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Cyclone Season
Shelley is accustomed to rebuilding after tropical cyclones ravage Northern Queensland. But rebuilding her life after her husband leaves and her career crumbles has proven more difficult. Her daughter barely speaks to her, and her sensible granddaughter has abruptly joined a band.
Like many women in their 50s, Shelley faces tough questions:
How much should she intervene in others’ lives?
Can she form her own social circle after decades as part of a couple?
With her history, can she trust any man? Especially one who is meddling, irritating, and addicted to internet dating?
Most of all, how does she pick up the pieces after the inevitable storms life brings?
Shelley is finding out what it takes to start over and weather life’s personal cyclones.
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Happy Belated Birthday
Sally Sparks is a woman in her blossoms, a writer, and a life adventurist.
In her strife for keeping her freedom, reputation, and social stability, she uses creative means.
A connection to her past life, brings conflict into her present relation with a young lover and forces her to take some major decisions regarding her personal life.
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When Life Changes
Life in the Far East is a melting pot of diverse cultures, where romance takes many forms. This story follows young adults who forge cross-cultural friendships in Thailand. Faced with discrimination, injustice, bribery, and other difficulties, they navigate complex decisions about integrity and honour. Saving face and upholding family reputation prove challenging, especially when misunderstandings arise. Each character uniquely combats obstacles as relationships deepen. When change occurs, responses vary. Ultimately, the question emerges: Can their love withstand the heat of social forces?
While fictional, the protagonists are composites of real-life individuals. Their poignant interactions unveil profound truths about facing adversity in rapidly modernizing societies. Readers are transported to the realities of the region, exploring moral dilemmas through sympathetic eyes as values intermix amidst the confusion of progress.
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The Colour of Covid
As Melbourne endures some of the planet’s longest pandemic lockdowns, three disconnected lives spiral toward intersecting turmoil. Family man John Clark fights to hold career and relationships intact while opinionated libertarian Jimmy Bulwark rages alone against heavy-handed government restraints. By chance these childhood acquaintances reunite just as forthright executive Nicky Chan gets callously downsized.
United in outrage over Nicky’s mistreatment, John and Jimmy impulsively intervene despite clashing worldviews that once kept them estranged. But social tensions run high and resources grow scarce as the crisis persists year after chaotic year. Personal principles get tested as the trio bonds through tribulation, forced to reconsider their stances on virus safety versus freedom and civil duty.
Follow the tumultuous trajectories of three complex personalities as isolating upheaval strains relationships and erodes security. With compassion and humour, this revealing drama bears witness to everyday people persevering through a surreal epoch of ominous viral threats, social polarization, economic devastation, and uncertainty plaguing our planet.
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March Rains
When Covid-19 spread around the world in 2020, it changed the lives of everyone in its path. Grace, an Intensive Care Unit nurse, is no exception. Dark clouds begin to gather over the bay as news headlines signal that Covid-19 has reached the United States with the first community transmitted cases emerging in the San Francisco Bay Area. Almost overnight, amidst a shelter-in-place, Grace finds herself on the frontlines of the crisis caring for the scores of patients filling her intensive care unit at Harris Memorial Hospital. Like a flash flood, the landscape of life inside and outside of the hospital is changed unexpectedly and drastically for Grace and those around her, forcing them to learn to live with uncertainty and under extreme pressures. Grace and her family navigate unforeseen complications as they attempt to make sense of and survive the crisis while carrying the defining weight of past and present trauma in a collision of circumstances through unchartered territory. It is uncertain whether they will find the path forward out of the eye of the storm.
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In Your Arms I Belong
The bond between Louise, Grant, Charlie, and Jim continues to strengthen as they move into a new chapter of their lives. Sharing their home together as two heterosexual couples they find themselves on a voyage of discovery. The importance of a healthy sex life overspills into the relationships they maintain with their family and friends. The myth of ‘with age comes experience’, is dispelled as Louise and Charlie become the teachers.
