Short Blurbs | Darry Fraser

Story blurbs

DAUGHTER OF THE MURRAY – Murray Series Book 1

A young 1890s woman who yearns for independence flees her foster family’s home on the River Murray and runs to her riverboat tycoon who’s promised her a better life. The eldest son of the foster family, returned to salvage his inheritance lost to the tycoon, gives chase, intending to indenture her. Instead he finds himself a fight on his hands.

2. WHERE THE MURRAY RIVER RUNS – Murray Series Book 2

The mighty Murray offers sanctuary to a woman who holds a precious, unexpected gift, and to her aunt, a defender of abused and abandoned families. It beckons a man with nothing to lose; it tempts another who has everything to gain. It summons the vigilante who loves them, and who fights to set the world to rights.

3. THE GOOD WOMAN OF RENMARK – Murray Series Book 3

Maggie O'Rourke has always had a hard head. No man was going to tie her down to a life of babies and domestic slavery. Forced to defend herself and a friend from assault by an evil man, she flees downriver on a paddle steamer. The further Maggie runs, the more she discovers there are some things she cannot escape.

4. THE WIDOW OF BALLARAT

When Nell Amberton’s husband is shot dead by a bushranger, there are few who grieve his passing, and Nell least of all. How could she miss the monster who had abused her from the day they wed — the man who had already killed his innocent first wife? But his death triggers a chain of events that seem to revolve around the bushranger who murdered him — a man to whom Nell, against her better judgement, is drawn.

5. ELSA GOODY BUSHRANGER

Thrust into the wider world, South Australian Elsa, and her older sister Rosie go in search of their dead brother George’s last resting place. Finding the tin of sovereigns he had with him—perhaps an impossible task—will mean they can save the family farm. Fate delivers a devastating blow. Can Elsa find what she’s looking for and, despite her own happiness, get back home in time to save the farm?

6. THE LAST TRUEHART

1865. Alice Truehart, a sensible girl, and her fiancé, Leo Smith are on the wharf in Williamstown, Victoria when a sleek dark warship, the Shenandoah, in the service of the Confederate Navy docks for repairs. Leo disappears – and never returns.

1898. Stella visits the cemetery where her mother Alice had been buried six years earlier. Her grandfather Henry, dead that year, and Ellen her beloved grandmother died only months before. Stella has a mystery to uncover about her parentage and the violent deaths that occur on her journey.

7. THE PRODIGAL SISTER

Miss Prudence North is freshly returned from university in Scotland and determined to find her place among the male-dominated world of the new forensic sciences when a high-ranking policeman waylays her. He threatens to charge her father for illegal medical practices unless she helps him build a case against local landowner Jasper Darke by spying on him.

8. THE FORTHRIGHT WOMAN

Widowed Marcella, daughter of Italian immigrants, is on a quest to learn what happened to great Uncle Luca after he disappeared from the Victorian goldfields years before. Marcella’s brother has other ideas for her, and resigning herself to another arranged marriage, she reluctantly journeys to Adelaide from the Southern Flinders Ranges with her feisty chaperone, Mrs Costa, herself a force majeure. Proby Cutler meanwhile is also looking for his ancestor, Ewen, who just happened to be great friends with Luca. The mysterious disappearance of the two men decades earlier has deadly ramifications for Marcella and Proby.

9. THE MILLINER OF BENDIGO

Evie Emerson is a renowned milliner, happily working for a living when she learns her sister Meryl is missing. After unsavoury attention from an awful suitor and a pending lawsuit, Evie goes in search of Meryl. She teams up with two old friends, Fitz, a journalist to whom, at one time, marriage had been suggested, and Raff, his great mate. When corrupt police are on Fitz’s trail, and Evie is caught up in violent crime, the three friends come together to resolve old issues.

10. THE NIGHT ON THE DARLING RIVER

It’s August, 1894. Tess has to leave her Echuca home – now. Tens of thousands of shearers are striking and there’s turmoil on the rivers and the sheep stations so, if she takes a steamer to Yarrawonga, she has a chance of a new life. But a melee at the wharf that night sees her thrust onto the wrong boat, the PS Rodney and, hiding in terror, she sails on it to its fateful demise on the Darling River. When she is discovered by a brutal man amidst the violence of the burning of the Rodney, Tess is thrown overboard, badly injured. Saved from drowning, she must make her way back home and rebuild her life. But the rivers are rising …