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The Official Website of the Bestselling Author

Trisha Hughes

Beware of Beautiful Days

Prequel to the Jack Curtis Crime Series

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Dragonfly

1st in the Jack Curtis Crime Series

This prequel takes the reader back to when Jack Curtis was a detective in Surfers Paradise as in introduction to this fan-favourite mystery and suspense series.

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As a heavy mist rolls into the hinterland of Surfers Paradise, a dog digs up a small bone in the rainforest. His owner, a local doctor, immediately recognises it as the humerus of a small child and calls the police.

 

 

When Jack and his partner Samantha O’Neil arrive at the crime scene, Jack’s instincts tell him something isn’t right and this may just be the tip of the iceberg. One day later, four more small bodies are found and the shocking violence shakes the small community of Tamborine Mountain to its core. 

With his Inspector pushing for an early closure of the cold cases, tensions rise threatening cracks in the team of officers at Surfers Paradise police station and pressure mounts as the press demand answers.

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Threads from the past are woven into the present when another small boy disappears and Jack struggles with the shocking realisation that this has been going on for five years under their very noses.

Ex-police detective Jack Curtis thought he’d seen everything.

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That is until he found his friend Joe naked and sobbing on the steps of his house, a gun lying beside him and his fiancée Shannon dead in a pool of blood.

All the evidence points to Joe as the murderer, yet he professes his innocence. 

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But if Joe didn’t do it, who did?

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Jack digs deep for answers but what he finds reveals Shannon was playing a more sinister and dangerous game than he could ever have imagined….

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...now he is questioning everything he thought he knew. 

Chameleon  

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3rd in the Jack Curtis Series

Scorpion    

4th in the Jack Curtis Series

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We all make mistakes, there's no doubt about it. And of late, Jack's track record was looking pretty grim.

 

But sometimes, the best of intentions can become the worst decisions of your life. Picking up a young, female hitchhiker on a dark rainy night could possibly be the worst decision Jack had ever made.

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One week later, the hitchhiker was missing and the sequence of events that followed that one simple good deed left Jack reeling with disbelief.

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Suddenly, he was thrown into a world of drugs, prostitution and murder as he delved deep into the disappearance to clear himself.

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In his wildest dreams, he never imagined where the investigation would lead.

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After her sister’s murder twenty years ago, Samantha Neil walked away from her family and home, fully intending never to return. There were too many hurtful words spoken in those last few days to ever attempt a reconciliation with her family and too many secrets that involved a feud between the Neils and their neighbours, the O’Donovans, that were never explained. Bundled into that pain was the loss of her childhood sweetheart, Rory O’Donovan.

 

When her mother died, an urgent plea from her elder sister bought her back to Tasmania for the funeral. Surprisingly, left for Samantha was a suitcase full of family photos, an ancient diary written by her grandmother and a heart-breaking letter from her mother appealing her to explore the clumsy investigation of her sister’s murder and to read the diary, which would explain everything.

 

But with that investigation, a Pandora's box of lies and deception is opened, leaving Samantha reeling from her discoveries.

Daughters of Nazareth

An autobiography

 Second Edition

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".......one week after my first communion and three days before my seventh birthday, my father went back into hospital and I awoke to the sound of silence."

 

For Patricia Gourgaud, life growing up in 50s Australia with her parents was blissful. This happiness was cut short one day when she was taken by the police to the local children's home, Nazareth House, a home for neglected and abandoned children. This event meant she would never see her mother again and rarely see her father.

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Throughout years of loveless discipline from the nuns at the orphanage, and abuse at the hands of foster parents, Patricia would wonder why her family had discarded her. She never stopped longing for the mother who had deserted her or for her beloved father, whose too few visits ceased mysteriously when she was a young teenager. Against the odds, at the age of fifteen, she ran away from her last abusive foster home determined to reinvent herself and heal. She would leave the horrors of her past behind her and start a new life for herself. Alone.

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But fate wasn’t finished with her yet. One night twenty years later, she received a telephone call from a complete stranger, a young woman who had a story of her own to tell that included Patricia. Overnight their lives changed as the past began to unfold. It would only be the beginning of extraordinary discoveries as the two women delved deep into government archives for answers.

