Showing results by narrator "Cat Gould" in All Categories

The situation was complicated, but the rules were simple. Rule number one: No catching feelings. Rule number two: We do this one time and one time only. Rule number three: This is our little secret. We made a hasty agreement fueled by heartbreak and liquor, but it turned out to be so much more. Darcy Shearer isn't the same woman I laid eyes on five years ago—everything has changed since that night . . . except the way I feel about her. I gave her my word, but now I'm taking her heart. She forgot the most important rule . . . that they're all made to be broken.

Twelve-year-old Amy Birkbeck is checking her bat boxes late one cold January evening in the woods by her house. She witnesses something no child should ever see—a group of men rolling a body into the deep pool of the disused old clay pit. Meanwhile, DCI Sophie Allen's team is falling apart. One of the members of the unit goes missing. Surely he couldn't be the body in the pool? Or is something much darker going on? Then a second body is found in the disused clay pit. And it seems the dead man is connected to a suspected arms dealer....

In 1947 Tilly’s grandmother bought an island. Its name is Småhølmene and it sits just off the coast of Norway. At first sight, the island seems bare, hardly more than a collection of rocks rising determinedly out of the water. Glittering and bittersweet, Island Summers lovingly portrays three generations of women and the island that became so irrevocably part of their lives. Now Mor-mor’s great-grandchildren are taking their turn, enjoying endless summers on Småhølmene, continuing the story that was begun over 50 years ago.

A smart, provocative account of the erotic current running just beneath the surface of a stuffy and stifling Victorian London.

In 1860s London, two loosely overlapping groups of bohemians - the Cannibal Club and the Aesthetes - challenged the buttoned-up Victorian propriety to promote erotic freedom and expression. Sensually attuned and politically radical, they were among the most influential thinkers and artists of the day, from Richard Burton to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris.

A group of housemates in Sydney’s inner city contend with gentrification, divisive politics, stalled careers, their own complicated privilege as second-generation Australians, and the evolving world of dating in this moving, funny, and stylish debut novel.

The world of magic is beautiful and enchanting, but there is darkness here too. Dara has been to hell and back trying to discover her destiny. Thrown into a world she didn't know she belonged to, she's completed the first task of claiming Emerald, but lost someone she cares about in the process. She finds her thoughts divided between finding the second stone - Topaz - and rescuing one of her warriors who was captured in battle. More now than ever, she's determined to put her power-hungry uncle and his plans for complete domination down once and for all.

Raised by a mad mother and a half-mad sister, abandoned by her father, Praxis Duveen is a master of the art of survival. Her life, indeed, has been full: two marriages, unsuccessful; a brief but profitable career as a prostitute; a little dabbling in incest; a mercy killing; and an inadvertent reign as both apostle and victim of the women's movement. Buffeted and battered by life, Praxis has survived with energy and humor intact.

When you are in the bush, pregnant, and your husband is hurt what do you do? Will you trust just about anyone? When their car gets a flat tire in the Australian outback, it should be a simple job for capable Hal to fix. His wife pregnant, he sets to it. But an accident befalls him, leaving him immobilized. Paige is now their only hope of getting out of the bush. When Paige chances upon a stranger, it seems her prayers are answered. But the stranger doesn't want to help. She wants something else, and it's not Paige's husband....

In this sequel to Future Leaders of Nowhere, Finn and Willa come home from camp to find everything is different. Even as they grow more sure of their feelings for each other, everything around them feels less certain. When Finn gets involved in a new community project, she's forced to question where her priorities lie at school. Meanwhile, her dad has moved interstate, her mother is miserable, and her home feels like a ghost town.

The Cancer Problem offers the first medical, cultural, and social history of cancer in 19th-century Britain. It argues that it was in the 19th century that cancer acquired the unique emotional, symbolic, and politicized status it maintains today. Through an interrogation of the construction, deployment, and emotional consequences of the disease's incurability, this book reframes our conceptualization of the relationship between medicine and modern life and reshapes our understanding of chronic and incurable maladies, both past and present.

