Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Literary Fiction

His father dead by fire and his mother plagued by demons of her own, William is cast upon the charity of his unknown uncle – an embittered old man encamped in the ruins of a once great station homestead, Kuran House. It's a baffling and sinister new world for the boy, a place of decay and secret histories. His uncle is obsessed by a long life of decline and by a dark quest for revival, his mother is desperate for a wealth and security she has never known, and all their hopes it seems come to rest upon William's young shoulders.

Twenty years on, each of Mary's four sisters is settled in her own way: Jane has a happy marriage and a large family; Lizzie and Mr Darcy have a formidable social reputation; Lydia has a reputation of quite another kind; and Kitty is in demand in London's fashionable salons. Mary, however, is a changed woman, and newly independent of family obligations. Now she is afire with resolve - to publish a book revealing the ills of England and the plight of the poor.

Kif Kehlmann, a young penniless writer, is rung in the middle of the night by the notorious con man and corporate criminal, Siegfried Heidl. About to go to trial for defrauding the banks of $700 million, Heidl offers Kehlmann the job of ghostwriting his memoir. He has six weeks to write the book, for which he'll be paid $10,000.

St Valentine’s Day, in the midst of the hot summer of 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return…. An Australian classic, the disappearance of three girls and a schoolteacher at Hanging Rock has captivated and intrigued audiences for generations. Jacqueline McKenzie’s interpretation of the best-selling novel captures all of the beauty of the Rock and illustrates the eerie sense of the unknown for which the story is legendary.

In a wintry landscape in the Swedish countryside, the paths of two women cross. One bleak March evening, Veronika, a young writer, arrives in a small village in pursuit of stillness and solitude to enable her to come to terms with grief and loss, and to complete a novel.

When Sarah Haywood rescues a young girl in trouble, she expects nothing in return. But her instinctive act of bravery puts her in the debt of a powerful and dangerous man, and he has other ideas. He lives by his own brutal code, and all debts must be repaid - in the only way he knows how. He offers Sarah a way to solve an impossible situation with her intolerable boss.

Phoeba Crupp is a gal of inconveniently independent tendencies, to the concern of her mother and her sisters although not of her father - an eccentric ex-accountant who moved his family from the city to a small farm in rural Australia in order to establish a vineyard - a decision Phoeba's mother bitterly (and loudly) resents. But Phoeba has loved it since the day they arrived. While her sister makes a play for the local squatter's son, Phoeba is content with her best friend Harriet, until circumstances push her towards the world of men and money.

It's a decade since the infamous Inquiry into corruption tore the state of Queensland apart. But for George Verney, disgraced journalist and bit player in the great scandals of his day, the Inquiry has never quite finished. After 10 years of self-imposed exile, drawn by the terrible death of a man who was his friend, he reluctantly returns to Brisbane, the city of his downfall. In a town he no longer recognises, and through an underworld that has forgotten him, George must seek out the other hidden survivors of his times, to confront the truth about their common past.

Every city, town and village has its memorial to war. Nowhere are these more eloquent than in Australia, generations of whose young men have enlisted to fight other people's battles – from Gallipoli and the Somme to Malaya and Vietnam. In The Great World, David Malouf gives a voice to that experience. But The Great World is more than a novel of war. Ranging over 70 years of Australian life, from Sydney's teeming King's Cross to the tranquil backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, it is a remarkable novel of self-knowledge and lost innocence, of survival and witness.

An affectionate and bittersweet portrait, David Malouf's first novel recreates the sleazy, tropical half city that was Brisbane and captures a generation locked in combat with the elusive Australian dream. Dante and Johnno are unlikely childhood friends, growing up in the bustle of steamy wartime Brisbane. Later, as teenagers, they learn about love and life amidst the city's pubs and public libraries, backyards and brothels, Moreton Bay figs and tennis parties. As adults, they make the great pilgrimage overseas and maintain an uneasy friendship as they seek to build their lives.

