Showing results by narrator "Taryn Ryan" in All Categories

‘She’s dead, Emily. She’s dead.’ The phone falls from my hand. I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. This isn’t possible – my mother couldn’t have been in an accident at the cliffs. She cannot be dead. Because if she is, then it might be all my fault… This first trip back home was supposed to be a fresh start for our family. Full of cocktails on the terrace and sunny days at the beach. It was time to forget all the secrets that had torn us apart.

When I begin to receive threatening messages, one thing becomes clear: Cassandra wants me out of her son’s life, and she will do anything to get what she wants. Including destroying me. But that’s okay. No matter what she does, I’m confident that Miles and I will be forever. Because I know Cassandra’s darkest secret. The one she’ll do absolutely anything to keep. I have a plan, while she has no idea who she’s dealing with. And by the time my darling mother-in-law realizes, it will be far too late for her to run…

My hand trembles as I stare at the anonymous text. On this sunny Saturday morning, our twin ten-year-old boys were playing in the park just down our tree-lined street. But only one of them has come home… and it’s all my husband’s fault. I race to Leo’s study and demand answers. As his face turns white, I know: one of his affairs has turned deadly. I always smell the unfamiliar perfume on his shirt. I try to pretend we are a happy family, for the sake of the children… but now, my child is in terrible danger.

In Western Australia, Sarah chuckles as she describes her final will and testament—which will throw the metaphorical cat among the family pigeons—whilst sharing a bottle of wine with her neighbour Thomas as they sit on the terrace of her luxurious waterside home. Six months later, at the age of 95, she peacefully passes on. Married and widowed three times, Sarah has had a great life as a successful businesswoman. Now she's left her Australian house to her two great-nieces—on the condition that they live in it together for a year. 

Riga, 1943. Cycling the streets to deliver fresh loaves, Zenta passes empty houses, curtains open, doors unlocked, their occupants forced out by Russian or German hands. Above the newly built town hall, a Nazi flag waves in the breeze. Since her brother became a soldier and her sister joined the resistance, Zenta is all her parents have left. Then one morning her sister returns. Tired, worn, with a newly rounded belly, Estere is as determined as ever to fight for their freedom.

Liv and Toni were once inseparable. While their parents focused on Mandy, their little sister with special needs, the two older sisters leaned on each other for love, support and security. When they were in their teens, and Liv needed a lifesaving operation, Toni didn’t hesitate to do whatever it took to help her. Since then, their lives have gone in different directions. They live in different cities and rarely see each other. But now it’s Toni who needs help from Liv. Because she’s desperate for a baby.

It’s the phone call every mother dreads. I’m climbing into the car after a trip to the grocery store. As the engine starts, my phone rings. It’s my stepdaughter, Shelby, who is babysitting my three-year-old Millie. "I only went upstairs for a second," she says through her sobs. "She’s gone." When the police turn up, Shelby’s story starts to unravel. What is she hiding? Then I get a message saying, "Your husband is not who you think he is." Suddenly, my family feel like strangers. Everyone has a secret - even me.

They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth. A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman's disappearance 25 years ago. After years of living overseas, Emily returns to New Zealand to care for her father who has dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time - and to glimpse shattering truths about his past.

When Mara Gregory receives a letter from the father whom she believed to have died when she was a child, her world is turned upside down. Aaron Buchanan only discovered that he had a daughter a couple of years ago and now he's desperate to play a part in her life. In the face of her mother's opposition, Mara arranges to meet her father and his family. In a breath-taking corner of the world, amid a waterfront community on Australia's west coast, will Mara find him the disappointment that her mother promises?

When a young girl wakes up in the middle of the desert, she has no idea who she is. She's wearing one shoe, a silky black dress, and she's carrying a strange, heavy case. She meets Tarni, who is on a mysterious quest of her own. Together, the two girls trek across the vast and ever-changing Australian Outback in search of answers. Except both are also hiding secrets.

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.

An unexpected inheritance is most people's dream, but not so for Paula. She's happy and secure in Western Australia with her own business, a complete contrast to her rootless childhood, and has little interest in the minor stately home in Wiltshire of which she is apparently now the owner. Persuaded to at least visit the property, she travels to the UK but from the journey to what awaits her at the other end, complications personal, romantic and financial abound, which will test the adage that home is where the heart is.

You’d never know what secrets the house on Hogarth Street holds - what’s happening, right this second, behind closed doors. An emerald-green front lawn. Perfectly trimmed hedging. An ivy-covered front gate and the scent of honeysuckle in the air. In the yard, two scooters lie on the grass. One blue, one pink, belonging to five-year-old twins.

Her chest tightens, her heart speeding up. The kitchen is chaos. She steps on something hard, and looks down. Toy dinosaurs are scattered everywhere. But her son is nowhere–her baby boy is gone.

Katelyn smiles around at her husband and friends, gathered to celebrate her 36th birthday in their beautiful home decorated with fairy lights. But the next day Katelyn wakes up shaken and terrified in a hospital bed. She doesn’t remember the sweet taste of birthday cake icing, or how angry her best friend was at midnight, or the terrible things her husband said. She doesn’t remember the party at all. When she asks her husband what happened the night of the party he says "nothing". But her blood runs cold at the way his voice lilts slightly. The way it always does when he is lying.

If you think you weren't born with confidence, it's time for a reframe. Step beyond imposter syndrome, a crisis of self-belief or a deficit of bravery with this empowering and practical guide to making friends with your fear and building the skills of confidence in every aspect of your life. Human behaviour and performance specialist Mel Schilling walks you step by step through taking control of your relationships, career and life, demonstrating that confidence, resilience and self-esteem are skillsets to be learned and are essential to helping you thrive.

Verity Fassbinder has her feet in two worlds. The daughter of one human and one Weyrd parent, she has very little power herself, but does claim unusual strength and the ability to walk between one world and the other as a couple of her talents. A rarity, she is charged with keeping the peace, and ensuring the Weyrd remain hidden. But now Sirens are dying, illegal wine made from the tears of human children is for sale—and in the hands of those who hold to old, dangerous ways—and someone has released an unknown and terrifyingly destructive force on the streets of Brisbane.

I never thought I would end up here. Alone, in a cold one-bedroom apartment, only seeing my precious daughter once a week. Another woman is living the life that was once mine. I wish I was still married to my ex-husband, the love of my life. I dream of tucking my five-year-old child into her ballerina bed sheets every night. I miss living in a beautiful house, the perfect family home, with a winding staircase and a sprawling garden. I’d do anything to be with my family again. To start over and prove to them that I’ve changed, that I won’t lose control like before.

An insurance investigation sounds pretty harmless, even if it is for 'Unusual Happenstance'. That's not usually a clause Normals use—it covers all-purpose hauntings, angry genii loci, ectoplasmic home invasion, demonic possession, that sort of thing—but Susan Beckett's claimed three times in three months. Her house keeps getting inundated with mud, but she's still insisting she doesn't need or want help... until the dry-land drownings begin.

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey's music career with the Marine Girls had just begun, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by activism and agitprop theatre, lesbian punk bands and rock 'n' roll love affairs. Morrison came to be a kind of mentor to Thorn, a strong female role model in a male dominated industry. They both faced a chauvinist music media wanting them to behave to type.