Book picks similar to
The River is Down by Lucy Walker
calibre
australian
romance
vintage
Night Beach
Kirsty Eagar - 2012
You crave them in a way that's not rational, not right, and you're becoming somebody you don't recognise, and certainly don't respect, but you don't even care. And this person you like is unattainable. Except for one thing... He lives downstairs.Abbie has three obsessions. Art. The ocean. And Kane.But since Kane's been back, he's changed. There's a darkness shadowing him that only Abbie can see. And it wants her in its world.A gothic story about the very dark things that feed the creative process.
Mail Order Melody (Brides of Seattle #5)
Cynthia Woolf - 2018
So why does one woman occupy his mind night and day? He is being trusted to deliver a group of mail-order brides from Massachusetts all the way to the Washington Territory. Karen is one of them. She's beautiful, smart and has two young children that should scare Adam off faster than an angry rattlesnake. He was burned at the alter, left standing with his heart broken and the whole world laughing when his fiancee eloped with his best friend. A woman is more trouble than he needs. But he's the moth and she's the flame. He knows he's going to get burned. But allowing her to marry another is out of the question. And when a deranged woman from Karen's past threatens the soft-hearted woman he can't help but fall in love with--and her two precious little ones--Adam discovers that walking through fire doesn't burn anymore, not if it gets him what he really needs...his own family.
The Club
David Williamson - 1977
It's about each and every club in the League and about soccer, rugby and baseball too," writes the Melbourne Sun's football commentator, Lou Richards, himself a former Aussie Rules champion who has seen it all. He and fellow fanatic, Professor Ian Turner of Monash University, introduce David Williamson's latest probe into the confrontations of Australian life. If you have ever belonged to a sports club, if you have ever been part of any organisation in which the will to win prevails and the trial of strength goes on in the clubroom long after the players have left the field - then you will know the men of The Club.
Becoming Hank
Maggie M. Lily - 2021
But, long before parenthood, they were in love.Take a step back in time to meet a young Henry "Trip" Trellis before he met Darla and changed the course of his destiny.Haven't read the Building the Circle series? No worries. This short read will introduce the family and leave you hungry for more!
The Ship of Brides
Jojo Moyes - 2005
for the first time, a post-WWII story of the war brides who crossed the seas by the thousands to face their unknown futures.1946. World War II has ended and all over the world, young women are beginning to fulfill the promises made to the men they wed in wartime. In Sydney, Australia, four women join 650 other war brides on an extraordinary voyage to England—aboard HMS Victoria, which still carries not just arms and aircraft but a thousand naval officers. Rules are strictly enforced, from the aircraft carrier’s captain down to the lowliest young deckhand. But the men and the brides will find their lives intertwined despite the Navy’s ironclad sanctions. And for Frances Mackenzie, the complicated young woman whose past comes back to haunt her far from home, the journey will change her life in ways she never could have predicted—forever.
The Love that Remains
Susan Francis - 2020
He is a gentle giant of a man, who promises Susan the world.Two years later they throw in their jobs, marry and sell everything they own, embarking on an incredible adventure, to start a new life in the romantic city of Granada, where they learn Spanish and enjoy too much tapas. In love, and enthralled by the splendour of a European springtime, the pair treasure every moment together.Until a shocking series of events alters everything.Susan Francis' memoir is riveting and remarkably honest and Susan Duncan said it was fearless and raw and an amazing read.
After All These Years
Kathleen Gilles Seidel - 1984
Still living in the same white farmhouse where she grew up, Curry watched those closest to her leave—her parents by tragic death, her husband to war, and her best friend, Tom, who walked away because he couldn't deal with being left alive. Then one day, without warning, Tom returns. Curry appears as down-to-earth as she ever was, but her survival has come at a cost and now it's up to Tom to help Curry re-open her heart to life's joy.
We That Are Left
Lisa Bigelow - 2017
Melbourne, 1941. Headstrong young Mae meets and falls head over heels in love with Harry Parker, a dashing naval engineer. After a whirlwind courtship they marry and Mae is heavily pregnant when she hears that Harry has just received his dream posting to HMAS Sydney. Just after Mae becomes a mother, she learns Harry's ship is missing.Meanwhile, Grace Fowler is battling prejudice to become a reporter on the afternoon daily newspaper, The Tribune, while waiting for word on whether her journalist boyfriend Phil Taylor, captured during the fall of Singapore, is still alive.Surrounded by their friends and families, Mae and Grace struggle to keep hope alive in the face of hardship and despair. Then Mae's neighbour and Grace's boss Sam Barton tells Mae about a rumour that the Japanese have towed the damaged ship to Singapore and taken the crew prisoner. Mae's life is changed forever as she focuses her efforts on willing her husband home.Set in inner Melbourne and rural Victoria, We That Are Left is a moving and haunting novel about love and war, the terrifyingly thin line between happiness and tragedy, and how servicemen and women are not the only lives lost when tragedy strikes during war.
