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

Hetty and Ness have been best friends since childhood. Hetty is captivating, while Ness is a wallflower, hopelessly in love with her. Leaving Melbourne for the first time to live abroad, they take a room in a share house of creatives in Toronto’s student quarter. Hetty disappears into bar-keeping and nightlife, while Ness drifts aimlessly. But when Ness finds Faith in the art gallery, an intense affair begins. Her life starts to make sense. And Hetty’s starts to fall apart, a mess of bad drugs and bad men. Ness may lose the person she loves more than anyone else in the world.

John Devereaux, an SAS Warrant Officer, is seconded to the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and handed a mission that will test him to his very core. The operationally deniable mission: infiltrate into Cambodia via parachute from 37,000 feet in the dead of night and assassinate two high-value targets, alone, and with dozens of enemy soldiers in his way.

With her heart in tatters, Rose Bennett swaps her hometown of London for sunny Australia, but arrives to find the Shingle Valley shrouded in winter. As the weather improves, Rose starts to unlock the secrets of the valley - from bonfire ceremonies and wine-making traditions, to eccentric locals and their histories.... And soon, Rose falls in love with the valley, the wines, the two children she’s caring for and with the handsome and brilliant Mark Cameron, owner of the troubled Kalkari Wines estate.

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.

A family favours their son over their daughter. Shan attends university before making his fortune in Australia, while Yannie must find menial employment and care for her ageing parents. After her mother’s death, Yannie travels to Sydney to become enmeshed in her psychopathic brother’s new life, which she seeks to undermine from within.... This is a novel that rages against capitalism, hetero-supremacy, mothers, fathers, families - the whole damn thing.

After a brutal attack and the breakdown of her marriage, life has taught former TV star Remi Lucan that it's safer to not rely on anyone. Instead, she's buried herself in Hobart, transforming her dilapidated sandstone house back to its former splendor. But when she runs out of money, her wealthy ex-husband tries to force the sale of the property and Remi realizes her only option is to take in tenants. At first her biggest problem is adjusting to the intrusion of two unlikely housemates, but when a series of 'accidents' turns ugly, it becomes clear these incidents are more than pranks.

Sarah and Hannah are on a cruise from San Diego, California, to Sydney, Australia. Sarah, Hannah's grandmother, is returning to the country of her birth, a place she hasn't seen since boarding the USS Mariposa in 1945. Then she, along with countless other war brides, sailed across the Pacific to join the American servicemen they had married during World War II. Now Hannah is the same age Sarah was when she made her first journey and, in hearing Sarah tell the story of her life, realises the immensity of what her grandmother gave up.

This could be any small town. It aches under the heat of summer. It flourishes in the cooler months. Everyone knows everyone. Their families, histories and stories are interwoven and well-known by one and all. Or at least, they think they are. But no one sees anything quite the same way. Perceptions differ, truths are elusive, judgements have outcomes and everything is connected. For better or for worse.

Thirteen-year-old Audrey is a talented young football player. But does she want to play for Australia or does she just want to please her father, Ben, whose own thwarted sporting career looms large in his ambitions for his daughter? Audrey's mother, Jonica, doesn't know whether to be more concerned about her anxious daughter, her overbearing husband, or the only other girl on the team, Katerina, who is causing trouble on and off the field.

At times like these families should be coming together, not tearing each other apart. On her remote North Queensland cattle station, Ivy Dunmore is facing the end of her days. Increasingly frail, all she holds dear is threatened not just by crippling drought, but by jealousy and greed - and that’s from within her own family. Can Felicity, who's battling her own crisis as her 50th birthday approaches, protect her mother and reunite her family under the homestead's faded iron roof? Or will sibling rivalries erupt and long-held secrets from the past break a family in crisis?

Every couple has a story. How they met, how they fell in love–their ups, their downs. What made them want to be in each other's arms day and night. The struggle of family expectations. The need to please each other, the desire to go their separate ways. It is about the private universe between two people as they try to hold to each other despite the barriers of geography, culture and class. Every couple has a beginning, a middle, and maybe an end.

When city naturopath Rilee Summers meets gorgeous farmer Dan Kincaid, a whirlwind romance follows, and the next thing she knows she's married and living on her husband's family property in a small rural community. But Rilee's city ways and new naturopathy practice, and her outspoken views on teen pregnancies, only serve to alienate her from the deeply conservative townsfolk and her in-laws.

A schoolgirl catches the eye of the future leader of Nazi Germany. An aspiring playwright writes to a convicted serial killer, seeking inspiration. A pair of childhood sweethearts reunite to commit rape and murder. A devoted Mormon wife follows her husband into the wilderness after he declares himself a prophet. The 12 stories in The Love of a Bad Man imagine the lives of real women, all of whom were the lovers, wives or mistresses of various ‘bad’ men in history.

Astronomer Lucy Rutherford is celebrating the refurbishment of the 100-year-old telescope in the Yarra Valley town of Bowness, Victoria. Her husband, Justin, is running for parliament, on a platform of responsibility and progress. But Lucy isn't interested in being a politician's wife. She plans to leave him once he's won the election. Her biggest concern is how her eleven-year-old daughter, Gabby, will take the news. Or does Gabby already know?

Delphi Hoffman, a wildchild living in London, is finally getting her life together with a new love affair and the offer of a coveted job—until she receives the phone call she hoped would never arrive. Her mother Vivian’s terminal illness has reached its tipping point and she summons Delphi to Australia to help her euthanise. Unable to deny her mother’s suffering, or her promise to her of a good death, Delphi reluctantly returns to her mother for the last time.

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.

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?

At seventeen, Maeve is naively single-minded about pursuing a life in the theatre. After a rigorous audition process, she secures a position at one of the most competitive drama schools in the country. Leaving behind the security of her childhood home in Queensland, Maeve moves to Melbourne and devotes herself to the course. The expectations of the faculty are made clear from the outset: to avoid failure, the process must be adhered to without question and, as the youngest student at the drama, Maeve knows she must gain life experience in order to support it.

Eighteen-year-old Aaron is charismatic, resourceful and addicted to heroin. His mum has kicked him out of home in a last-ditch move to help him get straight, and he wanders the streets of South Melbourne, living on his wits and sleeping rough–all the while chasing drugs, dreams and love. Desperate to fund his addiction, Aaron climbs into the car of The Man, a distinguished elderly gentleman willing to pay for a certain kind of relationship.

Greta's partner, Joel, grew up with five brothers and a sister in a feisty household on an isolated NT property. But he doesn't talk about those days - not the deaths of his sister and mother, nor the origin of the scars that snake around his body. Now, many years later, he returns with Greta and their three young boys to prepare the place for sale. The boys are quick to settle in, and Joel seems preoccupied with work, but Greta has a growing sense of unease, struggling in the build-up's oppressive heat and living in the shadow of the old, burned-out family home.