Showing results by author "Shirley Barrett" in All Categories

It wasn’t just the bad breakup that turned Eleanor Mellett’s life upside down. It was the cancer. And all the demons that came with it. Luckily, Eleanor discovers Talbingo, a remote little town looking for a primary-school teacher. Unfortunately, Talbingo is a bit creepy. It’s not just the communion-wine-guzzling friar prone to mad rants. Or the unstable, overly sensitive kids, always going on about Miss Barker, who vanished. It’s living alone in a remote cabin, with no cell or Internet service, wondering why there are so many locks on the door and who is knocking on it late at night.

When the eldest daughter of a whaling family in New South Wales sets out to write about the particularly difficult season of 1908, the story she tells reveals itself to be far larger than she ever expected. As her family struggles to survive, and as she attempts to navigate sibling rivalries and all-consuming first love, 19-year-old Mary will soon discover a shocking side to these men who hunt the seas and the truth of her own place among them.

Rush Oh! is a deeply moving and captivating novel that will capture listeners' imaginations and launch a brilliant new voice in fiction. When the eldest daughter of a whaling family in Eden, New South Wales, sets out to chronicle the particularly difficult season of 1908, the story she tells is poignant and hilarious, filled with drama and misadventure.

Rush Oh! tells the unforgettable tale of a close-knit whaling community in New South Wales where a bright young woman struggles with sibling rivalry, a stern father and falling in love with John Beck, a man with a shady past.

Freshly single and thoroughly traumatised from the ordeals of breast cancer, Eleanor Mellett starts a new job as teacher in a remote mountain hamlet. It’s peaceful. Almost too peaceful. And what's become of the previous teacher, the saintly Miss Barker who has disappeared abruptly under mysterious circumstances? And what's with all those locks on her front door? And what is that bus doing idling outside her house late at night? When the local priest tries to exorcise Eleanor of her 'cancer demon', he seems to have unleashed a host of other demons set to torment her.