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

Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. It is no surprise, then, that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety - one of those men who's always got away with things and just keeps going...until the day we meet him, middle aged and in the boot of a car, and everything pointing towards a shallow grave.

At a crossroads in their lives, a couple arrives in Greece to house-sit for a friend. Emma is searching for a meaningful next step beyond work or motherhood, and Julian is struggling to come to terms with the failure of his academic career. Their visions for the future seem to be pulling them in different directions, and they hope that this summer away will help them to mend their frayed connection.

At once she is catapulted back to 2000, meeting the cool, confident English backpacker visiting Sydney, where their intense friendship led to plans to travel back to Europe together. But then Margot fell in love with Johnny, they opened a restaurant together and had a baby. Margot never made it to London, and Tess tragically died from ovarian cancer. The guilt Margot felt about letting her friend down has never completely subsided.

Jaxie dreads going home. His mum’s dead. The old man bashes him without mercy, and he wishes he was an orphan. And then, in one terrible moment, his life is stripped to little more than what he can carry and how he can keep himself alive. There’s just one person left in the world who understands him and what he still dares to hope for. But to reach her he’ll have to cross the vast saltlands on a trek that only a dreamer or a fugitive would attempt.

Meet Jimmy Flick. He's not like other kids - he's both too fast and too slow. Jimmy's mother, Paula, is the only one who can manage him. She teaches him how to count sheep so that he can fall asleep. She holds him tight enough to stop his cells spinning. It is only Paula who can keep Jimmy out of his father's way. But when Jimmy's world falls apart, he has to navigate life on his own and make things right.

Zoe, a sometime artist from California, has recently lost her husband. Martin, an engineer from Yorkshire, is alone after a messy divorce. Both have ended up in Cluny, central France, on a separate journey to walk the Camino: 2,000 kilometres to Santiago, in northwestern Spain. The Camino changes you, it's said. It's a chance to find a new version of yourself. But can these two very different people find each other?

Three scary monsters – racism, misogyny and ageism – roam through this mesmerising audiobook. This audiobook can be listened to in two different ways – either Lyle or Lili can be heard first. Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation. Lili’s family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she’s teaching in the south of France. She makes friends, observes the treatment handed out to North African immigrants and is creeped out by her downstairs neighbour.

In Canberra, a federal election looms and Cassius Calvert, Minister for Border Integrity, is facing a new hard-line policy regarding asylum-seekers. Off the Indonesian island of Dana, Isi Natoli, skipper of the Java Ridge, and a group of Australian surf tourists are anchored beside an idyllic reef. A few kilometres away, Roya and her mother are amongst the passengers fleeing persecution aboard the Talakar. When a storm breaks, these stories collide with chilling consequences....

Nic is a 45-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice. The person she's closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up. When Lena travels to her aunt's house to see if Nic's all right, she gets the shock of her life.

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading - and forgetting. But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a local myth, Ren is inexorably drawn into her impossible mission. As their lives entwine, unravel and erupt - as myths merge with reality - both Ren and the soldier are forced to confront what they regret, what they love and what they fear.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town. She finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget.

Narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct mammoth, this is the (mostly) true story of how a collection of prehistoric creatures came to be on sale at a natural history auction in New York in 2007. By tracing how and when these fossils were unearthed, Mammoth leads us on a funny and fascinating journey from the Pleistocene epoch to 19th-century America and beyond, revealing how ideas about science and religion have shaped our world.

Amy, Jin and Lucie are leading isolated lives in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy's mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets. Will opening their hearts to the rabbit help them to heal or only invite further tragedy?

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further—into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

It is early 1942, and Australia is in the midst of war. While working at a Japanese hospital in the port of Broome, Dr. Ibaraki is arrested and sent to Loveday internment camp in a remote corner of South Australia. As tensions at the isolated camp escalate, the doctor's beliefs are thrown into question, and he is forced to confront his past: the promise he made in Japan and its devastating consequences.

Perfect for fans of Haruki Murakami, Ghost Cities is a profound and highly imaginative novel that cleverly draws on Chinese history to explore the absurdity of modern life and work.

In the heart of a city blooming with flowers, three women face life-changing challenges. Driven by grief over the sudden death of her mother Corinne, Sydneysider Emma Taylor has taken refuge with her Parisian grandmother, Mattie, in her house with its secret garden. Determined to unlock the mysteries of Corinne's past, Emma's only clue is an enigmatic photograph.

Tom Hope doesn’t think he’s much of a farmer, but he’s doing his best. He can’t have been much of a husband to Trudy, either, judging by her sudden departure. It’s only when she returns, pregnant to someone else, that he discovers his surprising talent as a father. So when Trudy finds Jesus and takes little Peter away with her to join the holy rollers, Tom’s heart breaks all over again. Enter Hannah Babel, quixotic small-town bookseller: the second Jew, and the most vivid person, Tom has ever met. He dares to believe they could make each other happy.

Jena Chung plays the violin. She was once a child prodigy and now uses sex to fill the void left by fame. She's struggling a little. Her professional life comprises rehearsals, concerts, auditions and relentless practice; her personal life is spent managing the demands of her strict family and those of her creative friends, and hooking up. And then she meets Mark - much older and worldly wise - who consumes her. But at what cost to her dreams?

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.