Book picks similar to
Centre Stage by Judy Nunn


australian
judy-nunn
fiction
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One Sunday


Joy Dettman - 2006
    The year is 1929. The Great War with Germany has been fought and won, but at an immense cost to the small community.Death is too familiar here. So many sons were lost. So many daughters would never be wives; so many grandchildren would never be born.Racial hatred is like a bushfire in the belly of some. And the dead girl is found only yards from the property of old Joe Reichenberg, a German. Tom Thompson, the local cop, lost his two sons in Gallipoli. He believes he has come to terms with his bereavement - until that Sunday.Slowly, the true face of Molliston is exposed. By midnight, a full moon is offering its light - and a glimmer of hope.

Goodbye Sweetheart


Marion Halligan - 2015
    A man apparently happily married, yet, with two divorces behind him and three puzzled children. In death it seems that he is not the person everyone thought.As his extended family gathers to mourn, secrets and lies unfold uncomfortably around them. Those pornographic images on his laptop? An unexpected lover - is he still philandering? But somewhere in the turmoil of mourning each of them has to find an answer to the question - who was this man really? What mysteries has he taken to the grave with him?Goodbye Sweetheart is a powerful novel of love, the desire for understanding, and the inevitable messiness of life.

Heartless


Tasma Walton - 2009
    At 7, she discovers that love isn't necessarily forever.At 21, she finds love but it escapes her.At 35, she learns that love can be dangerous.By 49, she realises that the greatest love of all comes from the heart.As her life's milestones come and go, you will recognise yourself in her: her loves, her mistakes, and her belief that she doesn't deserve more.Australian author Tasma Walton's debut novel is a moving and confronting fable about the power of the human heart, the worthiness of its desires and the often dire consequences of ignoring them.

Dead Cat Bounce


Peter Cotton - 2013
    All the while, the body count mounts.Glass’s suspects include some of the most powerful people in the land, and the press-gallery journalists who cover their every move. It’s a murky world of shifting allegiances, half-truths, and finger pointing, where everyone has a motive for murder.As election day nears, Glass risks everything for a breakthrough in the case, and his life is soon hanging by a thread. But if he thought he’d hit rock bottom, he was wrong …

The Radcliffes


T.J. Kline - 2017
    KLINE, PRESENTED BY JAMES PATTERSON!THE WEDDING FLORIST: After losing her job and getting evicted from her home, the last thing florist Anna Nolan needs is to ruin her new gig. But it's hard for her to work for the powerful and sexy Gabriel Radcliffe. Namely, because Anna's arranging the flowers for his wedding to society girl Stephanie Maurier--and she wishes she were the bride...THE HORSE TRAINER: Fallon Radcliffe can only escape her socialite family and their expectations when she's in the stables with her horse, Destiny's Dreamer. But she doesn't realize that her love for racing will develop into something more-- a yearning for her trainer, Travis Mitchell, even though they live worlds apart...THE GOURMET CHEF: Alexandra Radcliffe has never been a dreamer. But when she meets the man of her secret fantasies --a sexy, driven chef who wants to open a restaurant--she starts to believe in happily ever after. Or is there something about the smooth Nico Donacelli that could destroy their precious, fragile bond?

Taking Chances


Susan Lewis - 1999
    Chambers agrees to track down the killers. But his need for vengeance soon overrides their desires.In London, high-flyer Sandy Paul, helping to raise finance for the film, still harbours a fierce passion for Michael, and aims to remove Ellen from his life.Love, lust, jealousy and ambition take the stage with high finance, power and mortal danger. Torn loyalties, male pride and female desires turn the movie into a terrifying trap of death threats and destruction...

Grace's Table


Sally Piper - 2014
    They shifted shape and position with even the gentlest of forces. Even a tiny puff – a shrug – could bring about change, move a handful of thoughts to a new understanding, a new authority. A gale, like today’s, and whole dunes – lives and futures – were relocated, reimagined.Grace had not had twelve people at her table for a while. This wasn’t the kind of family who shared regular Sunday meals. But you don’t turn 70 every day.As her friends and family arrive for lunch, memories are rekindled but not all of them are welcome. As the meal is served, it becomes clear that events of the past have left their mark on everyone at the table in vastly different ways. Grace is reminded that age is no guarantee of wisdom and there is much still to learn from the young at heart. As the family finally confront a shocking event in their past, Grace is forced to face her own shortcomings as a parent and wife and left to contemplate the ways in which grief and regret have resonated through her life. This moving and often funny novel dissects the lives of women over three generations, explores the pull and power of memory and celebrates the triumph of endurance.

Prochownik's Dream


Alex Miller - 2005
    Since the death of his father, Moniek Prochownik, four years earlier, Toni has been at a creative standstill - until Marina Golding, the wife of his former teacher and mentor, Robert Schwartz, contacts him, and everything changes. Toni finds in Marina the perfect companion of his life in art and his creative energies are re-awakened.But Toni's newfound inspiration and artistic energy come at the direct expense of his relationship with his wife and daughter. The more dependent for his art he becomes on Marina, the more potentially destructive become the tensions between himself and his wife, Teresa. Toni's dilemma is how to reconcile the transgressive nature of his imaginative life with the daily life of his family, who he loves. Robert Schwartz's dying father, Theo, warns him not to confuse art with life. But by what means is he to achieve such clear-sightedness?Immensely satisfying, Prochownik's Dream is a work of great subtlety, strength and intellect. Its examination of the artist at work is complex and completely absorbing. But at its heart, very simply, it is a book about love.

