Today we feature the spotlight Annie Seaton, prolific author of rural romance, cosy magic, and crime thrillers.
~Eleni
"PrologueThe osprey circles high above the Coral Sea, riding the warm updrafts that rise from the sun-baked islands scattered across the brilliant blue water. Below, coral reefs glow through the shallows in shifting patches of turquoise and jade, while deeper channels cut dark scars between the islands. The bird's keen eyes search constantly for movement beneath the surface-a flash of silver scales, the shadow of a fish, anything that might become its next meal.
A lone white catamaran lies anchored in the shelter of a crescent-shaped bay. The osprey has seen these vessels before. Humans arrive with the seasons, drawn to the islands like migrating birds, though their habits are stranger and far less predictable.
The osprey tilts its wings and drifts silently overhead."
- Dark Waters (Book 4, Bec Whitefield Mysteries) by Annie Seaton
NEW RELEASES
Annie Seaton
May Day Magic
Book 6, The Enchanted Village
Released
20 May
Patrick Doyle was supposed to be something brilliant. His family had chosen his profession before he’d even finished school—medicine, law, anything worthy of their cleverest son.
Instead, he followed his heart and became an English teacher. And for a long time, that was enough.
Then came the year that broke him.
Now Patrick is moving to the Cotswolds, his books packed in boxes and his faith in himself left behind, to take up a teaching post in a quiet market town and a cottage in a village.
But Lavender Cottage has already been waiting for him.
As May unfolds across the village, Lily Morrison watches Patrick Doyle move quietly through it, slowly coming to understand himself. Can she help Patrick see that maybe he made the right choice?
The village does its work. It always does.
May Magic is the sixth book in the beloved Enchanted Village series—a story about the courage it takes to choose your own life, and the person who helps you realise you already have.
Buy
Annie Seaton
Midsummer Magic
Book 7, The Enchanted Village
Released
30 June
A warm, very funny love story about late starts, sticky beginnings, and finding home in a place you didn’t plan for.
Charlotte Reid had a strategy. The bees had other ideas. After fifteen years climbing the corporate ladder at Harrods, Charlotte is done with London. She has bought a honey-coloured sweet shop in a Cotswolds village she’s visited exactly twice, packed up her flat, and turned up determined to do this right. She has a strategy document. She has a five-year plan. She has a cream blouse that has, so far, survived everything.
Twenty-five hours before the grand opening, the strategy document does not survive thirty thousand bees on the front of her sign — or Tom Wakefield, the local beekeeper, who finds the whole situation very funny.
Tom keeps bees on Mrs Willoughby’s land. He has hair that needs cutting, a thirteen-year-old daughter who has already worked Charlotte out, and a habit of speaking to insects in endearments. He is the calm to Charlotte’s strategy, the slow afternoons to her London speed, the 'we’ll see' to her 'I’ve planned for that'. He is also, infuriatingly, the only person in the village who knows what to do when bees turn up uninvited.
Buy
Annie Seaton
Harvest Magic
Book 8, The Enchanted Village
Released
25 August
Summer in Lower Thistlewick has never been quite like this.
The film crew for Shadowlands—Dimity Armstrong’s much-loved fantasy series—arrives in July, bringing cameras, cables, a great deal of excitement and rather more interest in the village’s hanging baskets than anyone expected.
Lower Thistlewick takes it all in its stride. Mostly.
Alf Cooper, already cast as the innkeeper in the production, soon discovers that pretending to run an inn while actually running one is more complicated than it sounds. So he sends for his nephew, Harvey.
Harvey Cooper arrives on a Tuesday with two bags, no explanation and an easy way with people that makes him seem as though he has always belonged behind the bar at the Swan. He doesn’t say what he has left behind, and Alf doesn’t ask. Lower Thistlewick has always been good at knowing when to leave a person alone.
Meanwhile, Dimity is spending long hours at Pippin’s Nook with Rowan, the production’s scriptwriter. The work is entirely necessary, entirely professional—and beginning to trouble Vivian far more than she wants to admit.
At the bookshop, Joanna and Hugh are planning their September wedding. And Charlotte, watching the village fill with strangers, begins to suspect that the biggest change of the summer may have nothing to do with Shadowlands at all.
It may have something to do with Harvey.
Lower Thistlewick has always had a way of giving people what they need, even when they haven’t quite worked out what that is themselves.
This summer, the village has its work cut out.
Harvest Magic is the eighth novel in The Enchanted Village series.
Omnibus versions are also available.
