Showing results by publisher "Bolinda audio" in Historical Fiction

Sydney, Christmas, 1901. Federation has been achieved but Australian women are yet to gain the right to vote in their new nation's elections and have a say in the laws that govern them. Bolshy, boisterous Frankie Merriweather is a fervent advocate for women's rights, determined to dedicate herself to the cause, never marrying or becoming a mother. She can't understand her artistic sister Ivy, who wants a life of ease and beauty with her soon-to-be fiancé, law student Patrick Earle.

The divine Phryne Fisher returns to lead another dance of intrigue. Seven Australian soldiers, carousing in Paris in 1918, unknowingly witness a murder and their presence has devastating consequences. Ten years later, two are dead ... under very suspicious circumstances. Phryne's wharfie mates, Bert and Cec, appeal to her for help. They were part of this group of soldiers in 1918 and they fear for their lives and for those of the other three men.

Dreaming the Bull continues the story of Breaca - now hailed Boudica, the Bringer of Victory, and her half brother, Bán, now an Officer in the Roman auxiliary cavalry. Each stands on the opposing side in a brutal war of attrition between the occupying army and the defeated tribes; each is determined to see the other dead. Caught between them are two children, son and daughter to two of the greatest warriors their world has ever seen, while in distant Rome, the Emperor Claudius holds the balance of lives in their hands.

It's 1967, the summer of love, and in swinging Melbourne Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin has been hauled out of exile in the Fraud Squad to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl, the daughter of a powerful and politically connected property developer. As Berlin's inquiries uncover more missing girls he gets an uneasy feeling he may be dealing with the city's first serial killer. Berlin's investigation leads him through inner-city discothèques, hip photographic studios, the emerging drug culture, and into the seedy back streets of St Kilda.

Following a heartbreaking struggle to survive as a Jewish child in Germany, Felix faces perhaps his greatest challenge - to find hope when he's lost almost everything. As Europe goes through the final agonizing stages of the war, Felix struggles to reconcile hatred and healing. He's helped by a new friend, but if he should lose her as well...

In the years following the death of Jesus Christ, John the Apostle, now a frail, blind old man, lives in forced exile on the desolate island of Patmos with a small group of his disciples. It is against this turbulent background and inspired by Jesus's radical message of love and forgiveness that John comes to dictate his Gospel.

It's 1963 and Sally Mitchell, the daughter of a New Zealand sheep farmer, is on her way to England. On a stop-over in Sydney, she impulsively takes a job as a governess at Barra Creek, and finds herself in a different world: one dominated by John Monroe and his strict and proper wife, Lorna. Here, Sally's life changes forever. Only Lorna knows the truth of a mysterious death and a terrible injustice. Now, in 2003, she searches for the former governess to and share her horrific secret.

It was easy for Elizabeth. She married the man she loved, bore him two children and made a home for him which was the envy of their friends. It was harder for Ruth. She married Elizabeth’s son and then found that, somehow, she could never quite measure up. Isolation, deceit and betrayal fill the gaps between the two individual women and between their different worlds. In this complex thriller, Philippa Gregory deploys all her insight into what women want and what women fear, as Ruth confronts the shifting borders of her own sanity.

Tyen is teaching mechanical magic at a school respected throughout the worlds. News arrives that the formidable ruler of all worlds is back and enforcing his old laws - including the one forbidding schools of magic. As teachers and students flee, Tyen is left with no home and no purpose...except the promise he made to Vella. Tyen must decide what he is willing to do to free her. After five years among the tapestry weavers of Schpeta, Rielle's peaceful new life has been shattered by a local war.

Once Were Warriors is Alan Duff's harrowing vision of his country's indigenous people two hundred years after the English conquest. In prose that is both raw and compelling, it tells the story of Beth Heke, a Maori woman struggling to keep her family from falling apart, despite the squalor and violence of the housing projects in which they live.

