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

In the tradition of gloriously absorbing, lush and moving women's fiction by authors such as Kate Morton, Lucinda Riley and Joanne Harris comes Precious Things. Normandy, France, 1891: a young woman painstakingly sews an intricate beaded collar to her wedding dress, the night before her marriage to someone she barely knows. Yet Aimee longs for so much more....

'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.

Sydney, 1942 - the year of the fall of Singapore, the bombing of Darwin, and the surprise attack on Sydney Harbour by Japanese midget submarines. Australia is surely doomed to fall to the Japanese.... In the confessional, Father Frank Darragh hears how his community is changing - how the very real fear of invasion by the Japanese is leading people to challenge what the church teaches is right or wrong. Under the threat of death, people do things they would never dream of in peacetime.

From the author of the phenomenal and best-selling Tales of the Otori series comes a new stand-alone historical novel set in 19th century Japan. For centuries Japan has been on its own; isolated by choice from the rest of the world. But the Western powers are now at its shores, its government is crumbling and revolution is building. The age of the samurai is ending and in its place a new Japan will be born. Into this turmoil steps a young woman.

Born into the House of Romanov to the all-powerful Peter the Great and his wife, Catherine, a former serf, beautiful Tsarevna Elizabeth is the envy of the Russian empire. She is insulated by luxury and spoiled by her father, who dreams for her to marry King Louis XV of France and rule in Versailles. But when a woodland creature gives her a Delphic prophecy, her life is turned upside down. Her volatile father suddenly dies, her only brother has been executed and her mother takes the throne of Russia.

Istanbul, Turkey, 1955. Benedict Hitchens, once a world-renowned archaeologist, is now a discredited - but still rather charming - shell of his former self. Once full of optimism and adventure, his determination to prove that Achilles was an historical figure led him to his greatest love, Karina, on the island of Crete and to his greatest downfall, following the disappearance of an enigmatic stranger, Eris. He has one last chance to restore his reputation, solve the mystery of Eris and prove his Achilles theory. But it is full of risk and possibly fatal consequences....

A fabled house. A fabulous fortune. Beautiful, identical twins...a tale of dark shadows and extraordinary deception. Dark shadows fall across the golden summer of 1886. Naive country girl Ida Garfield longs to escape the farm. When Miss Matilda Gregory, the elegant mistress of Summersby House, offers Ida employment as a housemaid, Ida leaps at the chance. Yet it's not for her servant's skills that she's wanted. It's her inquisitiveness.... Before Ida starts her first day, however, Miss Gregory is found dead.

For the past 50 years, the golden treasures of Troy have been lying in the basement of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Now Germany and Turkey are both reclaiming the treasures. American lawyer Sarah Kaplan is drawn into the debate when the Turkish government employs her to get the treasure back. But things go horribly wrong and Sarah ends up in a Turkish gaol. Sarah's only link with the outside world is the amulet she wears, passed down to her from her great-grandmother. Engraved with the symbols of the bull and owl of Troy, the amulet's origin is a mystery.

1838. The Ohio River. May Bedloe is a seamstress to her cousin, the flamboyant actress Comfort Virtue. A wealthy abolitionist and notorious opportunist is quick to lure Comfort to her cause - a cause, it seems, that has no use for quiet little May. Casting out on her own for the first time, May lands a job on Hugo Cushin's wondrous Floating Theatre - a flatboat that sails the Ohio performing plays to the townsfolk along the way. Though shy at first, May quickly finds herself drawn into the eccentric troupe of characters aboard her new home.

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.

Should you find yourself in need of a discreet investigation into any sort of mystery, crime or puzzling circumstances, think of Jesperson and Lane.... For several years Miss Lane was companion, amanuensis, collaborator and friend to the lady known to the Psychical Societs only as Miss X - until she discovered that Miss X was actually a fraud.

English aristocrat Isabel de Rolland is sent to Australia to marry Marmaduke Gamble, the debts of her family being paid in exchange for the respectability her lineage gives the rich ex-convict Gamble family. Despite all odds, Isabel and Marmaduke develop a grudging friendship that over time blooms into something more. But the secrets of the past continue to haunt them and the madness in both their families threatens their hard-won happiness.

In the forest, armed men from the new settlement ventured to investigate strange lights and found three fires burning, a child at their center, tethered to a stake. The boy appeared to be white, perhaps three or four years old, unable to speak. He watched the men with the darting, fearful eyes of a wild animal and at their approach he crouched, snatched a stick from a fire, and snarled. So begins Dirk Wildlight's life in the tiny Victorian settlement of Tilmore.

When Catherine's secret lover dies suddenly, she has nowhere to turn to except her work. A middle-aged curator in a London museum, Catherine is given a very particular project: a box of intricate clockwork parts that appear to be the remains of a 19th century automaton - a beautifully made mechanical bird. When she discovers the diary of the man who commissioned the machine, she is partially rescued from one obsession by another: who was Henry Brandling?

London, 1888. Abandoned by her mother at the age of seven, Jerusha Carey is no stranger to being left behind. Eleven years later she is married to Dan Applebee, an older, reliable farmer from Kent. Jerusha believes she has finally found the security she has always craved. But then disaster strikes. Kent, 1904. Two years after the sudden death of her husband, Jerusha is alone once again. But the arrival of the enigmatic Joe Finch, a traveller seeking work on the farm and a home for his daughter, sets Jerusha's life on a new path, giving her hope for her future.

In a darkened cell, a brutally deposed dictator lies crippled - deprived of his power, his freedom and his eyes. On the edge of utter despair, his only companion is the young boy who brings him his meagre rations, a mere child who fears his own shadow. But to one who has held and lost the highest power, one thing alone is crystal clear: even emperors were mere children once. Ten years later the new ruler's son watches uneasily over his father's empire.

Ben Thomas made a mistake. A one-night stand with Natasha Peters has got her pregnant. Now Ben has two options – give up on his dream as a comedian and get a day job, or abandon his responsibility and be a total dick. Only when Tash tells the full truth does a third possibility emerge.

When Rosie’s parents were involved in a train accident, her mother was killed and her father left crippled, unable to earn a living and relying on Rosie to keep the wolf from the door. With her mother gone and her sweetheart Adam away in the army, Rosie is lonely. She eagerly awaits the letters from him, but they never come. As she grows more disillusioned, Adam’s best friend Doug goes out of his way to be charming and attentive. Alone and confused, Rosie blossoms under his evil influence.

Sydney, 1941: Olive and Ivy may be identical twins, but they couldn’t be more different. While Olive is focused on marrying a man appropriate to her station, Ivy wants to do more, to be more. Joining the Australian Women’s Army Service is the perfect chance for her to escape her family obligations and make a real difference in the world. She doesn’t expect serving her country to lead to romance...or devastating betrayal and unthinkable grief. Sydney, 2008: Escaping her husband’s betrayal and an impossible personal loss, Madeline returns home to Sydney to nurse her broken heart.

2022. Stained-glass expert Rhoda Sullivan is called to Telton Hall to examine a window designed by an Italian prisoner of war during WWII. It should be a quick job but when she and the owner's son, Nate Hartwell, discover a body underneath one of the flagstones in the chapel, Rhoda cannot let the mystery go. She knows what it's like to miss someone who is missing—her twin brother disappeared just before their 18th birthday, and she has been looking for him for nearly a decade. But when the threats start, it's clear someone doesn't want the secrets of Telton Hall to come to light.