Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Family Life

Schoolteacher Natalie has always been a city girl. When Nat takes up a posting at a tiny school in remote Western Australia, it proves quite the culture shock. But soon Natalie is welcomed by the inquisitive locals - particularly young student Billy and his intriguing single father, Drew. As Nat's school comes under threat of closure and Billy's estranged mother turns up out of the blue, Nat finds herself fighting for the township and battling with her heart.

Mai and Hikaru went to school together in the city of Nagoya, until Hikaru disappeared when they were 18. It is not until 10 years later, when Mai runs into Hikaru's mother, Hiromi Sato, that she learns Hikaru has become a hikikomori, a recluse unable to leave his bedroom for years. In secret, Hiromi Sato hires Mai as a 'rental sister', to write letters to Hikaru and encourage him to leave his room.

Meet Dorcas, a spirited 12-year-old struggling to contain her irrepressible humour and naughty streak in a family of Christadelphians in 1960s Adelaide. She is her mother's least favourite child and always at the bottom of the order on the family's string of beads that she and her younger siblings Ruthy and Caleb reorder according to their mother's ever-changing moods.

Raised by her severe parents in a punitive and authoritarian church, Ellen Wells is entirely unprepared for life in the modern world. When things become intolerable at home, she escapes and, striking out on her own, makes a completely new start. Ellen lands a job as a teacher in a girls' school and gradually finds peace in that community and in her solitary life. To begin with, she is painfully shy, but when she meets Gordon, a fellow teacher, she responds with curiosity and, before long, pleasure. Three years later, a knock on the door changes everything.

How can we know the truth of our own lives? This question troubles Matilda, as she looks back on her time with her foster brother, Sem. Matilda remembers long hours at the swimming pool. Celeste, a girl who lived downstairs. Sem disappearing for hours, then days. Her father yelling in the driveway. A car coming to take Sem away. Five years later, Sem is now a memory she has locked away. Until, at a party, she reconnects with Celeste and then Sem and the three of them move to Eden. As the summer drags on, Sem starts disappearing again.

This could be any small town. It aches under the heat of summer. It flourishes in the cooler months. Everyone knows everyone. Their families, histories and stories are interwoven and well-known by one and all. Or at least, they think they are. But no one sees anything quite the same way. Perceptions differ, truths are elusive, judgements have outcomes and everything is connected. For better or for worse.

Europe, 1940s: Imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, Spanish fighter and photographer Mateo Baca is ordered to process images of the camp and inmates for a handful of photo books being made for presentation to top Nazi figures. Just five books in total, or so the officials think. Mateo manages to make a secret sixth book and, with the help of a local woman, Lena Lang, it remains hidden until the end of the war.

Fleeing Melbourne for a village in the Yorkshire Dales had felt right. Sanctuary, I'd thought. But nowhere is as straightforward as it first appears. When Giselle flees to the north Yorkshire village of Hollydale, she doesn't give much thought to what she might find there. She's more concerned with what she's leaving behind–a toxic marriage, the loss of her beloved sister, Lina, and the cloud of suspicion over the circumstances of Lina's death.

1944. Emily Dean is sent to stay with relatives in rural Victoria. With grandmother determined to keep up standards despite the effects of the war; Della, the Bible-quoting cook, and her young and fearless aunt Lydia, who refuses to befriend her, Emily just wants to go home. But things start looking up when she encounters Claudio, the Italian prisoner of war employed as a farm labourer. And then Lydia’s brother, William, unexpectedly returns from the war. Wounded and bitter, he’s rude, traumatised and mostly drunk, yet a passion for literature soon draws them together.

Coburg, Melbourne. Ford McCullen is growing up with his mother, Deidre, his Pop and Noonie in ‘The Compound’, a pair of units in the shadow of Pentridge prison. His father, Robert, has left them to live in the bush with his new male partner. Nobody is coping. When Ford’s paternal grandmother Queenie’s good fortune allows him to attend a prestigious Catholic private school on the other side of the river and to learn the violin, Ford finds himself balancing separate identities.

