Beyond the Orchard

A haunting story of yearning, love and betrayal from the bestselling author of Thornwood House. Lucy Briar has arrived home in turmoil after years overseas. She's met her fiance in London and has her life mapped out, but something is holding her back. Hoping to ground herself and find answers, Lucy settles into once familiar routines. But old tortured feelings flood Lucy's existence when her beloved father, Ron, is hospitalised and Morgan - the man who drove her away all those years ago - seeks her out. Worse, Ron implores Lucy to visit Bitterwood Estate, the crumbling historic family guesthouse now left to him. He needs Lucy to find something - an old photograph album, the very thing that drove Ron and his father apart. Lucy has her own painful memories of Bitterwood, darkness that has plagued her dreams since she was young. But as Lucy searches for the album, the house begins to give up its ghosts and she is driven to put them to rest. And there, held tightly between the house, the orchard and the soaring cliffs, Lucy uncovers a long-hidden secret that shattered a family's bond and kept a frightened young girl in its thrall ...and Lucy discovers just how fierce the lonely heart can be.

Anna Romer grew up in a family of book-lovers and yarn-tellers, which inspired her lifelong love affair with stories. A graphic artist by trade, she also spent many years travelling the globe stockpiling story material from the Australian outback, then Asia, New Zealand, Europe and America. Her first novel Thornwood House, reflects her fascination with forgotten diaries and letters, dark family secrets, rambling old houses, and love in its many guises – as well as her passion for the uniquely beautiful Australian landscape. When she’s not writing (or falling in love with another book), Anna is an avid gardener, knitter, bushwalker and conservationist. She lives on a remote bush property in northern New South Wales. Hannah’s one-woman show My Name is Rachel Corrie was nominated for both the Adelaide Critics’ Circle and Green Room Awards 2010, and won the Adelaide Theatre Guild’s ‘Curtain Call’ Award for Best Female Performance in 2010. In 2009 she was awarded Best Theatre Performance for her role in After the End. Her theatre credits include: Actors at Work (Bell Shakespeare), Goodbye Ruby Tuesday (Melbourne International Comedy Festival), The Red and the Black (Stork Theatre), Been So Long (Adelaide Fringe 2006), Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Australian Shakespeare Company). 2012 saw Hannah starting the year touring Australia in David Williamson’s Let the Sunshine.

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