Dreaming the Serpent Spear is the magnificent final story of the world’s most famous warrior queen in in Manda Scott’s best-selling Boudica series. Britannia, AD 60: the tribes of Britannia are ready to seek bloody vengeance. Twenty thousand warriors are poised to reclaim their land from their captors. Now is their chance: the Roman governor has marched his legions west, leaving his capital and a vital port undefended. There is no going back.

It's September 1957, two days before the VFL grand final, and Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin, former bomber pilot and ex-POW, finally has some time off. But there's no rest for Charlie, a decent but damaged man still troubled by his wartime experiences. A recently widowed friend asks a favour and he's dropped into something a hell of a lot bigger than he bargained for when he discovers a Melbourne funeral parlour has been burying bodies with parts missing.

In 1945 two returning soldiers meet on a train bound for Zululand. They have nothing in common: Joe King is a British-South African landowner; Wilson Mpande a Zulu tribesman. Yet destiny will link them for generations. Michael King and Dyson Mpande, the sons of enemies, share a precious friendship that defies race and colour. But as the realities of apartheid transform an angry South Africa, the fate of the Zulu nation is as precarious as that of the endangered black rhinoceros, hunted for its horn. Each must fight for what he loves most.

As the eldest son of the Duke of Langford, Nathaniel Gresham sees his arranged marriage to Lady Violet Devere as just another obligation to fulfil – highly suitable, if unexciting. But as Violet sets out to transform herself from dowdy wallflower to dazzling young duchess-to-be, proper Nathaniel sets out to prove he's a match for his new bride's vivacity and daring.

America in 1968 is in turmoil and the leafy Holloman suburb of Carew is being silently terrorised by a series of vicious and systematic rapes. When finally one victim finds the courage to speak out and go to the police, the rapist escalates to murder. For Captain Carmine Delmonico, it seems to be a case with no clues. And it comes as the Holloman Police Department is troubled: A lieutenant is out of his depth, a sergeant is out of control, and into this mix comes the beautiful, ruthlessly ambitious new trainee, Helen MacIntosh, daughter of the influential president of Chubb University.

It is 1939, and working-class Evie Bishop has received a scholarship to study mathematics at Oxford when tragedy turns her life upside down. Evie must seek a new future for herself and, inspired to contribute to the war effort, joins the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as an Ops Room plotter. Posted to a fighter station on the Sussex Coast, Evie befriends two other WAAFs. But the German bombers seem to know more than they should about the base’s operations, and soon Evie, May and Jess are caught up in a world more dangerous than they ever imagined.

Jack Kelly and Paul Mann have survived one world war – will they survive another? When the Japanese threaten to invade the Pacific, the two men know that they must do everything in their power to protect their adopted country of Papua as well as their loved ones from an ambitious and merciless enemy. Lukas Kelly and Karl Mann are like brothers – just like their fathers – and both are determined to do their part for the Australian cause. While Karl works undercover in espionage, Lukas trains to be a pilot.

Edith and Frances, living with their mother on a tiny farm in the south-east of Australia, are visited by their cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram. The two young men are taking the long way home after working on an archaeological dig in Iraq. It is 1937. The modern world they say, is waiting to erupt. Among the tales they tell is the story of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, in ancient Mesopotamia.

As the armies of the British Empire march across the world in brutal conquest, Lieutenant Griff Whitaker resigns his commission under a burden of shame, intending to disappear – permanently. By uncanny chance, Ariadne and Griff are separately drawn to the secluded valley of the famed Jenolan Caves. Friendship blooms amid this place of peace and natural wonder. As desire ignites, Griff regains his passion for music and his violin, and begins to hope for another way of being in this world – while Ariadne's own talents and heightened perceptions might well defy the laws of science altogether.

It is 1919. The Great War has ended, but the Spanish flu epidemic is raging across Australia. Schools are closed, state borders are guarded by armed men, and train travel is severely restricted. There are rumours it is the end of the world. In the NSW town of Flint, Quinn Walker returns to the home he fled ten years earlier when he was accused of an unspeakable crime.