Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Little Secrets
    Unavailable
    Little Secrets
    Unavailable
    Little Secrets
    Ebook361 pages5 hours

    Little Secrets

    By Anna Snoekstra

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    What happens when ambition trumps the truth?

    A town reeling in the wake of tragedy

    An arsonist is on the loose in Colmstock, Australia, most recently burning down the town’s courthouse and killing a young boy who was trapped inside.

    An aspiring journalist desperate for a story

    The clock is ticking for Rose Blakey. With nothing but rejections from newspapers piling up, her job pulling beers for cops at the local tavern isn’t nearly enough to cover rent. Rose needs a story—a big one.

    Little dolls full of secrets

    In the weeks after the courthouse fire, precise porcelain replicas of Colmstock’s daughters begin turning up on doorsteps, terrifying parents and testing the limits of the town’s already fractured police force.

    Rose may have finally found her story. But as her articles gain traction and the boundaries of her investigation blur, Colmstock is seized by a seething paranoia. Soon, no one is safe from suspicion. And when Rose’s attention turns to the mysterious stranger living in the rooms behind the tavern, neighbor turns on neighbor and the darkest side of self-preservation is revealed.

    Editor's Note

    Strange, dark mystery…

    A strange, dark mystery that plays with very modern fears about the economy and the state of journalism. A deep study of small towns as a rash of arson incidents threatens one such community in Australia.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarlequin MIRA
    Release dateOct 17, 2017
    ISBN9781488027932
    Author

    Anna Snoekstra

    Anna Snoekstra is the author of Only Daughter, Little Secrets and The Spite Game. Her novels have been published in over twenty countries and sixteen languages. She has written for The Guardian, Meanjin, Griffith Review, Lindsay,LitHub and The Saturday Paper. Her first audio drama, This Isn't Happening, is out with Audible in late 2022. Photo by Samantha Iliov

    Read more from Anna Snoekstra

    Related authors

    Related to Little Secrets

    Related ebooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • Article

      Let Him Rot!

      Dec 20, 2022

      Let Him Rot!
      4 min read

    • Article

      Michael Robotham

      Jul 29, 2021

      Last year, Michael Robotham saw his 2017 novel The Secrets She Keeps turn into a six-part psychological thriller drama TV series for Network Ten, starring Downton Abbey’s Laura Carmichael. “It was fascinating, exciting and slightly surreal seeing m

      1 min read

    • Article

      September’s BOOK CLUB

      Aug 4, 2022

      It’s been a decade since Hannah was at Oxford, yet she’ll never forget it. Her room-mate, April, was killed by one of the university porters. Now he’s dead and Hannah wonders if she helped send an innocent man to prison. But if Hannah digs too deep,

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Murder Of James Bulger 30 Years On

      Feb 7, 2023

      This week marks 30 years since two-year-old James Bulger was abducted and murdered by two 10-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. James would be in his 30s now. Would he be married? A father? With a career? All that was snatched away from

      4 min read

    • Article

      We All Live in Uncertain

      Jul 30, 2020

      “Think of Caddo as a maze of lakes within lakes,” says John Winn, proprietor of Caddo Outback Tours, as the two of us settle into a small Go-Devil boat roped to a dock in Uncertain, on the border of northern Louisiana. For two decades, Winn has given

      6 min read

    • Article

      My first year WITHOUT MY MOM

      Mar 16, 2020

      My first year WITHOUT MY MOM
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Living Victims

      May 8, 2020

      The Living Victims
      7 min read

    • Article

      Musings On My Father

      Aug 8, 2022

      Musings On My Father
      5 min read

    • Article

      Friend Or Foe?

      Aug 24, 2023

      Sitting on the grass beside my girlfriend Grace, I spotted a familiar face approaching from across the park. ‘Can I join you?’ Chelsea, then 17, smiled, plonking herself down. It was March 2018 and I’d been with Grace, then 16, for six months. I was

      4 min read

    • Article

      All For nothing

      Jun 1, 2023

      All For nothing
      4 min read

    • Article

      Book The Good Sister

      Oct 29, 2020

      Laced with her usual quirky humour, sass and darkly charming tone, Australian author Sally Hepworth brings her latest tome – tipped to be her breakout – to shelves. Delivering a knockout novel about the lies that bind two sisters, Hepworth tells the

      1 min read

    • Article

      My Life With A Monster

      Jul 16, 2021

      My Life With A Monster
      4 min read

    • Article

      By Appointment

      Jun 11, 2020

      By Appointment
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Naked Truth

      Oct 28, 2021

      The Naked Truth
      4 min read

    • Article

      Dawn's Choice

      Oct 2, 2020

      SHE couldn’t understand it – her husband is usually such a laid-back guy but after reading her latest novel, he was slamming things around the kitchen. Eventually Jodi Picoult couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s the matter with you?” she bellowed. Jodi

