Showing results by publisher "Bolinda audio" in Contemporary Fiction

A meat truck carrying illegal immigrants is intercepted at the Canadian-American border, but an unconscious woman is inadvertently left inside the truck. Two strangers waiting in separate cars impulsively smuggle her across the border - and their lives are changed irrevocably. In this complex and compelling novel, Felicity and Gus cross and re-cross borders - between countries, between past and present, and between reality and illusion - as they struggle to come to terms with borderlines of their own.

As she watches her brother losing the battle with his memories, Rowan wonders how long she can keep her own past at bay. The old family home in Access Road, where Lionel, Roly and Rowan grew up, is crumbling away - but after more than fifty years Lionel and Roly are back. Rowan too, otherwise safe in her 'upper crusty' suburb, is drawn more and more strongly 'out west'. The past is dangerously alive.

The Fishcastle stands proud and high over the seaside village of Proudie Bay, where the sea meets the land. It is home to the Hardwicks - Marlin, teller of tales and charmer of snakes and women; his daughter, Jennifer, who keeps house; and his son, Gulliver, perfect in form but flawed in spirit. Creaking with secrets and a menagerie of creatures, the Fishcastle gathers many others into its rambling rooms and garden. One eventful summer under the Fishcastle's roof their lives are changed forever.

Cassie and Erin are sisters. They are close - in age, looks and personality - but there is one crucial difference: Cassie is adopted. At 17, Cassie sets out to find her birth mother. She is hungry for the truth, but she discovers her adoption was far more complicated than even she could have imagined. In uncovering her real identity Cassie learns her adoptive parents have kept a terrible secret from her her whole life, which now threatens to destroy everything she has ever held dear.

Wagners Creek, otherwise known as the arse-end of the Earth, is the home of the mutton-bird, the carrion crow, and the remarkable Fin Starling. Son of the local provider of "special services", Fin is different from other children and soon it becomes clear that he is something of a miracle-worker as he transforms the dirt-poor shantytown into a place of pilgrimage. Elizabeth Stead's gently comic portrait of Wagners Creek is handled with benevolent grace.

A gloriously warm-hearted novel about wonderful hats, the people who buy them - and their remarkable stories. Hats! Hats! Hats! Upbrims, sidesweeps, silks, ribbons and trims all become part of Ellie's life when she inherits the little hat shop on Dublin's South Anne Street. But the city is changing, and Ellie must decide if she wants to follow the hat-making tradition of her mother or accept a generous offer to sell the shop.

Everything changes for Kate, Moya and Romy when they receive word that Maeve Dillon, their mother, is critically ill. It is time to return from Dublin, London and New York to Rossmore and the old stone house overlooking the Irish Sea where they grew up. But ancient jealousies surface as each sister confronts the past and the decisions they have made.

A woman running from her past rents a lonely cottage haunted by drowned lovers and the presence of the sea. Here - amongst the local writers and conservationists, the Aborigines, fishermen, ferals and drifters - Jessica Sorensen almost loses her life and then remakes it. In this haunted and haunting story, Dorothy Hewett has written a novel about love and loss and the endless drift of the tides.

For Tom, a counsellor struggling to rebuild his emotional life after the breakdown of his marriage, the suburbs are his world. His neighbours in Winter Close are his 'people', a kind of twenty-first century tribe. Tom, however, has a weakness for jumping to dramatic conclusions about his neighbours' relationships with each other and with him. Although he's often wrong, the truth is even more engrossing than his fantasies.

Earl wakes up one morning to find his hair sticking up like a toothbrush. He can't get it to stay down and he keeps on getting into trouble with everyone. What is he going to do?

A powerful and moving story of one family's courageous journey. After a perilous and terrifying escape from war-torn Afghanistan, Gulnessa and her family find themselves in Australia, a place they know nothing about. They are exhausted and traumatized, but so full of hope. But their struggle isn't over yet.<

Kalu climbed high into a tree seeking the perfect leaf to roll into a pipe.... Softening one end in his mouth, he pressed down with his teeth to flatten the tube and blew. The sound, sweet and clear, rode the wind, snaking through the tree and down into the village. Set in the small Indian town of Hastinapore, we meet Kalu: just a young boy, without any family, living on the streets. As he plays his music, he doesn't realise there is a man resting against the trunk listening. And so Kalu and the healer meet, and Kalu’s life is changed forever.

Kate Cassidy is about to celebrate 25 years of marriage to Paddy. But the secret she has kept all this time is about to be discovered. Erin Harris has always known that she is different from the rest of her family. Over the years she has begun to put the pieces together, and now she has to discover who she really is and where she comes from. Nina Harris has always put her marriage and family before everything. But now she must face up to the truth as her daughter is prepared to run off and search for a woman she doesn't know.

Curl Curl, Sydney, January 1978. Angie's a looker. Or she's going to be. She's only 14, but already, heads turn wherever she goes. Male heads, mainly...Jane worships her older cousin Angie. She spends her summer vying for Angie's attention. Then Angie is murdered. Jane and her family are shattered. They withdraw into themselves, casting a veil of silence over Angie's death. Thirty years later, a journalist arrives with questions about the tragic event. Jane is relieved to finally talk about her adored cousin. And so is her family.

Alice loves to cook. She believes the secret of good food is to cook with passion. Her love affair with cookery has taken her from her parents' seaside hotel to Paris and then one of Dublin's finest restaurants. Then she marries Liam and is happy to hang up her chef's hat and cook for her family and friends instead. But now she's cooking for one! Her marriage to Liam over, it's high time she learns to stand on her own two feet and begin again....

Marnie, Tina and Lee are in their 20s when they share a house in Bondi. Each is running away from something: Marnie, wild, privileged and impetuous, is escaping from the stifling conservatism of Melbourne - and a father who will mark her relationship with men forever. Tina, driven to leave Brisbane and her migrant background, promises herself she'll own a home on the harbour by the time she's 30. But what if the price of success is too high? Lee dreams of showbiz fame to save her from suffocating life in the suburbs of Newcastle.

In 1975, at the age of 20, Hannah Coady thinks she can change the world. Fiery and idealistic, she proves her mettle as a journalist in the terrible famine in Ethiopia, and is changed forever by the experience. But it's not just the starvation and the politics that change her, it's the beginning of a great love for two remarkable men: Waldo, a cynical but endearing British filmmaker, and Ezekiel, a Rwandan radical whose fervour is a match for Hannah's own.

When Naiim's family swaps war-torn Beirut for the dark heart of Melbourne's western suburbs, all hopes are pinned on the youngest daughter becoming a doctor. But first she must impress the Dean of the medical school, Professor Maclean. Not easy to do when your family members are finding the new landscape of suburban Melbourne even more perilous to negotiate than a Lebanese ceasefire.

Thousands of depressed little towns dot the vast plain where Cristiano Zena lives with his hard-drinking father, Rino. Unfocused urban sprawl with no centre to look to and nothing to look forward to. Rino Zena and his cronies, Danilo and Quattro Formaggi, are planning a ram raid on an ATM, using a converted tractor. The wary, adoring Cristiano sits in on their meetings, watching their half-baked plans unravel, and thinks about the unattainable Fabiana Ponticelli. He has no idea that something very, very bad is about to happen.

Eleanora has had a failed marriage and she lives with her mother, a religious woman. They take in a house boarder. This is all simple enough. Yet the past that slowly reveals itself is eating this family of sorts alive, and draws Eleanora to a room, and a place within herself which she may not survive....