Ants have been walking the Earth since the age of the dinosaurs. Today there are one million ants for every one of us. The closer you get to ants, the more human they look: they build megacities, grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and even make vaccines. They also have a darker side: they wage war, enslave rivals and rebel against their oppressors. From fearsome army ants, who stage 12-hour hunting raids where they devour thousands, to gentle leafcutters gardening in their peaceful underground kingdoms, every ant is engineered by nature to fulfil a role.

In 2003 Rachel Aspden arrived in Egypt as a 23-year-old journalist. She found a country on the brink of change. The two thirds of Egypt's eight million citizens under the age of 30 were stifled, broken, and frustrated, caught between a dictatorship that had nothing to offer them and their autocratic parents' generation, defined by tradition and obedience. In January 2011 the young people's patience ran out.

People in Glass Houses tells how a small church in a suburban Australian school hall became a multimillion-dollar tax-free enterprise and a powerful international force. Providing memorable portraits of charismatic leaders Brian and Bobbie Houston, this is a powerful, personal, and at times very funny exploration of an all-singing, all-swaying mega church. The church is more than a faith—it’s a brand. And one fraught with scandal.

Dara and her warriors have faced evil at every turn, and all attempts at reclaiming what's rightfully hers have been met with unwavering resistance from her uncle. With Emerald and Topaz claimed, Dara enters her hardest battle yet as she searches for Ruby, the last stone in their quest to overthrow her uncle and restore Silvia to its original beauty. Does Dara have the inner strength to trust her instincts, and the courage to overcome everything she's been through? Or will her uncle defeat her once and for all?

Carolyn Winter is cool, in control, and content with her single life. She’s certainly not looking for a relationship. Been there, done that, not pleasant. She has all she needs at the moment. A new job and a new home. And when someone, an attractive someone, is catapulted into her life, and keeps reappearing, she tells herself nothing can happen. It’s far too complicated. Isn‘t it?

In one vicious night, Kirby Brown's world is torn apart. Her best friend is dead, killed by a madman who is now after Kirby, and she has no idea why. When the police prove incapable of protecting Kirby, she has no choice but to trust a mysterious stranger. And while she finds herself inexplicably drawn to him, she fears the strange abilities he wields. An investigator for the Damask Circle, Doyle Fitzgerald, has come to Melbourne, Australia, to hunt down a killer.

It is 1878, and Dr. Poppy Stamford has reluctantly rekindled her relationship with Sherlock Holmes. Though it has been almost four years since they parted on uneasy terms and while he continues to suppress his feelings for her, they are still intrigued and inspired - and frustrated - by each other. When her beloved uncle is arrested in relation to a series of murders near the British Museum, Poppy and the burgeoning detective set out to find the evidence to set him free.

How does a mother cope when she is forced to walk away from her three children and never see them again? That is what happened to JB's mother, Myrtle. Eventually, rescued from her despair by tall, dark, and handsome George Rowley, who fell in love with her, Myrtle started a new life and had seven more children. She buried the grief of losing her first children deep within and kept her pain secret. JB and her siblings were unaware of the existence of Myrtle's first three children until after she died.

Book four in the Little Town series. Is Senior Constable Tess Fuller really as resilient as she thinks? When faced with the tragic consequences of her own stubborn decision - further inflaming her lifelong feud with the large, revengeful, and violent Bycraft family - how will she cope? And can she rebuild her trust and relationship with her newly returned partner, Sergeant Finn Maguire, while they work a puzzling accidental death case?

Drawing on insights from across the social, behavioral, and natural sciences, Michelle Baddeley explores contexts in which behavior is driven by the herd. She analyzes the rational vs nonrational and cognitive vs emotional forces involved, and she investigates why herding only sometimes works out well. With new perspectives on followers, leaders, and the pros and cons of herd behavior, Baddeley shines vivid light on human behavior in the context of our ever-more-connected world.