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

Seventeen-year-old Georgia has a secret - one that is isolating her from everyone she loves. She's desperate to tell her best friend, but Sophia is ignoring her, and she doesn't know why. Before she can find out, Sophia is left fighting for her life after a hit-and-run, with Georgia a traumatised witness. Georgia's secret is about to go viral, but can her family rise above the lies they've told and fight for what matters most of all?

Rae is 10 years old, and she’s tough. She’s had to be: life with her mother has taught her the world is not her friend. Now suddenly her mum is gone and Rae is alone, except for her dog Splinter. Rae can do a lot of things pretty well for a kid. She can take care of herself and Splints, stay under the radar at school and keep the front yard neat enough that the neighbours won’t get curious. But she is gnawed at by fear and sadness; haunted by the shadow of a terrible secret.

When a local father is convicted of the possession and distribution of child pornography, the tight-knit, middle-class community is quick to unravel. He is granted permanent name suppression, and soon friend turns on friend, neighbour delivers up neighbour, and hysteria rapidly engulfs them all. Who among them was capable of such moral trespass?

When Winona Dalloway begins her day—in the peaceful early hours before her children, that ‘tiny tornado of little hands and feet', wake up—she doesn't know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed. On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices—a mind both wild and precise. And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …

Everything Feels Like the End of the World is a collection of short speculative fiction exploring possible futures from an Australia not so different from our present day to one thousands of years into an unrecognisable future. At the heart of each story is the anchor of what it means to be human: grief, loss, pain and love. These transformative stories are both epic and granular, and forever astonishing in their imaginative detail, sense of revelation and emotional connection. They herald the arrival of a stunning new voice.

On beautiful Fraser Island in 1882, the population of the Badtjala people is in sharp decline following a run of brutal massacres. When German man Louis Müller offers to sail 18-year-old Bonny to Europe, along with 22-year-old Jurano and his 15-year-old niece, Donordera, the proud and headstrong Bonny agrees. Accompanied by Müller’s bright and grieving daughter, Hilda, the group begins their journey to perform in Hamburg, Berlin, Paris and eventually London in the hope of seeking help from the Queen of England.

Daniel is a 16-year-old drug dealer and he’s going to jail. Then, suddenly, he’s not. A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other 'gifted delinquents.' The elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter. So where are they? It’s not a school, despite the 'lessons’ with the headsets and changing images. It’s not a psych unit - not if the absence of medication means anything. It’s not a jail, because Daniel’s free to leave. Or that’s what they tell him.

His orders are simple: ‘The safety catch is off. Return that girl to her family and drag those bastards back to justice. Dead or alive. It makes no difference to me.’ Alex Morgan - policeman, soldier and spy for Intrepid, the black ops division of Interpol - is on the hunt for Serbian war criminals. But these guys were never going to let it be that simple. An assassination attempt is made on the presiding judge of the international tribunal. Days later, the judge’s daughter vanishes in mysterious circumstances.

Rose is in her eighties and has dementia, but she's not done with life just yet. Alternately sharp as a tack and spectacularly forgetful, she spends her days roaming the corridors of the aged-care facility, ruminating on the staff and residents and enduring visits from her emotionally distant children and grand-daughters. But when her friend is found dead—after an apparent fall from a window, Rose embarks on an eccentric and deeply personal investigation to discover the truth and—exposes all manner of secrets, even some from her own past.

Abigail Sorensen has spent her life trying to unwrap the events of 1990. It was the year she started receiving random chapters from a self-help book called The Guidebook in the post. It was also the year Robert, her brother, disappeared on the eve of her 16th birthday. She believes the absurdity of The Guidebook and the mystery of her brother's disappearance must be connected....

Loyal country girl Libby Popovic lives a golden life with her confident financier husband Ludo and their two children, Harrison and Ana. When Ludo is jailed for financial fraud, Libby feels agonizingly complicit for hosting the final investor pitch in their home. She's also horrified to discover that her brother lost money as well - and with it his last chance at IVF. Matters go from atrocious to worse when her family's possessions and home are repossessed, Libby is sacked and Harrison's priceless violin is wrecked.

Max is about to finish high school. On the surface it appears he has everything, but underneath he is floundering. Grappling with questions about his birth parents and his sexuality, he feels that there is a seed of badness deep within him that will inevitably be exposed. After an incident at the end-of-year party sets Max's world to crumbling, he must finally figure out who he is and where he came from–and who he is allowed to love.

Five years ago, Kate's partner, Max, abandoned her for his pregnant lover. The affair has long since crumbled, but Kate has become fixated with Vee, her ‘replacement'. In a bid to find out what compelled Max to leave, she moves to Bridgewell, where Vee is now raising her four-year-old daughter, Iona. Warm and trusting, Vee is juggling work, single parenthood and a controlling ex-partner, Max, with whom she is still secretly sexually involved. When Vee meets charismatic artist, Tom, she is hopeful of establishing her first meaningful attachment since Max. But Kate has her own plans.

Any woman who’s ever been involved with a bad, bad man and been dumped will understand what it feels like to be broken, brokenhearted and bent on revenge. Taylor Bishop is hurt and angry and wants to destroy Angus Hollingsworth in the way he destroyed her: ‘Insidiously. Irreparably. Like a puzzle he’d slowly dissembled...stolen a couple of pieces from and then discarded, knowing that nobody would ever be able to put it back together ever again.’ So Taylor consults The Art of War and makes a plan. Then she takes the next irrevocable step - one that will change her life forever.

Every 179 days Robbie forgets everything. He knows this because last time it happened, he wrote himself a letter explaining it. The disorientation. The fear. The bizarre circumstances imposed by the rare neurological condition he lives with. To survive the forgetting - to cope with his recurring loss of identity - Robbie leads a solitary, regimented life. Lives alone. Speaks to no one if he can avoid it. Works to complete a strange herculean task set for him by his former self. And then, with 12 days left before his next forgetting, Julie invades his life.

After surviving a brutal attack, Auckland cop DS Honey Chalmers has returned to her hometown to care for her mother. The remote coastal settlement of He Kino holds complicated memories for Honey, not least the tragic suicide of her younger sister, Scarlett. And Honey's relationship with her formidable mother is fraught to say the least.

Noni Blake knows she wants more: more adventures, more joy, more romance, more orgasms, more pleasure...more everything. Now she just has to figure out how to get it. Noni didn’t expect to be starting over at the age of 36. But 18 months after the end of her long-term relationship, she decides it’s time to start living her life again. While an encounter with a sexy firefighter is a welcome entry back into the dating world, Noni soon realises she’s looking for more than just a series of brief, pleasurable encounters. She’s looking for more pleasure in, well, everything.

Since adolescence, 58-year-old Beth has lived her life with blinkers on, repressing the memory of a teenage trauma. Her mother, Marian, took control of that situation, and of all else in their family life—and as much as she could in the small town of Miner's Ridge as well. Now Marian is dead, and Beth, unemployed and in the middle of a humiliating divorce, is living with her gentle-hearted father in the family home. Beth feels obliged to take over her mother's involvement in the local town hall committee.

Kate and Harriet are best friends who are growing up together on an isolated Australian cape in the 1880s. As daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. Ultimately a moment of skylarking in McPhail's hut changes everything....

Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from her beloved granddaughter, Kimberly. Instead, she surrounds herself with animals, working as a guide in an outback wildlife park. And although Jean talks to all her charges, she has a particular soft spot for a young dingo called Sue. As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realises this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals.