Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Coming of Age

Hannah has been running - literally and figuratively - from her life back in Australia. Whenever she's not working, she's pounding London's streets, putting the past behind her. Then she meets a fellow Australian named India, and Hannah's entranced. For India is confident, exotic and charming - qualities that Hannah feels she's desperately lacking. India has a secret, too - one beyond any remedy.

Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation...until one night her granddaughter rows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept to herself - with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl - unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these.

Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice and revelation. This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, best-selling author of The Slap and Barracuda, takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters who will never let you go and situations that will haunt you forever.

How to be a reader - how to be a writer. All you need to know. Alice is an 18-year-old student and aspiring novelist with green spiky hair, a child of the modern age who recoils at the idea of reading Jane Austen. In a sequence of letters reminiscent of Jane Austen's to her own niece, 'aunt' Fay examines the rewards of such study. Not only is her correspondence a revealing tribute to a great writer - it is also an original and rewarding exploration of the craft of fiction itself.

Jerra and his best mate Sean set off in a beaten-up old VW to go camping on the coast. Jerra's friends and family want to know when he will finish university, when he will find a girl. But they don't understand about Sean's mother, Jewel, or the bush or the fish with the pearl. They think he needs a job, but what Jerra is searching for is more elusive. Only the sea, and perhaps the old man who lives in a shack beside it, can help.

The story of Elena and Lila begins in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. The two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, sometimes to their own detriment, as each discovers more about who she is and suffers or delights in the throes of their intense friendship. There is a piercing honesty about Ferrante’s prose that makes My Brilliant Friend a compulsively readable portrait of two young women, and also the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country.

It's 1944 when twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood. As part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo, the girls experience privileges and horrors unknown to others.

Sharply observed, bitter and humorous, The Long Prospect is a story of life in an Australian industrial town. Growing up neglected in a seedy boardinghouse, 12-year-old Emily Lawrence befriends Max, a middle-aged scientist who encourages her to pursue her intellectual interests. Innocent Emily will face scandal, suburban snobbery and psychological torment. Originally published in 1958, The Long Prospect was described as second only to Patrick White's Voss in postwar Australian literature.

It’s winter in Logan, south-east Queensland, and still warm enough to sleep in a car at night if you have nowhere else to go. But Kathy Bradley can’t sleep. She has driven from Sydney to plan a funeral with her five surviving siblings (most of whom she hardly speaks to) because their sister Annie is finally, blessedly, inconceivably dead from the brain tumour she was diagnosed with 25 years ago.

The Story of a New Name is an extraordinary novel about two young women, Lila and Elena, growing up in Naples in the early 1960s. At 16 Lila marries the shopkeeper Stefano. She is filled with pleasure at her new wealth and horror at the life she has chosen. Elena’s own attempts at romance seem to be sabotaged by Lila’s turbulent affairs. As she tries to plot her way out of poverty via academic and literary success, her constant anxiety is that she is just a shadow of the brilliant Lila.

Jude is a 30-something sort-of musician made accidentally rich by a fortuitous business deal. Suddenly able to fund his obsession with wine and restaurants, he naturally embarks on a victory lap of Paris. While there, he is entrusted to open the Melbourne outpost of a beloved bistro and curate its perfect wine list. But is Australian wine enough? Is Jude enough? To find out, he’ll stare down rollercoaster luck, his own demons and falling for his best friend – all while leaning on his Grand Crew of wine-loving comrades.

When a spreading fire in the mountains stops his train, Bon looks out the window and does what he’s always imagined he might—he gets off the train, and steps out of his life. In the desolate regional town of Newnes, he falls into the company of Steven and Jack Grady, two brothers, one garrulous, the other all but silent, both drawn like moths to the chaos of the coming days. When Lesley—an enigmatic fellow escapee from the city—arrives, they coalesce into a makeshift family unit, bound by a deep and strange attachment.

On the eve of her 30th birthday, Wilhelmina Mann is already dealing with more than enough problems, so a birthday misadventure landing her in the lock-up is hardly even a surprise. But that mistake leads to Wil receiving a packet of old letters—letters to Wil from her mother that were written just before she died, back when Wil was a small child. Suddenly, Wil's life is thrown into a new kind of turmoil as she discovers the mother she lost. And while the letters begin as tales of growing up, they soon become a great love story, almost as great as the bond between mother and daughter.

In a heady whirlwind of independence, lust and defiance, 16-year-old Karuna falls pregnant. Not on purpose, but not entirely by accident, either. Incensed, Karuna’s mother, already over-protective, confines her to their 14th-storey housing-commission flat, to keep her safe from the outside world - and make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. Stuck inside for endless hours, Karuna battles her mother and herself for a sense of power in her own life, as a new life forms and grows within her.

May, 1940. After a bitter tragedy, young Australian woman Lucie and her French mother, Yvonne, are forced to leave home and seek help from the only family they have left - Lucie's uncle, Gerard. As the Second World War engulfs Europe, the two women find themselves trapped in German-occupied Paris, sharing a cramped apartment with the authoritarian Gerard and his extremist views. Drawing upon her artistic talents, Lucie risks her own safety to engage in small acts of defiance against the occupying forces and the collaborationist French regime.

Balga Boy Jackson is the long-awaited new story of Mudrooroo. He returns to his roots to give us a vivid life story of an Australian Black Boy - naturally with a pun, Balga is the Australian grass tree called in Western Australia the Black Boy. Mudrooroo, who hails from Cuballing in the West, takes us on Balga Boy's journey to Fitzroy and Kings Cross. The late '50s and early '60s come alive through Balga's own blues and musical journey, and he says, 'This is how it was for a lot of us'.

Living on her family’s gorgeous lakeside estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, clever, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented 14-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure.... One midsummer’s eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest son, Theo, has vanished without a trace.

Set in a remote area of Western Australia, The Fringe Dwellers is the story of two part-Aboriginal sisters, Noonah and Trilby, who leave the mission they call home to return to their family's camp on the fringe of white society. Noonah is pragmatic and accepts her position, only wanting to raise money for the family. But Trilby refuses to believe that her current position will define the rest of her life.

For the first time in your life, she is going to tell you the truth.... Then: a trip to the beach tore Becky’s world apart. It was the day her mother, Selma, met the mysterious man she went on to fall in love with and leave her husband and child for. Now: it’s been a decade since they last spoke, but Selma has just weeks to live. And she has something important to tell Becky - a secret she been hiding for many years. She had another daughter. With the loss of her mother, Becky aches to find her sister.

The long-awaited novel from Mudrooroo, who returns to his roots to give us the striking and evocative story of an Australian Black Boy...a boy born long ago in 1938 who was named Balga or Black Boy. He had an Aboriginal mother and an African American father who bequeathed to him the spiky mop of hair which gave him his name. So it is said. Now listen on.