Showing results by narrator "Maddy Withington" in All Categories

A second chance at love isn’t in the cards for me. A second chance at love isn’t in the cards for me. Which is why when I meet Aria Swan in a bar one night and she offers up a solution to both of our problems, I actually consider her proposal. I mean, where’s the harm in playing house for a bit? It’s not like I’m going to fall in love with her. A fact that will make terminating this little arrangement at the end of the year easy. Even if her touch has this way of melting the icy coldness surrounding my heart....

Winifred ‘Fred’ Darling, serial dater and author of 21 Rules for Not Catching Feelings, may not have been the best choice for maid of honor at her mother’s sixth wedding. Indeed, she’s determined to do everything in her power to stop it—and she’s found a kindred spirit in the groom’s attractive son, Leo. He’s dead-set against the wedding too, and once they arrive on the island where their respective parents plan to get hitched, “Operation Break-Up” is set in motion…

WINNER OF THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE NSW PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN AWARD A gripping, haunting work about the reverberations of a serial killer's crimes in the lives of everyday...

1917: America's declaration of war against Germany gives Grace Winter, a keen-eyed New York Times investigative reporter, a much sought after opportunity to make her mark on the Western Front, albeit in ways she had never expected. But by 1918 the gruesome reality of trench warfare has set in...

‘Ella Baxter’s debut novel is drenched in sex and death . . . there’s also much love . . . An intense, viscerally affecting book, with the quotient of tenderness to violence in an equal scale.’ - Sydney Morning Herald Amelia is no stranger to sex and death. Her job in her family’s...

Katy Sweeney is looking for her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, her free-spirited younger sister, Phoebe, vanished without a trace on the remote, achingly beautiful coastal highway in Western Australia. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up on her.

After fleeing to Melbourne in the wake of a breakup, all Ana has to show for herself is an unfulfilling job at an overly enthusiastic tech start-up and one particularly questionable dating app experience. Then she meets Evan. Charming, kind and financially responsible, Evan is a complete aberration from her usual type, and Ana feels like she has finally awoken from a long dating nightmare. As much as she tries to let their burgeoning relationship unfold IRL, Ana just can't resist the urge to find Evan online.

Noni Blake knows she wants more: more adventures, more joy, more romance, more orgasms, more pleasure...more everything. Now she just has to figure out how to get it. Noni didn’t expect to be starting over at the age of 36. But 18 months after the end of her long-term relationship, she decides it’s time to start living her life again. While an encounter with a sexy firefighter is a welcome entry back into the dating world, Noni soon realises she’s looking for more than just a series of brief, pleasurable encounters. She’s looking for more pleasure in, well, everything. 

When her parents announce their impending separation, Natalie can't understand why no one is fighting or at least mildly upset. And now that Zach and Lucy, her two best friends, have fallen in love, she's feeling slightly miffed and decidedly awkward. Where does she fit in now? And what has happened to the version of her life that played out like a TV show—with just the right amount of banter, pining and meaningful looks? Nothing is going according to plan. But then an unexpected romance comes along and shakes things up even further.

A group of school-leavers: free at last, ready to party, expectations high. Leonardo, geeky, asthmatic, shy and prone to anxiety, has landed with them. Super high-achiever Kaiya is trying to forget her frustration with her drug-addicted sister as well as dealing with pressure from the popular girls. Mason is coming to terms with his secret desire for his best mate, Jared. Jared wants a week off from his relationship with Val so he can have sex with as many girls as possible. But the party takes a dangerous turn when Val is drugged and a man is later found dead on the beach.

Magpie Beach is a quiet seaside town – full of small-town prejudices and small-town cliques. Meg, Rosemary and Lily are all outsiders. Meg and Lily because they came to Magpie Beach to escape their former lives, Rosemary because her upbringing was the subject of much local gossip and upturned noses. The three women come together as friends, partly because their homes are so close together on the outskirts of town – and partly because their neighbors treat them with such suspicion. When Jessie Else goes missing – it's easy to see why this small band of outcasts are first on the list of suspect.

'There's a killer roaming the roads and you're out here on your own, picking up strangers .' When Emily's beautiful cousin Aspen goes missing somewhere in the Outback, no one seems to take it seriously, not even the police. After all, Aspen has a history of drug use and a string of broken...

“Curious about a new guy, Ana falls into a social media sinkhole when she sees her predecessor: gorgeous, blonde, and dead. . . . This propulsive debut will give you chills.”—People (Best Books Fall 2023) “A serious blend of Fleabag and Rebecca with the pulse of modern-day existence...

It's not easy getting close to people. Amelia's meeting a lot of men but once she gets the sex she wants from them, that's it for her: she can't connect further. A terrible thing happened to Daniel last year and it's stuck inside Amelia ever since, making her stuck too. Maybe being a cosmetician at her family's mortuary business isn't the best job for a young woman. It's not helping her social life. She loves her job, but she's not great at much else. Especially emotion. 

"With clear enunciation and an emotive tone, Withington captures the story's humor, as well as Brooke's personality, especially her anxiety. The slight variance in voices is just enough to differentiate the characters. Romance fans, regardless of age, will enjoy this production."- AudioFile From...

Christine thought a year in South Korea would hit the pause button on her messy life. Her dad's death had left her anxious and depressed, and her career in musical theatre had reached a new low of shopping-centre kids' shows. When she found herself pulled over by the side of the road, dressed as a dinosaur and sobbing uncontrollably, it was clear something had to change. A role with an experimental theatre company based in Seoul seemed the perfect way to put off dealing with her problems, at least for a year. But she soon found there's no running away from yourself.

Bridget and Simone aren't friends. But their daughters are in the same dance troupe, so they're flying to Los Angeles for the girls to perform at Disneyland. Simone's daughter Zahra is indisputably a leader in the group, but Bridget's daughter Becky is a talent on the rise. Simone and her husband are accustomed to business class, but Bridget is less comfortable there. Both lonely women are surprised to find something in common, until Bridget discovers images of Zahra and other dancers that shock her. Are they exploitative or art?

Lotti Coates lives in the shadow of a genius: her father, George, is a brilliant and celebrated Australian painter. When Lotti meets the outcast waif Kyla at a suburban Canberra school, two worlds are set to collide. Slowly Kyla is drawn into the orbit of the Coates family. Or is it the other way around? As Lotti and Kyla navigate their way towards adulthood, dark secrets start to unravel, with devastating consequences....

Sydney TV reporter Josephine "Josie" Larsen is approaching 30 and coming dangerously close to failing at life. Lost in a vortex of other people's career milestones, engagement parties, and baby showers, Josie is perennially single, abandoned by her globetrotting family, and invisible to her boss—except for the one time he tuned in while she was mid-panic attack on live TV. As a punishment, Josie is shipped off to cover another reporter's six-month leave at a regional bureau in Newcastle. But Josie has more waiting for her in Newcastle than yawn-inducing stories about bicycle lane protests.

Eighteen-year-old Brooke is the kind of friend who not only remembers everyone's birthdays, but also organizes the group present, pays for it, and politely chases others for their share. She's the helper, the doer, the guarder-of-drinks, the minder-of-bags, the maker-of-spreadsheets. She's the responsible one who always follows the rules—and she plans to keep it that way during her first year of university. Her new share house is rules-lite. But ‘no unnecessary drama' means no fights, tension, or romance between housemates.