Book picks similar to
The Trivia Man by Deborah O'Brien
romance
fiction
aussie-author
australian-author
Parting Words
Cass Moriarty - 2017
Who are these people and what was their significance to Daniel? For his eldest son, Richard, there are hidden motives for his impatience to settle the will. His sister Evonne is still hurting from decades of her parents' disapproval. The youngest sibling, Kelly, believes she knew her father best. As Daniel's children carry out his last wishes, each of them must confront their entrenched ideas about their father, and reconsider their own lives. What they discover is beyond anything they imagined.
Invisible Boys
Holden Sheppard - 2019
Hammer is a footy jock with big AFL dreams, and an even bigger ego. Zeke is a shy over-achiever, never macho enough for his family. But all three boys hide who they really are. When the truth is revealed, will it set them free or blow them apart?Invisible Boys is a raw, confronting YA novel, tackling homosexuality, masculinity, anger and suicide with a nuanced and unique perspective. Set in regional Western Australia, the novel follows three sixteen-year-old boys in the throes of coming to terms with their homosexuality in a town where it is invisible – and so are they. Invisible Boys depicts the complexities and trauma of rural gay identity with painful honesty, devastating consequence and, ultimately, hope.
Before I Let You Go
Kelly Rimmer - 2018
call is the first time Lexie Vidler has heard her sister’s voice in years. Annie is a drug addict, a thief, a liar—and in trouble, again. Lexie has always bailed Annie out, given her money, a place to sleep, sent her to every kind of rehab. But this time, she’s not just strung out—she’s pregnant and in premature labor. If she goes to the hospital, she’ll lose custody of her baby—maybe even go to prison. But the alternative is unthinkable.As weeks unfold, Lexie finds herself caring for her fragile newborn niece while her carefully ordered life is collapsing around her. She’s in danger of losing her job, and her fiancé only has so much patience for Annie’s drama. In court-ordered rehab, Annie attempts to halt her downward spiral by confronting long-buried secrets from the sisters’ childhood, ghosts that Lexie doesn’t want to face. But will the journey heal Annie, or lead her down a darker path?Both candid and compassionate, Before I Let You Go explores a hotly divisive topic and asks how far the ties of family love can be stretched before they finally break.
All Summer Long
Dorothea Benton Frank - 2016
Dorothea Benton Frank s magical stories take us deep into the heart of her beloved Carolina Lowcountry. In her novels, this lush landscape comes alive in all its vibrancy and color. She ignites all of our senses with her vivid descriptions of landscape and atmosphere. In her novels you hear the ocean washing the shore on different islands so profoundly that you can nearly hear the sea gulls squawking, too. This is a story of people whose lives are changing a southern gentleman returning home to lead a more peaceful life and his talented New York wife who is not quite sure she is ready to make the transition. They are moving north to south, fast pace versus slow pace, downsizing. And while they are doing this, they are getting glimpses into other people s lives over the course of a summer, holidays that will amuse, shock and transform them. This irresistible story is home to captivating characters as funny, complicated, and real as our best friends husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, friends and family who wrestle with the complexities, pain, and joys familiar to us all. Finally, we ll come to recognize the face of love, the kind that deepens and endures but only because one woman makes a tremendous leap of faith. That leap changes them all.
Fast Women
Jennifer Crusie - 2001
Nell Dysart's in trouble. Weighed down by an inexplicable divorce and a loss of appetite for everything, Nell is sleepwalking through life until her best friend finagles a job for her with a shabby little detective agency that has lots of potential and a boss who looks easy to manage. Gabe McKenna isn't doing too well, either. His detective agency is wasting time on a blackmail case, his partner has decided he hates watching cheating spouses for money, and his ex-wife has just dumped him...again. The only thing that's going his way is that his new secretary looks efficient, boring, and biddable. But looks can be deceiving and soon Nell and Gabe are squaring off over embezzlement, business cards, vandalism, dog-napping, blackmail, Chinese food, unprofessional sex, and really ugly office furniture, all of which turn out to be the least of their problems. Because soon, somebody starts killing people. And shortly after that, they start falling in love...
