Two women abduct and hide out with their four-year-old granddaughter Avery, who they suspect is being harmed. They both love Avery ... shame they can't stand each other. A wise and witty novel for readers of Sophie Green and Brooke Davis. What would you do to protect a child?Beth's daughter Cleo and Shirley's son Daniel used to be married. Now Cleo is in gaol for supposedly contravening a family violence order, and Daniel has full-time care of their four-year-old daughter, Avery.When Shirley suspects that Daniel is harming Avery, she enlists Beth to abduct their own granddaughter, even though the two women can't stand each other. They are joined on the run across country Victoria by Winnie, Shirley's own 89-year-old tech-savvy mother, and Harthacnut, Beth's miniature schnauzer.The abduction gives rise to crises both personal and social, as Shirley's large and interfering family - including her toxic son - struggle to come to terms with her...

The Broadhurst sisters, book editor Emily and stay-at-home wife and mother Jill, are suffering severe cases of the-grass-is-always-greener syndrome.So, when Melbourne Cup Day rolls around, they decide to have an each way bet by trading places. But then they find they have to cope with an elusive pregnancy test, vegetable-flavoured punch, flying carpet bowls, a predatory femme fatale, a foul-mouthed three-year-old, and argumentative and accident-prone teenagers.Spend a madcap Melbourne Cup with the Broadhursts, and find out if the race that stops the nation can get their lives back on track.

Once upon a time Chris Beggs and her husband had a dream – to one day own a farm, with cows and poultry and a crisp white fence surrounding a quaint cottage. So what could possibly be wrong with fulfilling that dream 15 years later as a 38-year-old divorced mother of two?It was love at first sight. While on a family outing with her two children Grace and Michael, ex-husband Garth and his new girlfriend Cynthia, Chris happens upon a picture of the perfect country cottage in the Healesville Real Estate Agency window. And after a heated discussion and a rash decision, she is the proud owner of a chicken farm.Chris says goodbye to her safe city life, legal firm work, ex-wives luncheons and the house she has known for the past 18 years... and welcomes 6am egg collections, strange noises in the night, a bitter bookkeeper and a feisty llama. Her teenage daughter is bent on world domination, the tractor has a mind of its own, and the hens are named after...

Unlike her best friend Camilla Riley, compulsive list-maker Terry Diamond prides herself on her organisational abilities. Also unlike Camilla, Terry is tall, blonde, curvaceous and self-confident. However, all this doesn't stop chaos bursting into her life when her daughter not only gives birth on Terry's living-room rug but decides to move home with infant in tow.Then there are the problems Terry is having with her love life, as she realises her boyfriend – a handyman who wears pink overalls – may not even be Mr Right For Now, and falls in love at first sight with a mysterious stranger who dresses like the father in a 1950s sitcom. Will all this mayhem make the play-it-safe Terry do what she needs to do to turn her life around?

The last thing Nell Forrest expected when she tried to plant a tree was to unearth the skeletal remains of a former resident. Now her new backyard is swarming with police, there's a television news crew camped next door, and once again she is smack in the middle of a murder investigation. And the timing is dreadful. Two of Nell's daughters are about to give birth and she is surrounded by new in-laws with agendas of their own.But it soon becomes clear that this time the investigation is personal – so personal that enquiries bring her long-estranged father back into the family fold, and the answers shed some very uncomfortable light about the proclivities of her parents when they were young. Who would have thought that the little country town of Majic had ever been such a swinging place to live?