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

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.

Winter Robins is a happy enough child, growing up in the north of England, with parents who love her and the constant companion of a twin brother, but a cold wind blows through when her mother dies. Her father turns to the bottle, her grandmother struggles to cope, and she and her brother are sent to live in Western Australia with family their mother had never mentioned.

While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry.

It's 1831. Assigned to a good family in Sydney town and now learning the art of tattoo, convict girl Harrie Clarke is still haunted by the horror of the brutal murder she, Friday Woolfe and Sarah Morgan committed the previous year. Powerful and vindictive criminal Bella Jackson continues to demand money in exchange for her silence regarding their crime. And when things go from bad to much, much worse for Harrie, she is left teetering on the brink.

Bush nurse Lara McIntyre and rural journalist Toby Paxton are thrust into the limelight when an accident puts the heart of their community in jeopardy. The small country town of Bridgefield can’t manage without their general store and post office, but Lara can’t stomach the idea of out-of-town buyers revamping it with no regard for what the residents want. She’s also unsure where Toby’s allegiances lie in this fight. Loyalties are put to the test as the locals attempt to save the shop, with personal agendas, old grudges and misunderstandings threatening their best efforts.

Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy's mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets. Will opening their hearts to the rabbit help them to heal or only invite further tragedy?

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further—into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Audrey Sweetman wakes up one morning next to her husband, excited for the promotion she's been working towards for years. But by nightfall, everything in her life has been upended. She escapes to the seaside village of Whitehaven Bay, but her plan to hide is derailed by her meddlesome new neighbours. The Coffin Cheaters bikie gang. A cranky pensioner with a habit of naked swimming. Shez, the dubious 'CEO' of the holiday flats. A mouthy teen who's nothing but trouble. And a handsome yet elusive retiree, Dr Flood.

People like Dash didn't die. He was only what? Mid-thirties? Well off. Adored. By some anyway. World at his feet. Well, Myddle at his feet, which was his world. Ruth Dawson has taken a break from big city law to fill in for a few months for an old mate in Myddle. How hard can it be? she thinks. Turns out, very hard.

It is early 1942, and Australia is in the midst of war. While working at a Japanese hospital in the port of Broome, Dr. Ibaraki is arrested and sent to Loveday internment camp in a remote corner of South Australia. As tensions at the isolated camp escalate, the doctor's beliefs are thrown into question, and he is forced to confront his past: the promise he made in Japan and its devastating consequences.

Iris Turner, an unworldly young Englishwoman, arrives in the French Riviera to take up a secretarial role for the mysterious Hammond Brooke. Living in a small, exclusive hotel among eccentric and unpredictable aristocrats and struggling to gain her employer's trust, she soon realises that nothing is as it seems. Initiated into the mysterious world of perfume, she finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and deception.

Alex and Leah meet at medical school and form an immediate and intense connection. Over the course of four years as they are caught in the push-pull of love and betrayal, longing and reunion, neither can quite give up the other, even as they question whether they are good for each other. Twenty years later, when Alex and Leah encounter each other again, will they make the right choice?

Lottie Fairchild has two loves: history and, well, history. She's fascinated by the legends of love and curses handed down through her own family. Owner of a successful antique shop in her small country town Banalla, Lottie is on the committee that is about to launch a new festival celebrating the town history and their local figure of fame, gentleman bushranger Jack McNally. Altogether, Lottie is happy. Mostly. But when festival guest speaker Professor Damian Loxley arrives, a week early and on a motorbike, Lottie is caught off guard.

All Ellie Robertson has wanted to be since childhood is a painter: after all, that’s the easiest way to speak without actually having to say anything. But now she’s turning thirty, has had a major career win, and is only just realising that she might have let some minor things slide. Like, for instance, working out how to love another human being. So Ellie decides to do what any normal person would do: paint a portrait of each of her exes, from the childhood crush to the woman she may or may not still be madly in love with.

Penny McIntyre loves her life as an ambitious city professional, so when she's floored by a mystery illness and ordered back to the family farm for three months' rest and recuperation, she is horrified to find her perfect life imploding. Within days, she is forced to leave her job, her live-in boyfriend and her beloved city apartment...to return to the small country town in which she grew up. Back to her dad and three sisters, one of whom has never forgiven her for abandoning her family. And to her ex-boyfriend, Tim Patterson, who was the biggest reason she ran in the first place.

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.

Alice is only nine years old in 1910 when she is sent to the feared Coast Hospital Lazaret at Little Bay in Sydney, a veritable prison where more patients are admitted than will ever leave. She is told that she's visiting her mother, who disappeared one day when Alice was two years old. Once there, she learns her mother is suffering from leprosy and that Alice has the same disease.

Perfect for fans of Haruki Murakami, Ghost Cities is a profound and highly imaginative novel that cleverly draws on Chinese history to explore the absurdity of modern life and work.

A novel of searing emotional truth, told with the relentless pull of a thriller, from the award-winning creator of Offspring. Paula is a dedicated suburban GP who is devastated by the murder of a friend and her children by their estranged husband and father. Stacey and the children had been staying with her after fleeing his control, and Paula is haunted by the thought that she couldn't protect them when they most needed it. How had she missed the warning signs? How had she failed to keep them safe?

Lucie Tamberlani had it all: a business manager with a passion for naturopathy, she was set to take over the bookwork at the family strawberry farm in South Australia. But the unexpected fallout from a relationship sees her flee to Melbourne, raising her daughter alone. Jack Schenscher is doing it tough: caring for his aged grandparents and managing their wheat farm while simultaneously pursuing his passion of sustainable eco-farming on his own acreage leaves him with little time and even less money. Both Lucie and Jack must discover that home is wherever the heart is.