Showing results by narrator "Edwina Wren" in All Categories

Like so many of her university friends, Kate Brown is London bound, but unlike her friends - who had the chance to enjoy the beer, sights and attractions of the UK - Kate is instead visiting her grandmother (who may or may not be the devil). But when Kate is almost run over by the ridiculously good-looking Jack Baker, it leaves her wondering if being out and about is such a good idea after all, especially when she catches herself laughing at his jokes. One thing Kate knows for sure is that she has to avoid Jack at all costs.

January 1920. Young Englishwoman Margaret Dalton is full of excitement as she arrives to begin a new life in the warm, golden land of Australia. She leaves behind the horrors of WWI and can't wait to see her husband, Frank, after two years' separation. But when Margaret's ship docks, Frank isn't there to greet her, and Margaret is informed that he already has a wife....

It will soon be another cold winter in the Ukraine. But it's 1941, and things are different this year. Max, the devoted caretaker of an animal preserve, must learn to live with the Nazis who have overtaken this precious land. He must also learn to keep secrets - for there is a girl, Kalinka, who is hiding in the park. Kalinka has lost her home, her family, her belongings - everything but her life. Still, she has gained one small, precious gift: a relationship with the rare wild and wily Przewalski's horses that wander the preserve.

Three people, struggling to come to terms with great loss after the end of the war, search for peace in a small town's library in a heartbreaking novel of love and loss and the healing power of memory and words. In a small town on the land's edge, in the strange space at a war's end, a widow, a poet and a doctor each try to find their own peace, and their own new story. In Thirroul, in 1948, people chase their dreams through the books in the railway's library.

What if your perfect life was based on lies? I'm a lucky woman, thinks Susanna Greenfield. And why wouldn't she? Her handsome, successful husband is a loving father to their two teenage children. Her mother, Jean, is her dearest friend. Her scatty but adored younger sister, Angie, seems to have finally found some stability in her life. Susanna has a solid career as an art teacher and if, as she's recently discovered, there's a hole inside her where her creative spirit used to be - is that really such a big price to pay?

On Christmas Eve in 1967, a London woman unhappily transplanted to the Australian suburbs makes a decision that will change forever the lives of her four young children. Forty years on, those children are adept at concealing their shared pain. But as their father begins to lose his grip on reality, they find themselves floundering in an unfamiliar sea. And their past is about to reach into the present in ways that will shock and challenge them all.

Boomtown Los Angeles, 1929: Into a world of movie lots and speakeasies comes Xas, stunt flier and wingless angel, still nursing his broken heart and determined only to go on living in the air. But there are forces that will keep him on the ground. Forces like Conrad Cole, movie director and aircraft designer, a glory-seeking king of the grand splash who is also a man sinking into his own sovereign darkness. And Flora McLeod, film editor and maimed former actress, who sees something in Xas that no one has ever seen before, not even God, who made him, or Lucifer, the general he once followed.

The horror of the Rainbow Opera riot is the talk of the country. Dreamhunter Grace Tiebold's reputation is in tatters and Laura is in hiding. But the nightmare has only just begun. Rumours about the government's torture of prisoners have been suppressed and corrupt minister Cas Doran is free to take his plans to shocking heights.

It's that time again ... time to indulge in a spot of jealousy, betrayal and late-night bar-hopping. Everyone's back from a week of après-ski hot tub fun in Sun Valley, and cream coloured envelopes from the Ivy League are beginning to drop all over Fifth Avenue doorsteps.

The uptown girls are headed downtown as Serena and Jenny take on their new fabulous roles as rock-star model girlfriends of New York's hottest band, The Raves. Meanwhile, Dan is too busy drowning his sorrows in empty bottles to notice a mysterious French beauty who has a penchant for dirty, Jim Morrison wannabe lead singers. Blair takes residence at the Plaza to think about her future. Will she become a gun-toting international spy or Manhattan's snobbiest society hostess? Decisions are so difficult!

Second title in a super-cool new series in the best-selling style of Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.The pressure builds for Kia, Georgie, Micki and Ace in the sequel to the acclaimed Starfish Sisters. 'Starfish who surf together stick together.' It was Ace who wrote that in Kia, Georgie and Micki's blue booklets on the last day of camp. Yet it's Ace who's ended up ruining everything - ending the Starfish Sisters before they've even begun. How are they going to get back together?

Georgie, Kia, Micki and Ace are thrown together at an elite girls' surfing camp. They're not friends straight away - there's jealousy, insecurity, secrets and lies to deal with first. Yet they soon realize that they need to stick together, because their friendship brings out the best in each of them. But will they all make the grade?

The gripping story of one woman's fight against all odds, and a sweeping tribute to Australia's landscape and its peoples. Australia 1945. Until now Kate Dowd has led a sheltered life on Amiens, her family's sprawling sheep station in northern New South Wales. The horrors of war have for the most part left her untouched. But with her father succumbing to wounds he's borne since the Great War, the management of the farm is increasingly falling on Kate's shoulders.

This collection contains some of Jackie French's most popular and best-loved wombats books. Renowned for her knowledge, admiration and love for wombats, Jackie French's The Wonderful World of Wombats will reveal the day-to-day lives of this fascinating Australian animal.

A president has been overthrown by a military coup in a nameless country in an unspecified era. The president's barber, chef, and portraitist are imprisoned, with many others, in a remote palace in the hills high above the city center. Before the coup, these three men worked with unquestioning loyalty, serving the president in seemingly benign jobs. Now, forced to serve the country's new leader, they begin to reconsider their role in the old regime.

Italy, 1917. Australian journalist Rebecca Quinn is an unconventional woman. At the height of World War I, she has given up the safety of her Sydney home for the bloody battlefields of Europe, following her journalist husband to the front line as a war correspondent in Italy. Reporting the horrors of the Italian campaign, Rebecca finds herself thrown together with American-born Italian photographer Alessandro Panucci and soon discovers another battleground every bit as dangerous and unpredictable: the human heart.

Australia 1948. As a young woman running Amiens, a sizeable sheep station in New South Wales, Kate Dowd knows she's expected to fail. And her grazier neighbour is doing his best to ensure she does, attacking her method of burning off to repel a bushfire. But fire risk is just one of her problems. Kate cannot lose Amiens, or give in to her estranged husband Jack's demands to sell: the farm is her livelihood and the only protection she can offer her half-sister Pearl, as the Aborigines Welfare Board threatens to take her away.

Originally published in the Netherlands in 1993, De Loo's first novel to be translated into English explores the enmity that existed between Germans and the rest of Europe after World War II. This moving tale addresses notions of guilt and responsibility in a sensitive, thought-provoking manner, without exonerating or condemning.

Set in 1906, Dreamhunter describes a world very similar to ours, except for a special place, known simply as "The Place", where only a select group of people can go. These people are called Dreamhunters, and they harvest dreams that are then transmitted to the general public for entertainment, therapy - or terror and political coercion. Inside The Place, 15-year-old Laura finds out what happened to her missing father and uncovers a government secret.

Wild Chicory is the story of a journey from Ireland to Australia in the early 1900s, along threads of love, family, war and peace. It’s a slice of ordinary life rich in history, folklore and fairy tale and a portrait of the precious bond between a granddaughter, Brigid, and her grandmother, Nell.