She doesn’t believe in love since watching her father walk out on her mother years ago. After divorcing his cheating wife, Bryson Blackstone is content with living his life as a single man, running his business and staying busy. But his focus is soon diverted to Kalina Cooper – a beautiful woman he sees every evening in a café. * * * The Blackstone Family novels are all standalone books. Any follow-up short stories correspond to the full-length novel. Book 1 - Evenings With Bryson (Bryson and Kalina) Book 2 - Leaving Barringer (Barringer and Calista) Book 2.5 - Forever Us: Barringer and Calista Blackstone - A Short Story Book 3 - The Things Everson Lost (Everson and June)

    By daybreak, her world has shifted. Max Carlisle, a troubled AFL star, can't stop what comes next. And Ruby, a single woman from the apartment block, is left with questions when she sees Jordi leave.In this remarkable novel, Rachel Matthews captures the characters of Jordi and her family, the players, and the often loveable inhabitants of a big city with a deceptive lightness of touch that seduces the reader. Siren reveals the often unnoticed life of a city while simultaneously drawing us deep into a dark and troubling world. What happens has an unexpected effect on all those who are both directly and indirectly involved.The result is a powerful and haunting novel about cultural stereotypes and expectations, love, loneliness, family and our struggle to connect. In so many ways, Matthews subtly sounds the siren on sexual violence and its prevalence in our culture.

    She would marry a man called Tod or Brad and she would have two perfect children. But instead she married a Jeff and he’s just confessed to having an affair.Spurred on by supportive friends and her unpredictable sister Max, she finds the job she was born for: Wife for Hire. Sam manages everything from domestic help to renovations to social events for many satisfied customers.However when Hal Buchanan is added to her client list but claims not to need her services, Sam realises that while she can organise many things in life, she is not so businesslike when her emotions are involved.

    Beer and bitterness destroyed his marriage to his high school sweetheart, but he’s a changed man now. Solid, stable and sober, he’s finally ready to start a family of his own. But the only woman he can imagine spending his forever with filed divorce papers on him eight years ago.When Rowan Albright faces her groom at the end of the aisle, this time they’re not the ones getting married. She never stopped loving Mannix, but his weekend beer binges to mask the deep-rooted grief tore at the very fabric of her soul, especially since alcoholism decimated her family. But Aunt Ellie says he’s clean now, so when Mannix’s beloved Gramps offers her a job in the family business, she jumps on it. Working together will reveal her ex-husband’s change of heart, right? Or destroy hers…Is faith, hope and love strong enough to rebuild what was lost? Will God give them a second chance at love and a future, or will both their hearts be shattered once again? Will theirs be a summer reunion or a summer to forget?

    Nothing could be further from the truth. Long-time resident, Izzy Montgomery juggles the stress of a new job with her burgeoning home life. Family dynamics go into overdrive when Alexander and Cynthia launch plans to build a home nearby and Liam’s sister, Fiona shows up to do an internship with the local doctor. Lisa-Marie and Justin are back for the summer and sparks fly. While crusty, old Reg keeps sawmill production booming, Beulah runs the organic bakery and plans the First Annual Caleb Jenkins Memorial Ball Tournament. Bethany discovers her own hidden talents working with young people at Micah Camp. As a nine-year-old’s dreams reflect a dangerous reality, many encounter issues from the past. This is a novel for all those who work at building family ties by strengthening the traditional and creating the new. Chasing Down the Night explores a wide-ranging emotional landscape while highlighting the many aspects of day-to-day, rural life. Tears and laughter are inevitable.

    This former bank manager helped them transform three million dollars - stolen from bookies by a gang of robbers - into a rescue package for their dying town.But now the day of reckoning has come.The crims want the money.The cops want the money.A rogue insurance investigator wants the money.And so do Australia's two most notorious hit men.In trying to save his town, Lambert is forced to risk everything - his life, the lives of the town folk, his own daughter, ten thousand barramundi and a really lovable Jack Russell.

    He is sent to Italy by a wealthy financier to try and coax home the rich man's son. In the process Ripley becomes both attracted and seduced, finding the murder the only way to deal with the situation. From that point Ripley tries to cover up his crime. Patricia Highsmith's beguiling tale of morality and amorality is given a dramatic rendering by contemporary dramatist Phyllis Nagy, who knew Highsmith in her later years in Paris."Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

    She hates her job, she's jealous of her perfect flatmate - and she has just called off her wedding.A trip home to Ireland to celebrate her birthday with her beloved grandmother is exactly what Erin needs, and she's spent days preparing herself to break the news about her broken engagement. What she's not prepared for is the gift she receives: a secret family heirloom that will change everything.Could this be the answer Erin has been looking for - the key to the happy life she's always dreamed of? Only time will tell...

    Lindy has arranged a pre-wedding holiday week, Phoebe included, as a reunion for Alex and his two Best Men. Phoebe loves weddings and hopes for her own happily ever after.Brady Winters reluctantly leaves his luxury charter yacht company in the Mediterranean for a flying trip to Australia to be Best Man. A week is all he can spare and, as a confirmed and cynical bachelor, spending time with an overexcited group of women preparing for a wedding is the last thing he wants. But as Lindy's meticulous plans go awry, Phoebe's sense of duty almost halts the wedding, and a dental crisis forces Brady to stay on long enough for him to discover a wedding of his own might not be too bad after all. But will Phoebe have him?