Peter Carey's first novel and first Miles Franklin winner, Bliss remains a work ahead of its time. It takes dying during a heart attack for Harry Joy to realise that the life he thought was happy is actually hellish. His wife is a cheat, his kids are a source of shame, his company spruiks carcinogens. While Harry is resuscitated, he will never be the same, for, having seen his own misery, he can no longer deny the injustice around him. But before he can be redeemed, a whole new perdition awaits him in this darkly funny and prescient fable about the idiocy of defiling nature.

Prim, an aid worker in the Sudan, is contacted by her sister Dimp, who is back in Australia. She has come into possession of revealing documents concerning their ancestors: transported from Manchester, their great-grandfather was the son of a convict, while their great grandmother was not only a convict, too, but Jewish. As the story unfolds, through letters and a journal, of how John Bettany made his fortune and of Sarah's time in the notorious Female Factory, the sisters gain new perspectives on their roots.

From Chloe Hooper, author of the phenomenal The Tall Man, comes a brilliant novel about sex and money. The Engagement is a taut psychological thriller in which the deft blurring of reality and dark fantasy rivals that of Luis Bunuel's classic Belle de Jour. Liese Campbell has an engagement for the weekend: to stay with Alexander Colquhoun, the well-mannered heir of a pastoral dynasty, at his property in western Victoria. Liese, an English architect in flight from the financial crisis, now works at her uncle's real-estate business in Melbourne.

Sarah is a smart young lawyer living in Bondi when she falls head over heels. Daniel is handsome and passionate. When Daniel introduces her to a charismatic young couple, rabbi Menachem Lev and his wife, Chani, despite herself, Sarah is drawn in by the vibrant community at the beachside synagogue. By the time the couple move to the Jamison Valley, where Menachem and Chani have established a community of believers, Sarah can’t imagine life without the joy, purpose and love she’s discovered. Four years on, youthful passion has given way to something darker.

A rampaging force of nature is wreaking havoc on the streets of Edinburgh, but has top shagger, drug dealer, gonzo-porn star, and taxi-driver ‘Juice’ Terry Lawson finally met his match in Hurricane ‘Bawbag’? Can Terry discover the fate of the missing beauty, Jinty Magdalen, and keep her idiot-savant lover, the man-child Wee Jonty, out of prison? Will he find out the real motives of unscrupulous American businessman and reality-TV star Ronald Checker?

Whales have always been the life-force of Angelus, a small town on the south coast of Western Australia. Their annual passing defines the rhythms of a life where little changes, and the town depends on their carcasses. So when the battle begins on the beaches outside the town, and when Queenie Cookson, a local girl, joins the Greenies to make amends for the crimes of her whaling ancestors, it can only throw everything into chaos.

Henrietta, privileged and sheltered, expected a smoothly comfortable society life in Washington when she married Sam Pollitt, a handsome self-made biologist. Ten years later, Henny is a skinny, screaming drudge with five children, a raging wreck of a woman driven by 'hate, horror, passion or contempt'. But Sam, whose impractical idealism has brought his family to near-ruin, is unchanged: still at sea in all adult affairs, an absurd hypocritical buffoon but a genius with children, except Louie, his eldest daughter.

The diet revolution is here. And it’s armed. Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you’re fat, to be noticed is to be judged. Or mocked. Or worse. She works answering fan mail for a popular teen magazine and is biding her time until her weight loss surgery. Only then can her 'true life' as a thin person finally begin.

Loveday Cardew prefers books to people, and her job in a York bookshop is her refuge. If you look carefully, you might see the first lines of the novels she loves the most tattooed on her skin, but there are secrets Loveday will never share. Into the bookshop come a poet, a lover, a friend and three mysterious deliveries, each of which stirs unsettling memories she wants to forget. Turning the pages of her past will be the hardest thing Loveday has ever done. Can she trust those around her?

Ort knows the sky is watching. And he knows all about watching, because he spends half the night listening at doors and peering through cracks. Especially since his dad’s accident. Everything at home is falling apart. His father’s withering away, his sister is consumed by rage and fear, his grandmother is losing it entirely and his mother is brave but no longer coping. And then, out of nowhere, a stranger appears at their door. Has he come to rescue Ort and his family, or is he just another problem?