Books 1-3
Annie Seaton
The Witching Hour
Book 3, Catherine Snowden Supernatural Thrillers
Released
20 September
Some churches should stay abandoned.
Six months after stopping a serial killer, Detective Inspector Catherine Snowden has finally found peace. Her gift—the ability to hear the dead—is under control. She has boundaries. A loving husband. A quiet life in the countryside.
Until Rebecca Wright's spirit reaches out.
Twenty-four-year-old Rebecca was found hanging in an abandoned church, ruled suicide. But her sister is having vivid nightmares—Rebecca showing her a man's face, a struggle, a murder.
Catherine takes the case. Just one more investigation.
But St. Bartholomew's Church holds a darker secret. Five women have died there over twenty years. All ruled suicides. All found at 3 AM in the bell tower. And every night at the witching hour, something ancient stirs within the deconsecrated walls.
As Catherine investigates, she discovers the truth: this isn't suicide. It's ritual murder. And the killer believes Catherine's gift makes her the perfect final sacrifice.
The witching hour is coming. And this time, Catherine might not survive till dawn.
A gripping supernatural thriller perfect for fans of dark mysteries and gifted detectives.
non spec-fic
Annie Seaton
Under Darling Skies
Book 5, Daughters of the Darling
Released:
30 April
Bridget O'Byrne thought she was building the future with her brilliant business partner and cutting-edge AI technology. Eighteen months later, she's trapped in Sydney, financially ruined, and under the controlling influence of Antony Saar. When his venture collapses amid fraud investigations, Bridget returns home to Ceann Mara with her confidence shattered.
Back on the family property she once dismissed as old-fashioned, Bridget struggles to rebuild her life. Her path to recovery takes an unexpected turn when she reconnects with Danny Walsh, a quietly competent stockman who was her closest friend in primary school. Danny's contentment with honest work and simple truths challenges everything Bridget thought she wanted.
Meanwhile, Tom and Cat's genealogical research uncovers the mystery of eleven-year-old Roisin O'Byrne, Catherine's sister, who vanished from Melbourne in 1880. Following Roisin's trail to the goldfields, Bridget begins to understand that sometimes survival requires losing yourself completely before you can find your way home.
A story about recognising manipulation, rebuilding trust, and discovering that the most profound strength often comes from the simplest truths.
Buy
Annie Seaton
Light on the Darling
Book 6, Daughters of the Darling
Released:
29 September
While her five daughters found their paths—to love and to lives that carried them away from Ceann Mara— Laura kept the homestead and the campground running, the table set, and the family held together. She had believed it was enough.
Now the last of her girls has found her happiness, and the house is quiet in a way Laura didn't prepare for. Tom has the property. The girls have their families and their lives, and Laura, looking after a homestead that no longer needs her the way it used to, wonders when she stopped being a person and became invisible.
Until a letter arrived from a Sydney solicitor, Laura thought she understood herself.
As Laura takes up her paintbrushes for the first time in decades, a developer moves in on the Darling, threatening the river that has shaped their family for seven generations. Her art brings her an unexpected voice. Her heritage gives her an unexpected courage. And the woman who has spent thirty years holding everyone else up must decide whether to stay invisible—or to finally be seen.
Light on the Darling is the sixth and final book in Annie Seaton's beloved Daughters of the Darling series—the story of the woman who made all the others possible.
Buy
Annie Seaton
Outback Secrets
Book 2, The Happy Outback Hotel
Released:
28 May
Small-town outback romance where love is worth the wait.
Jill and Ryan’s story continues in Outback Secrets as Irish photographer Finn O’Sullivan arrives in Garnet Creek running from a scandal—his reputation destroyed, his career in ruins.
Librarian Charlotte Hayes recognises Finn the moment he walks into her library. Her reaction is immediate, complicated—and she's not about to explain why.
When Finn is offered part-time bar work at The Happy Outback Hotel, Charlotte tells herself to stay away, but she can't ignore the growing connection between them—or the guilt of staying silent whilst Finn suffers.
When Charlotte's past catches up to her, threatening everything she's built, staying silent is no longer an option. Speaking the truth could save Finn—or destroy them both.
As Garnet Creek rallies around them both, Finn and Charlotte must decide: keep running from the past or stand and fight for the love and family they never expected to find.
Because sometimes the biggest secret is what you're afraid to reach for.
Buy
Annie Seaton
Outback Dreams
Book 3, The Happy Outback Hotel
Released:
14 August
Sophie MacAllister came to Garnet Creek as a backpacker, planning to stay a week.