    How else would beauty influencer, Senaé Dawson, wind up at a bachelor auction? Whisked away without a say, her besties treat her to a birthday bid at an auction featuring decadent Black men. Inevitably infected by the hype, Senaé’s excitement hits hyper drive until the blindfold’s removed from her eyes. She’s dumbstruck to discover she’s just “bought” her ex-husband. Lexington “Lex” Ryde turned his love for cars into a multi-million dollar private transportation business serving Black Hollywood’s A-list. His line of work taught Lex to be prepared at a moment’s notice. But seeing his ex-wife face-to-face for the first time in twenty years leaves him feeling as if “sucker-punched by Tyson and Holyfield.” Thanks to their problematic past, neither is pleased with this bachelor auction “ridiculousness”, or the instant flare of hot, sexual attraction erupting between them. But being Mama Peaches’ first foster child, Lex can’t renege. He's stuck with the auction results...and the unpleasant truth that he's still in love with his ex.   Take the ride with Senaé and Lex! They’ll confront a painful past, consider their present, and encounter an unwanted admirer who must be dealt with.

    Her surprise soon gives way to panic when they figure out that an employee gave her car to the wrong person and it is now five hundred miles away. All the Christmas gifts that she’d carefully budgeted out for her children since July were in the trunk.Zayden Crile can’t believe his employee made such a huge mistake. And of all people it had to be his former sister-in-law. She’s still upset that his brother ran off with the nurse, leaving her with two small children. She has struggled, and to make things a little easier Zayden takes care of her car as a favor. He certainly never intended to make a mistake which could ruin Christmas for his niece and nephew.Forced to ride together to get her car, Blythe starts to see Zayden in a new light and realizes that maybe she married the wrong brother. Could one honest mistake patch a new family together?

    By the river. On her own.After finishing her six-year long affair with her boss, Rosa is desperate to avoid him in the workplace and determined to forge a new life for herself.Harry Kennedy has sailed away from a messy Sydney divorce and is resolute in kick-starting a new life on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.Thrown together at work, Rosa and Harry discover a secret. One that their employer is desperate to keep hidden. To reveal it they must work together, but first they must learn to trust not only each other but their own rising attraction.Are these two damaged people willing to risk their hard won independence for the promise of love again?

    One follows Joanna Aronson as she cares for her father, Clyde, during his latest struggle with cancer while butting heads with her stepmother, Brenda, a cold woman whom Joanna suspects of neglecting him and even trying to kill him. Interspersed are Joanna’s memories of growing up in suburban Baltimore with her sister and parents in the ’60s, a life that seems idyllic yet seethes with subterranean discontents. Clyde, an English teacher, dominates the family with his charisma but undermines it with his affairs, including a liaison with one of Joanna’s teenage acquaintances. Joanna’s mother, Evie, feels trapped in housewifery and longs for the fulfillment she felt as a Communist Party activist. Joanna, though drawn like Clyde to the life of the mind, feels slighted because of his wish that she had been a boy. A colleague of her father’s seduces her at age 14. Threading through the story is Clyde’s memoir of growing up with his brother, Harry, in New York’s National Hebrew Orphan Home after his father abandoned the family and his mother placed the two boys there in 1924. It’s a Dickensian story of cold, hunger, loneliness, frequent beatings, and sexual abuse, but it’s lit with friendships and intellectual ambitions. Cherubin’s bittersweet tale is an epic and indelible character study of Clyde from frightened cub to kvetching lion in winter, with overtones of King Lear and an occasional queasily incestuous vibe. She writes in evocative prose that mixes astringent reality with glowing reverie. (“I sized up the three agents,” recalls Evie of a visit from the FBI during the Joseph McCarthy era. “Cold, smug, and bored. They could not begin to understand how alive I was during the war, how urgent and meaningful my life was thanks to the CP. How engaged I was with the world… I still miss those days.”) As Joanna grapples with her clan’s vexed legacy, the author shows how both betrayal and forgiveness can propagate across generations.An alternately dark and luminous, wounded and affectionate portrait of a family in crisis.

    . When off-duty EMT Kristen Devereaux rescues a man from a potentially fatal accident, she has no idea that she just saved the life of one of the most successful billionaires in the country. Which is exactly why she’s stunned when he invites her to dinner one night and makes her a proposal she just can’t afford to turn down. Self-made billionaire Sebastian Kent is a man in trouble. This divorced father of two adorable girls is restlessly being pursued by a vindictive ex-wife who’s not quite as innocent as she looks. After a particularly nasty divorce, the last thing that Sebastian wants is another relationship. Until he meets feisty Kristen with her sparkling eyes and sharp wit. In spite of their reservations, there’s no denying the electrified spark between Kristen and Sebastian. But as the two lovers embark on a whirlwind romance, will they ever escape the dangers that constantly lurk over their heads? **** This is a standalone Novel with a touch of steam and HEA. ****