It’s Teaser Tuesday time again, the blog series where I share tantalising snippets from works-in-progress, up-coming releases and published novels. Except when I let good buddies take over. Like today!

Rachael Johns is known and loved for her rural romances, including her phenomenally successful Outback series. But Rach is multi-talented and has now turned her hand to women’s fiction. The result is The Patterson Girls, a story I’m very much looking forward to reading and I know Rachael’s fans are too. Which means it’s going to be in huuuuge demand and you should snare your copy right this instant. Grab The Patterson Girls from Booktopia, Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play or your favourite retailer.

Now here’s Rach to tell you a little bit about the book and give a taste of what’s to come. Enjoy!

THE PATTERSON GIRLS is my first women’s fiction book, but it also has a lot of the trademark elements of my rural romances. It’s set mostly in a small South Aussie town and has four delicious male leads for you to fall in love with. About sisters and a family secret, I hope you’ll love it as much as I do. This extract is in Abigail Patterson’s point-of-view. Abigail is the youngest sister and lives in London, but is on the edge of destitution after recently losing her job!

Her hands shaking—she’d never done anything illegal before in her life but couldn’t afford the time or money it would take to get a busker’s permit—she bent down and released the clasps on her violin case.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered as she tenderly picked it and the bow up out of its case. It felt like sacrilege to be playing her prized instrument on a dirty London street with the overcast sky frowning down at them, but the second she lifted it up and put her chin on the chin rest, she began to relax. She positioned her fingers on the strings, took a deep breath and launched into Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major.

Before long a small crowd had gathered around her and people were tossing money in her case at a pleasing rate. She smiled her thanks as the coins dropped and clinked against each other, thinking that perhaps she’d go out and splurge on a baby name book when she was done. And something delicious to eat. If she was pregnant, she needed to keep her strength up. She was so distracted by these thoughts and the actual glee of playing for an audience again that she almost didn’t hear the shout from one of the onlookers.

‘Pigs are coming!’

Her fingers faltered on the strings, as she wondered what farm animals were doing in central London, and then it clicked. Police. How the person guessed she didn’t have a busker’s permit she had no clue, but she called out her thanks as she shoved her violin and bow back into the case and fumbled to get it shut. A coin lodged in one of the clasps and a cold sweat erupted on the back of her neck as the crowd dispersed.

A menacing figure dressed in the Met’s navy blue approached from about twenty metres away. Clutching her not-quite-shut case under her arm, Abigail launched into a run. She didn’t know where she was headed, just that she needed to get away.

‘Oi, Miss!’ The policeman’s angry voice followed her and she upped her speed as if she were running from a rabid dog. No Abigail, nothing like that. Just the law. Good Lord, what had become of her?

©Rachael Johns