CASSIE
HAMER
THE STRANGER AT THE TABLE
A family gathering, but not everyone who sits down to dinner will survive it.
Maz Antonio has spent the last two years in prison so is determined to make the first major family gathering in their new home deep in Australian suburbia as perfect as possible. She owes it to everyone after the terrible mistakes she’s made … mistakes for which she will always be trying to atone. This special lunch is her chance to make things right for her husband and children, to show everyone that she can maintain her sobriety, that things can go back to normal. (Whatever normal looks like when you have traumatic, confusing flashbacks of that fateful day where two innocent lives were lost.)
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Her sister, Elli, is in. So is her husband’s brother. Her distant father-in-law is gracing them with his presence and her mum Margaret is on the way from Newcastle, bringing a colleague – a virtual stranger she impulsively invited.
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But is this man really a stranger? Or could it be that he is intimately connected to the past that Maz has so desperately been trying to put behind her – a past that’s about to explode across the dinner table in the deadliest of ways…
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"This compelling page-turner takes us inside the Antonio family with all of its love and loyalty, secrets and betrayals, grief and guilt. Cassie Hamer’s characters are so real—she gives us fascinating insights into complex family dynamics. And that’s what hooks us into this story: the explosive truths that this family must face, and whether they can uncover their long-held secrets, trust each other, and find forgiveness."
Petronella McGovern, author of The Last Trace