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

Michaela and Eve are two bright, bold women who befriend each other their first year at a residential college at university, where they live in adjacent rooms. They could not be more different: one, assured and popular - the other, uncertain and eager to please. But something happens one night in O-week - a drunken encounter, a foggy memory that will force them to confront the realities of consent and wrestle with the dynamics of power.

Mari and Elisabeth have been at the center of each other's lives for years. Close friends since university, they're now drifting through their mid-twenties, working casual jobs and living in run-down share houses. When they meet Jack, a charming academic historian twenty years their senior, they're attracted to the sophisticated, intellectual world in which he seems to move. As the summer gathers heat, Jack is drawn into their lives, and an unconventional relationship—halfway between friendship and love triangle—develops.

Late in the night, 14-year-old Sam Watson steps onto a quiet overpass, climbs over the rail and looks down at the road far below. At the other end of the same bridge, an old man, Vic, smokes his last cigarette. The two see each other across the void. A fateful connection is made, and an unlikely friendship blooms. Slowly, we learn what led Sam and Vic to the bridge that night. Bonded by their suffering, each privately commits to the impossible task of saving the other.

86, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed" relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray.

Three years after life got in the way of their long-distance relationship, Californian illustrator Zoe and English engineer Martin have an unexpected opportunity to reunite: a second chance to follow in the footsteps of pilgrims in Europe. This time, they won’t be walking the famous Camino de Santiago to north-west Spain but the less-travelled Chemin d’Assise and Via Francigena to Rome, the mountainous path down from rural France.

From the Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize for The Natural Way of Things. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her? They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house.

Gin in one hand, paintbrush in the other, Franny Calderwood has turned her back on the world, or at least the world she used to love. Having lost her husband, Frank, in tragic circumstances three years earlier, 65-year-old Franny copes the only way she knows how: by removing herself completely from the life she had before. Franny lives a life of decadent seclusion, with only her two dogs, Whisky and Soda, a stuffed cat, cocktails and the memory of Frank for company.

There's nothing quite so beautiful as Paris in the spring; and when you add in the chance to learn the French way of food, in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, who can resist? Not Gabi Picabea or Kate Evans who have come from Australia to Sylvie Morel's Paris Cooking School. Both are at a crossroads, and learning to cook the French way in Paris, far away from all their troubles, seems like the perfect escape. For each of the women, that extraordinary April in Paris will bring unexpected twists and transformations that will change the course of their lives.

Vivian Molloy hardly expected to retire early from teaching, but for her husband, Dave, she'd do anything. But when Dave abandons her after a weekend away, she returns home to their picturesque town in Tasmania, shell-shocked and alone with nothing to fill her days. When an old colleague tries to rope her into teaching a writing class at the local library, Vivian is hesitant. How can she teach with her life falling apart? But it is the people she meets that help her remember who she is.

In taut and stylish prose, The Passenger Seat examines how men learn and perform masculinity. Rejecting easy answers, it keeps our eyes trained on the vanishing point where vulnerability edges into violence, alienation into aggression.

Four women. Four loves. Four life-changing stories. At a little salon by the sea—on the windblown coast of 1980s Australia—four different women with intertwined lives will find themselves through love, heartbreak and learning to love again.

Rae is 10 years old, and she’s tough. She’s had to be: life with her mother has taught her the world is not her friend. Now suddenly her mum is gone and Rae is alone, except for her dog Splinter. Rae can do a lot of things pretty well for a kid. She can take care of herself and Splints, stay under the radar at school and keep the front yard neat enough that the neighbours won’t get curious. But she is gnawed at by fear and sadness; haunted by the shadow of a terrible secret.

1894, Echuca, Victoria: Tess Hawthorn is a woman on the run from her abusive husband. All she has to do is get on the riverboat Victor and she will be free. But with tensions at an all-time high between unionist shearers and Scabs, Tess isn't the only person trying to board a boat under the cover of night. When a brawl erupts between the union and non-union men, Tess is mistaken as a fellow Scab and in the chaos pulled aboard the PS Rodney - the same boat heading up the Darling River that her husband was bound for.

An unexpected death finds Lizzie, Alice and Margot at various crossroads in their lives, torn between looking back and moving on. Lizzie is reeling from a decades-old discovery that changes everything she thought she knew about her friends, her family and her marriage. Alice has always been the good-time girl, as charismatic presenting the weather on television as she is working as a life model. But decades of piecemeal gigs have left her with a safety net that is rapidly unravelling.

After weeks of grieving, a woman books a plane ticket bound for an old villa in the mountains of Abruzzo. Invited to stay with her friends Giulia and Fab—in the weeks before they marry in a village orchard—she lives for a summer in the house's Birthing Room, where generations of women once had their babies. More often, though, she lives in her head: in the past, trying to make sense of her grief and wondering how to go on, or if she can.

Beatrix is a loner. She has a love-hate relationship with her one friend, Ray, a hate-hate relationship with everyone else in her office and a genuine attachment to a stuffed canary named Horatio. She drinks alone far too much. Lately she's been finding the edge of the railway platform dangerously seductive. Her life needs to change. Then she crosses paths with an old woman who seems to be stalking her, and that's exactly what happens. Eighty-something Fred is smart, earthy, funny and not the harmless elderly lady she appears to be. She is, in fact, quite literally something else. But what?

Council employee Lorrie Hope has a great partner, two adorable kids and absolutely no idea what to do with her life. This Friday, she's hoping for change: it's launch day for her big work project, and she's applied for a promotion she's not entirely sure she wants. Meanwhile, her best friend, Alex, is stuck in a mess involving Lorrie's rakish ex, Ruben—or, more accurately, his wife. Oh, and Ruben's boss happens to be the mining magnate Sebastian Glup, who is sponsoring Lorrie's project…

Set in 1995 against the backdrop of Auckland's burgeoning party scene, Golden Days is the story of an intense late-teens friendship between bookish Becky and star-dusted Zoe Golden, and what happened when one terrifying night changed their lives and destroyed their friendship forever. After finding out that her husband has been cheating on her, Becky is mourning the end of her picture-perfect marriage at the bottom of a bottle. She thought she'd left that summer far behind, but the trauma of her present day brings back memories of the horrific night her brother died.

Busy mum-of-four Lizzie, newly divorced Sam and single mum Megan are best mates. And after a couple of decent coffees, they reckon they can handle anything. So when Baytree Primary calls out for volunteers to help at an upcoming camp, these three jump at the chance. Because nothing ever goes wrong at school camp, right?

From the acclaimed author of The Memory Artist and The Shut Ins comes a new novel about the relationship between body and self, and how we must dive beneath the surface to really know ourselves.