5 To Watch: October

 

The Three Miss Allens
Victoria Purman

How much of who we are is destiny and how much chance?

In 1934, the three Miss Allens – Ruby, Adeline and Clara – arrive in the seaside town of Remarkable Bay for their annual summer holiday. It’s the last time they’ll spend summers as a family. Adeline is engaged, Ruby is weighing up an offer, and Clara is just eighteen and about to start her life. But by summer’s end, the lives they have known will change irrevocably and a mysterious secret will tear the family apart.

Eighty-two years later, Ruby’s great-granddaughter Roma Harris moves to the now sleepy Remarkable Bay, retreating from tragedy. Roma’s distant cousin Addy arrives too, fleeing a life with too much drama. It’s only when the women discover an old guest book that they start asking questions about the mysterious third Miss Allen. Who was she? Why has she disappeared from the family’s history?

If they solve this mystery from their past, could it change the women’s futures?

 

The Family Secret
Fiona Palmer

From one of Australia’s favourite storytellers comes a heartwarming story spanning three generations about when to fight and when to surrender – and how new love can heal old wounds.

Kim Richards is a creative woman of the land, a rural ambassador who’s renowned for her contribution to her community. But deep down, she’s lonely. She’s already watched the man she loves falls for someone else, and her dream of starting her own family feels like it’s slipping through her fingers.

Enter Charlie McNamara, an older man who’s arrived in Lake Grace on business. Sparks fly between Kim and Charlie, but he seems to have a hidden agenda and a past life he’s trying to hide.

They’re both drawn to local hermit Harry, a Vietnam veteran who’s haunted by memories from the war. What ties these lost souls together? Can they solve a long-held family mystery and heal fractures of the heart?

 

From a Paris Balcony
Ella Carey

Heartbroken and alone, Boston art curator Sarah West is grieving the recent deaths of her parents and the end of her marriage. Ultrasensible by nature, she’s determined to stay the course to get her life back on track. But fate has something else in mind. While cleaning out her father’s closet, she finds a letter from the famous Parisian courtesan Marthe de Florian, dated 1895. The subject? Sarah’s great-great-aunt Louisa’s death. Legend has it Louisa committed suicide…but this letter implies there’s more to that story.

Determined to learn the truth, Sarah, against her nature, impulsively flies to Paris. There she’s drawn into the world of her flatmate, the brilliant artist Laurent Chartier. As she delves deep into the glittering Belle Époque to unravel the mystery, Sarah finds that her aunt’s story may offer her exactly what she needs to open up to love again.

Following Sarah in the present day and Louisa in the 1890s, this moving novel spans more than a century to tell the stories of two remarkable women.

 

 

The Art of Keeping Secrets
Rachael Johns

Little secrets grow up to be big lies…

They’ve been best friends since their sons started high school together, and Felicity, Emma and Neve share everything … or so they thought.

But Flick’s seemingly perfect marriage hides a shocking secret which, with one word, threatens to destroy her and her family’s happiness. Emma is in denial about a potential custody battle, her financial constraints, the exhaustion she can’t seem to shake off and the inappropriate feelings she has for her boss. And single mum Neve is harbouring a secret of her own; a secret that might forever damage her close-knit relationship with her son.

When the tight hold they have each kept on their secrets for years begins to slip, they must face the truth. Even if that truth has the power to hurt the ones they love, and each other.

Perhaps some secrets weren’t made to be kept.

 

Hell on Wheels
Rhyll Biest

An imperious princess, an arrogant mercenary, a marriage of convenience, and one hell of a roller derby bout.

Princess Valeda fled Hell to hide from her mad brother, but a war on her realm sees her dragged straight back to seal a military alliance through marriage.

Her betrothed? The Captain of Bloodshed and Slaughter, a royal bastard with blood black as night whose passion for her might prove as dangerous as the war with her brother.

Valeda is going to need all of her wits, treachery and cunning—and some lessons learned through demon roller derby—to overcome her past, defeat the enemy, and survive her marriage

 

 

 

 

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