There is a cyclonic change in the lives of the older siblings and friends of Louise and Grant’s Family. As new relationships develop, the complexities of life bring others to an end. With the turbulences of relationships that are challenged by modern day prejudices, they are met, by devastating affects upon those lives involved.
With the love and support of those around them, it is possible for them to evolve and flourish. With the beginnings of a new life, like the eternal spring, love blossoms confirming that it is in your arms that I belong.
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Go East
The Sweedies are an average modern family with their share of quirks. They face life with humour and cherish family time, especially with the Grannies.
A trip to Spain brings mishaps – Sally Sweedie, mother to Jen and Ted, misplaces her phone while dealing with treacherous weather.
Back home in Southend for Christmas, two new arrivals join the Sweedies. Howard, father of the household, feels restless and buys a motorcycle, much to his wife’s chagrin.
Fast forward to 2033 and the fortune teller proves accurate – the Sweedies are thriving as always. Now, seven-year-old Flora joins the clan.
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Yellow Leaf
In Yellow Leaf, discover the journey of pianist Will as he navigates the uncharted waters of starting again after the unexpected breakdown of his fourteen-year long marriage to his childhood sweetheart. As he reflects on his past and his marriage, Will must confront the question of who he is outside of his relationship and what he truly wants from life, work, and love. With humour and heart, the novel follows Will’s evolution as he immerses himself in the world of film making and encounters a diverse cast of characters from the music, media, academic and cultural spheres. Through this journey of self-discovery, Will not only reinvents himself but also challenges the perceptions of classical music. This introspective and thought-provoking story offers a rare glimpse into the mind and heart of a man amid a mid-life awakening.
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Homeless Companions
Harmony Harringdon is a teenager with her whole life ahead of her. She is beautiful, sweet, and talented. Harmony and her best friend Jake Butler are inseparable. As the pair grow from children to teenagers, their friendship becomes love. They weren’t to know what fate has planned for them. It would all become too much for Harmony, despite having Jake there to support her.
Fleeing the shame and devastation she believes she has caused, Harmony leaves all she knows behind her. Bearing witness to the cruel realities of life, this time fate is kind and brings Harmony a Carnival.
With newfound purpose, Harmony’s talent and tenacity propels her on an unexpected journey. However, all Harmony longs for more than anything is for something or someone to save her.
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Homeless Companions
Harmony Harringdon is a teenager with her whole life ahead of her. She is beautiful, sweet, and talented. Harmony and her best friend Jake Butler are inseparable. As the pair grow from children to teenagers, their friendship becomes love. They weren’t to know what fate has planned for them. It would all become too much for Harmony, despite having Jake there to support her.
Fleeing the shame and devastation she believes she has caused, Harmony leaves all she knows behind her. Bearing witness to the cruel realities of life, this time fate is kind and brings Harmony a Carnival.
With newfound purpose, Harmony’s talent and tenacity propels her on an unexpected journey. However, all Harmony longs for more than anything is for something or someone to save her.
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Life Drawing
“Art gotta be high up and dangerous,” the graffiti artist tells his mother. It has to be practiced diligently like playing the piano, the longtime members of a life drawing studio believe, and if your view of the model is the model’s backside, you don’t move for a better view. Art is a mysterious way into your model’s sorrow when words fail. Art can open the rooms of your childhood. It existed before there was perspective. It can even be a dinner party. It can make a still life come alive, and it can heal a wounded spirit.
Barbara de la Cuesta taught and worked as a journalist in South America. She now teaches Spanish.
Her novel, The Spanish Teacher, was winner of the Gival Press Fiction Prize.
About her most recent novel, Adam’s Chair, Lauren Stafford, of the Manhattan Review of Books, wrote:
“A tapestry of literary elegance… A contemporary novel for the ages.”
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Greeted by Kindness
Can you always trust Kindness?
The ghost writer of her autobiography thought so. The government that made her Lady Kindness and its minister thought so too.
Kindness definitely believed it, but fact checking left some big questions unanswered.
Whatever Kindness believed, it does matter that you are who you say you are.
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