Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Women's Fiction

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.

"Would it be a serious breach of etiquette to run out on my own wedding?" This is the question Becky Steele asks herself as she clings to the window ledge of her parents' bathroom, grimly regarding the 10-foot drop into the dustbins below. She stares in disbelief at the meringue dress for which she has drunk only skimmed water for four weeks to fit into. Why can't Becky commit to Julian, human rights lawyer, and her Knight in Shining Armani? Yes, Julian's the right man, but has she had enough wrong ones?

Of all the nightmare options that passed through Antonia Heaveringham's head when her husband Hugo uttered the words, 'I've got something to tell you,' a coming out speech never figured. Suddenly alone in their adopted home of Sydney, with no friends save for her six-year-old son Tom and a pair of jeweled Jimmy Choo mules, Antonia soon finds that an attractive single woman is not nearly so welcome on the champagne social scene as the wife of a glamorous English aristocrat.

When Arden Maynor was six years old, she was swept away in a terrifying storm and went missing for days. Against all odds, she was found alive, clinging to a storm drain. Fame followed and so did fans, creeps and stalkers. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and left Widow Hills behind. Twenty years later, Olivia, as she is now known, is plagued by night terrors. She often finds herself out of bed in the middle of the night, sometimes streets away from her home. Then one evening she jolts awake in her yard, with the corpse of a man at her feet.

It's been 10 months since Jack died, and Sandra, a tightly wound academic, copes with her grief by immersing herself in the history of textiles. When she and Martha, a gifted knitter, meet over an unconscious body on the footpath, the unlikely threads of their lives tangle into each other. Sandra invites Martha to join her in a professional collaboration, but what begins as a working relationship becomes something deeply personal.

A breath-taking debut from an author whose vision is both acerbic and tender. Seb's beautiful, beloved wife Leda has been killed by a swan. With a name like that, with a bizarre family history like hers, it isn't really surprising. Seb has a grip on her story and its aesthetics; he knows how it should go. Except that he doesn't. Sorting through her belongings after her death, he comes across a packet of unopened letters from a man whom Leda has never mentioned.

At home, they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they've become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore. Now, Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she's been praying for.

Maddie's getting it from all sides. Her bitchy new boss at the radio station humiliates her live on air about her figure, her glamour-puss mum keeps dropping not-so-subtle hints that Maddie should lose weight, and her kids are embarrassed to be seen with her after the disastrous mums' race at their school sports day. Something's got to change. Maddie joins the local weight-watching group expecting more humiliation but instead finds two unlikely allies.

Single mother and dreamer Loretta Boskovic lives in Gunapan, a town lost in the scrubby Australian bush. She has fantasies about dumping her two kids in the orphanage and riding off on a Harley with her dream lover. Her best pal is a crusty old junk man called Norm. She needs a lawnmower; he gives her two goats called Terror and Panic. Loretta’s a self-dubbed ‘old scrag’, but she’s got a big heart and a strong sense of injustice. So, when the government threatens to close down Gunapan’s primary school, and there’s corruption wafting through the local council, Loretta stirs into action.

Robin Wilde has a beautiful six-year-old daughter, a job she's really rather good at, a wonderful best friend and an auntie who is bonkers, yes, but loves her to the moon and back. But Robin has a secret. Behind the mask she carefully applies every day, she can't shift the grey, lonely feelings of The Emptiness. She struggles to fit in with the school mum crew, online dating is totally despair-inducing and she worries all the time about raising her daughter with self-confidence, courage and joy.

Lizzie's life is pretty damn perfect, until she realises she's about to hit the dreaded 4¿0. But losing her job to a younger journalist is not the only ingrown pube in the bikini wax of Lizzie's life. Her surgeon husband, Hugo, unexpectedly falls for an actress who keeps fit doing step-aerobics off her own ego. Lizzie has always believed brains to be more important than beauty, but up against a sex goddess, principles and profundity are about as useful as a eunuch at a whipped-cream orgy.

The Dark Flood Rises asks momentous questions as it entertains and enthralls. In her beautifully imagined new book, Margaret Drabble is at her incisive best, exploring the end of life with her trademark humour, composure and wisdom. Francesca Stubbs holds our hand as we take a walk through old age and death. Fran brings us to drinks with her dear friends, dropping off mouth-watering suppers for Claude, her ex-husband, warm and cosy in his infirmity.

Praxis Duveen is a survivor. At five years old, in 1920s England, she is still innocent, the product of an unstable mother and a flighty father who abandoned Praxis and her half-crazy sister, Hypatia. As the decades fly by, Praxis experiences many incarnations. Now, from her dingy basement apartment, where she's attempting to write a memoir, Praxis tells about the story of her remarkable journey - peppered with more than a few detours along the way.

Francesca is Caro’s stepmother, and Pauly’s mother. A scientist, she can see what is going to happen. The high house was once her holiday home, now looked after by locals Grandy and Sally, she has turned it into an ark, for when the time comes. The mill powers the generator, the orchard is carefully pruned, the greenhouse has all its glass intact. Almost a family, but not quite, they plant, store seed and watch the weather carefully.

Alexandra Ludd is an actress playing Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. In the eyes of the world she has everything a woman could want: husband, home, child, income, good looks, good friends, the plaudits of the crowd and the affection of neighbours. But Alexandra inspires envy as well as love: she was unwise to forget it, she was complacent, perhaps a little vain - and all fate has to do to bring her down is to snip a single strand....

Everything in Klara’s life seems perfect. She runs a successful cosmetic clinic with her best friend, Tomas, she has a beautiful house near the beach in Melbourne, and she and her adoring husband Dante are trying for a baby. Then one day, she receives a call that punctures her perfect life. Dante has had an accident. He was found unconscious in a gay sauna and now lies in a coma. What Klara discovers about her husband will disrupt everything she thought she knew about love, marriage and family.

When Brooke Hastings and her new husband, Doctor Jason d'Winters, stop off at the small town of Bindi Creek - they have no idea that the small township will end up having such a dramatic impact on their lives. Lured by the peaceful town and its need for a doctor, the young family decide to settle at Bindi Creek and make friends with the locals, including Jason's old mate Wes, who admires Jason and Brooke's perfect life. But Brooke is not all she appears to be, and the guilty secrets of her tragic past are tearing her apart.

1838. The Ohio River. May Bedloe is a seamstress to her cousin, the flamboyant actress Comfort Virtue. A wealthy abolitionist and notorious opportunist is quick to lure Comfort to her cause - a cause, it seems, that has no use for quiet little May. Casting out on her own for the first time, May lands a job on Hugo Cushin's wondrous Floating Theatre - a flatboat that sails the Ohio performing plays to the townsfolk along the way. Though shy at first, May quickly finds herself drawn into the eccentric troupe of characters aboard her new home.

Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Bea, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother who disappeared 40 years earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, Laura ignores Bea's warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers.

When pregnant Jaya loses her mother, then her baby son, Arun, in a tragic cot death, her world crashes down. Overcome by grief and guilt, she begins to look for answers. Looking through her mother’s belongings, she finds two diaries and old photographs, carrying the smoky aroma of fire. A young boy smiles out at Jaya from every photograph - and in one, a family stand proudly in front of a sprawling mansion. Who is this child? And why did her mother treasure this memento of a regal family lost to the past?