We've all sat at the traffic lights with our mind a million miles away, but fortunately few of us have ever had to experience a random carjacking. For Miranda Jack (Jax) what was supposed to be a routine drive from Sydney to Newcastle turns into a nightmare in the space of a few seconds. Most puzzling is what the car jacker actually wants. Jax's car is not fancy and her abductor has not given her a specific destination. All he tells her is to drive on the freeway.

An experienced journalist, Jax does her best to calm her passenger down and extract some information, but it is largely a futile exercise. Although she manages a few snippets of his story such as the fact he has a wife and child, much of what he says is the ramblings of a person under great psychological stress. Alarmingly the one thing he keeps repeating is that he is "already dead".

Bestselling novelist Nina Jones has always felt like a fraud and now it seems she has psyched herself out from writing anything worthwhile. Suffering from a severe case of writer's block she welcomes a distraction from her looming deadline when a storm damages her home on Ember Island, near Brisbane. Needing to go over and oversee the repairs she is happy to spend some time there and is hoping the space and isolation will re-boot her creativity.

The discovery of some old diary pages within the walls of her home are yet another distraction that prove to become an obsession as Nina becomes absorbed in a century old mystery involving young English woman Tilly Kirkland and her charge Nell. Tilly spent time in the very same house as a governess after escaping an unhappy marriage in England. Her intriguing story unravels slowly parallel with Nina's own.

Isobel Richardson and her son Leo have worked hard to build a great life for themselves in Wales. Raising three healthy kids and having lovingly renovated their family home things are humming along nicely when out of the blue Leo's twenty year career at the local power plant ends in redundancy. Suddenly everything about their secure world is on shaky foundations as Leo struggles to find work and Isobel is left to deal with the fallout. Amidst all this stress, however, she finally voices a long held secret desire - to pack up the family and move to Australia.

Once committed the Richardsons set about making their big plan happen. Isobel assumes her beloved mother will come with them and is devastated when she not only refuses to consider the idea but withdraws from their life altogether. As her only child Isobel cannot fathom her mother's attitude but doesn't let it dissuade her from taking the leap she knows will provide their family with the future she has dreamt of for so long.

When New York stockbroker Lachlan Colbert (aka Colby) and his friends decide to visit Australia to see in the new millennium their only plan is to have a good time. Unworldly local girl Caitlin's aim is to make some extra money working on the boat they have chartered. Yet in the space of a few days this unlikely pair are smitten and a couple of years later they are married and living in an apartment in Manhattan.

A decade later Colby and Caitlin have moved to the suburbs with their adopted son Benjamin. They live in a beautiful house in a nice neighbourhood. Colby's income allows Caitlin to be a full time home-maker. Yet within this veneer of the "perfect" suburban life exist some serious cracks that come to light all too horribly when a house fire finds Caitlin outside their home screaming for Benjamin while the neighbours gossip about just what going on in the Colberts home.

Nobody is more surprised than Audrey herself when she decides to keep the abandoned rural property she has recently inherited. Situated in Queensland, it is 2000 kilometres away from Audrey's home and life in Melbourne and needs extensive repairs. Yet she can't deny there is something about Thornwood House that draws her in and before she knows it she and her daughter have moved in.

Initially Audrey cannot understand why her estranged husband Tony owned the property in the first place, let alone the reason he left it to her. But after some research she realises that both Tony's grandmother and his sister died on the property under tragic circumstances. After the discovery of an old diary, Audrey is well and truly ensnared in the mystery of Thornwood House. When she starts having disturbing dreams about the house's history Audrey becomes obsessed with finding out just what happened there.

Journalist Rebecca is at a crossroads in her life. Single, unsettled in her life in Brisbane and all alone after the death of her mother, she decides to quit her job and head north to the small town of Sandpiper Bay. It is not a random choice, Rebecca had always longed to find out the mysterious circumstances surrounding her mother's adoption, and Sandpiper Bay is where she believes her grandparents came from.

While the town itself is beautiful and tranquil, Rebecca is not warmly welcomed by all the residents, especially when it is revealed what she is doing there. The further she digs into the past, the more obvious it becomes that her mother Maryanne's adoption is mired in some kind of scandal that people are simply not willing to talk about. Fortunately for Rebecca, there are a few locals who befriend her and help with the search, despite the general opposition.

Having grown up watching Young Talent Time each week, I was very interested to read Tina Arena's autobiography. Being one of the few who successfully made the transition from child entertainer to extremely successful recording artist, her story was an interesting and entertaining read from start to finish.

Perhaps one of the most significant facts I learned about Tina was that her name is in fact Fillipina and she was (and still is) known to her friends and family as Pina. The name Tina was adopted when she started on YTT. Tina grew up in a very normal household in Moonee Ponds in Melbourne, the middle daughter of two hard working Sicillian immigrants. From a young age she loved to sing and entertain and as we know he big break came when she joined the Young Talent Team. Tina speaks fondly of her time on the show and has only kind words to say about host Johnny Young and her fellow team members. I thought this was refreshing in an age where many people like to dish the dirt on former castmates whenever the chance provides itself.

I will out myself here and admit I wouldn't normally read a book in this genre. However my opinion changed about one page in as I realised it was a story I could relate to because of the way it is told.

Meg is just a normal woman living in Melbourne. Going into hospital to give birth she wakes after Caesarian surgery to find herself the only person alive. Everybody else around her lies dead from a mysterious virus. She has to make a decision - to give in and die alongside everybody else or to get herself together and fight to survive this alien new world.