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

In the waning years of the 19th century there was a hunger for tribal artifacts, spawning collecting voyages from museums and collectors around the globe. In 1897, one such collector, a Chicago insurance magnate, sponsors an expedition into the South Seas to commemorate the completion of his company's new skyscraper - the world's tallest building. The ship is to bring back an array of Melanesian weaponry and handicrafts, but also several natives related by blood....

Five days before Christmas, Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper sits at his desk at the Johannesburg major crimes squad, ready for his holiday in Mozambique. A call comes in: a respectable white couple has been assaulted and left for dead in their bedroom. The couple’s teenage daughter identifies the attacker as Aaron Shabalala— the youngest son of Zulu Detective Constable Samuel Shabalala—Cooper’s best friend and a man to whom he owes his life.

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.

As WWII ravages the world and the Japanese Empire has set its sights on Australia, the Americans have come to save us. But not all soldiers are heroes and not all heroes are soldiers. Sergeant Joe Washington, a US Military Police, loves music and photography but spends his days delving into the sordid and petty crimes committed by the thousands of American troops passing through town. While trying to find stolen gasoline stores, he is sent to investigate the body of an American soldier found dumped in a cemetery. Suddenly Joe is up against notorious detective Frank Bischof.

I want to die. I do not want to be mad.... It is like my body is a house, and some visitor has come and attacked the person who lived there. After an Australian patrol officer commits suicide on a remote New Guinea island in 1959, five witnesses are called to a government inquiry. Each has a disturbing story to tell: strand by strand, the mystery of the officer's past is unravelled. But what of other visitants, like the unidentified flying object and the cargo cult it has inspired on the island?

Set in a remote area of Western Australia, The Fringe Dwellers is the story of two part-Aboriginal sisters, Noonah and Trilby, who leave the mission they call home to return to their family's camp on the fringe of white society. Noonah is pragmatic and accepts her position, only wanting to raise money for the family. But Trilby refuses to believe that her current position will define the rest of her life.

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....

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.

Sydney, 1942. Pearl is 18, beautiful and impetuous. She plays saxophone in an all-girl jazz band at the Trocadero and occasionally sits in on underground gigs with her twin brother Martin, who also plays the sax. On one such evening black GI and jazz legend James Washington blows into her life, and nothing is ever the same again, especially not Pearl. A love story begins to unfold against the blacked-out nights and rumour-filled days of a city in the grip of war.

It is 1905 and brothers Yung and Shun eke out a living as green grocers near Wellington's bustling Chinatown. The pair work to support their families back in China, but know they must adapt if they are to survive and prosper in their adopted home. Nearby, Katherine McKechnie struggles to raise her rebellious son and daughter following the death of her husband Donald. A strident right-wing newspaperman, Donald terrorised his family, though was idolised by his son. Chancing upon Yung's grocery store one day, Katherine is touched by his unexpected generosity. In time, a clandestine relationship develops....

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.

It is1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence. Lizzie Fawkes has grown up in radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. Diner believes that Lizzie's independent, questioning spirit must be coerced and subdued. She belongs to him.

Lucy Nolan is the golden girl. The only daughter of local grocers, Sally and Mike Nolan, she's grown up in a home of total love and security. The one thing her heart desires is that Jack Hanson might ask her to marry him, and when he does eventually propose, Lucy is prepared to give up everything to be with him—even though it means leaving her beloved parents to live abroad where Jack has been offered an exciting business opportunity. But then, almost on the eve of the marriage itself, tragedy strikes.

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.

Barely five feet tall, suicidally courageous, obsessed with tigers, and sexually eccentric, Mabel Stark was the greatest female tiger trainer in history. Clad in her leather suits and married five times, she was the Mae West of tiger taming. In the 1910s and 1920s, when circus was the most popular entertainment in America, Mabel Stark was the biggest attraction for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus.

The week before Christmas, 1929, Eoghan O'Keenan loses his factory job, and has to flee the slums of Chippendale with his seven-year-old sister Agnes. On the north side of Sydney at Lavender Bay, Olivia Greene is working on her latest millinery creations and dreaming of becoming the next Coco Chanel. A job on the Harbour Bridge for Eoghan, designing couture for the Governor's wife for Olivia, and a chance meeting in the Botanic Gardens sees the beginning of an unconventional romance.

Wild Cat Falling is the story of an Aboriginal youth, a 'bodgie' of the early sixties who grows up on the ragged outskirts of a country town, falls into petty crime, goes to gaol, and comes out to do battle once more with the society who put him there.Its publication in 1965 marked a unique literary event, for this was the novel from the Aboriginal community to be published in Australia.

Yorkshire, 1923. Sonny Cowgill is slowly regaining his memory. He was declared missing in action in the First World War, presumed dead. But Sonny’s beloved wife Rachel found him and brought him home. As he rebuilds his relationship with his wife and learns how to be a father to the son he never knew he had, memories begin to resurface. Sonny remembers something that the Cowgill family thought lost forever – the whereabouts of his eldest brother.

The marriage of Marcia and Curt Ratheter seems idyllically happy. As much in love now as on their wedding day, nothing can mar their joy. But one fateful day in 1931, Curt disappears, leaving Marcia her two daughters bereft. Then Barty Bendall admits his love to Marcia. Desperately trying to forget the past, Marcia moves to Blackburn with him, but soon Barty sinks into bad ways, tyrannising the family. He particularly focuses his aggression on Polly, Curt and Marcia’s first-born, blonde as an angel but afflicted since birth with an ominous shadow over her health.

Remi Victoire grew up in a theatre troupe based in Paris after being abandoned by his mother. He has a good heart but is a womaniser and a drunkard. His faithful best friend is Pascal, who shares with Remi the experiences of the theatre trouple. Saskia is a Prussian contortionist who joins the two men on their storytelling journeys. They - along with the other young members of the theatre company - are the ‘lost children’, caught up in the trials and tribulations of a chaotic period of war and peace, which also marks the transition from oral to written storytelling.