July’s selection features a man’s return and subsequent murder trial, a shockingly ‘twisty’ domestic suspense, and the consequences of one night changing young people’s lives forever.
Find out about each one below and remember to email your choice.
Broken Country
by Clare Leslie Hall
Everyone in the village said nothing good would come of Gabriel’s return. And as Beth looks at the man she loves on trial for murder, she can’t help thinking they were right.
Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.
It was Frank who picked up the pieces and together they built a home very different from the one she’d imagined with Gabriel. Watching her husband and son, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.
But when Gabriel comes back, all Beth’s certainty about who she is and what she wants crumbles. Even after ten years, their connection is instant. She knows it’s wrong and she knows people could get hurt. But how can she resist a second chance at first love?
Amazon: Paperback $16.00, Kindle $12.99
Booktopia: Paperback $26.95
QBD Books: Paperback $32.99 (currently 15% off $28.04)
Sutherland Library: 15 copies (currently 31 holds)
Kmart: Doesn’t stock this title
Big W: $16 but listed as ‘Sold Out’
The Stranger at the Table
by Cassie Hamer
A family gathering, but not everyone who sits down to dinner will survive it. Poisonous lies, family secrets, addiction and revenge – always a dish best served cold – are all on the menu.
For readers of Sally Hepworth, Jo Dixon and Ali Lowe, this twisty domestic suspense holds you captive from its gripping beginning to its shocking denouement.
Maz Antonio has spent the last two years in prison so is determined to make the first major family gathering in their new home deep in Australian suburbia as perfect as possible. She owes it to everyone after the terrible mistakes she’s made … mistakes for which she will always be trying to atone. This special lunch is her chance to make things right for her husband and children, to show everyone that she can maintain her sobriety, that things can go back to normal. (Whatever normal looks like when you have traumatic, confusing flashbacks of that fateful day where two innocent lives were lost.)
Her sister, Elli, is in. So is her husband’s brother. Her distant father-in-law is gracing them with his presence and her mum Margaret is on the way from Newcastle, bringing a colleague – a virtual stranger she impulsively invited.
But is this man really a stranger? Or could it be that he is intimately connected to the past that Maz has so desperately been trying to put behind her – a past that’s about to explode across the dinner table in the deadliest of ways…
Amazon: Paperback $18.00, Kindle $12.99
Booktopia: Paperback $28.50
Sutherland Library: Paperback (9 copies, no holds), eBook (Borrow Box – checked out) & eAudiobook (Borrow Box – checked out), Large print – on order
Kmart: Doesn’t stock
Big W: Paperback $18.00
Night Road
by Kristin Hannah
In Kristin Hannah’s Night Road, the consequence of one terrible night changes a group of young people’s lives forever.
Lexi and Mia are inseparable from the moment they start high school. Different in so many ways – Lexi is an orphan and lives with her aunt on a trailer park, while Mia is a golden girl blessed with a loving family and a beautiful home – yet they recognize something in each other that sets them apart from the crowd, and Mia comes to rely heavily on Lexi’s steadfast friendship.
Mia’s beloved – and incredibly good-looking – twin brother Zach finds life much less complicated than his sister. Jude thought she’d never have to worry about her son, that he’d always sail through life, easily achieving whatever he, and his family, wanted and expected – but then he fell in love.
The summer they graduated is a time they will always remember, and one they could never forget. It is a summer of love, best friends, shared confidences and promises. Then one moment, one night, changes them all forever. As hearts are broken, loyalties challenged and hopes dashed, the time has come to leave childhood behind and learn to face the future.
Amazon: Paperback $14.00, Kindle $12.99
Sutherland Library: Paperback (5 copies, 18 holds), Large Print (1 copy, 0 holds)
Booktopia: Paperback $19.90
Kmart: Doesn’t stock this title
Big W: $14 (listed as sold out)