Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Women's Fiction

Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers, and a dog-eared novel collection.

Griffin Callahan and Olivia Dawson were inseparable. Everyone in town knew it. But when Griff went off to Ag College, Liv told him it was over and fled her family's farm to study law. Griff had never understood her reasons but eventually accepted that first loves don't last. Until now. Currently back on the farm to help her twin brother with the harvest, Liv is the same gorgeous, laughing, hazel-eyed girl he'd always loved. Yet Griff can sense a difference, an uncertainty playing beneath the surface that wasn't there before.

England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector's wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances' love of books and secretly practiced Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn't report a reclusive and mysterious midwife to delay her going to gaol.

Hair stylist Kit Cooper is at the top of her game. She does the shows in Milan and Paris, tends to pop stars and celebrities, and has styled enough campaigns and magazine covers to last a lifetime. But Kit is ambitious. Restless. She can't help asking: what's next? One day, frustrated she can't find the perfect product for a look, she wonders ... could she make it herself?

When Laura discovers an old photo of her grandmother, Lillian, with an intriguing inscription on the back, she heads to the sleepy seaside town of Banksia Bay to learn the truth of Lillian’s past. But when she arrives, Laura finds a community where everyone seems to be hiding something. Virginia, owner of the iconic Beach Shack café, has kept her past buried for 60 years. As Laura slowly uncovers the tragic fragments of that summer so long ago, Virginia must decide whether to hold on to her secrets or set the truth free.

After a bitter divorce, Kate and her battle-scarred kids escape the city to the vast but run-down property of North Star. Bequeathed to her by her grandfather, it had been in the family for generations, but it doesn't take long for her realise that she's going to need every ounce of determination to restore the homestead to its former glory and fulfil her dream of turning it into a bush retreat. As she starts to make headway with the restoration and falls for a local bloke, Kate finally feels like life is going right for her. Then her ex-husband comes to town....

Fiona is devastated when her husband Charlie commits suicide after the accidental shooting of his friend. Though Fiona decides to keep farming their successful property, rumours that she intends to sell keep circulating. When Detective Burrows arrives to sign off on the investigation into Eddie's death, his suspicions are aroused by some strange anomalies at the scene. As Dave becomes increasingly convinced that something sinister is going on, Fiona finds herself dealing with disasters at the farm.

Vivian Molloy hardly expected to retire early from teaching, but for her husband, Dave, she'd do anything. But when Dave abandons her after a weekend away, she returns home to their picturesque town in Tasmania, shell-shocked and alone with nothing to fill her days. When an old colleague tries to rope her into teaching a writing class at the local library, Vivian is hesitant. How can she teach with her life falling apart? But it is the people she meets that help her remember who she is.

Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it's normal to be feeling overwhelmed. It doesn't help that she's always felt like the odd one out in her picture-perfect Connecticut family. But Maddy's latest low is devastatingly low, and she goes on antidepressants. She begins to feel good, dazzling in fact, and she soon spirals high into a wild and terrifying mania that culminates in a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Mary Anne is haunted by the death of her sister and worn down by depression. She's not a good wife and she's not a good mother. Then, one morning, she wakes to find her life completely unfamiliar to her, and she leaves her family to become a country singer. Vivian vows to be nothing like her mother, Mary Anne. Wounded by her mother's lack of love and emancipated by her lack of attention, adolescent Vivian looks for knowledge in dark places: news reports about child murderers, fashion magazines, boys' bedrooms, and small acts of violence.

You Must Remember This is an eloquent jumble of a family story, as experienced by Grace, an elderly woman with dementia trying to get her moorings in a worsening storm. It contemplates the perils of remembering and forgetting, making your own way in the world and how we seem bound to repeat the patterns of the past. Most profoundly it's about sensing what it's like to live on while your faculties dim, and about finding peace.

The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and devote her life to the study she is denied as a woman. So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of the revered Fulda monastery, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome.

Jason Weaver just wants to be left alone. It was a tough transition from his army days to civilian life, and he's looking forward to settling into a solitary life. Tilly Hollis is working two jobs to save for her dream career: running an equine therapy program. Tilly loves her horses more than anything, and after losing her husband and business partner just a few years earlier, she's determined to make it work on her own. When Jason walks into the café where Tilly works, they're immediately drawn to one another. But can they overcome their pasts to find a future together?

Three friends travel to Marcoy, a regional town for a weekend away from family life. One year ago, a tragic incident splintered the group, and the women have seen little of each other since. Melissa has slept much of the past twelve months away, and she hopes this weekend will help her re-emerge from the depression she's been living with. Bridie worries that she is not a good enough mother. She worries about most things, really, but she's dealing with things just fine. At least that's what she tells herself. In fact, she only agreed to this weekend away out of a sense of duty.

Marlowe and Harper share a bond deeper than most sisters, shaped by the loss of their mother in childhood. For Harper, living with what she calls the Up syndrome and gifted with an endless capacity for wonder, Marlowe and she are connected by an invisible thread, like the hum that connects all things. For Marlowe, they are bound by her fierce determination to keep Harper, born with a congenital heart disorder, alive. Now 25, Marlowe is living her own life abroad. Then she receives a devastating call that Harper’s heart is failing.

Winter Robins is a happy enough child, growing up in the north of England, with parents who love her and the constant companion of a twin brother, but a cold wind blows through when her mother dies. Her father turns to the bottle, her grandmother struggles to cope, and she and her brother are sent to live in Western Australia with family their mother had never mentioned.

PR executive Gabrielle Moreau knows she has an easy life, but when her business partner claims she lacks career passion, she takes ownership of a dilapidated pub in a tiny riverside settlement to prove she can be a success without falling back on her privilege. Eighteen months ago, Settlers Bridge stonemason Hayden Paech had it all: a job he loved, good mates and a close family. All he needed was the right woman to come along, and he was ready to settle down. But one poor choice stole that chance, and he'll never risk caring for anyone again.

In 1932, Wanny Woldstad, a young widow, travels to Svalbard, daring to enter the Norwegian trappers’ fiercely guarded male domain. She must prove to Anders Sæterdal, her trapping partner who makes no secret of his disdain, that a woman is fit for the task. Over the course of a Svalbard winter, Wanny and Anders will confront polar bears, traverse glaciers, withstand blizzards and the dangers of sea ice, and hike miles to trap Arctic fox, all in the frigid darkness of the four-month polar night.

Nic is a 45-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice. The person she's closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up. When Lena travels to her aunt's house to see if Nic's all right, she gets the shock of her life.

Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Ann Baker's childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer Ethan Oswald. Haunted by what happened, Ruth has long been convinced Oswald had other victims. But no one has ever believed her. After dropping out of college and failing to prove her serial killer theory, Ruth is bartending when she hears that another young girl has gone missing from her home town. With Oswald now deceased, she begins to suspect he had an accomplice. A partner in crime who is still active today.