Tara Sharp Series
It’s a week until her eighteenth birthday and Cass is holding the fort at the Sharp agency.
Tara’s on a holiday with Ed, Nick Tozzi’s attending to his wife’s rehab again, Johnny Viaspa’s in hospital, and Wal’s working a side job for a band.
All’s quiet in the office until a distraught girl walks in off the street and tries to hire Cass to kill her boyfriend.
Tara steps off a plane to find out that Cass is in a “situation” and the Western Cheaters bikie gang is calling in yet another favour. Who said a holiday was a good idea?
Audiobook Edition
A hot millionaire is in deep with a mob boss who wants to kill him. How much will Tara Sharp risk for her first big client? Tara Sharp can see auras, and it’s ruining her life. When she tries to turn her inconvenient secret into a paying gig, her first job lands her in the middle of a tug of war between the biggest, baddest crime lord in town and the hottest business man Tara has ever met. A narcoleptic ex-roadie sidekick, a cranky pet parrot, and a psychic investigator with an uncanny ability to read auras—what could go right? If you like refreshing, funny, fast-paced crime packed with quirky, lovable characters, then you’ll love Marianne Delacourt’s action-packed Tara Sharp series.
Format: Unabridged Audiobook | Narrator: Anthea Greco | Time: 8 hrs and 10 mins
Excerpt
Cass ran a wet cloth over the kitchen bench and then hung it on the dishrack to dry. It was that kind of day. A day when swiping a sponge over an already gleaming bench top seemed like the most important thing… the only thing… she had to do.
When she lived at home, Saturdays had been the best day of the week. Debs and Ricci came over early, before lunch, and they swapped outfits and did their makeup and bargained over what they’d wear that night, and where they’d go: the train-tracks bonfire, the movie-plex in the mall, or the under-agers party in the carpark behind Gibbo’s Bar. Sometimes they’d sneak into the back of Vivio’s nightclub, but most of the bouncer’s knew their age and if they got caught they were booted out. It only ever worked out for them if the bouncer was new, or Ricci’s cousin was working.
Cass didn’t really mind if they got busted. The music at Vivio’s sucked. She’d grown up with all the House-styles and sometimes she just ached for something old-school and defined like The Damned and Killing Joke. Ancient 80’s goth rocked, in her opinion.
On those endless, perfect Saturdays, if her mum was sleeping off a hangover, they’d smoke weed in the lane behind her flats. Then they’d give Raj at the corner store total shit when they went in to buy gum to hide the stink. Not that her mum cared if she was smoking or not.
Cass sighed. Being fourteen seemed another life ago. And in a week’s time she’d be able to legally vote. Eighteen. Not that any of the wankers in Australian politics deserved her support. But it felt good to know it was her right to NOT vote for them if she wanted to.
And the truth was, that even though Saturdays had been more fun when she was fourteen, she wouldn’t want to be that person again. The last few years hadn’t been easy, but they’d been better than her life with her mum in almost every way.
She formed a mental list of how much better. (Lists were good when you were bored.)
#1 Getting much better at believing I can do shit.
That’s sounded stupid. She’s always been able to do shit. At twelve she’d learned to fill out her mum’s dole forms. At thirteen she’d menu-planned to make their allowance stretch two weeks, and then did the shopping at Coles. But that was stuff everyone did. What she was better at now was other crap. Like spreadsheets, and forensics.
Her boss, Tara Sharp, knew everything about people. Like Tara really got people. When they were lying and stuff. Cass knew she wasn’t so good at that. But she didn’t forget anything. And she could organise shit quickly. Into lists.
#2 Tara Sharp.
Cass would never forget the day they’d met – twenty-six months ago – out the back of the train station in the Bunkas. She’s never seen such a giant, wild-looking woman before. Seriously. All hair, and bounce. And that was just the outside. On the inside, Tara was like a ticking bomb. And just as you get used to her being, all like, a regular… tick, tick, tick… she’d go BOOM! Blow up and do something crazy. In the time Cass had known Tara, someone had tried to run her over, she’d been kidnapped by dead-set, professional hit man, and she’d been inducted into a bikie gang.
Cass grinned. It sounded bad when you put that stuff on her list. But really it wasn’t. Tara was good people. Like… really good people. Tara had saved her life. Friend, sister, mum, and annoying older person who partied to Aussie (vomit) hip hop, all rolled into one.
Oh, and her Boss.
Which bought her to number 3…
#3 The Sharp Agency – specialising in weird shit. Not exactly a PI business, not exactly anything. Just doing the strange stuff that got recommended to them. The leftover problems, often for the leftover people.