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This autobiography of touching warmth tells the story of the confused and sometimes frightened girl who became an independent woman. Inside, however, she carried the scars and loneliness borne of the belief that her parents had abandoned her.

 

Daughters of Nazareth is a compelling and moving account of a woman who refused to be bowed by the worst the world could do.  It is a story about how a life of yearning and loneliness can be transformed into one filled with love, happiness and peace. Above all, it is a deeply touching story of a woman who grew up without a family, only to find them when she least expected it.

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Vikings to Virgin

Book I
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                                        England's story from 

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The Vikings to The Virgin Queen

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The story of the Kings and Queens of England is a wonderful drama that spans for fifteen hundred years. It’s full of lust, betrayal, heroism, murder, cruelty and mysteries.  

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There were some monarchs who ruled for years and there were some who ruled for only a few months. There were also some who should never have ruled at all. Yet this group shares one thing in common. In their own lifetimes, they were the most powerful and brutal individuals in the land. 

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This is the first book in a trilogy covering the Vikings, Normans, Plantagenets, Lancasters, Yorks and Tudors. It begins with a race of people who were struggling to survive and finishes with a comet blazing across the London sky heralding the end of Bloody Mary’s reign. 

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Virgin to Victoria

Book 2
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   England's story from

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      The Virgin Queen to Queen Victoria 

 

After the death of her sister, 'Bloody Mary', England had high hopes for Elizabeth I when she came to the throne. The 25-year-old ascended the throne as the third queen to rule in her own right and she attended her first council exuding an air of quiet confidence, even though she was inheriting a bankrupt nation torn apart by religious discord. It was chaotic.

 

Despite her amazing legacy and despite what her father, Henry VIII, had desired above all else, Elizabeth failed England in one vital point. She never married and did not leave an heir to the Tudor dynasty. By making that one fateful decision, she left the path open for the arrogant Stuarts in Scotland to take over and life would never be the same.

 

'Virgin to Victoria' travels in time through Elizabeth's amazing life, through the confusion of the Stuart dynasty, through the devastation of a Civil War led by Oliver Cromwell, through battles for the throne and through the turbulent and discordant Hanover dynasty with its intricate family squabbles.

 

Queen Victoria did not ask to be Queen. It was thrust upon her by the accident of birth and then by a succession of accidents that removed all others who stood between her and the throne. She assumed it reluctantly and, at first, incompetently. Parliament was sure the 18-year-old could be relied upon to leave the job of running the country to the professionals.

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Couldn't she?

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Victoria to Vikings

Book 3
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Englands's story from

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Queen Victoria to The Vikings

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- The Circle of Blood -

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At the heart of our present are the stories of our past. In ages gone by, many monarchs died while they were still young. There were battles and diseases and many were simply overthrown. But the days of regal engagement in hand-to-hand combat are over and the line of succession has a good ageing prospect these days.

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One of the most famous monarchs in history is Queen Victoria and her passing brought an end to an amazing era. She could be demanding, rude and frequently fled public duties for the solitude of Scotland. But she loved fiercely and her people loved her in return. Under her reign, England achieved a greatness it had never known before.

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'Victoria to Vikings' spans from this great queen to another one - Queen Elizabeth II. Ours is the era of the longest living monarch in history and her ancestry is incredible. But walking two steps behind her, stalwart and loyal, stands Prince Philip, the strawberry to her champagne, and with him comes his own amazing Viking heritage.

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The Tartan Kings 

 

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For better or worse, the story of Scotland is long, tumultuous and endlessly interconnectected with England. History has possibly never seen such an intense relationship between two countries. 'THE TARTAN KINGS' tells us the story of ruthless kings, a favoured queen, warriors, battles and wars. But standing tall above them all are the strong, dependable ones who persevered. The resilient ones. The irrepressible ones.

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Scotland has been a desert, a swamp, a tropical rainforest, and a desert again. It has drifted north over the planet with an ever changing cargo of dinosaurs, giant redwoods, sharks, bears, lynx, giant elk and wolves. And also, in the last twinkling of an eye in the geological time-scale, human beings. But it has always been on this unavoidable collision course with England. If they weren’t fighting each other, they were fighting the English. 

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To the Scots, the English have been friends, allies, rivals, family and oppressors. 

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But mostly enemies.

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