AustLit

'For readers of Karly Lane, Fleur McDonald, Maya Linnell and Rachael Johns - a heartfelt and fresh rural romance about trust, hope and finding your place in life from an award winning and much loved author.

'Country vet Primrose Cartwright knows more about heartache than most but in the close-knit community of Ballimore, she's found a place to call home. Prim has her work and the love of her sisters, and she doesn't need anything else - certainly not Blake Sinclair.

'The new vet in town, Scotsman Blake has a love-them-and-leave-them reputation. He is curiously protective of Prim, but his privileged upbringing and jet-set life are nothing like her own. Prim has tried - and failed - at the dating game. Even if there's a burning attraction between them, the last man she could ever trust is Blake.

'Blake finds Prim fiercely independent, vulnerable, and unlike any other woman he has ever known. But Prim won't tell him her secrets unless he tells her his own, and Blake's pain is buried deep.

'Will Prim's determination to unravel the mystery that threatens her career bring Prim and Blake together or tear them apart? As the storm clouds gather, can Prim and Blake confront their painful pasts and create a future together? Will they find the sunshine through the rain?' (Publication summary)

'For small-town vet Amber, Christmas is everything money can't buy. For infuriatingly attractive big-city blow-in Jasper, it's simply a season of commerce. But when Jasper joins the fight to save the town's medical centre - and promises to take Christmas to heart - Amber is forced to take stock. Could Jasper be all her Christmases come at once?' (Publication summary)

'When Patience Cartwright is stranded in her home town, the last thing she expects is a second chance at love...

'Fiercely independent naval officer, Patience Cartwright has never had a place to call home, but she knows where she doesn't belong. After an unhappy childhood and a badly broken heart, she'll never return to the country.

'But to save her career, Patience is forced to accept a secondment - to an environmental team working near the town where she grew up. There she encounters once more the infuriatingly attractive biologist Hugo Halstead - the very man she's sworn never to forgive.

'Given their history, Hugo, as self-assured and honest as Patience is secretive and self-contained, has vowed never to trust her again, but that doesn't stop him feeling just as helplessly drawn to her complicated mix of courage and fragility as he ever was.

'As Patience recuperates from a life-threatening illness in the small country town of Horseshoe Hill, she realises the beauty of the landscape and close-knit community promise something very different to the future she's mapped out.

'But could the secrets she keeps and the shadows of her past, send her adrift all over again?'  (Publication summary)

'Will a misunderstanding and past trauma stand in the way of profound attraction? Immovable determination meets irresistible charm in this delightful rural romance from an award-winning and much-loved author - for readers of Rachael Johns, Karly Lane and Fleur McDonald.

'When Phoebe Cartwright finds Sinn Tørrissen, a naval officer and meteorologist, frozen half to death in the middle of a thunderstorm, she believes she's saved his life. Sinn, unfailingly competent and infuriatingly arrogant, disagrees. In Phoebe's small country town to track down the members of an illegal horse-racing syndicate, the last thing he needs is to become entangled with Phoebe.

'A much-loved member of her community, the prickly and independent Phoebe is used to solving other people's problems. So when she learns her younger sister could be implicated in their father's dishonest accounting for the syndicate, she insists on working with Sinn to uncover the truth.

'Sinn is both confused and entranced by the passionate Phoebe and in spite of her resistance, Phoebe finds herself drawn to him. But Phoebe is determined to protect her sister above all, and the secrets she cannot tell Sinn threaten to sweep his investigation - and their romance - way off course.With clouds building on the horizon, can Phoebe and Sinn weather the gale and find in each other a shelter from the storm?' 

Source : publisher's blurb

'For readers of Karly Lane and Tricia Stringer...misunderstandings and injured pride stand in the way of true love in this charming rural romance from an award-winning and much-loved author.

''Penelope Janu's fresh, bright, funny new twist on rural romance is an absolute delight. Her wit is as sharp as a knife. She is one of my absolute must-read authors.' Victoria Purman, bestselling Australian author

'After a troubled childhood and the loss of her beloved grandmother, Sapphie Brown finally finds somewhere to call home - the close-knit rural community of Horseshoe Hill.

'The locals love Sapphie because she never gives up - as chair of the environment committee, with the children in her classes, the troubled teens at the youth centre, the ex-racehorses she cares for and even the neglected farmhouse and gardens she wants make her own. Sapphie gives second chances to everything and everyone. Except Matts Laarkin.

'An impossibly attractive environmental engineer who travels the world, Matts was Sapphie's closest childhood friend. He came to deliver a warning - now he doesn't want to leave.

