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

England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector's wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances' love of books and secretly practiced Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn't report a reclusive and mysterious midwife to delay her going to gaol.

Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, best-selling Growing Up series. It includes interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt.

January 1951: Eleanor Webber is fleeing a failed love affair and has returned home to River Run, her family's sprawling sheep property in Western NSW. Her hope is to take time to heal, but there's little chance of that happening. With tensions rising in the shearing shed, a mysterious stranger appears on the horizon and Eleanor's younger brother, Robbie, entangles her in a situation that will have serious repercussions for every member of the Webber family for years to come.

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.

Two women from opposite ends of the earth begin corresponding by chance and start sharing the intimacies of their lives. An anguished email from Pamela Robinson in Australia to her ex-husband in Paris accidentally ends up in the inbox of New York State teacher Chrisanthi Woods. Chrisanthi is sympathetic to Pamela's struggles and the women begin to tell each other the stories and secrets of their lives. Pamela, responsible for raising her three sons, must re-invent the meaning of home following her divorce, and Chrisanthi, her dreams long dampened, must find home by leaving it.

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

All-round chaos merchant Nell Jenkins has returned to Aotearoa-New Zealand to fulfil family duties for the mother and brother she's barely seen since making her small-town escape as a teen. But her homecoming isn't the triumph it should be. She has nothing to show for her time in Sydney but a string of failed relationships, crappy jobs and an ongoing HR complaint against her ex-girlfriend, now former boss.

Alfie's mum, Emilia, has been lying to him forever. It's only ever been the two of them in Ireland, but when Emilia's appendix explodes, she drops a second bombshell: she has a family back in Australia and she and Alfie are going to meet them. When Penny Bains opens the door of her Tasmanian farmhouse to a boy with an Irish accent claiming to be the son of her missing daughter, Emilia, her life is turned upside down.

Nine years ago, 30-year-old Chelsea Taylor left the small country town of Barker to rise to the top as a concert pianist. Yet here she was, back again with her four-year-old daughter, Aria, readying herself to face her father, Tom. The father who'd shouted down the phone nine years ago never to come home again....

Forensic psychiatrist Natalie King works with victims and perpetrators of violent crimes. She rides a Ducati a size too big and wears a tank top a size too small. Likes men but doesn't want to keep one. And really needs to stay on her medication. Now she's being stalked. Anonymous notes, threats, strangers loitering outside her house. Natalie doesn't know who it could be. A hostile former patient? Or someone connected with a current case?

When Aaron Love discovers a fresh corpse near the cracked lakebed–along with evidence his missing father is alive and linked to a web of organised crime–he is thrust into a world of deception, injustice and betrayal. With the town on the brink of collapse, Aaron and a haunted detective, Martyn Kravets, uncover a web of conspiracy that reaches far beyond the small community.

Perth, 1954. Thirteen-year-old Frank, a refugee from wartime Hungary, is learning to walk again after contracting polio. At The Golden Age Children's Convalescent Home, he meets Elsa, and the two patients form a forbidden, passionate bond. The Golden Age becomes the little world that reflects the larger one, where everything occurs: love, desire, music, death and poetry.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town. She finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget.

When Maggie, Fran and Rose met in their youth, they had dreams and ambitions. Forty years later, the three friends are turning 60, all of them restless and disenchanted with their lives. In an attempt to recapture the sense of freedom and purpose they once possessed, they decide to retrace the steps of their 1978 backpacking trip through Europe. What could possibly go wrong? As they set off on their trip, it will prove to be an odyssey that will test their friendship, challenge their beliefs and redefine the third age of their lives.

Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since a television commercial when she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs. At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise–and when 16-year-old Jasmine Landridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel.

Giacomo Brolo, aka Jack, is a mess. He works piecemeal construction gigs in remote WA, drinks himself to oblivion and is estranged from his family and friends. He's consumed by a self-loathing all too common for closeted men who have grown up in a world of hate and shame. But then Jack returns to his regional hometown of Geraldton for a family wedding. He hasn't been back since he fled at the age of eighteen, and his past soon catches up with him.

In fear for his life, American millionaire Daniel Cartwright changes his will, appointing his old friend Rowland Sinclair as his executor. Soon murder proves that fear was well founded. When Rowland receives word of Cartwright’s death, he sets out immediately for Boston, Massachusetts, to bury his friend and honour his last wishes. He is met with the outrage and anguish of Cartwright’s family, who have been spurned in favour of a man they claim does not exist.

Charlie's skin was stinging. Not with heat or sweat, but with that intense, body-defining self-consciousness—that sense of being watched. She lowered her eyes from Eleanor's loving gaze. Her throat taut with tears, she swallowed. ‘You're a good sister, Eleanor.' ‘Don't say that.' After two years of lockdowns, there's change in the air. Eleanor has just broken up with her boyfriend, Charlie's career as an actress is starting up again. They're finally ready to pursue their dreams—relationships, career, family—if only they can work out what it is they really want.

In the aftermath of their mother's death, the Tetley siblings' lives are falling apart. Left to fend for themselves as their family farm goes to ruins, Rose sets out to escape the grief and mess of home. When she meets Noongar Elders Patsy and Herbert, she finds herself drawn into a home where she has the chance to discover the strength of community, and to heal a wound her family has carried for a generation.

The resourceful and intrepid Rosalind Thorne, a heroine after Jane Austen's heart, returns to solve another mystery within Regency-era high society in the latest novel in Darcie Wilde's nationally bestselling historical series. Ideal for fans of Amanda Quick, Lauren Willig, and Deanna Raybourn.