Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home. Kieran’s parents are struggling in a community which is bound, for better or worse, to the sea, that is both a lifeline and a threat. Between them all is his absent brother, Finn.
The Survivors is a story of family, secrets, lies and friendships and takes place in the small, fictional coastal town of Evelyn Bay in Tasmania. Kieran, along with girlfriend Mia and baby daughter Audrey, have returned to their home town from Sydney, in order to help Kieran’s mother pack up and move his father to a nursing home in Hobart.
Another audiobook for this week’s Throwback Thursday. The Homecoming was released in June 2017 by Brilliance Audio and is performed by Luke Daniels.
My Thoughts
Set in California, Alan Russell opens the story with several couples and their children having a Valentine’s Day BBQ at the beach. A ghost story told by the fire, sworn to be true by the teller, fascinates Stella but makes the adults uncomfortable. Introducing Jason’s story lays the groundwork for what was to come.
Throwback Thursday this week is an audiobook aimed at the younger reader, performed excellently by MacLeod Andrews. It was published in January 2016 by Scholastic Audio.
My Thoughts
When twelve year old Jonathan Grisby arrives at Slabhenge, hungry, cold and tormented, he faces at least ten weeks in the forbidding and Dickensian-like reform school. Run by The Admiral and his staff, who take pleasure from making life as difficult and uncomfortable as possible for the unfortunates who have been sent there. Slabhenge has had several incarnations, including a facility for the mentally ill, but to the boys it seems more like a prison with it’s many corridors, staircases and stone-walled, dank rooms.
The Rising was released on audio in January 2017 and performed by Luke Daniels.
My Thoughts
Eighteen year old Alex Chin, popular star football player, was adopted by a Chinese couple, Li and An Chin, when he was a baby. Football is his passion and with plenty of scholarship offers, he believes he has a bright future ahead. His tutor, Samantha Dixon, is about to graduate and plans an internship with NASA, working with Dr Thomas Donati. All is going well for both of them until a head injury on the football field lands Alex in hospital. An initial CT scan shows something strange, and when Alex has a follow-up the bulbs in scanner burn out and the glass casing shatters. Then Alex’s doctor is murdered. And when Sam finds Alex’s parents dying in their home and have a run in with the non human attackers, she and Alex go on the run with help from Alex’s guardian, Raiff, who has been in the background, keeping an eye on him, knowing this day would come sooner or later.
She was the most brutal killer of our time. And she may have been my mother…
When website columnist Robin Diamond is contacted by true crime podcast producer Quentin Garrison, she assumes it’s a business matter. It’s not. Quentin’s podcast, Closure, focuses on a series of murders in the 1970s, committed by teen couple April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy. It seems that Quentin has reason to believe Robin’s own mother may be intimately connected with the killings.
Quentin Garrison, the young co-host of Closure, a true crime podcast, had personal reasons for researching the murder spree in the latter half of the 1970s, carried out by the notorious teenage duo, April Cooper and Gabriel LeRoy who were known as the Inland Empire Killers.
Much Ado About Highlanders is the first of a trilogy which I listened to back in March 2017 and enjoyed very much.
My Thoughts
After a prank backfired and years of father/daughter misunderstandings, independent and headstrong Kenna MacKay fled her marital home on the night of her wedding to Alexander Macpherson. Their marriage was arranged to unite the two clans. For the past six months she has been training in the skills of healing with the nuns at Glosters Priory. Kenna and her cousin, Emily, are attending a birth in the village when they are kidnapped by the Macpherson brothers in a determined attempt to bring Kenna and Alexander together again. Left alone, the attraction ignites.
Fresh from a high-profile case in the Paris fashion world, elite forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Dr Alexander Gregory receives a call from the New York State Homicide Squad. The wife of a notorious criminal has been admitted to a private psychiatric hospital and can no longer testify in his upcoming trial. Without her, their case will collapse, but amid reports that the staff are as unpredictable as their patients, who can the police trust?
Dr Alexander Gregory and his friend and mentor, Professor Bill Douglas are visiting Quantico, Virginia. They have been invited to deliver a presentation on criminal profiling at one of the regular international conferences held there. They were met by Special Agent Hawk and Agent Johnson, who later asked for their assistance with a highly classified case involving the Romano crime family.
While Detective Cormac Reilly faces enemies at work and trouble in his personal life, Garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway with the threat of prosecution hanging over his head. But even that is not as terrible as having to work for his overbearing father, the local copper for the pretty seaside town of Roundstone.
There’s plenty going on in this third outing for Cormac Reilly. He is still having problems at the Galway Garda station. When a young girl is abducted, Superintendent Brian Murphy deliberately makes life difficult by refusing extra manpower on the pretext that the officers are out on much needed surveillance for drugs, although after all that time there was nothing to show for it.
Released on Audible: May 2020 and Published by Orion
Category: Historical Fiction, Audiobook Review
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people band together to attempt something remarkable.
One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England’s finest novelists. Now it’s home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate.
A small, diverse group of people, which includes local farmer Adam, Adaline the widowed village teacher, Dr Gray, the village doctor, Frances Knight, who’s father owned the estate, Frances’ solicitor and housemaid, a specialist at Sotheby’s and a movie star from America, come together with the idea of forming a Jane Austen Society.
This week I’m looking back at an audiobook I really enjoyed. Abandon by Blake Crouch, released in September 2016. Luke Daniels did an amazing job with the narration.
My Thoughts
The story begins in 1893 with a mule skinner arriving in Abandon to find a ghost town. He’d been there only two weeks ago delivering supplies and the town was thriving and full of activity. Now the streets were deserted with the snow laying in drifts. Then he sees a young girl with a revolver, and it’s the last thing he ever sees.
Author: Jane Harper