Bridget and Simone aren't friends. But their daughters are in the same dance troupe, so they're flying to Los Angeles for the girls to perform at Disneyland. Simone's daughter Zahra is indisputably a leader in the group, but Bridget's daughter Becky is a talent on the rise. Simone and her husband are accustomed to business class, but Bridget is less comfortable there. Both lonely women are surprised to find something in common, until Bridget discovers images of Zahra and other dancers that shock her. Are they exploitative or art?

Meg's life is woven into the fabric of St. Stephens. It's a tapestry made of two precious children, a hidden truth, and a husband whose ideas of a perfect wife do not match her own. When Meg puts her foot down on a third kid, gets a job, and is empowered by the same book group that was meant to keep her in her place, her marriage begins to disintegrate. Set in a tiny Mormon community, this is a novel about resilience and courage – the fierceness of mother-love and the power that comes with never forgetting who you really are.

In those first moments, that admission felt precious to me: it was something that I alone had been deemed worthy enough to carry, and I was grateful. I was grateful to finally know, but I still couldn't speak. Something was wrong, she knew it, but she was entirely unprepared for what he would tell her. Viewed through the lens of a relationship breakdown after one partner discloses to the other that they are transgender, this autofiction spans 18 months: from the moments of first discovery, through the eventual disintegration of their partnership, to the new beginnings of independence.

Mary Anne is haunted by the death of her sister and worn down by depression. She's not a good wife and she's not a good mother. Then, one morning, she wakes to find her life completely unfamiliar to her, and she leaves her family to become a country singer. Vivian vows to be nothing like her mother, Mary Anne. Wounded by her mother's lack of love and emancipated by her lack of attention, adolescent Vivian looks for knowledge in dark places: news reports about child murderers, fashion magazines, boys' bedrooms, and small acts of violence.

Anna, 62, is the victim of a terrorist attack in which eleven others were murdered. Nat, 35, is an Army veteran who fought in Afghanistan. They have so little in common. And so much. A friendship stirs between them, tentative and unlikely, its foundation the violence they have seen and the memories that stalk them. Together, they begin to search for a way back home. But when Nat's wife falls unexpectedly pregnant, terrible ghosts from his wartime past rise up and much more than a friendship is at stake.

Thirteen-year-old Audrey is a talented young football player. But does she want to play for Australia or does she just want to please her father, Ben, whose own thwarted sporting career looms large in his ambitions for his daughter? Audrey's mother, Jonica, doesn't know whether to be more concerned about her anxious daughter, her overbearing husband, or the only other girl on the team, Katerina, who is causing trouble on and off the field.

A captivating literary journey that delves into the intertwined lives of a town, its people, and a region shaped by revolution and war.

Meg and Nina are two sisters living very different lives. Meg is super organised and possibly OCD; Nina is so depressed she is living like a homeless person in her own flat and feels as though she has lost control of her life. As a result, she has become estranged from her family. But when Meg's repeated attempts to make contact with her eventually succeed, Nina can't refuse her request to head north with her and their younger sister Amber, whose drug addictions have torn the family apart.

Australian soldier Toohey returns from Baghdad in 2003 with shrapnel in his neck, crippled by PTSD and white-knuckling life. In the Iraq of a decade earlier, aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son Uday, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Melbourne as the millennium turns, Robbie, faced with her father’s dementia and the family silences that may never find voice, tests boundaries. And in the present day, Gerry seeks to escape his father Toohey’s tyranny and heal its wounds.

Lismore resident Rob–a happily married empty-nester, enjoying his late middle age–has always defined himself by the quality of the roof over his head and the state of his family life. Solid. Safe. Stable. But when the 2022 flood hits, he and his wife Sal find themselves homeless, their lives now the very opposite of secure and predictable.