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

Luna Lewis is white. But her friends aren't, nor are her brothers, nor her one-time Princess of Indonesia–finalist stepmother. After transforming from pudgy preteen to ‘exotic' beauty, Luna reinvents herself as ‘Luna Lu' and takes her ticket out of the most isolated city on earth. However, as her international modelling career approaches its expiry date, Luna must grapple with what she's sacrificed—and who she's become—in her mission to conquer the world.

On a frozen January evening in 1944, Nancy Levin and her three-year-old daughter, Emily, flee their East London home as an air raid siren sounds. Not far away, Diana Meadows and her own three-year-old daughter, Abigail, are lost in the blackout as the air raid begins. They hurry to the safety of the underground tube station, but in wartime people will do anything to survive - even at the expense of others.

In 1916, Rosie Marchand leaves her hometown of Albert on the Somme. A survivor of the war, she finds shelter in the home of her cousin, photographer Louis Thuillier, a shell-shocked veteran of Verdun, who with his wife Antoinette takes pictures of soldiers behind the lines. For Australian Bill Foster, the war is a faraway adventure where he is driven to go and join his brother. Bill is in love with Isabella De Luca, a passionate Queensland woman, and promises to return to her. However, Mick De Luca, Isabella's father, vows to do all he can to ensure this doesn't happen.

London, 1943: war and dwindling resources are taking their toll on the staff of Partridge Press. The pressure is on to create new books to distract readers from the grim realities of the war, but Partridge's rising star, Alice Cotton, leaves abruptly and cannot be found. Alice's secret absence is to give birth, and although her baby's father remains unnamed, Alice's mother promises to help her raise her tiny granddaughter, Eadie. Instead, she takes a shocking action. Theo Bloom is employed by the American office of Partridge.

July, 1945. The war in Europe is finally over. But Auguste Duchene, who survived occupied Paris at great personal cost, cannot escape his past. He finds himself helping the Allies to pursue a Gestapo war criminal through the ravaged and dangerous streets of Berlin. Duchene soon learns, however, that, although one global conflict may have ended, another is beginning, and he is in a deadly race against the Russians as they hunt the same man. And, once again, at the heart of all he does, are his extraordinary wife Sabine and his beloved daughter Marienne.

Will Power has returned from the Northern Territory shaken, stirred and generally discombobulated. It is late 1942, and, demeaningly enough, he finds himself playing a pantomime dame. If only this was his only worry.... As his great hero, Shakespeare, once noted, 'When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions'. Can Will finally overcome his tendency to be the living embodiment of Murphy's law?

To lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like murder. In New South Wales in 1888, Louisa Collins was sentenced to hang after being tried multiple times for the alleged murders of her two husbands. The testimony of her young daughter helped to decide her fate. This clever and compelling novel recreates Louisa’s time in her Darlinghurst prison cell as she reflects on her life and on the grief and loss that delivered her to this place.

1941. She is a celebrated writer stranded in Paris. He is an enigmatic foreigner with a dangerous secret. Together they must find a way to outwit the Nazis in order to survive. Armed with a precious first edition of Finnegans Wake and an even more precious stash of cigarettes to barter with, Eleanor Gorton Clarke joins the sea of refugees escaping Paris for the Spanish frontier. But when a stranger kills two German soldiers to save her life, Eleanor is forced on the run with her rescuer, pursued by a detective from the Wehrmacht.

Poignant and uplifting, political and personal loyalties are tested in 19th-century Sydney. Colonial Sydney in the final weeks of 1899: a city striving for union and nationhood but dogged by divisions so deep they threaten to derail not just the Federation but the colony itself. There are chasms opening, too, when a clandestine note reaches the wrong hands in the well-to-do household of aspiring politician Alasdair Dunlevy and his wife, Eleanor.

Paris, 1810. Haunted by the French Revolution, Marie Tussaud has locked herself away in her shop with the death masks she was forced to make to avoid the guillotine. Philidor, a famous magician, offers her the chance to accompany him to London to assist in creating a wax automaton that will bring them both money and success. Following a disastrous performance on their opening night in which the wax on their prized spectacle melts, the eccentric duke, William Cavendish, invites them to his rambling estate, Welbeck.