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

Lily works as a cleaner. She moves through houses in inner-city Melbourne, unseen, scrubbing away the daily residue of other people’s privilege. Her partner Janks works the line in a local food factory. With every pay cheque, they inch further away from their former world of poverty and addiction. Lily and Janks are determined that their daughter Jewelee will have a different life. She’ll have a career, not a dead-end job. She’ll have savings, not debt. But precarious lives are easily upended.

Grief-stricken and on the verge of a breakdown, Luda Managan and her two teenaged children try to make a home for themselves on a collection of harsh and haunted Scottish islands. Luda, a photographer, is mesmerised by the extraordinary magic of the islands but soon finds herself condemned by the local community after publishing images documenting the death of a local child. Alienated, Luda turns her attention to the records from the 17th-Century island witch-hunts and the fragmented life stories of the executed women.

When Laura discovers an old photo of her grandmother, Lillian, with an intriguing inscription on the back, she heads to the sleepy seaside town of Banksia Bay to learn the truth of Lillian’s past. But when she arrives, Laura finds a community where everyone seems to be hiding something. Virginia, owner of the iconic Beach Shack café, has kept her past buried for 60 years. As Laura slowly uncovers the tragic fragments of that summer so long ago, Virginia must decide whether to hold on to her secrets or set the truth free.

When the Japanese invade in 1942, the Australian men and women stationed at the New Guinea port of Rabaul flee into the jungle. Written off by their government as ‘hostages to fortune', the little-known garrison on Australia's tropic frontier has been left with no modern equipment, no lifeline to the outside, and no means of escape. Most are captured and killed in the sinking of the prison ship Montevideo Maru, which remains Australia's worst sea disaster. But the surviving soldiers and nurses carry on.

David is a golden boy, a good man, a good son and brother in his Vietnamese family, a good adoptive son in his wealthy Australian family, a good boyfriend and, most of all, a good doctor. But when the miracle drug he invents brings to life the one dark secret of his past, it threatens David’s future and that of those he loves. Is what happens next a tragic death or a clever murder? That’s what David’s friends, family and foes must work out...at the same time as each schemes to conceal their involvement.

In 1999, art dealer Alex Clayton stumbles across a lost portrait of Molly Dean, an artist’s muse brutally slain in Melbourne in 1930. Alex buys the painting and sets out to uncover more details, but finds there are strange inconsistencies: Molly’s mother seemed unconcerned by her daughter’s violent death, the main suspect was never brought to trial despite compelling evidence and vital records are missing. Alex enlists the help of her close friend, art conservator John Porter, and together they sift through the clues and deceptions that swirl around the last days of Molly Dean.

It's not easy getting close to people. Amelia's meeting a lot of men but once she gets the sex she wants from them, that's it for her: she can't connect further. A terrible thing happened to Daniel last year and it's stuck inside Amelia ever since, making her stuck too. Maybe being a cosmetician at her family's mortuary business isn't the best job for a young woman. It's not helping her social life. She loves her job, but she's not great at much else. Especially emotion.

Lotti Coates lives in the shadow of a genius: her father, George, is a brilliant and celebrated Australian painter. When Lotti meets the outcast waif Kyla at a suburban Canberra school, two worlds are set to collide. Slowly Kyla is drawn into the orbit of the Coates family. Or is it the other way around? As Lotti and Kyla navigate their way towards adulthood, dark secrets start to unravel, with devastating consequences....

After narrowly escaping Nazi terror, Rowland Sinclair and his companions land in London, believing they are safe. But they are wrong. A bizarre murder plunges the hapless Australians into a queer world of British aristocracy, fascist Blackshirts, illicit love, scandal and spies. A world where gentlemen are not always what they are dressed up to be....

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?

Germaine Johnson may not be all that good with people, but she's great with numbers. Unfortunately, as she discovers after the incident at Wallace Insurance, there are very few openings these days for senior mathematicians. Then her cousin gets her a job at the council. On the Senior Citizens Helpline. It's not the resume entry Germaine wanted - but it turns out Mayor Verity Bainbridge has something more interesting in mind for her. A secret project involving the troublemakers at the senior citizens centre and their feud with the golf club next door....

