Showing results by publisher "Penguin Random House Australia Audio" in Literature & Fiction

The journals of the Nobel Prize-winning author, beautifully illustrated with his own paintings

'They said he was their boy. And so he was....' In 1913, on a summer’s day at Half Moon Lake, Louisiana, four-year-old Sonny Davenport walks into the woods and never returns. The boy’s mysterious disappearance from the family’s lake house makes front-page news in their home town of Opelousas. John Henry and Mary Davenport are wealthy and influential, and will do anything to find their son. For two years, the Davenports search across the South, offer increasingly large rewards and struggle not to give in to despair.

2020 began with fire storms raging through the country, followed by floods and then a global pandemic that has changed how Australians think, feel and live. We all experienced this year differently, but one thing rings true for all us: this is a year we won't forget. This anthology brings together original work from a diverse collection of Australian voices, from writers to scientists, journalists to historians, all expressing what 2020 meant to them.

London, 1850. Constance Horton has disappeared. Maude, her older sister, knows only that Constance abandoned the apothecary they call home, and, disguised as a boy, boarded a ship bound for the Arctic. She never returned. 'A tragic accident', the Admiralty called it. But Maude Horton knows...

Dara Willcox, in New York for a weekend, meets Austin Clarke at an art gallery. The two are on different courses-Austin is British, temporarily in New York. Dara's from North Carolina, set on law school. They fall in love at first sight, and are determined to make their lives together. Days after their engagement dinner, Austin hears unsettling news from London that wrecks their plans. Dara abruptly cancels the wedding. She refuses to reveal why, not even to her best friends or her parents or grandmother, disrupting their family tradition of openness.

Audrey Mendes is a clever lawyer but has never made partner. Her weeks are filled with long hours in the office, visits to her ageing parents, trivia nights at the local and evenings at home with her pet rabbit, Joni. When Audrey tries to buy wine at the pub she is ignored and walks out without...

It's 2002. Britney and Justin are done. Low-rise jeans tyrannise the pants-wearing public. And Hector Singh, a 27-year-old eccentric, moderately talented yet extremely confident aspiring TV writer, is hell bent on 'making it' in LA. He's Puerto Rican and Indian but also post-race (or so he thinks) and he refuses to be intimidated by the Whites Only landscape of show business. But when his mother dies suddenly, Hector's grief turns into depression, triggering dark thoughts and a binge-eating disorder. With a series of implosions that threaten to sink his work and relationships, Hector unravels.

'A smart, swaggering love letter to smart, swaggering youth, told in a voice that's racing hot, icy cool and always on the verge of losing its composure.' Ronnie Scott 'Strap in and let an unforgettable story of sex, drugs and electroclash rush past you like the wet neon blur beyond the windows...

The disappearance of Bo Rabbit in 1984 left the Rabbit women crippled by grief. Bo's mother, Rosemary, and Bo's younger sister Delia, became disjointed and dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned 18. Now a teacher at a Queensland college, Delia's life is dissolving. She gave up on her own art, began a relationship with a student and is struggling to raise her three growing children, Olive, Charlie and Benjamin. And, now she must also care for her mother. Despite it all, the Rabbits are managing, precariously.

A sexy, funny, surprising tale of female friendship, bedrooms and marriage.

Rebecca thinks the past is behind her. She has spent the last ten years working as a lawyer at an insurance firm in London, but she's unfulfilled in her job, and her boyfriend, the one she didn't even care about, has just dumped her. And then comes an email from Hannah, the sister she hasn't...

Told from five different points of view, each one revealing something different, On a Bright Hillside in Paradise tells the story of a family of convict descendants in the back-blocks of Tasmania, on a farm in a place called Paradise. They lead hard-scrabble lives. The drama begins when strangers arrive, Christian Brethren evangelists who hold big revival meetings in local barns. On a Bright Hillside in Paradise tackles big questions of faith and family but remains grounded in the dreams and strivings of its beautifully drawn characters.

What does it feel like to be passionate about your daily work? How do people find their way into fascinating, unusually fulfilling careers, even against the odds? Space lawyers and bibliotherapists; euthanasia activists and women's rugby champions; shark experts and solar power visionaries; a...

'Is this all?' That's the question Joan asks as she surveys her neat, suburban home and her perfect children. It's July 1969, and her husband, Buzz, is walking on the Moon. In Houston, Joan folds laundry and smiles for the cameras. Outside, the world is on fire: Vietnam, civil rights...

Kin is the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I'm always hoping to find: smart and funny. ANN PATCHETT A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage-a novel that sparkles with wit, intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends...

You wake up alone after an emergency caesarean, desperate to see your child. And when you are shown the small infant in the nursery, a terrible thought takes root: this baby is not your baby. No one believes you. Not the nurses, your father or even your own husband. They say you're confused and...

Who do you trust when you can't trust the one you love? Four years on from the devastating loss of their first child, Lauren and Alex De Vale are finally the proud parents of new baby, Charlotte. However as Lauren - who struggled to bond with her late son - returns to work, she is riddled with...

Nineteen-year-old identical twins Violet and Daisie Chettle can hardly believe their luck when they are recruited as maids to accompany the queen's lady-in-waiting on the royal tour to Australia in 1954. It's just the ticket they need away from cold, grey England and the tension that's been brewing at home since the loss of their parents. However, life on board the SS Gothic, and indeed in the colony, is far from the glamorous adventure they expected, and their relationship becomes even more strained when one twin discovers her sister's unconscionable act of betrayal.

Melbourne 1993: Ezra and Yonatan are best friends whose lives are forever changed when their school, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Yahel Academy, is rocked by a scandal and they are thrown onto two divergent paths. Twenty years later, the lives of the two men are very different: Ezra identifies as secular and atheist, while Yonatan has been ordained as a rabbi and even teaches at the academy. By chance they are reunited, and the events of their past and present collide with devastating consequences.

From the Booker-shortlisted author, an audacious comic lament for a world that no longer knows itself. ‘Brilliant, hilarious, eccentric and beautiful. A surfacing story unlike anything I’ve read. I need two copies of this book. One to keep on my shelf, and a sacrificial one so I can cut out...