The Wrong Girl


Zoë Foster Blake - 2014
    The new chef has just arrived on set and he is drop dead gorgeous. And despite everything – the sabbatical that Lily and her flatmate Simone are taking from men, the fact that Jack is a work colleague – Lily falls head over heels for him. And while Lily battles her feelings, her flatmate Simone breaks their pact and starts dating some guy from her wholefoods shop. That guy turns out to be Jack. Up close, Lily bravely watches on as romance blossoms between Simone and Jack. Or does it? They don't seem to have much in common, apart from their striking good looks. And Lily and Jack just seem to get each other. Is that the same thing as falling in love? And could she ever dream of betraying a friendship? Lily has to make some difficult decisions about work and home, and realises that if she doesn't take life by the scruff of the neck, she is the one who'll be picked up, shaken and dumped.

Crossing Paths


Dianne Blacklock
    Much better to see it for what it is than to be perennially disappointed.With a hefty new mortgage, a frustrating career as a newspaper columnist and a flailing relationship with a married co-worker, Jo Liddell is resigned to living a less-than-perfect life.That is, until she crosses paths with Joe Bannister – a celebrated foreign correspondent returning home to care for his dying father. Against all her natural instincts, Jo finds herself falling for Joe, and with his help begins to realise that she might deserve to be happy after all. But when she decides to take the plunge and give love a chance, the results are catastrophic. And so Jo must fight hard for everything she never believed in – success, self-acceptance, and above all, real love.

Lost Voices


Christopher J. Koch - 2012
    As he is drawn into Walter′s rarefied world, Hugh discovers that both his uncle and the farmhouse are links to a notorious episode in the mid nineteenth century.Walter's father, Martin, was living in the house when it was raided by members of an outlaw community run by Lucas Wilson, a charismatic ex-soldier attempting to build a utopia. But like later societies with communitarian ideals, Nowhere Valley was controlled by the gun, with Wilson as benevolent dictator. Twenty-year-old Martin's sojourn in the Valley as Wilson's disciple has become an obsession with Walter Dixon: one which haunts his present and keeps the past tantalizingly close.As Walter encourages Hugh's ambition to become an artist, and again comes to his aid when one of Hugh's friends is charged with murder, the way life's patterns repeat themselves from one generation to another becomes eerily apparent.Dramatic, insightful and evocative, Lost Voices is an intriguing double narrative that confirms Koch as one of our most significant and compelling novelists.

Mad Men, Bad Girls and the Guerilla Knitters Institute


Maggie Groff - 2012
    She sets out to expose the cult's lunatic beliefs and bizarre practices, but when she learns the identity of a recent recruit, her quest becomes personal. And dangerous.The cult isn't the only case on Scout's agenda. Someone is cutting up girls' underwear at an exclusive school and Scout agrees to look into it. And the sinister secret behind the vandalism is not nice. Not at all.But Scout has her secrets too. In the dead of night she sneaks out with an underground group of yarn bombers to decorate the locality with artworks. The next mission ticks all the right boxes – it's risky, difficult and extremely silly. However, not everyone is amused, and Scout has a sneaking suspicion that the local police sergeant, Rafe Kelly, is hot on her tail.

The Girl in the Yellow Vest


Loretta Hill - 2014
    It could be our best friend or … our worst enemy.’Emily Woods counts cracks for a living. Concrete cracks. So when her long-term boyfriend dumps her, she decides it’s time for a change of scenery. Her best friend, Will, suggests joining his construction team in Queensland. Working next door to the Great Barrier Reef seems like just the sort of adventure she needs to reboot her life…until she realises that Will is not the person she thought he was.Charlotte Templeton is frustrated with the lack of respect FIFO workers have for her seaside resort. But picking a fight with their tyrannical project manager, Mark Crawford, seems to lead to more complications than resolutions. The man is too pompous, too rude, and too damned good looking.As both women strive to protect their dreams and achieve their goals, they discover that secrets will come out, loyalty often hurts, and sometimes the perfect man is the wrong one.

Hold Your Fire


Chloe Wilson - 2021
    Prize-winning author Chloe Wilson’s stories will pin you to the page.‘Chilling, funny, and razor sharp – a writer in control every step of the way. How I relished this extraordinary and original collection.’ Sofie Laguna, Miles Franklin winner for The Eye of the SheepFirst published in Granta Magazine, the title story takes us into the cold war of a contemporary family: a missile-making mother doubts her husband’s guts and the steel of her son, until a playground incident escalates and brings them into the most surprising of alliances.Needle sharp, effortlessly surprising and beautifully controlled, every story is transfixing. A young couple move into a house in which there’s been a recent murder, and fall under the spell of their peculiar, commanding neighbours. Two sisters are determined to detoxify themselves into perfection. A diver pushes herself and those around her to higher and higher jumps. Interspersed with these transfixing tales are lightning strikes of flash fiction: we glimpse a leopard in the apartment next door; plants grown out of a strange and miraculous soil; the spirit of a girl who’s been thrown down a well. At each turn, Chloe Wilson offers a unique insight, a tear in the veil of our comfortable moral certainties. Hold Your Fire exposes the battles we wage beneath the surface.

Stillwater Creek


Alison Booth - 2010
    As the weeks pass, both Ilona and her nine-year-old daughter Zidra get to know the townsfolk. But a gruesome discovery shows that Jingera is not quite the utopia Ilona imagines it to be.