Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Historical Fiction

A man arrives at a house on the coast to write a book. Separated from his lover and family and friends, he finds the solitude he craves in the pyrotechnic beauty of nature, just as the world he has shut out is experiencing a cataclysmic shift. The preoccupations that have galvanised him and his work fall away and he becomes lost in memory and beauty. He also begins to tell us a story.

J.P. Powell is an archaeologist and historian with a passion for bringing the past to life. Powell has worked as a high school teacher, an academic, a National Parks officer, a museum administrator and has excavated in Jordan, Cyprus and Greece as well as leading historical archaeology projects in Australia.

1930. Seventeen-year-old Iris Mitchell dreams of designing clothes, but there's little spare cash for fashion in their shanty-town home. The gift of a single purple ribbon from her would-be boyfriend John Tucker, however, creates an unexpected opportunity...and when Iris's brother joins the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction, the Mitchell family move to the city. Iris is torn away from John, but he's Protestant and she's Catholic, so perhaps it wasn't meant to be.

It’s 1947. The world continues to grapple with the fallout of the Second World War, and former war reporter Billie Walker is finding her feet as an investigator. When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to London and Paris, where Billie’s own painful memories also lurk. Jack Rake, Billie’s wartime lover and, briefly, husband, is just one of the millions of people who went missing in Europe during the war. What was his fate after they left Paris together?

For the past 50 years, the golden treasures of Troy have been lying in the basement of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Now Germany and Turkey are both reclaiming the treasures. American lawyer Sarah Kaplan is drawn into the debate when the Turkish government employs her to get the treasure back. But things go horribly wrong and Sarah ends up in a Turkish gaol. Sarah's only link with the outside world is the amulet she wears, passed down to her from her great-grandmother. Engraved with the symbols of the bull and owl of Troy, the amulet's origin is a mystery.

A man arrives at a house on the coast to write a book. Separated from his lover and family and friends, he finds the solitude he craves in the pyrotechnic beauty of nature. He becomes lost in memory and beauty.... He also begins to tell us a story. A retired porn star is made an offer he can't refuse for the sake of his family and future. So he returns to the world he fled years before, all too aware of past temptations and long-buried desires. Can he resist the oblivion they promise?

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.

Remi Victoire grew up in a theatre troupe based in Paris after being abandoned by his mother. He has a good heart but is a womaniser and a drunkard. His faithful best friend is Pascal, who shares with Remi the experiences of the theatre trouple. Saskia is a Prussian contortionist who joins the two men on their storytelling journeys. They - along with the other young members of the theatre company - are the ‘lost children’, caught up in the trials and tribulations of a chaotic period of war and peace, which also marks the transition from oral to written storytelling.

Henry Hallward, editor of the Sydney Chronicle, is a thorn in the side of the colonial administration. Hallward has been imprisoned several times for criminal libel and continues to edit his newspaper while incarcerated. This time, he’s in jail awaiting trial for suggesting that there have been some criminal financial dealings involving the CEO of the Australian Agricultural Company, a consortium of British landowners, some resident in the colony, some not, to whom the British government was giving a million acres of Australian land to develop.

An affectionate and bittersweet portrait, David Malouf's first novel recreates the sleazy, tropical half city that was Brisbane and captures a generation locked in combat with the elusive Australian dream. Dante and Johnno are unlikely childhood friends, growing up in the bustle of steamy wartime Brisbane. Later, as teenagers, they learn about love and life amidst the city's pubs and public libraries, backyards and brothels, Moreton Bay figs and tennis parties. As adults, they make the great pilgrimage overseas and maintain an uneasy friendship as they seek to build their lives.

Abandoned by her lover and fleeing the wrath of her family, Marie-Louise must make a desperate choice: find a man or become one. 1791. In the midst of the French Revolution, unwed mother Marie-Louise Girardin takes one last look at her baby son before entrusting him to her friend, the revolutionary Olympe de Gouges. She must escape, and only the most daring plan will bring her both the anonymity she needs and the independence to return one day for her son.

A haunting and enigmatic tale that will keep you awake and wondering long after you've finished this classic mystery. Everyone agreed that the day was just right for the picnic to Hanging Rock - a shimmering summer morning warm and still, with cicadas shrilling.... St Valentine’s Day, in the midst of the hot summer of 1900, a party of schoolgirls went on a picnic to Hanging Rock. Some were never to return....

A rare, original and stunning novel about a remarkable girl who learns the hard way that the truth doesn't always set you free.The setting is the Mallee - wide, flat scrubland in northwestern Victoria, country where men are bred quiet, women stoic and the Gothic is never far away. Olive Lovelock has just turned 12. She is smart, fanciful and brave and on the cusp of something darker than the small world she has known her entire life. She knows that adults aren't very good at keeping secrets and makes it her mission to uncover as many as she can.

A stunning epic bringing the passions and heartaches of colonial Australia to vivid life. When a volatile trio is thrown together in Australia, they form an extraordinary, unexpected alliance that will challenge the establishment. Love, hate, survival and revenge: all will discover the truth.

A stunning epic bringing the passions and heartaches of colonial Australia to vivid life. When a volatile trio is thrown together in Australia, they form an extraordinary, unexpected alliance that will challenge the establishment. Love, hate, survival and revenge: all will discover the truth.

The dazzling new novel from Michelle de Kretser, author of Questions of Travel, best seller and winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Set in Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is a mesmerising novel about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies and as nations. It feels at once firmly classic and exhilaratingly contemporary.

Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most enigmatic and notorious women of the 1840s, Margaret Atwood has created an extraordinarily potent tale of sexuality, cruelty and mystery. Sixteen years have passed since teenaged Grace was locked up for the cold-blooded murder of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his lover, Nancy Montgomery. Saved from the gallows where her alleged accomplice was hanged, Grace claims to have no memory of the events which changed her life forever.

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'.

We're in Bacchus Marsh in the 1950s, with car salesmen, an early aviator, and the lives of Irene Bobs and Willy Bachhuber. The striking Irene is ahead of her time, a fearless, big-hearted, independently minded woman. Her next door neighbour Willy seems to be constantly in flight from his own life. He lacks social confidence but is extremely well read, so much so that he's a radio quiz champ. And he has a particular fondness for maps.

A powerful debut, harmonising Australian-born and immigrant voices, contrasting and connecting their thoughts and struggles. What if moving to a crumbling Australian coastal town meant giving up your only dream? In 1974, Nayeema reluctantly leaves Sydney's inner city to move to Burraboo, a tired coastal town, with her husband, Fawzy. In doing so, Nayeema surrenders her only dream, but once there she falls under the sway of new infatuations.