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

Dedicated and ambitious, Emma Swann is about to start a gruelling year as a surgical registrar at the prestigious Mount teaching hospital. She's excited to join her adored older brother Andy in pursuing the same career as their father, an eminent surgeon who made his name at The Mount. But the pressure of living up to his distinguished reputation is nothing compared with the escalating stress Emma experiences as a registrar.

Jena Chung plays the violin. She was once a child prodigy and now uses sex to fill the void left by fame. She's struggling a little. Her professional life comprises rehearsals, concerts, auditions and relentless practice; her personal life is spent managing the demands of her strict family and those of her creative friends, and hooking up. And then she meets Mark - much older and worldly wise - who consumes her. But at what cost to her dreams?

Two women awaken from a drugged sleep to find themselves imprisoned in an abandoned property in the middle of a desert. The Natural Way of Things is a gripping, starkly imaginative exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, and of what it means to hunt and be hunted. But most of all, it is the story of two friends, their sisterly love and courage.

86, and ‘beautiful, radical ideas’ are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students—and Kit. He claims to be in a "deconstructed" relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, her work on the Woolfmother falls into disarray.

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.

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.

After the death of her husband, Adam, in an horrific plane crash, Gemma Sinclair defies community expectations—and Adam's dying words—by deciding to hang on to Billbinya, the 10,000-hectare station he bequeathed to her. As if Gemma's grief and the job of looking after Billbinya aren't enough, a wave of innuendo soon sweeps the community that Adam's plane crash was no accident. Police officers confirm the rumour when they visit Gemma and tell her Adam's death was almost certainly related to his involvement in a cattle and sheep duffing ring.

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.

Fact and fiction meld into one in this stirring family saga set against shifting landscapes and pivotal moments in Australian history. Lillian was born in 1892, the same year Henry Lawson wrote 'The Drover's Wife' and cemented his place in Australia's literary canon. When Lillian reads the short story as a teenager, she is convinced that it is based upon her own family and becomes determined to prove it. But as the years pass, the truth becomes more problematic, and Lillian must decide what is more important: holding onto the past or embracing the future.

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.

From the Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize for The Natural Way of Things. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her? They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house.

When she arrived in New York on her 18th birthday, carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Now, just one month later, she is the city’s latest Jane Doe, an unidentified murder victim. Ruby Jones is also trying to start over; she travelled halfway around the world only to find herself lonelier than ever. Until she finds Alice’s body by the Hudson River. From this first, devastating encounter, the two women form an unbreakable bond.

Lauren Ramsey is so concerned about the welfare of a boy in her kindy class, she doesn't realise her own daughter, Skye, needs help. At 14 Skye finds the only person who will listen to her problems is Tamara Thompson, the manager of her favourite clothes shop. Tamara knows what it's like to be a troubled teen, and despite her successful career and loving partner, her sense of worthlessness still threatens to overwhelm her.... Sometimes you have to resolve the past before you can face the future.

Best mates Teddy and Alice are hired hands with flexible moral boundaries. Whatever the mess, they can be relied upon to fix it with no questions asked. But sometimes it's not as simple as cleaning up. Teddy is searching the suburbs for a missing teenager with her occasional sidekick Art, while Alice's mission is to drive one of Australia's richest men along Victoria's east coast to his final resting place before anybody finds out he's dead. But when a surprise revelation sees their cases collide, Teddy and Alice turn the tables on their wealthy employers to shake out the truth.

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.

Gin in one hand, paintbrush in the other, Franny Calderwood has turned her back on the world, or at least the world she used to love. Having lost her husband, Frank, in tragic circumstances three years earlier, 65-year-old Franny copes the only way she knows how: by removing herself completely from the life she had before. Franny lives a life of decadent seclusion, with only her two dogs, Whisky and Soda, a stuffed cat, cocktails and the memory of Frank for company.

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.

When Sylvie, a single mother yearning for a creative spark, meets Michael, a renowned painter, she feels something she hasn't felt in years. Impulsively she decides to uproot her life and move to Isaiah, an artists' colony, with her teenage daughter Alice. To Sylvie, Isaiah seems to offer a second chance at the things she's sacrificed—freedom, love and art—but her relationship with Michael begins to affect the closeness she once had with her daughter. Without her mother's knowledge, Alice engages in an act of teenage defiance that will shape both their lives.

Focused on pursuing her dream of becoming a doctor in suburban Sydney, Taylor doesn't have time for love—yet it seems life has other plans when she catches the eye of charismatic Zac. However, betrayal and the financial implications of her parents' impending divorce could destroy both her plans and her passion. Escorting her distraught mother to the far side of the country, she is forced to embrace a new life in the stark South Australian countryside. Stressed and disheartened, Taylor starts to experience disturbing dreams.

Mackenzie Henry is happy enough with her life in the small town of Summerfield. She loves her work as a saddler, the bushland surrounding her home, and the feeling of safety her beloved grandfather brings her. She doesn't want anything—or anybody—else. So when her grandfather asks her to lead the fight to rehabilitate land destroyed by an open-cut mine, and work in front of the camera with a Norwegian documentary-making team, Mackenzie fears her life will be tipped on its axis. And she's right.