'All Sapphie wants to do is forget their painful past, but thrown together they discover an attraction that challenges what they thought they knew about each other. Do they have a chance to recapture what they lost so long ago? Or will long-buried secrets tear them apart?

'In the flowers she creates from paper and the beauty that grows on the land, Sapphie has found perfect imperfection. Could that be what love is like too?' (Publication summary)

'A kiss can change your life ...

'Jemima Kincaid loves her home, her horses and her job as a farrier. Life has not been kind to her, but Jemima is happy in the close-knit rural community of Horseshoe Hill, which rallied around in her hour of need. Even so, she is fiercely independent and will never rely on anyone again.

'Particularly a man like Finn Blackwood.

'An infuriatingly attractive geneticist and wild animal vet, Finn threatens not only the serenity of Jemima's present, but that of the future she has so carefully mapped out. But as their paths continue to cross, she finds her attraction to Finn impossible to counter, even as the trauma of her past threatens to undo her. Finn is fascinated by Jemima's solitary nature and unique vulnerabilities but Jemima knows all about loss and how to avoid it. Don't let anyone get close in the first place ...

'As the past begins to cast long shadows, Jemima and Finn discover that a kiss can bring worlds together-or tear them apart. Will they finally face their fears and find love on Horseshoe Hill?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Picking up the reins of her father's law practice, Ariella Blake has made a place for herself in small-town Warrandale. But when stand-in farrier Jack Adamson blows in for the holidays, with his good looks and infuriating evasiveness, he challenges her to embrace the rules of Christmas. Step by step, will Christmas - and Jack - get under her skin?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Sometimes a girl just has to do what’s in her heart …

'By day Miles Franklin, named after the famous author, is a successful lawyer. But by night she writes historical romance novels under the pen name Emma Browning. When Miles’s assistant covertly enters her boss's novel in one of Australia’s biggest literary awards—and it wins—Miles’s perfectly ordered world is torn apart.

'Lars Kristensen smells a rat. As the CEO of Iconic International, the company publishing Miles’s prize-winning novel, he’s determined to meet the author and uncover her true identity.

'But Miles is equally determined to protect her privacy—and to keep writing—even if it means mastering pole dancing, and choreographing a love scene in the back of a horse-drawn carriage … Well, she is a romance writer, after all.

'Miles has the grit to keep her secret, but Lars has the smouldering looks and arrogance of any romantic hero she has ever imagined.

'Hmm. Sometimes a girl just has to turn the page …'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'When the diminutive but fiery Golden Saunders falls from her horse and smashes her leg irreparably, and her racing family is disgraced by a corruption scandal, she thinks she's hit rock bottom.

'Then the enigmatic Tor Amundsen, United Nations diplomat (read: spy), arrives on the scene and proves her wrong. His investigation into her family pulls her back into a world she had escaped, and the branch of the family she has tried to avoid at all costs.

'Tor is infuriated and frustrated by the impossible mixture of fragility and fierceness that is Golden, true, but he is also strangely protective of her.

'Golden wants no part of it. Men have pushed her around her whole life. The last thing she needs is an arrogant, irritatingly handsome man telling her what to do. But it turns out Tor has a way with animals, children and, well, Golden…

'Before too long, she finds their overwhelming attraction is overriding her good sense, and as they are both pulled deeper into the murky world of dirty money, things are about to get messy, and Golden's small, quietly ordered life will change beyond recognition…

'Can Golden overcome her fears and the shadows of the past and reach for a new kind of future? Will she ever be able to get her life back on the right track?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'What woman doesn’t love a real-life hero? Harriet Scott, for one. The fiercely independent daughter of famous adventurers, she grew up travelling the world on the environmental flagship The Watch. So when Harriet’s ship sinks in Antarctica and she has to be rescued by Commander Per Amundsen, an infuriatingly capable Norwegian naval officer and living breathing action hero, her world is turned upside down.

'Like their namesakes, the original Scott and Amundsen who competed to reach the South Pole first, Per and Harriet have different ways of doing things. Per thinks Harriet is an accident waiting to happen; Harriet thinks Per is a control freak. But when Harriet realises that Per is the only one who can help her fund the new ship she desperately wants, she is forced to cooperate with him.

'Per refuses to assist unless Harriet allows him to teach her to swim. But there is more to Harriet’s terrible fear of water than meets the eye. Can Harriet face her fears and come to terms with the trauma and loss of her past? And will she begin to appreciate that some risks are well worth taking—and that polar opposites can, in fact, attract?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.