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

Helen and John are too preoccupied with making a mess of their marriage to notice the quiet ways in which their daughters are suffering. Junie grows up brittle and defensive, Anna difficult and rebellious. When 15-year-old Anna fails to come home one night, her mother's not too worried; Anna's taken off before but always returned. Helen waits three days to report her disappearance. But this time Anna doesn't come back....

Odessa Odin has it all—a successful career, an adoring husband and a close circle of friends to whom she is fiercely loyal. On the surface they're living a glittering London life of wealth and cosseted privilege, but underneath this veneer lies painful truths of betrayal, neglect and unfulfilled ambitions. It's a tightrope of holding themselves and their marriages together as their men transgress the promises they made at the alta. For the women, there's just too much to lose. When Odessa discovers her husband is having an affair, her carefully constructed life falls away.

Schoolteacher Natalie has always been a city girl. When Nat takes up a posting at a tiny school in remote Western Australia, it proves quite the culture shock. But soon Natalie is welcomed by the inquisitive locals - particularly young student Billy and his intriguing single father, Drew. As Nat's school comes under threat of closure and Billy's estranged mother turns up out of the blue, Nat finds herself fighting for the township and battling with her heart.

Gwen Hill adores Green Valley Avenue. So when the house next door is sold, Gwen wonders how the new family will settle into this cosy community. More than a new home, it's a clean slate for Frankie, who has moved her brood in a bid to save her marriage. To maintain privacy and corral her children, Frankie proposes a fence between the properties, destroying Gwen's picture-perfect front yard. To Gwen, this is an act of war.

In the spring of 1949, Stella O'Riain flees her home - a sheep property on the barren edge of the Strzelecki Desert. She leaves behind the graves of her husband Joe and her baby daughter. With no money and limited options, Stella accepts her brother-in-law Harry's offer to live at the O'Riain cane farm in the Richmond Valley. There she hopes to get answers to the questions that plague her about her marriage. However Harry refuses to discuss Joe or the family's secrets, even forbidding her to speak to the owner of the neighbouring property.

Paris, 1810. Haunted by the French Revolution, Marie Tussaud has locked herself away in her shop with the death masks she was forced to make to avoid the guillotine. Philidor, a famous magician, offers her the chance to accompany him to London to assist in creating a wax automaton that will bring them both money and success. Following a disastrous performance on their opening night in which the wax on their prized spectacle melts, the eccentric duke, William Cavendish, invites them to his rambling estate, Welbeck.

Pasha Ivanov is a child of the Freeze, born in Moscow during Brezhnev's repressive rule. Night after night his parents and their friends gather to preserve the memory of terrifying Stalinist violence and to expose the continued harassment of dissidents. When Gorbachev promises glasnost, openness, 24-year-old Pasha longs to create art and to carry on the work of those who came before him. His search to find meaning leads him to assemble a fractured story of Russia's traumatic past.

Mai and Hikaru went to school together in the city of Nagoya, until Hikaru disappeared when they were 18. It is not until 10 years later, when Mai runs into Hikaru's mother, Hiromi Sato, that she learns Hikaru has become a hikikomori, a recluse unable to leave his bedroom for years. In secret, Hiromi Sato hires Mai as a 'rental sister', to write letters to Hikaru and encourage him to leave his room.

Even before I knew anything about Granddad Les, Wally and me sometimes dared each other to see how close to the knackery we could get. It was way out in the bottom paddock, and Dad had banned us from going further than the dam. Wally said it was because the whole paddock was haunted. He said he could see ghosts wisping in the grass like sheets blown from the washing line. But even then I knew for sure that was a lie. Ten-year-old Cub lives with her parents, older brother Cassie, and twin brother Wally on a lonely property bordering an abandoned cattle farm and knackery.

France, 1673. Desperate to save herself and her only surviving son from an outbreak of plague, the widow Charlotte Picot flees her village. But her son is kidnapped by slavers, and she fears the boy has been taken to Paris, the terrible City of Crows. And so she resorts to witchcraft and summons assistance in the shape of a malevolent man. Meanwhile, a notorious criminal, Lesage, is unexpectedly released from the prison galleys where he has served a brutal sentence for sacrilege....