Earthly Delights
Kerry Greenwood - 2004
At four am she starts work at Earthly Delights, her bakery in Calico Alley.But one morning Corinna receives a threatening note saying "The wages of sin is death" and finds a syringe in her cat's paw. A blue-faced junkie has collapsed in the dark alley and a mysterious man with beautiful eyes appears with a plan for Corinna and her bread. Then it is Goths, dead drug addicts, witchcraft, a homeless boy and a missing girl and it seems she will never get those muffins cooked in time.With flair, chutzpah and a talent for kneading, Corinna Chapman will find out who exactly is threatening her life and bake some beautiful bread.
Harvesting the Heart
Jodi Picoult - 1993
Now, having left her father behind in Chicago for dreams of art school and marriage to an ambitious young doctor, she finds herself with a child of her own. But her mother's absence and shameful memories of her past force her to doubt whether she could ever be capable of bringing joy and meaning into the life of her child, gifts her own mother never gave.Harvesting the Heart is written with astonishing clarity and evocative detail, convincing in its depiction of emotional pain, love, and vulnerability, and recalls the writing of Alice Hoffman and Kristin Hannah. Out of Paige's struggle to find wholeness, Jodi Picoult crafts an absorbing novel peopled by richly drawn characters, and explores motherhood with a power and depth only she is capable of.“A brilliant, moving examination of motherhood, brimming with detail and emotion.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch“Jodi Picoult explores the fragile ground of ambivalent motherhood in her lush second novel. This story belongs to… the lucky reader.” —The New York Times Book Review
The Department of Lost & Found
Allison Winn Scotch - 2007
This is a novel that will leave you taking stock of what's important in your own life . . . and never letting it go.It didn't start out as the worst day of Natalie Miller's life. At 30, she is moving up the political ladder, driven by raw ambition and ruthless determination. As the top aide to New York's powerful female senator, she works hard, stays late, and enjoys every bit of it, even if the bills she's pushing through do little to improve the lives of the senator's constituents. And if her boyfriend isn't the sexiest guy alive, at least he's a warm body to come home to.Then he announces he's leaving. But that news is barely a blip compared to what Natalie's doctor tells her: She has breast cancer. And she can't cure it by merely being headstrong. Now the life Natalie must change is her own.All her energy, what little of it she has left, must go into saving herself from a merciless disease. So when she's not lying on the sofa recovering from her treatments and indulging in a curious addiction to The Price Is Right, she realizes it's time to take a hard look at her choices. She begins by tracking down the five loves-of-her-life to assess what went wrong. Along the way, she questions her relationships with her friends, her parents, her colleagues, the one who got away, and, most important, with herself: Why is she so busy moving through life that she never stops to embrace it?As Natalie sleuths out the answers to these questions, her journey of self-discovery takes her down new paths and to unexplored places. And she learns that sometimes when life is at its most unexpected, it's not what you lose that makes you who you are . . . it's what you find.
The Cattleman's Daughter
Rachael Treasure - 2009
To make matters worse, her heritage is under threat. A government bill to evict the mountain cattlemen is about to be passed, and the Flanaghans could be banned from the mountains their family has looked after for generations.When a terrible accident brings Emily to the brink of death, she realises she must return to the high country to seek a way forward in life; healing herself, her daughters and her land. Along the way, she finds herself falling in love with a man who works for the government - the traditional opposition of the cattlemen - new Parks ranger, Luke Bradshaw. But just as she sees that the land and Luke are the keys to regaining her life, Emily faces losing them both in the greatest challenge of all . . .Set in the beautiful snowgum country of the Victorian Alps, The Cattleman's Daughter is a haunting and unforgettable tale of love, self-discovery and forgiveness from one of Australia's best-loved authors.
The Midwife's Confession
Diane Chamberlain - 2011
Everything they knew about Noelle—her calling as a midwife, her passion for causes, her love for her friends and family—described a woman who embraced life.Yet there was so much they didn't know.With the discovery of the letter and its heartbreaking secret, Noelle's friends begin to uncover the truth about this complex woman who touched each of their lives - and the life of a desperate stranger - with love and betrayal, compassion and deceit.
