and tells me if I really want to succeed, I'd get rid of the baby. Driven to find out more about her curmudgeonly neighbour, Jane Cooper begins to investigate the life of Muriel, who claims to be a famous artist from Sydney's bohemian 1920s.

Friday the thirteenth of February 1948 is Hannah Gordon's thirty-sixth birthday. Her daughter Allie turns sixteen on the very same day. What's more, it's a full moon. Hannah doesn't need Grandma Ade's warning that bad luck is coming to realise the odds are against them. Hannah Gordon has always wanted to be someone important, yet she's stuck in an inner-city back street, fighting to keep hold of her children, her home and her sense of self. Then a devastating accident sets off a chain of events that will rock the family foundations to the core.

A forthright investigation of human frailty and emotion with a plot that keeps you in its thrall until the last word. When Greer Gordon met Mischa Svoboda, a driven Czech-born refugee painter, he was unknown. His debut at the small art gallery where she worked created a sensation, and their explosive love affair caused Greer to abandon her husband and career and embark on a nomadic life with Mischa.

Winifred Steger travelled to Australia with her father in the 1880s, when he took up a land grant in north Queensland. The grant proved to be worthless, and, faced with poverty, endless backbreaking work and isolation, Winifred's father spiralled into depression and alcoholism. Left to fend for herself, Winifred battled insurmountable odds to maintain her dignity and sanity, finding solace in writing to ease her hardship.

It was a shocking crime that made headlines around Australia. An innocent young woman violently attacked in her family home by a total stranger and left to die. Beaten repeatedly and soaked with petrol as her home burned, Lauren Huxley's life was hanging by a thread. Lauren's battle to survive caused an outpouring of public love and support. The crime was so horrific, so senseless, anyone who read about the attack couldn't help thinking: how could I bear someone I loved to go through this?