All I Ever Wanted
Vikki Wakefield - 2011
She's set herself rules to live by, but she's starting to break them.Now Mim has to retrieve a lost package for her mother.Does this make her a drug runner?Why is a monster dog called Gargoyle hidden in the back shed?And Jordan, the boy she sent Valentines to for years, why is he now suddenly a creep?How come there's a huge gap between her and her best friend, Tahnee?And who is the mysterious girl next door who moans at night?Over the nine days before her seventeenth birthday, Mim's life turns upside down. She has problems, and she's determined to solve them herself. But in the end, she works out who her people are, and the same things look entirely different.
Sex Lies and Bonsai
Lisa Walker - 2013
But in this small coastal town, shy, awkward Edie has always lived in the shadow of her surf champion father. How can she move on from her ex -- and from her past?Her best friend and life-coach, Sally, is full of dubious advice, but Edie finds there are many ways to mess things up all by herself. A new-found talent for erotic writing, a job drawing crab larvae, unrequited lust for a professor with hidden depths and a maddening musician with troubles of his own add to her swag of problems. And then things get complicated ...A tender and witty tale about finding your voice, falling in love ... and crab sex.
Cold Fear
Suzanne Brandyn - 2013
When she regains consciousness, her daughter is missing.As the police widen their futile search, Macy struggles to pick up the pieces of an unimaginable life. Urged to take a break she heads to an isolated cabin with a girlfriend to recuperate so she can continue searching, only to face her worse nightmare - times ten.Trapped by a man she believed dead, he demands she play a game. She runs, he hunts. There is no place to hide...
The Beast's Garden
Kate Forsyth - 2015
It combines the well-known story of a daughter who marries a beast in order to save her father with another key fairy tale motif, the search for the lost bridegroom. In ‘The Singing, Springing Lark,' the daughter grows to love her beast but unwittingly betrays him and he is turned into a dove. She follows the trail of blood and white feathers he leaves behind him for seven years, and, when she loses the trail, seeks help from the sun, the moon, and the four winds. Eventually she battles an evil enchantress and saves her husband, breaking the enchantment and turning him back into a man.Kate Forsyth retells this German fairy tale as an historical novel set in Germany during the Nazi regime. A young woman marries a Nazi officer in order to save her father, but hates and fears her new husband. Gradually she comes to realise that he is a good man at heart, and part of an underground resistance movement in Berlin called the Red Orchestra. However, her realisation comes too late. She has unwittingly betrayed him, and must find some way to rescue him and smuggle him out of the country before he is killed.The Red Orchestra was a real-life organisation in Berlin, made up of artists, writers, diplomats and journalists, who passed on intelligence to the American embassy, distributed leaflets encouraging opposition to Hitler, and helped people in danger from the Nazis to escape the country. They were betrayed in 1942, and many of their number were executed.The Beast's Garden is a compelling and beautiful love story, filled with drama and intrigue and heartbreak, taking place between 1938 and 1943, in Berlin, Germany.
Every Little Thing
Lana Dash - 2020
At three, he takes first priority, and I'm always there for him. But when my sexy new neighbor Trace moves in, there's someone else on my mind...usually at night. My plus-one for my friend’s wedding cancels on me the night before. I don't want to go, but then...Trace offers to step in and be my date. He’s only doing me a favor so I don't look stupid. I've never been the kind of woman who attracts guys like him. But the way he holds me close makes me think I might've been wrong all these years... Trace From the moment I lay eyes on Kate, I want her, but I never thought the curvy beauty next door would ever look my way. When her date flakes on her, I jump at the chance to step in and replace him and show her what it's like to have a real man at her side. Her priority is her young son, and I respect that, because I respect her. There's no room in her life for a guy like me. But after one steamy night together, I can't let her go. I'll do whatever it takes to show her I'm the man she needs in her life, and she's the only woman for me. EVERY LITTLE THING, is an insta-love, happily-ever-after, STEAMY romance. No cliffhangers, no cheating. This is a standalone short story.
Band of Gold
Maggie Christensen - 2014
A schoolteacher in Sydney, Anna juggles her busy life with a daughter in the throes of first love and increasingly demanding aging parents.When Anna’s husband of twenty-five years leaves her, on Christmas morning, without warning or explanation, her safe and secure world collapses. Marcus King returns to Australia from the USA, leaving behind a broken marriage and a young son. When he takes up the position of Headmaster at Anna’s school, they form a fragile friendship through their mutual hurt and loneliness. Can Anna leave the past behind and make a new life for herself, and does Marcus have a part to play in her future?
Becoming Aurora
Elizabeth Kasmer - 2016
Our pack moves as one, past empty shop fronts and faded billboards.Sixteen-year-old Rory is at a crossroads in her life. While her gang plans its next move in a racially motivated turf war, Rory is sentenced to spend her summer at an aged care facility. She's proud of taking the rap for a crime her gang committed and reading to a feisty old boxing champion isn't going to change that.But what happens when Rory's path intersects with migrant boxer Essam's and she becomes the victim, not the perpetrator? Can she find the courage to face her past and become the girl her dad called Aurora?