Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Family Life

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Russo's skillful use of dialogue perfectly suits the audio medium. A wonderfully fun and perceptive novel in the traditions of Thornton Wilder and Anne Tyler, The Risk Pool is set in Mohawk, New York, where Ned Hall is doing his best to grow up, even though neither of his estranged parents can properly be called an adult.

Desperate to enjoy their empty nest, Jen and Andeep downsize to the countryside, to forage, upcycle and fall in love again, only to be joined by their two 20-something daughters, Asha and Camille. Living on top of each other in a tiny house, with no way to make money, tensions simmer, and as Jen and Andeep focus increasingly on themselves, the girls become isolated, argumentative and violent.

At home, they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they've become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore. Now, Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she's been praying for.

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.

Maddie's getting it from all sides. Her bitchy new boss at the radio station humiliates her live on air about her figure, her glamour-puss mum keeps dropping not-so-subtle hints that Maddie should lose weight, and her kids are embarrassed to be seen with her after the disastrous mums' race at their school sports day. Something's got to change. Maddie joins the local weight-watching group expecting more humiliation but instead finds two unlikely allies.

Single mother and dreamer Loretta Boskovic lives in Gunapan, a town lost in the scrubby Australian bush. She has fantasies about dumping her two kids in the orphanage and riding off on a Harley with her dream lover. Her best pal is a crusty old junk man called Norm. She needs a lawnmower; he gives her two goats called Terror and Panic. Loretta’s a self-dubbed ‘old scrag’, but she’s got a big heart and a strong sense of injustice. So, when the government threatens to close down Gunapan’s primary school, and there’s corruption wafting through the local council, Loretta stirs into action.

When Gill and Gabe's eldest son drowns overseas, they decide they must hide the truth from their desperately unwell teenaged daughter. But as Gill begins to send letters from her dead son to his sister, the increasingly elaborate lie threatens to prove more dangerous than the truth. Told through alternating perspectives, and moving between Tasmania and London, this is a story about family, food, grief and hope.

Maine, 1997. As the people of Fort Meadow Beach celebrate the Fourth of July, four-year-old Daisy Wright disappears and is never seen again. Maine, Present Day. Fired from her job and heartbroken, Peyton Winchester moves back home for the summer. Bored and aimless, she finds a renewed sense of purpose when an ad for a journalism course reminds her of a path not taken. Returning to life in her hometown brings back all kinds of memories—including Daisy's vanishing when she was a young girl herself.

Everything in Klara’s life seems perfect. She runs a successful cosmetic clinic with her best friend, Tomas, she has a beautiful house near the beach in Melbourne, and she and her adoring husband Dante are trying for a baby. Then one day, she receives a call that punctures her perfect life. Dante has had an accident. He was found unconscious in a gay sauna and now lies in a coma. What Klara discovers about her husband will disrupt everything she thought she knew about love, marriage and family.

'Your husband is a landowner,' they told her. 'Food and clothing is so plentiful, it grows on trees'. 'You will be able to go to school'. Of the three lies the matchmaker told Willow before she left home as a picture bride in 1918, the third hurt the most. Never one to be deterred, Willow does all that she can to make the best of her unexpected circumstance. But it isn't long before her dreams for this new life are shattered – first by a husband who never wanted to marry her in the first place, and then by the escalation of the Korean independence movements.

Jonathan Coulter planned for his death meticulously, leaving nothing to chance. His will states that his three adult children must decide between them how to dispose of his estate. If they cannot come together over their inheritance, then they risk losing it. But Liv, Noah and Chloe never agree on anything. And now, with only one weekend to overcome their rivalry, tensions begin to rise.

What if your perfect life was based on lies? I'm a lucky woman, thinks Susanna Greenfield. And why wouldn't she? Her handsome, successful husband is a loving father to their two teenage children. Her mother, Jean, is her dearest friend. Her scatty but adored younger sister, Angie, seems to have finally found some stability in her life. Susanna has a solid career as an art teacher and if, as she's recently discovered, there's a hole inside her where her creative spirit used to be - is that really such a big price to pay?

Even though 16 years have passed, Billie will never recover from the murder of her daughter, Jess, and clings to her memory—and the site of her death—like a life raft. Daniel, who was a toddler when his mother was killed, can recall little of what happened but knows if he’s to have any chance of a better future he needs to move on from that defining event—if only his grandmother would let him. Meanwhile Daniel’s stepmother, Carla, also feels trapped by Jess’s legacy but has a plan that she believes will help everyone to escape from the long shadow of the past.

Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Bea, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared 40 years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea's warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers.

Nell Reece has never known her mother, and her father's burden of guilt about his wife has kept him cowed for years, working as a common labourer on his sister's farm. For all her aunt's spiteful attempts to break Nell's independent spirit, she has never succeeded. But now Nell, pregnant and alone, is forced to leave behind the men in her life, believing she might never be able to return. With little but the clothes she wears, she travels across the Bedfordshire countryside of 1890. When she encounters a scruffy urchin called Kit, she takes him under her wing.

When pregnant Jaya loses her mother, then her baby son, Arun, in a tragic cot death, her world crashes down. Overcome by grief and guilt, she begins to look for answers. Looking through her mother’s belongings, she finds two diaries and old photographs, carrying the smoky aroma of fire. A young boy smiles out at Jaya from every photograph - and in one, a family stand proudly in front of a sprawling mansion. Who is this child? And why did her mother treasure this memento of a regal family lost to the past?

An exploration of relationships, marriage, passion, beauty and the price of love. Zoë Howard is 17 when her brother, Russell, introduces her to Stephen Quayle. Aloof and harsh, Stephen is unlike anyone she has ever met, 'a weird, irascible character out of some dense Russian novel'. His sister, Anna, is shy and thoughtful, 'a little orphan'. Zoe and Russell, Stephen and Anna: they may come from different social worlds, but all four will spend their lives moving in and out of each other's shadow.

Then she lifts the Fish up from the bassinet and holds him out to me. ‘Go on, take him.’ And to the Fish she says, ‘This is your uncle.' I manage to clap my hands either side of the fish bundle. But I feel like I am holding an expensive glass. Once you’re told not to drop it, all you can think of is the glass shattering across the floor. When the baby is born in a shabby caravan at a beach campground, it’s clear he is not like other babies. But the family will try hard to protect and love and accept him. Perhaps all the more to make up for letting his troubled mother down.

This collection of short fiction from Elizabeth Harrower features a number of previously unpublished works and 'Alice', which was published for the first time in The New Yorker in 2015. Internationally acclaimed for her five brilliant novels, Elizabeth Harrower is also the author of a small body of short fiction. A Few Days in the Country & Other Stories brings together for the first time her stories published in Australian journals in the 1960s and 1970s along with those from her archives.

The Book of Speculation is Erika Swyler's gorgeous and moving debut, a wondrous novel about the power of books, family, and magic. Simon Watson lives alone on the Long Island Sound in his family home, a house perched on the edge of a cliff that is slowly crumbling into the sea. His parents are long dead, his mother having drowned in the water his house overlooks. His younger sister, Enola, works for a travelling carnival and seldom calls.