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

Missus takes us behind the lives of Hughie and Mumma, out of the gritty realism of inner city slum life and into the past of the stations,the bush and the country towns. We meet them as they were in the early 1920s, drifter Hugh Darcy, the unwilling hero who sweeps the dreamily innocent Margaret Kilker off her feet.

Seventeenth-century Amsterdam is a city in the grip of tulip mania, basking in the wealth it has generated. Sophia’s husband Cornelis, an ageing merchant, is among those grown rich from this exotic new flower. To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his young bride. But as the portrait grows, so does the passion between Sophia and the painter; and as ambitions, desires and dreams breed an intricate deception, their reckless gamble propels their lives towards a thrilling and tragic conclusion.

This breathtaking novel travels more than a century between two love stories set in the Australian seaside town of Lighthouse Bay. In 1901, a ship sinks off the coast of Lighthouse Bay in Australia. The only survivor is Isabella Winterbourne - escaping her loveless marriage and the devastating loss of her son - who clutches a priceless gift meant for the Australian Parliament. Suddenly, this gift could be her ticket to a new life, free from the bonds of her husband and his overbearing family.

Behind the uneasy trees rose the hills, and beyond them again the country of the lost, huge wilderness between this last haunt of civilisation and the unpeopled sea. Exhausted and losing faith, an Anglican minister flees his mission in Australia's northwest for the vast emptiness of the outback. In the soul country of the desert, the old man searches for the islands of the Aboriginal dead, reflecting on past transgressions and on his life's work.

After her fiancé dies in the sinking of the Royal Oak, Mary finds herself stationed in Orkney, still battling her grief. With Iris and Sally by her side, she is gradually overcoming her loss and is surprised to be helped by the irascible Joe. Joe is a signalman aboard the Kelpie and his cheeky Morse code messages to Mary while she's on shift bring her cheer and exasperation in equal measure. With Christmas round the corner, Mary is opening herself back up to the festive spirit—and to love.

At twenty-something, Alice is eager for the milestones of adulthood: leaving home, choosing a career, finding friendship and love on her own terms. But with each step she takes she feels the sharp tug of invisible threads: the love and worry of her parents, who want more than anything to keep her from harm. Her father fears for her safety to an extraordinary degree - but why?

Three women linked by their blood, their dreams...and their sins. From Leningrad in the '70s to America and London in the present day, Kimberley Freeman's new novel follows the lives of two sisters, Lena and Natalia, and their cousin, Sofi, as they move away from Russia and all they have known. Despite promising to always take care of each other, a pact to meet every winter is shattered as their lives change and long-held resentments begin to surface. Can that resentment turn to hatred? To murder?

Naomi and Sally Durance are daughters of a dairy farmer from the Macleay Valley. Bound together in complicity by what they consider a crime, when the Great War begins in 1914 they hope to submerge their guilt by leaving for Europe to nurse the tides of young wounded. They head for the Dardanelles on the hospital ship Archimedes. Their education in medicine, valour, and human degradation continues on the Greek island of Lemnos, then on the Western Front. Here, new outrages - gas, shell-shock - present themselves.

Robert Sullivan has been left to raise three-year-old Nancy and her seven-year-old brother Jack by himself.Unable to cope, Robert is driven to abandon his children to those he believes can provide them with a better life. However, he quickly has a change of heart and decides to go back for them. But on the way there, he is involved in a horrific accident.

Like many of his mates from the bush, Frank Ballantyne is keen to join the grand adventure and do his bit. Specially as a chestfull of medals might impress the currently unimpressed parents of his childhood sweetheart. So Frank ups his age and volunteers with his horse, Daisy...and his dad. In the deserts of Egypt and Palestine he experiences all the adventure he ever wanted, and a few things he wasn't expecting. Heartbreak, love, and the chance to make the most important choice of his life.

Hated for his cruel and vicious nature, ruling his family with an iron hand from his sickbed, tyrannical patriarch Adam Penhallow is found murdered the day before his birthday. His entire family had assembled for his birthday celebration, and every one of them had the ways and means to commit the crime. As accusations and suspicion turn in one direction and then another, the claws and backstabbing come out, and no one is exempt from the coming implosion.

Following a humiliating experience involving the man she thought she’d marry, Iris Tredwick signs up to the Wrens in order to escape and - hopefully - find ‘the right sort’ of man to please her mother. After a bumpy start, Iris manages to befriend outspoken Mary and dreamer Sally as they are sent to their first posting - in Orkney. There she meets engineer Rob, whose flirtatious nature both charms and confounds straight-laced Iris. Much more appropriate for her is local doctor Stewart, if only she felt the same spark for him as she does for Rob.

Sharply observed, bitter and humorous, The Long Prospect is a story of life in an Australian industrial town. Growing up neglected in a seedy boardinghouse, 12-year-old Emily Lawrence befriends Max, a middle-aged scientist who encourages her to pursue her intellectual interests. Innocent Emily will face scandal, suburban snobbery and psychological torment. Originally published in 1958, The Long Prospect was described as second only to Patrick White's Voss in postwar Australian literature.

Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.

A compelling tale of two women separated by a century who discover long-buried secrets in an Australian manor house. In 1891, Tilly Kirkland is reeling with shock and guilt after her tempestuous marriage ends in horrific circumstances. Fleeing to the farthest place she knows, Tilly takes a job on Ember Island in Moreton Bay, Australia, where she becomes the governess to the prison superintendent's precocious young daughter, Nell.

Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside.

‘I can take him away from you any time I want.’ Her mistress’s cruel taunt is deeply disturbing to Jenny Dickens—why would Claudia be interested in a servant’s sweetheart? All the same, Jenny reckons without Claudia’s vicious nature. Using a wily trick, Claudia seduces Frank who, overcome with shame, leaves the household for a new life in Blackburn. Losing Frank is just the first of many disasters that leave Jenny struggling to cope alone.

Acclaimed-author Elizabeth Harrower's stunning debut, first published in 1957. Esther Prescott has seen little of life outside her wealthy family's Rose Bay mansion - until flashy Stan Peterson comes roaring up the drive in his huge American car and barges into her life. Within a fortnight they are living in his Kings Cross flat. Moody and erratic, proud of his well-bred wife yet bitterly resentful of her privilege, Stan is involved with his former girlfriend and a series of shady business deals.

Rita Blackthorn’s heart was barren and hard. In all of her life, she had never truly loved. But she had hated. Beneath the loving gaze of her daughter’s soft green eyes, her heart swelled with dark and dangerous emotions. Young Cathy Blackthorn has never experienced any loving response from her mother. It is her beloved Aunt Margaret, with a heart as big and warm as the summer sky, who has been more of a mother than her own could ever be. And when Cathy’s father brings home a London street urchin, Cathy despairs of ever winning her parents’ love.

1882. Laura Webster and her father are the stalwart keepers of Benevolence Island Lighthouse, a desolate place stranded in the turbulent Bass Strait. When a raging storm wrecks a schooner just offshore, the few survivors take shelter with the Websters, awaiting rescue from the mainland. But some of the passengers have secrets that lead to dreadful consequences, the ripples of which echo far into the future. 2020. Nina and her team of volunteers arrive on Benevolence to work on repairs, with plans to open up the island to tourists.