Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in All Categories

Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. It is no surprise, then, that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety - one of those men who's always got away with things and just keeps going...until the day we meet him, middle aged and in the boot of a car, and everything pointing towards a shallow grave.

In the Australia of the 1960s, '70s and '80s, armed robbers were the top of the criminal food chain. Their dash and violence were celebrated, and men like Ray Denning and Russell 'Mad Dog' Cox were household names long before Underbelly established Melbourne's gangland thugs as celebrities. Both were handsome, charismatic bandits who refused to bow to authority. Both were classified as 'intractable' in prison, and both escaped. Cox was the only man to escape from Katingal, Australia's only 'escape-proof' jail. Soon after he broke out, he tried to break in again and rescue his mates.

Martin Scarsden's new life seems perfect, right up until the moment it's shattered by a voice mail: a single scream, abruptly cut off, from his partner, Mandalay Blonde. Racing home, he finds an unconscious man sprawled on the floor and Mandy gone. Someone has abducted her. But who and why? So starts a twisting tale of intrigue and danger, as Martin probes the past of the woman he loves, a woman who has buried her former life so deep she has never mentioned it.

Multi-award-winning Hannah Gadsby broke comedy with their show Nanette. Now they take us through the defining moments in their life and their powerful decision to tell the truth—no matter the cost. Harrowing and hilarious, Ten Steps to Nanette traces Gadsby’s growth as a queer person, to their ever-evolving relationship with comedy, and their struggle with late-in-life diagnoses of autism and ADHD, finally arriving at the backbone of Nanette: the renouncement of self-deprecation, the rejection of misogyny, and the moral significance of truth-telling.

On her lunch break in Melbourne, Kim Leamy is approached by a stranger investigating the disappearance of a little girl from her Kentucky home 28 years earlier. He believes Kim is that girl. At first she brushes it off but soon finds herself questioning her family history and begins to unravel an unexpectedly dark past.

Trouble with the law, a missing sister, and a growing attachment to the wrong man—Evie Emerson has a dangerous path ahead of her... From a bestselling Australian author comes an exciting and twisty historical mystery and adventure.

Olivia is hiding from vicious media and online scrutiny in a remote Tasmanian house when an unknown man knocks on her door, seeking Pippa, a woman who once lived there. His father, Jeremy, has died, leaving behind a letter for the unknown woman. Olivia wants to help, but can she risk revealing her own sordid past and exposure to the world once more?

Hallie, a young and successful fashion blogger, recently married to a station owner, is having trouble adjusting to the flies, dust, snakes and isolation in the Flinders Ranges. Left alone with her baby while her husband, Alex is often out on long bore runs during the day, she also has to contend with her father-in-law, Rod, who insists on making himself at home in their house. Alex is out on a bore run, and as Hallie and their daughter, Ruby, watch him in real time on the camera from the homestead, Alex suddenly disappears from view. He is found later, dead at the bottom of a windmill.

1965. Eight-year-old Willa receives a mysterious box containing a jar of water and the instruction: ‘One ocean: plant in the backyard.’ So she does - and somehow creates a time-slip that allows her to visit her future selves.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women’s underwear and Hirsch knows enough about that kind of crime - how it can escalate - not to take it lightly. But the more immediate concerns are a call from the high school, a teacher worried about a student who may be in danger at home. Another call, a different school: a man enraged about the principal’s treatment of his daughter.

Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He’s still new in town but the community work - welfare checks and working bees - is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a ute and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch’s life has been peaceful. Until he’s called to a strange, vicious incident in Kitchener Street. Suddenly, it doesn’t look like a season of goodwill at all.

When Erin Macalister leaves the city to take care of her beloved grandmother, she's relieved to be escaping the remnants of her broken marriage. Arriving in the small rural community she grew up in, Erin finds nothing much has changed—including Jamie McBride, who is still as ridiculously good looking as he was when they were seventeen and madly in love. Leafing through old photo albums evokes vivid memories for her grandmother of a soldier she once loved. Erin's curiosity about this mysterious soldier deepens when she finds an engagement ring he once gave her grandmother.

Twenty years ago, Grace wanted nothing more than to be with Trent—a boy with a guitar and a lot of promises. Twenty years ago, Dorothy wanted nothing more than for her daughter to fulfil her potential. In a moment of heartbreak and fury, Grace makes a split-second decision to board a plane to London and put an ocean between them. There, Grace takes a job answering calls for a wannabe music mogul and sends her life on a dazzling trajectory.

It's 1921, and after years of working for Cadbury's at Bournville, Dorothy Adwell is on her way to a new adventure in the colonies, helping to establish the Firm's new Australian factory. A promotion and a fresh start are just what she needs after the horrors of the Great War and the loss of her beloved husband. During the long sea voyage, she meets Thomas and is immediately drawn to him. The war has left Thomas damaged, both mentally and emotionally, and Dorothy vows to help him—if only he will let her.

The owner of Settlers Bridge cafe, Ploughs & Pies, Samantha is short on confidence and big on regrets. Marrying young to fill the void left by an unhappy childhood, she still works in the same small town where she grew up, too filled with self-doubt and insecurity to ever risk spreading her wings. But, with the end of her abusive marriage, will she be forced to surrender everything that forms the foundations so important to her?

In 1990, Vijay and Indu leave India for Australia, seeking a better life for their family. But the move isn't easy on anyone. Not gentle Indu who becomes disconnected from her family and her life; nor the ambitious Vijay, who finds himself unmoored in a culture he doesn't understand. At the centre is Archana, their quiet daughter, for whom a growing understanding of her own queerness grates against the realities of her life.

Successful horse trainer Alissa Morgan–Jones has the world at her feet, until a tragic fire destroys everything. Widowed, in debt and under suspicion for arson, Alissa's life is in tatters. Her mother–in–law's isolated farm gives her the opportunity to pull her life back together and get herself back on her feet. Four years after fleeing the city and the scandal that ruined his career, disgraced lawyer Cameron Blakely has a successful new business and a new life.

Eighteen-year-old Nora Blake is the opposite of lucky. She's still wrangling her dead dad's debts when a mysterious illness lands her brother in hospital. But her fortunes take an unexpected turn when she wins a lottery to attend the exclusive magical Dream Gala with the charming—and very off limits—heir to the Lamour fortune, Remy Lamour. If Nora can win him over, she'll get a coveted spot on the Lamours' magical training program—and the money she needs to save her brother. There's just one problem: Nora never bought a lottery ticket.

One chaotic hip-hop dancer with no direction in life. One outrageously handsome scientist who is determined to go back to the Antarctic. Over a shared interest in beekeeping, things start to heat up. But can the path to true love ever flow as smoothly as honey?

After a fractured childhood spent in foster homes, city girl Roni has convinced herself that she has no need of anyone - other than her not-as-tough-as-he-looks rescued street cat, Scritches, and her unborn baby. Despite facing a bleak future, Roni distrusts the news of a bequest from an unknown aunt, Marian Nelson. But, out of options, she and Scritches leave Sydney behind, bound for the 800-acre property on the edge of the wheat belt of South Australia.