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

From the deserts of Egypt to the rolling hills of South Australia, The Limestone Road is the extraordinary story of one man's courageous journey home.

Watching the world from her bedroom window, she exists only in second-hand romance novels and falls for any fast-food employee who happens to spare her a glance. Everything changes with the return of Vince, a boy who became a legend after he was hauled away in handcuffs at 14. Sonny and Vince used to be childhood friends. But with all that happened in-between, childhood seems so long ago. It will take two years of juvie, an inebriated grandmother and a porn stash for them to meet again.

Christy Peacock is devastated when an unfounded scandal throws her life as a drama teacher at a prestigious Sydney school off track. With her dream career in shreds, she spontaneously answers an ad to work at Currawong Creek, a horse therapy camp for troubled children nestled among the picturesque Bunya Mountains.

It's been more than 10 years since Maddy Locke left Spinifex, the small outback town where she gave birth to her daughter, Bridget. Now she's back to prove she's got what it takes to run the medical centre and face the memories of that challenging time in her life. But everything's changed - the old pub is gone, her new colleagues aren't pleased to see her and it's drier and hotter than ever.

Dublin 1966. When Joan Quinn, a factory girl from the Cranmore Estate, marries Martin Egan, it looks like her dreams have come true. But all is not as it seems. Joan lives in the shadow of a secret—the couple's decision to give up their first daughter for adoption only months before. For the next three decades, Joan's marriage and her relationship with her second child Carmel suffer as a consequence. Then one day in 1996, a letter arrives from their adopted daughter.

Fourteen years ago, Kelsey and Raf Maccioni left hospital with their newborn daughter, Ammy. Days later, Shona and Nathan James welcomed the birth of their son, Zac. The only thing the two couples have in common is the IVF clinic where their dreams came true. They are strangers to each other - for now. Fast forward to April 2024 . . . Ammy has grown into a rebellious young woman, and Zac is a kind but introverted teenager. Life may not be perfect for either family, but like everyone else they are muddling through. Until Ammy takes a DNA test for a school project.

Max didn't believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max's death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden.

Despite coming out years ago, twenty-six-year-old Sean Preston has never been one to shout his sexuality from the rooftops. When his relationship of three months comes to a humiliating end, he vows never to become emotionally attached again, falling into a cycle of hook-ups, booze and an unrelenting gym routine. The rest of Sean's life isn't panning out how he hoped either.

When violin virtuoso Laura Hartley's priceless instrument is stolen, more than just her celebrated European career disintegrates. Her rare gift of seeing music in colour fades to grey, crushing the sense of self she's always expressed through her performances. Fleeing to her grandmother's home in the Australian outback, Laura discovers an extraordinary legacy woven through sheets of music - a powerful symphony born from the revolutionary hearts of suffragettes who refused to be silenced, their defiant voices rising above the doomed decks of the Titanic.

2016 Fresh from her mother's funeral, Mari arrives on Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts to study under the enigmatic painter Elizabeth Devereux. But she soon realises that her relationship to the island runs deeper than she ever thought possible. 1942 It's World War II, and Smith sisters Briar and Cadence are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together as the US army arrives on their island. In an attempt for normalcy, the sisters start a book club that quickly grows in numbers and becomes a lifeline for the women who remain on the island.

The 10th child of Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, known as Plorn, had consistently proved unable 'to apply himself ' to school or life. So aged 16, he is sent, as his brother Alfred was before him, to Australia. This is Tom Keneally in his most familiar terrain. Taking historical figures and events and reimagining them with verve, compassion and humour. It is a triumph.

Based on a real-life event, an epic historical novel from the award-winning author of Things in Jars, The Night Ship illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, 300 years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island.

Upon becoming a mother, Jessica Urlichs was reminded that the everyday ordinary is extraordinary. As sacred and tender as early motherhood is, it also comes with its struggles. Beautiful Chaos is a collection that chronicles it all - the highs, the lows, the confusion, the loss of identity, the becoming, and the brutal but beautiful ways our children hold mirrors up to us. This collection inspires vulnerability and will be a cathartic, healing read for anyone who needs it.

Sydney is full of climate refugees. Food and water insecurity have created tension. There is poverty, suspicion and cultural disharmony. A world of have and have nots. In this environment a 5 year old girl from the Floodline, Casey, disappears. Then the body of an auditor from a development company is found burnt in a car on the site where Casey disappeared. Are they related?

In 1966, at the age of 10, Martin Flanagan was sent to a Catholic boarding school in north-west Tasmania. Of the 12 priests on the staff, three have since gone to prison for sexual crimes committed against boys in their care. In 2018 and 2019, a series of disclosures about the school appeared on the ABC Tasmania website. Then came the Pell case. What followed was a frenzy of opinions, none of which represented Flanagan's view. The Empty Honour Board is part memoir, a reflection on truth and memory, and what is lost in rushing to judgement.

Set between England and India, Faithless tells the story of Cressida, a writer and translator, and her consuming love for Max, an enigmatic older writer—and married man. Faithless charts the course of Cressida's passion for Max from the first giddy rush of sensation when home during her first year of university, to the blossoming of a desire so potent it overwhelms, and the great stunning blows to the heart delivered by a love that she can't share with friends and family.

Dr Hannah Rogan, a GP from outback Queensland, is in hiding from an emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend. When a visit to her friend Gracie in Featherwood sparks the idea to move there and open a medical practice for the town, Hannah finds the fresh start she needs. The town has rebuilt after devastating fires and its growing population is desperate for her calm presence and expertise. Her first patient is the son of the tight-lipped, attractive Jude, from the mysterious closed community upriver.

Kathy has worked at a beloved Brisbane indie record store for half her life. She arrived as a teenager high on her dad’s supply of Led Zeppelin, stayed through her twenties and suddenly thirty is on the horizon and she’s still there, measuring her self-worth by her knowledge of the Velvet Underground’s back catalogue.

KABUL, AUGUST 2021. Sunny Tedder is back in her beloved coffee shop. After eight years away, she's thrilled to reunite with her Kabul 'family'. Yazmina now runs a pair of women's shelters from the old cafe, and dreams of a bright future for her two young daughters. Her sister Layla has become an outspoken women's rights activist and, thanks to social media, is quite the celebrity. Kat, Sunny's friend from America, is wrapping up her year-long stay in the land of her birth, but is facing some unfinished business.

Tess is feeling burnt out from her uninspiring job and her busy city lifestyle. Even her personal relationships make her feel as if she's simply drifting through life rather than living it to the full. Her godmother Luna, who leads a very simple existence in a rustic cottage in the North Queensland rainforest, is also at something of a crossroads. Keen to expand her jewellery-making business, she needs the new connections that a bustling city offers. When she suggests to Tess that the two of them might swap homes for an extended period, it seems the perfect solution.