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

I’m thrilled to welcome Rachael Johns to the blog again. Rach is mostly known for her fab rural romances but last year she released her first women’s fiction novel, The Patterson Girls, and it was a ginormous hit (read a Teaser Tuesday snippet here). It also won a prestigious Australian Book Industry Award for General Fiction Book of the Year. Pretty. Damn. Cool.

This week sees the release of Rach’s second women’s fiction, The Art of Keeping Secrets. Here’s Rach to tell you a bit about it and share a taste.

I’m so excited that my new book THE ART OF KEEPING SECRETS is FINALLY out!! This book is about female friendship and the secrets we keep for our friends, sometimes from our friends, and occasionally, the secrets we even keep from ourselves. My three main characters – Flick, Neve and Emma – head off on a girls’ trip to New York for a bit of fun and frivolity but even more importantly to hunt down Neve’s ex-lover and tell him he has a now seventeen year old son. However, while they’re in NYC, some other secrets come out. This extract I’m sharing with you today is from a scene in Central Park just before Flick reveals her big secret to her two best friends. Happy reading.

As their waiter retreated, Emma took a sip of her sparkling water and Flick’s phone beeped. She glanced down at where it sat beside them on the table, then sucked in a breath. Her cheeks flared red.

            ‘What it is?’ Emma asked.

            ‘Nothing. Just an old friend I met last night requesting friendship on Facebook.’

            ‘Jeremy?’ Neve exclaimed. ‘You’re not going to accept, are you?’

            Emma had no idea who they were talking about.

            Flick shrugged. ‘Why wouldn’t I? It was nice to see him again.’

            ‘Nice? The way you two were acting it looked a lot more than nice.’

            ‘Could someone fill me in?’ Emma asked, wondering what exactly she’d missed by going to bed early.

            ‘Flick met an old boyfriend in the bar last night and things got pretty damn cosy.’

            ‘What?’ Flick spluttered, her eyes wide. ‘For one, he was never my boyfriend and for two, things weren’t cosy. We were just catching up.’

            Neve raised her eyebrows. ‘And would your catching up have been any different if your husband had been there?’

            But Neve had to be overreacting – she’d had an emotional night and drank a fair bit – no way Flick would ever do anything to jeopardize her relationship with Seb. Emma scrutinised her friend’s face as they waited for her answer.

            ‘That’s none of your business,’ Flick said finally.

            Worry lodged itself in Emma’s throat. Where was Flick’s defence that of course she’d act the same if Seb had been there?

            ‘I beg to differ.’ Neve leaned forward, encroaching across the table into Flick’s personal space. ‘You’re a good friend, Flick, but so is Seb. He dotes on you and the kids, he’s a great father and the best darn husband I’ve ever known. Not many men would stay up so they could pick up their wife from a drunken night out with her friends you know. I don’t like to think of you…’

            Flick slammed her hand against the table top, rattling the silver cutlery. ‘Can you just stop going on and on about how bloody wonderful Seb is? Sometimes I think the two of you are more in love with him than I am, but things on the inside aren’t always as they look on the outside. And you don’t have the patent on secrets, Neve.’

Ooooh! Secrets! Just the sort of story we all love and you could be reading The Art of Keeping Secrets right now with just a clickety-click. Buy from Booktopia, Angus & Roberston Bookworld, Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, Google Play or duck down to your favourite independent book store or chain and grab a copy off the shelf.