Up on Horseshoe Hill
Penelope Janu - 2019
Her wit is as sharp as a knife. She is one of my absolute must-read authors.' Victoria Purman, bestselling Australian author A kiss can change your life ...Jemima Kincaid loves her home, her horses and her job as a farrier. Life has not been kind to her, but Jemima is happy in the close-knit rural community of Horseshoe Hill, which rallied around in her hour of need. Even so, she is fiercely independent and will never rely on anyone again.Particularly a man like Finn Blackwood.An infuriatingly attractive geneticist and wild animal vet, Finn threatens not only the serenity of Jemima's present, but that of the future she has so carefully mapped out. But as their paths continue to cross, she finds her attraction to Finn impossible to counter, even as the trauma of her past threatens to undo her. Finn is fascinated by Jemima's solitary nature and unique vulnerabilities but Jemima knows all about loss and how to avoid it. Don't let anyone get close in the first place ...As the past begins to cast long shadows, Jemima and Finn discover that a kiss can bring worlds together-or tear them apart. Will they finally face their fears and find love on Horseshoe Hill?
Gravity Is the Thing
Jaclyn Moriarty - 2019
That same year, she began receiving scattered chapters in the mail of a self-help manual, the Guidebook, whose anonymous author promised to make her life soar to heights beyond her wildest dreams.The Guidebook’s missives have remained a constant in Abi’s life—a befuddling yet oddly comforting voice through her family’s grief over her brother’s disappearance, a move across continents, the devastating dissolution of her marriage, and the new beginning as a single mother and café owner in Sydney.Now, two decades after receiving those first pages, Abi is invited to an all-expenses paid weekend retreat to learn “the truth” about the Guidebook. It’s an opportunity too intriguing to refuse. If Everything is Connected, then surely the twin mysteries of the Guidebook and a missing brother must be linked?What follows is completely the opposite of what Abi expected––but it will lead her on a journey of discovery that will change her life––and enchant readers. Gravity Is the Thing is a smart, unusual, wickedly funny novel about the search for happiness that will break your heart into a million pieces and put it back together, bigger and better than before.
Breath
Tim Winton - 2008
Breath is an extraordinary evocation of an adolescence spent resisting complacency, testing one’s limits against nature, finding like-minded souls, and discovering just how far one breath will take you. It’s a story of extremes—extreme sports and extreme emotions. On the wild, lonely coast of Western Australia, two thrillseeking and barely adolescent boys fall into the enigmatic thrall of veteran big-wave surfer Sando. Together they form an odd but elite trio. The grown man initiates the boys into a kind of Spartan ethos, a regimen of risk and challenge, where they test themselves in storm swells on remote and shark-infested reefs, pushing each other to the edges of endurance, courage, and sanity. But where is all this heading? Why is their mentor’s past such forbidden territory? And what can explain his American wife’s peculiar behavior? Venturing beyond all limits—in relationships, in physical challenge, and in sexual behavior—there is a point where oblivion is the only outcome. Full of Winton’s lyrical genius for conveying physical sensation, Breath is a rich and atmospheric coming-of-age tale from one of world literature’s finest storytellers.
The Peppercorn Project
Nicki Edwards - 2016
One bitter cop. One community to save them.After the tragic death of her husband, single mum Isabelle Cassidy is bereft and broke. When she hears about The Peppercorn Project – a scheme that offers affordable rent in the tiny but vibrant town of Stony Creek – Issie sees it as her family's best chance at a fresh start.Newly single police officer Matt Robertson moved to Stony Creek to lick his wounds after a bitter divorce. Wanting only peace and quiet, Matt is against the Project, seeing it as a threat to the peace he's found in the country town – until he meets Issie. Despite himself, Matt is drawn to the widow and feels inexplicably protective of her fragile family.Just when Issie begins to imagine a future with Matt, an accident proves how far she has to go before she can move beyond her grief. But the citizens of Stony Creek won't rest until they see these two broken souls find a new beginning, together.Can Issie move beyond the pain of her past and entrust Matt with her family, and her heart?A gorgeous rural romance for fans of Fiona McArthur, Rachael Johns and Fiona McCallum.
The Bass Rock
Evie Wyld - 2020
And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other.In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life.In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community.Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth’s belongings and discovers her place in the past – and perhaps a way forward.Each woman’s choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.