That was a long time ago now. These days, she’s Miss Sophie to a roomful of four-year-olds at the preschool, and the woman at the front desk of the Happy Outback Hotel who keeps the bookings, the dining-room covers, and most of Jill’s paperwork ticking along.
Sophie has spent the past year booking other people’s rooms, setting out other people’s tablecloths, and her days at the preschool reading stories to other people’s children, and has begun to suspect — with some private alarm — that arranging everyone else’s life is not, as it turns out, the same as having one.
Sam Whitlock is back at the Happy Outback Hotel. He’s an agronomist out of Wagga, three years on from his wife’s funeral, with a furious fifteen-year-old daughter waiting for him at the kitchen table back home. He has come north a second time because the family farm will not, on its own, see his Tess through Year Twelve, and Sam Whitlock’s quiet, inherited dream of a small place that lasts is, this April, fairly close to running out.
Neither of them is looking. Sam has Tess to think about, and a paddock back home, and a kind of grief that doesn’t let go in a hurry. Sophie, for her part, has long since decided she is not the kind of woman things happen to.
But the preschool needs a windbreak if the enrolment is going to hold. The fundraiser is on Sophie’s list. And the man she just handed the key to Room Three knows about trees.
Can two people who have stopped expecting their own happy ending find one — slowly, carefully, and with the whole of Garnet Creek looking on — on a verandah in autumn?
Buy
Annie Seaton
Dark Waters
Book 4, Bec Whitfield Mystery
Released:
31 July
Detective Bec Whitfield thought she'd found paradise in tropical Mission Beach—and maybe even love with charming local developer Jake Morrison. But when Cyclone Meredith threatens the coast, emergency preparations uncover a twenty-year-old secret buried in concrete.
The skeletal remains belong to Marcus “Moondog” Sullivan, a former Sydney property developer turned environmental activist who vanished in 2004 during heated battles over coastal development. Marcus had made powerful enemies on both sides of the conservation debate, and someone wanted him silenced permanently.
As Bec investigates, the case becomes uncomfortably personal. Jake's construction company was involved in the building where Marcus was found, and her new boyfriend grows increasingly evasive about his past. When Detective Todd Davenpot arrives from Brisbane with warnings about Jake's reputation, Bec finds herself caught between two men and a web of corruption that reaches far beyond Mission Beach.
With the cyclone bearing down and evacuation orders imminent, Bec must solve a murder that exposes decades of environmental crime and political corruption. But the closer she gets to the truth, the more she realises that Marcus Sullivan died because he threatened to expose secrets that powerful people will kill to protect.
In a race against time and the storm of the century, Bec will discover that some foundations are built on lies—and that choosing the wrong person to trust can be deadly.
Perfect for fans of Jane Harper and Candice Fox.
Buy
Annie Seaton
The Augathella Girls: Volume 1
Books 1-4
in print at a special price
The first four books in the bestselling Augathella Girls series in one volume. Over a year, eight women make their way to the Augathella region in outback Queensland. The magic of the landscape, new friendships, and new loves give each of them a new beginning.
1. Outback Roads: After fleeing from the city, will Callie Young get over her embarrassment, and will she be able to resist the charms of cattle owner, Braden Cartwright and his three sweet boys?
2. Outback Sky: As Fallon Malone starts a new job out west, nature conspires to bring the head stockman and the bush pilot together. Can she resist the charms of Jon Ingram?
3. Outback Escape: When Sophie Cartwright comes home to Augathella, she doesn’t get the welcome she expected Her ex, Kent Mason doesn't have the time to worry about her anymore, and he's not prepared to be hurt again.
4. Outback Winds: As the jillaroo and the shire building inspector spend more time together attraction grows quickly.
But Ben can’t wait to do his time in the bush and move to the city; Amelia wants to make a success of her career on the huge cattle spread. Will she give her heart to a man who wants to leave all that she loves?
Buy
PRE-ORDERS
Annie Seaton
Harvest Magic
Book 9, The Enchanted Village
Expected Release:
22 October
Kirsten Tredinnick QC has been one of the most respected barristers at the Criminal Bar for two decades. She has stood in courtrooms and changed the course of lives. She has been certain, precise, and formidable, and she has never once doubted that the work was enough.
Then came the Ashworth case.
She won’t talk about the Ashworth case. Not to her clerk, not to her chambers, not to the daughter who calls every Sunday and asks, carefully, whether she’s all right. What she can do is leave. A six-month sabbatical, an old friend’s recommendation, a cottage in the Cotswolds. She does not plan to talk to anyone. She plans to walk and read and be left alone, and when six months have passed, she will go back to the Bar, and everything will be as it was.
