The Secret Heiress

Luke Devenish

Nov 2017 · Bolinda · Narrated by Kate Rawson

About this audiobook

Dark shadows fall across the golden summer of 1886. Naive country girl Ida Garfield longs to escape the farm. When Miss Matilda Gregory, the elegant mistress of Summersby House, offers Ida employment as a housemaid, Ida leaps at the chance. Yet it’s not for her servant’s skills that she’s wanted. It’s her inquisitiveness ... But before Ida starts her first day, Miss Gregory is found dead. Fearing her one chance of bettering herself lost, Ida goes to the funeral, hoping that someone else from Summersby will still want her. Someone does. Handsome blond Englishman Mr Samuel Hackett is the late Miss Gregory’s fiancé. He expresses a keen need for a housemaid – and a friend. But Miss Gregory’s will brings to light an extraordinary deception and a terrible wrong from the past. Summersby has a secret heiress, whose name is also Matilda Gregory ... A strange, ethereal girl with an irrevocably broken memory. Who is this mysterious heiress, and why is Ida bound forever to the truth?

About the author

Luke Devenish is a scriptwriter, novelist, playwright and lecturer. Head Writer with Neighbours from 2001 to 2007, he worked in key creative roles including Script Producer, Story Editor and Supervising Script Editor. He oversaw well over 1,500 episode scripts for the iconic Aussie soap. Previously, Luke was Script Executive on Something in the Air and, with ABC TV Drama, worked in the writing and development of SeaChange, RAW FM and others. Before working in the television industry, Luke was a playwright, with productions of his work staged by Playbox, the Adelaide Festival, the Sydney Festival and NIDA. A graduate of Curtin University's Creative Writing stream, Luke studied fiction under Elizabeth Jolley and Tim Winton. He regularly teaches story editing and screenwriting for the Australian Film Television and Radio School.

Kate Rawson is an actress, musician and voiceover artist originally from Cornwall. She trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, London. Her theatre credits range from an adolescent boy to a Shakespearean heroine, while on TV she has played a drunken witch in Casualty, been shot and killed in Holby City and played an enthusiastic mother in ITV drama Doc Martin. Kate regularly records audiobooks and has voiced all manner of computer-game characters.