Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in All Categories

Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head. At the helm of his 26-foot whaleboat, the Bastard, McLaren sailed brazenly into enemy-held harbours, wreaking havoc with his mortar and machine guns before heading back out to sea.

From the best-selling author of Hello from the Gillespies and The House of Memories comes a warm and captivating story of family secrets, traditions and ties. As a child Maggie Faraday grew up in a lively, unconventional household in Tasmania, with her young mother, four very different aunts and eccentric grandfather. With her mother often away, all four aunts took turns looking after her - until, just weeks before Maggie's sixth birthday, a shocking event changed everything.

Two strangers save a life on a plane and then share one tender Singapore night en route from London to Sydney. Dr Ailee Green knows a relationship is not an option before she gives the gift that will save her brother's life. But surgeon Fergus McVicker has other plans, plans that don’t include Ailee walking out of his and his daughter's world, and he offers her something she's always wanted.

On 19 July 1916, 7,000 Australian soldiers - in the first major action of the AIF on the Western Front - attacked entrenched German positions at Fromelles, in Northern France. By the next day, no fewer than 5,500 were wounded and just under 1,900 were dead - a bloodbath that the Australian War Memorial describes as 'the worst 24 hours in Australia's entire history'. Just days later, three Australian divisions attacked German positions at nearby Pozières, and over the next six weeks they suffered another 23,000 casualties.

Spanning 15 years of work, Everywhere I Look is an audiobook full of unexpected moments, sudden shafts of light, piercing intuition, flashes of anger and incidental humour. It takes us from backstage at the ballet to the trial of a woman for the murder of her newborn baby. It moves effortlessly from the significance of moving house to the pleasure of rereading Pride and Prejudice.

Life for Bertie seems to be moving at a pace that is rather out of his control. In Drummond Place gardens, it seems that Olive has their future together all planned out. Meanwhile, upstairs at 44 Scotland Street, Bertie’s father, Stuart, is powerless to stop over-bearing Irene and her motion for Bertie to travel to Aberdeen on a three-month secondment. And, further up in the New Town, while Bruce Anderson plots with old-school chums, love blossoms in Big Lou’s Cafe. 

England, 1255: Sarah is only 17 when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a small cell, measuring seven paces by nine, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief of losing a much-loved sister in childbirth and the pressure to marry, she decides to renounce the world, with all its dangers, desires, and temptations, and to commit herself to a life of prayer and service to God.

Hannah has been running - literally and figuratively - from her life back in Australia. Whenever she's not working, she's pounding London's streets, putting the past behind her. Then she meets a fellow Australian named India, and Hannah's entranced. For India is confident, exotic and charming - qualities that Hannah feels she's desperately lacking. India has a secret, too - one beyond any remedy.

Ten-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada’s twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother, Jamie, is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn’t waste a minute—sneaking out to join him. So begins a new adventure for Ada, and for Susan Smith, the woman who is forced to take the two kids in. As Ada teaches herself to ride a pony, learns to read and watches for German spies, she begins to trust Susan—and Susan begins to love Ada and Jamie. 

Always is the seventh and final part of Felix's story, bringing to a powerful climax a series that countless young listeners around the world will remember. Late in life, Felix finds himself back where he started, living in an aged-care home that reminds him of his childhood orphanage. He's not happy. His body might be old, but his spirit is still youthful. When he learns that a dear friend from his early years is in terrible danger, Felix doesn't hesitate. 

We arrived at the tower at the top of the castle. The door was locked. 'We can't go into that room,' said Ho Hum. 'Not ever.' Tashi tells Jack about his scariest adventure ever the mysterious stranger Bluebeard moved into the old castle. Nobody knew what a monser Bluebeard was until he challenges Tashi to complete three impossible tasks. Can Tashi really save the day again?

From one of the game's true champions - a man who has captained both the West Coast Eagles and Carlton - comes a revealing, honest and unique autobiography. A rare and intimate look inside the world of the elite sportsman. Few people know Australian-rules football better than Chris Judd. He's one of the game's out-and-out champions, having captained two of the greatest clubs in the league - the West Coast Eagles and Carlton - and taken the Eagles to premiership victory in 2006.

The problem was that Les Darcy didn't want to march at the fore of such a procession, nor to such a destination. He wanted to continue what he had been doing to extraordinary acclaim before the war began - taking on the best boxers the world could throw at him, and lifting his entire family out of poverty as he did so. Torn between the duty he felt he owed his family, and the duty many felt he owed his country, Les made his choice ... and faced the consequences.

A truly inspiring and heartbreaking book from the mother of little James Bulger - whose murder by two young boys shocked the world. On 12th February 1993, Denise's life changed forever. As she was running errands at New Strand Shopping Centre, she let go of her two-year-old son's hand to take out her purse. Denise never saw her son again. In this extraordinary and heart-wrenching audiobook comes the unflinching account of that terrible day from James Bulger's mother, Denise.

Beauty Cookson is no beauty. She's a plain, timid girl who constantly feels inferior to the super-confident, snooty girls at school. Worse than the teasing in the playground, though, is the unpredictable, hurtful criticism from her father. Beauty and her meek, sweet mother live in uneasy fear of his fierce rages, sparked whenever they break one of his fussy house rules.

An international best seller that has sold more than a million copies in the UK, Dreams from My Father is a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking big questions about identity and belonging. The son of a Black African father and a white American mother, Barack Obama recounts an emotional odyssey, retracing the migration of his mother’s family from Kansas to Hawai’i, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Zack Freeman is ready to tell his story. The story of a boy and his crazy runaway bum. The story of a crack bum-fighting unit called the B-team, a legendary Bum Hunter and his formidable daughter, and some of the biggest, ugliest and meanest bums ever to roam the face of the earth. A story of courage and endurance that takes Zack on a journey across the Great Windy Desert, through the Brown Forest and over the Sea of Bums before confronting the biggest, ugliest, and meanest bum of them all.

Hal and his brotherband crew are hot on the trail of the pirate Zavac and they have one thing only on their minds: stopping the bloodthirsty thief before he can do more damage. Of course, they also know Zavac has the Andomal, the priceless Skandian artefact stolen when the brotherband let down their guard. The chase leads down mighty rivers, terrifying rapids, to the lawless fortress of Ragusa. If Hal is to succeed, he will need to go beyond his brotherband training. He will need to challenge the pirate one-on-one, knowing only one of them will survive.

When Kit Fielding, champion steeplechase jockey, finds out that his chief patron, Princess Casilia, is facing an increasingly serious threat, he goes unhesitatingly to her aid. Neither realises that his instinctive support is the first step towards a frightening battle involving violent risk, with the honour of the princess's family as the prize and Kit's own destruction as the forfeit.

The bombs were falling and the smoke rising from the concentration camps, but all Hitler's daughter knew was the world of lessons with Fraulein Gelber and the hedgehogs she rescued from the cold. Was it just a story or did Hitler's daughter really exist? And If you were Hitler's daughter, would all the horror that occurred be your fault, too? Do things that happened a long time ago still matter?