Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Genre Fiction

Rita Blackthorn’s heart was barren and hard. In all of her life, she had never truly loved. But she had hated. Beneath the loving gaze of her daughter’s soft green eyes, her heart swelled with dark and dangerous emotions. Young Cathy Blackthorn has never experienced any loving response from her mother. It is her beloved Aunt Margaret, with a heart as big and warm as the summer sky, who has been more of a mother than her own could ever be. And when Cathy’s father brings home a London street urchin, Cathy despairs of ever winning her parents’ love.

1882. Laura Webster and her father are the stalwart keepers of Benevolence Island Lighthouse, a desolate place stranded in the turbulent Bass Strait. When a raging storm wrecks a schooner just offshore, the few survivors take shelter with the Websters, awaiting rescue from the mainland. But some of the passengers have secrets that lead to dreadful consequences, the ripples of which echo far into the future. 2020. Nina and her team of volunteers arrive on Benevolence to work on repairs, with plans to open up the island to tourists.

In the waning years of the 19th century there was a hunger for tribal artifacts, spawning collecting voyages from museums and collectors around the globe. In 1897, one such collector, a Chicago insurance magnate, sponsors an expedition into the South Seas to commemorate the completion of his company's new skyscraper - the world's tallest building. The ship is to bring back an array of Melanesian weaponry and handicrafts, but also several natives related by blood....

Hetty’s family was torn apart following the German invasion of the Netherlands. Rounded up by the Nazis and then separated from their parents, Hetty and her brothers were sent to the Children’s House, within Belsen concentration camp. As one of the eldest, Hetty became the ‘Little Mother’, helping to care for not only her siblings, but the other children as well.In a direct and powerful style, Hetty recalls one of the remarkable, largely untold stories of the Holocaust – the extraordinary struggle and survival of this group of children through those terrible years.

Lucy Briar has arrived home in turmoil after years overseas. She's met her fiancé in London and has her life mapped out, but something is holding her back. Hoping to ground herself and find answers, Lucy settles into once familiar routines. But old tortured feelings flood Lucy's existence when her beloved father, Ron, is hospitalised and Morgan - the man who drove her away all those years ago - seeks her out. Worse, Ron implores Lucy to visit Bitterwood Estate, the crumbling historic family guesthouse now left to him.

Pools of blood, scenes of carnage, signs of agonising death - who deals with the aftermath of violence once the bodies have been taken away? Judith Kepler has seen it all. She is a crime-scene specialist. She turns crime scenes back into habitable spaces. She is a cleaner. It is at the home of a woman who has been brutally murdered that she is suddenly confronted with her own past. The murder victim knew Judith's secret: as a child Judith was sent to an orphanage under mysterious circumstances - parentage unknown.

When Adam moves into the abandoned house on the dusty edge of town, he is hoping to recover from the loss of his job and his home in the city. But when he meets Canning – a shadowy figure from his childhood – and Canning's enigmatic and beautiful wife, a sinister new chapter in his life begins. Canning has inherited a vast fortune and a giant folly in the veld, a magical place of fantasy and dreams that seduces Adam and transforms him absolutely, violently – and perhaps forever....

What if your worst enemy discovered your darkest secret? At 2:00 a.m. on the morning of her 40th birthday, Sophie wakes in the darkness of her bedroom and finds a stranger watching her from the foot of the bed. The intruder hands Sophie a letter and issues an ultimatum: the message is to be opened at her forthcoming party, in front of family and friends, at exactly 8:00 p.m.

Wry, moving, beautifully observed and politically astute, this latest audiobook from one of New Zealand's finest chroniclers pinpoints universal truths through very NZ lives. Life isn't always like it appears in the movies. In 1952 Irene Sandle takes her young daughter to Motueka. Irene was widowed during the war and is seeking a new start and employment in the tobacco fields. There, she finds the reality of her life far removed from the glamour of the screen.

