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

After fleeing to Melbourne in the wake of a breakup, all Ana has to show for herself is an unfulfilling job at an overly enthusiastic tech start-up and one particularly questionable dating app experience. Then she meets Evan. Charming, kind and financially responsible, Evan is a complete aberration from her usual type, and Ana feels like she has finally awoken from a long dating nightmare. As much as she tries to let their burgeoning relationship unfold IRL, Ana just can't resist the urge to find Evan online.

On a hot October afternoon, a girl walks barefoot out of the Wimmera desert, near the small town of Gatyekarr. She finds sanctuary with Beth, a regenerative farmer and collector of seeds, devoted to bringing her family's farm back to life. The arrival of the mysterious 'desert girl' unsettles the community and old tensions erupt. The longer the girl stays silent, the more volatile the town becomes. Who is she and what does her presence mean?

Rose is in her eighties and has dementia, but she's not done with life just yet. Alternately sharp as a tack and spectacularly forgetful, she spends her days roaming the corridors of the aged-care facility, ruminating on the staff and residents and enduring visits from her emotionally distant children and grand-daughters. But when her friend is found dead—after an apparent fall from a window, Rose embarks on an eccentric and deeply personal investigation to discover the truth and—exposes all manner of secrets, even some from her own past.

Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbors in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks up on stuff that isn't hers to worry about. They live next door to Janet, a white woman with an opinion about everything, and new arrival Sera, whose family are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe.

Prince of spin and life of the party Baz King is dead. Ten years ago, at an innocent summer barbecue in Melbourne, everything imploded. For the Kings and the four other young families there that fateful day marriages fractured, friendships crumbled and lives were upended. Nothing would ever be the same. Now in their forties and their children teenagers, Baz King cannot be found. Has his charm finally run out?

In Autumn of 1912, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins arrives at his new post in the fading gold town of Colley, NSW. On his first day, he is ambushed by a hidden gunman, his junior officer is killed before his eyes, and he escapes back to town to find the police station burning to the ground. Someone has it in for the mounted troopers. A traumatised veteran of the Boer War, and a stranger to Colley, Hawkins is deeply shaken and ill-equipped to solve the case. But with only green troopers and a drunken, incompetent detective available to hunt down the murderer, he is forced to take the lead.

Mickey Bloom: five-foot tall, dyslexic, and bullied at school. With a mostly absent and hostile father, Mickey feels she's no good at anything. Until she discovers running. Mickey's newfound talent makes her realize she's everything she thought she wasn't—powerful, strong, and special. But her success comes at a cost, and the relentless training and pressure to win leaves Mickey broken; her dream in tatters. Years later, when Mickey is working in a dead-end job, her mother becomes ill. While nursing her, Mickey realizes the only way she can overcome her grief—and find herself—is to run again.

Anna and Matt Butler were childhood sweethearts with a dream of owning their own land, a dream they achieved through hard work and determination. But as the seasons conspire against them and Matt is involved in a terrible accident, the couple face financial ruin and the loss of their farm. As they fight for everything they hold dear, they suddenly find themselves caught up in events much bigger and more dangerous than they could ever have imagined.

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?

Tony had found me. Or, he’d found Maggie. I had no way of knowing whether he was nuts or not; whether he might go to the cops. Maybe that sounds paranoid, but I don’t think it’s so ridiculous. People have gone to prison for much lesser things than accusations of child-killing. A quiet, small-town existence. An unexpected Facebook message, jolting her back to the past. A history she’s reluctant to revisit: dark memories and unspoken trauma, warning knocks on bedroom walls, unfathomable loss.

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.

Years after leaving Jasper, Detective Alex Markov has been sent back under the shadow of an LAPD corruption investigation. She is convinced that the man, a family friend, was murdered opportunistically under the cover of the fire. As the smoke clears, Alex reveals a town corrupt to its core–but exposing that corruption could destroy her and the people she loves. Will she ignore the crookedness and deceit, or face the consequences of pursuing an inconvenient truth?

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.

Daniel is a 16-year-old drug dealer and he’s going to jail. Then, suddenly, he’s not. A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other 'gifted delinquents.' The elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter. So where are they? It’s not a school, despite the 'lessons’ with the headsets and changing images. It’s not a psych unit - not if the absence of medication means anything. It’s not a jail, because Daniel’s free to leave. Or that’s what they tell him.

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 Jimmy Flick. He's not like other kids - he's both too fast and too slow. Jimmy's mother, Paula, is the only one who can manage him. She teaches him how to count sheep so that he can fall asleep. She holds him tight enough to stop his cells spinning. It is only Paula who can keep Jimmy out of his father's way. But when Jimmy's world falls apart, he has to navigate life on his own and make things right.

A thought-provoking, discomforting and beautiful novel about love, obsession, community and friendship. Nothing But My Body is an eight day journey through a young woman's mind, a queer sex worker in Australia, as she navigates through break ups and infatuation across a year. Set during the bushfire season of 2019 and into the coronavirus pandemic, sex work is the constant backdrop of the story as it moves between Sydney, Berlin, Orange and Bellingen.

Audrey Lamont has happily devoted herself to family life for the best part of 40 years, but lately she's become aware that she lost herself somewhere between 'I do' and the weekly shop. Worse, her academic husband Simon has found time for romance–just not with Audrey. Feeling invisible to everyone, even herself, she flees to her aunt's home in rural France. While waiting for her sudden absence to spark a change of heart in Simon, Audrey finds solace in the charms of the French countryside and the company of her aged aunt and a cast of eccentric Bretons.

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.

When a drought dries up the contents of a water hole on her uncle's property, the last thing Investigative journalist Phillipa Davenport expected to find was a body. On a deadline and with a severe case of writers block, Pip doesn't have time to investigate this story—she just wants to write her book. However, the universe and her neighbour seem to have other ideas. And then there's the mysterious detective assigned to the case, who Pip is beginning to find very distracting.