AustLit

''Mrs Keith Miller, internationally known aviatrix, was taken to the county jail here today and held for investigation by State Attorney's investigators. Jail attendants said they understood she was held in connection with the shooting of an airline pilot.'

'Petite, glamorous and beguiling, Jessie 'Chubbie' Miller was one remarkable woman ... flyer, thrill seeker, heartbreaker. No adventure was too wild for her, no danger too extreme. And all over the world men adored her...

'When the young Jessie left suburban Melbourne and her newspaperman husband in 1927, little did she know that she'd become the first woman to complete an England to Australia flight (with a black silk gown thrown into her small flight bag, just in case), or fly the first air race for women with Amelia Earhart, or that she would disappear over the Florida Straits feared lost forever only to charm her way to a rescue. Nor could she have predicted that five years later she'd find herself at the centre of one of the most notorious and controversial murder trials in United States history. And this all began with something as ridiculously mundane as a pat of butter...

'The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller is a spellbinding story of an extraordinary woman - an international celebrity during the golden age of aviation - and her passionate and spirited life...' (Publication summary)

'Two inquests, four trials, three hung juries and the executioner...but was Louisa Collins really a husband killer? Was she the callous adulteress, drunkard and liar known as the Botany Bay Murderess and the Lucrezia Borgia of Botany Bay? Or was this mother of seven a spirited and defiant woman who was punished for breaching society's expectations of womanly behaviour?

'Compelling, freshly told and richly detailed, Black Widow uncovers the truth of a story that challenged the morality, the politics and the notion of law in an Australia on the edge of nationhood.' (Publication summary)

'When Quaker forger John Tawell disembarked in Sydney in 1815, none could have imagined that he would become the most historically 'influential' - albeit unwittingly - of Australia's 160,000 convict transportees. Tawell established Australia's first retail pharmacy and built the first Quaker meeting house in New South Wales. He became a rich convict nabob like his colleague Samuel Terry, the Botany Bay Rothschild, however unlike Terry he eventually decided to take his fortune home to England.

'Shunned by the Quakers and ridiculed by the broader community, he was a deeply troubled man when he caught the 7.42pm train from Slough station near Windsor Castle on New Years' Day 1845, leaving a dying woman sprawled on a nearby cottage floor. Had he murdered her or hadn't he?

'Between Slough and London's Paddington railway station ran the only electric telegraph operation in the entire world that was capable of sending a random message at a moment's notice. 'A murder has just been committed,' began the message that pursued Tawell. The consequences were extraordinary. Tawell's trial was a sensation, the struggling electric telegraph industry became a phenomenal success, the electricity industry was launched, and the Communication Revolution began.' (Publication summary)

'In 1829 at the Supreme Court in Sydney, the bewitching Jane New was sentenced to death. Her crime: shoplifting a bolt of printed French silk. But was she guilty? Many had their doubts. Although a legal technicality soon quashed Jane's sentence, the autocratic Governor Ralph Darling refused to set her free. Like bees to the honey pot, the gentlemen of Sydney swarmed to Jane's defence including barrister and political agitator William Charles Wentworth and Supreme Court Registrar John Stephen Jr, who were both vigorous and manipulative in their appeals to set her free. An Irresistible Temptation is set against the backdrop of a particularly divisive period in colonial New South Wales. Not only did the scandal titillate Sydney and its legal and political ramifications push the colony to the brink of a constitutional crisis, but it contributed to the savagery of Governor Darling's public vilification and bestowed upon Jane New a place in the annals of Australian colonial history.' - back cover