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.

Chris Flood – a married father of two with plummeting self-esteem and questionable guitar skills – suddenly finds himself in the depths of polyamory after years of a near-sexless marriage. His wife, Sarah – a lover of the arts, avid quoter of Rumi, and always oozing confidence – wants to rediscover her sexuality after years of deadening domesticity. Their new life of polyamory features late nights, love affairs and rotating childcare duties. While Sarah enjoys flings with handsome men, Chris, much to his astonishment, falls for a polydactylous actor and musician, Biddy.

Van Diemen's Land, 1826. Bridget Crack, a desperate convict, flees the cruelty of her master into the impenetrable Tasmanian wilderness. Saved from certain death by Matt Sheedy and his fellow bushrangers, her precarious existence among the volatile and murderous men is a different kind of hell. Hunted by soldiers, at the mercy of killers, and surrounded by roaring river and towering columns of rock, what will she have to do to survive?

London, 1942. When art school graduate Eleanor Roy is recruited by the War Artists Advisory Committee, she comes one step closer to realising her dream of becoming one of the few female war artists. But breaking into the art establishment proves difficult until Eleanor meets painter Jack Valante, only to be separated by his sudden posting overseas. Melbourne, 2010. Although reluctant to leave her family at home, Kathryn can't refuse her grandmother Eleanor's request to travel to London to help her return a precious painting to its artist.

In the fall of 2011, a heartbroken young man flees Australia for the USA. Landing in the excessive, uncanny-familiar glamour and plenitude of New York City, Will makes a vow to say yes to everything that comes his way. By fate or random chance, Will's journey takes him deep into the American heartland where he meets Wayne Gage, a fast-living, troubled Vietnam veteran, would-be spirit guide and collector of exotic animals. These two men in crisis form an unlikely friendship, but Will has no idea just how close to the edge Wayne truly is.

Meet Dorcas, a spirited 12-year-old struggling to contain her irrepressible humour and naughty streak in a family of Christadelphians in 1960s Adelaide. She is her mother's least favourite child and always at the bottom of the order on the family's string of beads that she and her younger siblings Ruthy and Caleb reorder according to their mother's ever-changing moods.

Natalie King is back. Her reluctance to live a quiet life has led to severe depression, and now it's time to retreat to the country - a borrowed house on the Great Ocean Road and a low-key research job at a provincial university. But Natalie and trouble have a mutual attraction. Unsurprisingly, Natalie finds herself drawn deep into a local mystery and even deeper into danger....

Raised by her severe parents in a punitive and authoritarian church, Ellen Wells is entirely unprepared for life in the modern world. When things become intolerable at home, she escapes and, striking out on her own, makes a completely new start. Ellen lands a job as a teacher in a girls' school and gradually finds peace in that community and in her solitary life. To begin with, she is painfully shy, but when she meets Gordon, a fellow teacher, she responds with curiosity and, before long, pleasure. Three years later, a knock on the door changes everything.

Tessa Lowell is working in Uganda researching the effects of PTSD and war on child soldiers when she is kidnapped by rebel forces. Isolated in an increasingly volatile situation, she tries to form a bond with 13-year-old Francis, already an experienced soldier and survivor of shocking violence. In Melbourne, Tessa's parents learn government agencies can do little to help, so they contact their son Stephen, an astute if manipulative businessman based in Cape Town who agrees to search for her but has reasons of his own to do so.

How can we know the truth of our own lives? This question troubles Matilda, as she looks back on her time with her foster brother, Sem. Matilda remembers long hours at the swimming pool. Celeste, a girl who lived downstairs. Sem disappearing for hours, then days. Her father yelling in the driveway. A car coming to take Sem away. Five years later, Sem is now a memory she has locked away. Until, at a party, she reconnects with Celeste and then Sem and the three of them move to Eden. As the summer drags on, Sem starts disappearing again.