Rocked by a terrible accident, homeless Kelly needs to escape the cold streets of Glasgow. Maybe she doesn’t believe in serendipity, but a rare moment of kindness and a lost ring conspire to call her home. As Kelly vows to reunite the ring with its owner, she must return to the small town she fled so many years ago. On her journey from Glasgow to the south-west tip of Scotland, Kelly encounters ancient pilgrim routes, hostile humans, hippies, book lovers and a friendly dog.

Cliff Hardy may still have the moves but he's in trouble. The economy's tanking and he's been conned by an unscrupulous financial advisor and lost everything he's got. Cliff only knows one way, and that's forward, so he's following the money trail. It's a twisted road that leads him down deep into Sydney's underbelly, into the territory of big money, bent deals, big yachts, and bad people. Cliff's in greater danger than ever before, but he's as tenacious as a dog with a bone.

One crumbling grand manor house, a family in decline, five generations of women and an attic full of beautiful clothes with secrets and lies hidden in their folds.... Failed fashion designer Sylvie Dearlove is coming home to England - broke, ashamed and in disgrace - only to be told her parents are finally selling their once grand, now crumbling country house, Bledesford, the ancestral home of the Dearlove family for countless generations.

I want to die. I do not want to be mad.... It is like my body is a house, and some visitor has come and attacked the person who lived there. After an Australian patrol officer commits suicide on a remote New Guinea island in 1959, five witnesses are called to a government inquiry. Each has a disturbing story to tell: strand by strand, the mystery of the officer's past is unravelled. But what of other visitants, like the unidentified flying object and the cargo cult it has inspired on the island?

When lawyer Daniel Connell receives a visit from his troublemaking old flame, Victoria, pleading for his help, he looks for any excuse not to get involved. But no one else believes her pleas of innocence, and Daniel can see she is terrified. As he enters Vick's life once more, Daniel's search for truth leads from the dark heart of Essex to the mountains of Afghanistan and a terrifying world where monsters are real - and nothing is sacred.

Here's a comic story of modern love and life when you're 20-something, single, and male. It is the mess Jon Marshall makes of his life when it stops making sense – a comedy of fallibility and misjudgements.

A woman washes ashore in Sicily. She has come from North Africa to find her son, taken from her when he was just days old by his father and stolen away to Berlin. With nothing but her maid’s uniform and a knife stashed in a plastic bag, she relies on strangers – some generous, some exploiting – to guide her passage north. These strangers tell of their encounters with a quiet, mysterious woman in a blue coat – each account a different view of the truth, a different truth.

Relieved to take time out from her faltering marriage, Julia Lambett heads across the country to her hometown to help her father move into aged care. But moving an elderly man is easier said than done, especially when her father reveals that a guest has come to stay. Soon after her return, Julia bumps into her childhood friend. True to form, Davina takes a determined interest in all the things that Julia hoped she had left behind. With four decades of possessions that must be managed and dispensed with, Julia finds herself uncovering some long-forgotten, deeply unsettling memories.

Set in a remote area of Western Australia, The Fringe Dwellers is the story of two part-Aboriginal sisters, Noonah and Trilby, who leave the mission they call home to return to their family's camp on the fringe of white society. Noonah is pragmatic and accepts her position, only wanting to raise money for the family. But Trilby refuses to believe that her current position will define the rest of her life.

Istanbul, Turkey, 1955. Benedict Hitchens, once a world-renowned archaeologist, is now a discredited - but still rather charming - shell of his former self. Once full of optimism and adventure, his determination to prove that Achilles was an historical figure led him to his greatest love, Karina, on the island of Crete and to his greatest downfall, following the disappearance of an enigmatic stranger, Eris. He has one last chance to restore his reputation, solve the mystery of Eris and prove his Achilles theory. But it is full of risk and possibly fatal consequences....

In the warm alkaline waters of the public bath a headstrong young engineer accidentally collides with a beautiful actress. From this innocent collision of flesh begins a passion that takes them from the Wiltshire Downs to the most elemental choices of life and death in the Australian desert. Their intense romance is but part of the daring story that unfolds.