Michaelmas Cottage in Lower Thistlewick has other ideas.
Michaelmas Magic is the ninth book in the beloved Enchanted Village series — a story about the woman who has given everything to her work, and the village, the cottage, and one magnificently overconfident thirteen-year-old who refuse to let that be the whole of her.
Pre-Order
Annie Seaton
Another Magic Christmas
Book 10, The Enchanted Village
Expected Release:
15 November
This Christmas, the biggest surprise in Lower Thistlewick isn’t under the tree.
Shadowlands star Scarlett Simmons has nowhere she wants to spend Christmas. So when Dimity invites her to Lower Thistlewick, she escapes the film set for a festive village Christmas, hiding her loneliness behind the dazzling smile everyone expects.
Then her best friend Amanda arrives—with her fiancé, Angus, the man Scarlett once believed she would love forever.
Angus still believes the lies that ended their relationship. Scarlett still carries the heartbreak. And Amanda is determined to prove that whatever they once shared is firmly in the past.
But as Christmas draws closer, old feelings prove impossible to ignore. And in Lower Thistlewick, where meddling villagers, second chances and a little unexpected magic are never far away, Scarlett might just discover that her first love was always meant to be her forever love.
A warm, funny and romantic Christmas story about second chances, village magic and finding your way home to the person you never stopped loving.
Pre-Order
Annie Seaton
Outback Hearts
Book 4, The Happy Outback Hotel
Expected Release:
31 October
Some hearts break so completely, the only way back is to help someone else's beat again.
Dr Ethan Reeves has never set foot outside the UK—until an international placement scheme drops him straight from a London hospital corridor into the red dirt and endless sky of the Australian outback, with no layover in a city to soften the landing. Garnet Creek Medical Centre is smaller than his old GP surgery's car park. The nearest hospital is two hours away. And the man giving him a lift from the airstrip calls him "Doc" before he's even said his name.
Paramedic Zoe Bennett grew up in Garnet Creek and swore she'd never come back—not permanently, not after everything that drove her away. But her own reasons for running have caught up with her, and now she's home, splitting her time between ambulance shifts in Longreach and a new role as the hotel's safety officer. She tells herself it's temporary. She tells herself a lot of things.
Ethan and Zoe are polite strangers who happen to work in the same small building—until a hotel guest collapses mid-celebration and a child's snake bite turns a quiet afternoon into a race against time. Thrown together when it matters most, they discover something neither expected: a partner who understands exactly what it costs to keep showing up when everything's unfamiliar and there's nowhere left to run to.
As Garnet Creek gathers for a wedding that feels like the whole town's victory, farewells the man who saved it, and welcomes new life into the family they've all built together, Ethan and Zoe must decide whether two people from opposite ends of the earth can build something whole together—or whether the outback is too far from everything Ethan's ever known.
Buy
Annie Seaton
Goodby Creek
Book 5, Bec Whitfield Mystery
Released:
31 January 2027
Detective Rebecca Whitfield came to Cooktown to start over.
Leaving Pandanus Point was supposed to help her forget Detective Sergeant Todd Davenport—the man she fell for and the one who couldn't give her what she wanted. In the historic Far North Queensland town, she's determined to focus on her new job and leave the past behind.
Then local historian Jack Merrigan is found dead at the bottom of a remote lookout.
Everyone says it was an accident.
Bec isn't convinced.
Jack had been researching one of Cooktown's oldest legends: a fortune in gold that vanished during the Palmer River Gold Rush nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. Before his death, he claimed he had uncovered the truth about the missing treasure—and the murder that hid it.
When Cairns CIB sends assistance, the last person Bec expects steps out of the vehicle.
Todd Davenport.
As they follow a trail of missing journals, hidden maps and long-buried family secrets, another body is found and it becomes clear someone will kill to keep the past buried. The closer Bec and Todd get to the truth, the more dangerous the hunt becomes.
Because the lost gold isn't the only secret hidden in the rainforest.
And some treasures are worth murdering for.
Perfect for readers who love atmospheric Australian crime, layered mysteries and a slow-burn romance, Goodbye Creek is the gripping fifth instalment in the Bec Whitfield Mysteries.
Buy
GENERAL NEWS
Annie Seaton
has a number of books translated recently and available on Amazon.
Italian
Polish
Congratulations to our DarkSiders!
Happy reading everyone. Be safe & well.