      4 min read

    • Article

      January Fiction

      Dec 14, 2021

      The Maid by Nita Prose HarperCollins, £14.99 Molly Gray, the narrator of Nita Prose’s startlingly good debut novel, is a young woman who knows her place—and who rather likes it. For “approximately four years, 13 weeks, and five days” she’s been worki

      2 min read

    Reviews for Little Secrets

    3/5

    22 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      In Little Secrets Anna Snoekstra shows the extremes that people will go to to leave any situation in which they feel limited, in this case a dying small town. It is easy to end up "disliking" every character in the novel but that is making things too black and white. If telling a lie or keeping a secret makes one unlikable then there is no one in the world who is likeable. So some degree of nuance and effort is needed to separate elementary categories such as like or dislike from a more empathy driven spectrum of more or less ethical acts done by people with strong desires. That said, on the level of whether I would "like" these characters if they were in my actual circle of acquaintances, probably not most of them but I would not "dislike" most of them, I would decide whether that person's weaknesses were more than I cared to deal with.The mysteries in the novel (there are more than one though the plot is driven by one in particular) are interesting and compelling. The resolutions are made clear to the reader even when they do not actually become known to the characters. The solution to the main mystery elicits sadness as much as anything else while the others may spark anything from anger to disappointment (at or in one of the characters). While I was less sympathetic toward Rose by the end I was still pulling for her to succeed in the future. I did believe that she had learned from her mistakes and her experiences which is what one hopes for in a character. I am less sure some of the other characters learned or grew from their experiences.I preferred Snoekstra's first novel, Only Daughter, to this one I still found this to be a good thoughtful read. I would recommend this to readers who like psychological suspense with the warning that it does not, during the first part of the book, move particularly fast. Just know that the slower part helps to set up the action that comes later.Reviewed from a copy made available through Goodreads First Reads.
    • 3/5
      I was really invested in this page turner, and it seemed to be building up to a climatic denouement, but it just fizzled out, and the end was such a let down.
    • 3/5
      Three and a half star rating.A small run down Australian town with an arsonist running loose and someone leaving dolls on the doorsteps where young girls live. Remind me never to visit, let alone live there as it seems to have far more than it’s fair share of weirdos and selfish, nasty people - so many in such a small place! Safe to say it’s very much on the creepy side. This story took quite a while to get going, so much so I almost gave up on it, but am glad I did persevere, to see that at least some of the characters got what they deserved. Very descriptive and you could almost feel the stickiness, the heat and paranoia coming through the pages.
    • 3/5
      3.5 stars

      Set in a slowly dying town in Australia, Little Secrets by Anna Snoekstra is an intriguing mystery that begins with arson and quickly moves to the creepy porcelain dolls being left for the townspeople's children.

      Rose Blakey's mom and stepfather are forcing her to move out of the family home and she is counting on a cadetship with a newspaper to help her realize her dream of becoming a journalist. In the meantime, her hometown of Colmstock is plagued by a series of fires and unfortunately, the latest fire claimed the life of thirteen year old Ben Riley. When a porcelain doll is delivered to her home that bears an eerie resemblance to her younger sister Laura, Rose is shocked to discover a few other children have also received similar gifts. In an order to jumpstart her journalist career, Rose writes a sensational story that is published by a tabloid. Under intense pressure, the police investigation fails to uncover any leads. Rose's subsequent articles ratchet up the town's fears but they lead to unintended consequences.

      Rose and her best friend Mia are working dead end jobs at the local tavern. While Mia seems resigned to remaining in Colmstock and marrying a local, Rose is ambitious and cannot wait to leave the economically depressed town behind. Growing desperate following numerous rejections for her articles, she eagerly takes advantage of the uneasiness of the town's residents following young Ben's death and the deliveries of the frightening dolls. Rose also exploits the cops who visit the tavern to get insider information for her titillating articles. As events begin to spiral out of control, how far is Rose willing to go in her pursuit of her ambitions? How many people will suffer the consequences of her actions?

      Little Secrets is a rather slow-moving novel and quite frankly, none of the characters, including Rose, are particularly likable. The storyline is interesting and the town's decay, the townspeople's fears for their safety and their economic struggles are palpable. Despite the unlikable characters, the bleak setting and the story's slow pace, Anna Snoekstra brings the novel to a twist-filled conclusion that very neatly ties up all the various story arcs loose threads.