Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Literature & Fiction

Bush nurse Lara McIntyre and rural journalist Toby Paxton are thrust into the limelight when an accident puts the heart of their community in jeopardy. The small country town of Bridgefield can’t manage without their general store and post office, but Lara can’t stomach the idea of out-of-town buyers revamping it with no regard for what the residents want. She’s also unsure where Toby’s allegiances lie in this fight. Loyalties are put to the test as the locals attempt to save the shop, with personal agendas, old grudges and misunderstandings threatening their best efforts.

If love costs and art takes, what price do we pay for wanting it all? The Work is about the biggest intersections of life: of art and commerce, of intimacy and distance, of talent and entitlement, and of labor and privilege.

In Canberra, a federal election looms and Cassius Calvert, Minister for Border Integrity, is facing a new hard-line policy regarding asylum-seekers. Off the Indonesian island of Dana, Isi Natoli, skipper of the Java Ridge, and a group of Australian surf tourists are anchored beside an idyllic reef. A few kilometres away, Roya and her mother are amongst the passengers fleeing persecution aboard the Talakar. When a storm breaks, these stories collide with chilling consequences....

Mai On is devastated when her landlord sells her building to a property developer and the bakery she’s worked so hard to build is threatened. The last thing she needs is an outsider tearing down everything that matters to her. She’s determined not to be swayed by the sexy, charming developer. After costing his company millions of dollars, Nicholas Shadbolt is desperate to prove himself. Taking on the re-development of a rundown building is just the stepping stone he needs towards redemption.

The quiet coastal community of Pippi Beach is rocked when a party of young Hollywood movie stars and influencers arrives for the summer. Like most of the locals, mum Lydia is thrilled but her teenage daughter Lily finds the Hollywood types are superficial and arrogant–especially Dorian Khan, the most famous of them all. Lily's opinion is confirmed by handsome backpacker Alex, who has quite the story about Dorian's past. On a holiday to Los Angeles, Lily stays with family friend Wilson, an ambitious player who introduces her to powerful movie producer Stacy Black.

Diana McIntyre and her four boys have had a tough eighteen months but, with the love and support of her family, she believes their lives are finally back on track. Diana’s dream of starting a flower farm has been the perfect diversion, with an elderly dahlia expert showing her the ropes. She won’t have to do this alone. Locum pharmacist and single dad Ned Gardiner hasn’t called Victoria home for years. However, his father’s death forces Ned to return to the family farm, a place that holds few happy memories for him.

When top-flight journalists Hadley Callahan and Mitch Samuals married two years ago, theirs had been declared the celebrity wedding of the year. But now, Hadley unexpectedly returns to Stringybark Creek alone, hiding an explosive secret. While Hadley's in town, the shocking suicide of one of their old school friends brings her and childhood friend Ollie together as they mourn their loss and begin a campaign to raise awareness of rural mental health, both wanting to make a difference.

In Robbie Arnott’s widely acclaimed and much-loved first novel, a young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his sister, Charlotte - who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire. The answers to these riddles are to be found in this tale of grief and love and the bonds of family, tracing a journey across the southern island.

Gaelle has a dream job working for a fashion magazine, and a husband who loves her. Life should be perfect, but life does not always go according to plan. Feeling lost and alone, Gaelle flees to a tiny seaside town on the other side of the country. As she revisits the legacy of a strange, sometimes magical childhood in France, Gaelle finds unexpected help from a thirteen-year-old stranger.

Alice Croydon has the perfect life: she has a large, close-knit family who loves her—even if they are sometimes a little too invested in her decisions—and she's about to marry her high school sweetheart Finn. Alice couldn't be happier. Except for the occasional niggle whenever she thinks about her career—or lack thereof. Fashion design has always been her passion, but living in the small north-western New South Wales town of Gunnindi doesn't offer much opportunity to pursue her dream. Until one day the unexpected happens.

'Indian-Australian' is not a one-size-fits-all descriptor. Given the depth and richness of diversity of the Indian subcontinent, it is fitting that its diaspora is similarly varied. Growing Up Indian in Australia reflects and celebrates this vibrant diversity. It features contributions from Australian-Indian writers, both established and emerging, who hail from a wide range of backgrounds, religions and experiences. This colorful, energetic anthology offers reflections on identity, culture, family, food and expectations, ultimately revealing deep truths about both Australian and Indian life.

A searing new novel from leading Indigenous storyteller Tony Birch that explores the lengths we will go to in order to save the people we love. Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. After her daughter disappeared and left her with her granddaughter Sissy to raise on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing fair-skinned Aboriginal children from their families.

A small garrison of Australian soldiers is left to defend a town and its people against the might of the Japanese forces. This is a story of those who were left behind and those who waited for them to return.

Following his much-admired Books that Saved My Life, McGirr now shares his love of philosophy, focusing on the works of 20-plus eminent thinkers across history. It is animated by two related questions: from where do we draw a sense of life’s purpose? And how can philosophy make life better? It ranges widely across subjects - from solitude to community, language to order, experience to ecstasy, the idea of good to that of a good idea.

After decades-old human bones are discovered in the Tasmanian wilderness, Antonia Kovács returns home with questions for her father, a retired police inspector in Queenstown. Meanwhile, Tom Pilar receives news of an inheritance, from a man he barely remembers, one of his father's friends from the early days, newly arrived in the island and looking for work.

Tony had found me. Or, he’d found Maggie. I had no way of knowing whether he was nuts or not; whether he might go to the cops. Maybe that sounds paranoid, but I don’t think it’s so ridiculous. People have gone to prison for much lesser things than accusations of child-killing. A quiet, small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she’s reluctant to revisit: dark memories and unspoken trauma, warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss.

Eliza Grayling, born in Sydney when the colony itself was still an infant, has lived there all her 32 years. Too tall, too stern - too old, now - for marriage, she looks out for her reclusive father, Joshua, and wonders about his past. There is a shadow there: an old enmity. When Joshua Grayling is offered the chance for a reckoning with his nemesis, Eliza is horrified. It involves a sea voyage with an uncertain, probably violent, outcome. Insanity for an elderly blind man, let alone a drunkard.

Audrey Lamont has happily devoted herself to family life for the best part of 40 years, but lately she's become aware that she lost herself somewhere between 'I do' and the weekly shop. Worse, her academic husband Simon has found time for romance–just not with Audrey. Feeling invisible to everyone, even herself, she flees to her aunt's home in rural France. While waiting for her sudden absence to spark a change of heart in Simon, Audrey finds solace in the charms of the French countryside and the company of her aged aunt and a cast of eccentric Bretons.

When Erin Macalister leaves the city to take care of her beloved grandmother, she's relieved to be escaping the remnants of her broken marriage. Arriving in the small rural community she grew up in, Erin finds nothing much has changed—including Jamie McBride, who is still as ridiculously good looking as he was when they were seventeen and madly in love. Leafing through old photo albums evokes vivid memories for her grandmother of a soldier she once loved. Erin's curiosity about this mysterious soldier deepens when she finds an engagement ring he once gave her grandmother.

Birdie McBride has it all: a fulfilling job, five healthy daughters and a doting husband, Ned. But then Ned dies. He leaves behind a document for Birdie—‘Things I Need You To Know'—a guide to everything from household maintenance to each daughter's emotional landscape. Reading Ned's manual, Birdie falls in love with her husband in a way she never did when he was alive. Yet the presence of his best friend, Marcello, complicates things.