Stand Alone
Twenty years ago, Luna's aunt Juliette convinced Luna and her mother to write down their deepest secrets. She hid those secrets in a box. Then, in a pine forest far from home, Juliette buried what they wrote.
Luna never planned to go in search of that box. Whatever secrets her mother and aunt wrote that day, Luna had wanted to remain buried.
But when Juliette dies unexpectedly, Luna discovers her aunt was hiding more than the secret she buried twenty years earlier. Searching for answers, Luna returns to the small town Juliette had once loved; to the trees guarding their secrets.
There's one problem.
The pine forest is on private land. That land belongs to the sexy-but-guarded Jamie.
The more Luna chases Juliette's ghost, the more uncertain Jamie becomes of her intentions, but the more time they spend together, the more their chemistry builds.
It's complicated. And scary.
Especially since the last thing Luna expected to find was love ... or herself.
2018: All Chloe wanted was an eternal love – like that of her grandparents’. What she got was a broken heart and a rude reminder of single life in the digital age.
After her fiancé leaves, Chloe decides to re-invent the cafe her grandmother June opened in 1959. There, buried amongst her grandmother’s possessions in the abandoned building, lie long-hidden secrets. Secrets that could shatter everything Chloe believes about love ... and her grandparents.
1959: Arthur comes from the wrong side of the city. It’s never been an issue ... until he fell in love with the beautiful and wealthy June.
There are many reasons to stay away, but when June asks Arthur to renovate her dream tearoom, Arthur doesn’t say no. Each week he falls more in love with a woman who cannot be his, but his heart refuses to listen, and he finds himself doing what no honest man should do – keep secrets to be with the one he loves.
1988: In a multicultural pocket of inner-city Melbourne, sixteen-year-old Caleb falls in love with Samira, his Lebanese neighbour. Both understand the rules that determine they’re not allowed to date, but neither stays away. As they hide in the branches of a giant fig tree, their forbidden love blossoms … until tragedy pulls them apart.
1998: A chance encounter has reunited Caleb and Samira. Now that she’s no longer the sixteen-year-old girl he fell in love with but a beautiful grown woman, Caleb is certain they’ll have a second chance. But cultural rules don’t go away simply because they’re adults. Instead, they’re left facing the same battle they did as teens. Except this time, Caleb realises the threads of culture and heritage are woven much deeper into his own life than he could’ve imagined.
He has a choice. To fight for the woman he loves, or to do what everyone before him has done. Follow the rules.
Maya is floundering. She’s stuck in a dead-end job, is isolated from family and friends, and her father—the only person to ever truly understand her—has been gone four years. When her boyfriend leaves her for another woman, the rocky foundations of Maya’s life crumble to dust, and she sinks even further into the pit of grief and despair.
Until she meets him. Sam. The one with the animated smile and gentle eyes, who always sees the positive no matter how bad the negative. Sam reignites Maya’s passion with his enthusiastic outlook and helps to rebuild her life, piece by piece.
But when ghosts from Maya’s past resurface, her decisions almost destroy the few important relationships she has left, and the happiness she’s so recently found is threatened. She must overcome her demons and decide what matters most—the familiarity of the past, or the hope, love and possibilities of the future.
"I tip my hat to Ms Battany for the skill in crafting such a strong-willed, fiery, yet insecure, hurting and deliciously flawed woman that is Maya Ricci. I may not have loved her on every messy scene of her life, but I somehow understood why Maya behaved the way she did. Only a writer with skill can wield words like this. Thank you, Rania." - Goodreads reviewer.