In 1970s Melbourne, 22-year-old Italian migrant Antonello is newly married and working as a rigger on the West Gate Bridge, a gleaming monument to a modern city. When the bridge collapses one October morning, killing 35 of his workmates, his world crashes down on him. In 2009, Jo and her best friend, Ashleigh, are on the verge of finishing high school and flush with the possibilities for their future. But one terrible mistake sets Jo’s life on a radically different course.

1938, as the world spirals towards war, Klara Koch is employed as Hitler's personal cook. While Germany reveres the image of the Fuhrer, Klara and the household staff are privy to the real Hitler—his secrets, his ailments and his addictions. As Klara observes those circling the Fuhrer, she realises that not all of them are his admirers. Hitler is right to be paranoid. This thoroughly researched and compelling story takes listeners right up close and personal with Hitler as he spirals increasingly out of control in pursuit of his drug-fuelled quest for world domination.

Words are messy. Love is messier. Meet Beatrix Babbage - 29-year-old dog-earer of books and accidental destroyer of weddings. After ruining her best friend's nuptials, Bea relocates to the other side of the country in search of a fresh start, including meeting new people, living life to the fullest and finally pulling off balayage. But after a few months, life is more stagnant than ever. Bea’s job is dead-end. Her romantic life? Nonexistent. And her only friends are her books, her barista and her cleaning lady. Then Bea stumbles across a secondhand novel, inscribed with notes.

Beatrix is a loner. She has a love-hate relationship with her one friend, Ray, a hate-hate relationship with everyone else in her office and a genuine attachment to a stuffed canary named Horatio. She drinks alone far too much. Lately she's been finding the edge of the railway platform dangerously seductive. Her life needs to change. Then she crosses paths with an old woman who seems to be stalking her, and that's exactly what happens. Eighty-something Fred is smart, earthy, funny and not the harmless elderly lady she appears to be. She is, in fact, quite literally something else. But what?

There is much that heavily pregnant Grace still doesn't know about her new husband King's background. So, when word comes that King's father is dying, Grace is eager to accompany him to his childhood home, Blackwater, located in a remote part of Tasmania. Things go badly from the start. The house is in terrible repair, King's dying father yells at Grace to leave and King's twin sister, Ruth, seems disturbed by Grace's presence. After his father's death, King convinces Grace they must stay and help Ruth settle the estate, but as time stretches on he grows strange and distant.

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?

Queensland in 1976 churns with corruption. When Detective Ray Windsor defies it, he is exiled deep into the state's west. Royalton is a town on its knees and plagued by crimes left largely un-investigated by the local police chief, Kennedy, and his elusive boss. Mutual dislike between Kennedy and Ray gradually turns ugly as Ray and his new partner, Arshag, uncover a pattern of crimes that no one seems concerned about solving. But when two girls from local immigrant families are found dead and another disappears, Ray and Arshag are forced to take the law into their own hands.

Twenty-six-year-old Nicole Najim is struggling to find herself after a painful breakup, just when she thought she was going to settle down. Working a dead-end job in the family car dealership and at a loose end, she picks up her camera and returns to the melting pot of Sydney’s West to rediscover her roots. When she catches up with childhood friend, Danny, who makes his living in a shadowy underworld, their relationship intensifies just as the law starts to close in.

Sabine returned carrying a bag containing an effortless pair of Christian Wijnants fringed trousers and Ann Demeulemeeter Crinkle Nero boots. The sales assistant had agreed that the combination made Sabine looks exactly like an artist. Sabine is having a moment. Her new exhibition is opening soon and, as her gallerist says, 'hell is an artist three days before their exhibition opens'. But it's not only this coming milestone that is causing Sabine to melt down. She is being stalked. As exhibition day draws closer, so too does the man who has been watching her.