AustLit

'Carlo Minelli is about to discover that war and art are certainly not mutually exclusive.

'His politically ambitious father is carefully curating Carlo’s future at the family’s Lombardy vineyard. But Carlo and his artistic mother have other ideas. On the day he is meant to take up a highly coveted art scholarship at the French-run Villa Medici in Rome, Il Duce declares war. Carlo is turned away from the Villa’s heavily guarded entrance, leaving him neither a student nor gainfully employed in support of the war effort.

'Press-ganged into the Italian Army and captured in North Africa, Carlo the POW sketches and paints his way across three continents and several oceans, bringing the hardships of World War II into sharp relief against unexpected mateship, beauty and love.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'For much of the World War II conflict, Japan had been a safe haven for its citizens, far, far away from Germany's relentless advance in Europe and the daily horrors of such events as the London blitz, concentration camps and the fall of France. But Alex Faure always felt that one day the war would come with a vengeance to the Land of the Rising Sun, although even he was astonished by the ferocity with which the Allied forces exacted their retribution on the place he's always called home. Up until then, life had been good for Alex in Japan. The son of a French father and White Russian mother, he grew up and went to school in the port of Yokohama. The local community of foreigners was a tight knit, highly social group, the bulk of whom spent their summers at the holiday playground of Karuizawa in the mountains. As a gaijin or European with a command of English, French and Japanese, Alex looked forward to a good life in Japan after graduating from school and completing his tertiary education at Harvard in the US. The morning of December 7, 1941, put an end to those expectations. The surprise attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbour immediately changed Japan's status as a neutral in the European war. From that time on life became increasingly difficult for Alex, his mother and sister, particularly after his father fled to Vietnam to avoid arrest by the Tokko - Japanese special secret police. With his father's export business in tatters and the last of his mother's jewellery sold off, Alex was fortunate enough to secure a job at the Banque de l'Indochine, a French bank in Tokyo, while many of his European friends were locked out of work by the increasingly suspicious Japanese. Here he became embroiled in the murky world of propaganda, politics and clandestine financial deals, all as the war closed in. In order to survive and support his mother and sister, Alex had to sidestep the suspicions of his French superiors at the bank, keep secrets from those he loved, avoid the prying eyes of the infamous Kempeitai secret police, and somehow survive the devastating Tokyo bombings which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Dragons in the Forest is the amazing true story of Alex Faure's life behind the tinted glass of an inscrutable society that could never acknowledge the fallibility of its leaders, nor foresee its potential demise. Even to utter an opinion that the war might not be going as well as suggested by the movie reels would be an act of treason punishable by death. Peter Yeldham masterfully interlaces excerpts from Alex's diary with real events in wartime Japan, producing a riveting tale of life as a foreigner in a strange land at a very dangerous time.' (Publication summary)

'Luke Elliott and Claudia Marsden have fallen in love at a perilous time. The Second World War is raging in the Pacific, barbed wire and gun emplacements are strung along the northern beaches in preparation for invasion. As the war moves closer, their 'sextet' of loyal school friends is splintering as individual career dreams are pursued. Luke yearns to be a journalist but a start in newspapers is proving challenging. The war's end unexpectedly provides Luke's big break, but the pursuit of his dream will keep him away from Australia and Claudia, with surprising consequences for them both. ' (Publication summary)

'London, 1927. The jazz age. Aviators seek to conquer new frontiers in the sky.

'Former wartime ace James Harrington has his sights set on being the first person to fly from Britain to Australia in a light aircraft. With so much desert and ocean to cross, he's been told it can't be done.

Feisty Australian Sarah Carson can help make his dream a reality, but only on the condition that he takes her with him. So begins the flying adventure of a lifetime, until halfway across the world, the plane disappears...

Reporting on it all back home is Sarah's boyfriend, Fleet Street aviation correspondent Daniel Anderson, whose job it is to uncover the truth. Where in the world are they? And what is really going on?

From Australia's master of the historical blockbuster comes this highly entertaining adventure-romance about an ambitious and heroic pair. Glory Girl is an unforgettable story about the risks they take and the sacrifices they make for their chance of glory.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Katerina arrives in Sydney by ship as a six-year-old in the 1950s, a bewildered newcomer met by her father, whom she barely remembers, and abandoned by her impulsive and flighty mother. She faces a strange and often hostile new country as she and her father struggle to be accepted.

Growing into a beautiful and intelligent young woman, Katerina renames herself Kate and makes the Northern Beaches of Sydney home. At the age of seventeen, while the Vietnam War rages and protest marches fill Australian streets, she is swept into a passionate love affair.

Life for Kate brings joy and tragedy. Inspired by her own experience as a child, she becomes a legal advocate for displaced persons and is forced to confront questions of life and death, freedom and captivity - choices that will change her life forever...' (From the publisher's website.)

'They were our golden youth, seeking adventure on foreign battlefields. The First World War, everyone said in 1914, would be over by Christmas, and Stephen Conway rushes to enlist in the belief he should fight for King and Empire. Leaving behind a new wife and a baby on the way, he soon finds himself in the trenches of Gallipoli. Four horrific years later, Stephen is the only survivor of his platoon, shell-shocked and disillusioned, and during the heat of battle on the blood-stained fields of France, he mysteriously disappears.

'Stephen's ultimate fate is still a mystery when more than eighty years later his grandson Patrick finds a diary that leads him to Britain and France on a journey to discover what really happened . . . a journey during which he unexpectedly finds love, and the truth about his grandfather's fate that is even stranger and more shocking than he imagined.' (Publisher's blurb)

'The small town of Gundagai in the 1930s is no place for the attractive and flamboyant Belle Carson and her young son, Teddy – particularly when she longs for him to achieve the success that eluded her on the stage and screen. Determined to pursue this dream, she abandons her husband and their Murrumbidgee River home for a more vibrant city life. But Belle’s obsession leads her and Teddy – whom the press christens ‘the Murrumbidgee Kid’ – into a world where nothing is safe or familiar. And from her carefully hidden past a threat soon emerges to make their precarious lives even more vulnerable . . .

'From rural Gundagai to the bright lights and shady underbelly of 1930s Sydney, this is a beautifully written and absorbing story about an unconventional family’s coming-of-age.'

Source : author's blurb

A sweeping saga of love, deceit and sacrifice set during the early years of the twentieth century in the farmlands around Narrandera, then a small frontier town in rural south-west New South Wales. The narrative focuses on the Bergman sisters, Jessica, the feisty tomboy who loves to help her father work their farmland, and her beautiful sister, Meg, who is being groomed by her mother, Hester, to be the perfect wife so that she can marry her way out of poverty. However, Richard, the man that Meg has set her sights on, falls in love with Jessica, and they later have a son. Undeterred, Hester schemes to wrench the couple apart so that Meg can claim both Richard and his son. She eventually commits her daughter to a mental asylum, and it is there Jessica receives news of her lover's death and almost loses hope. After enlisting the help of Mr Runche, a down-and-out lawyer battling alcoholism, she is eventually released and, years later, it is the reformed Runche who gives Jessica the courage to fight for the return of her child.

Conceived as a telemovie, Without Warning is a story of sexual pursuit and intimidation that almost destroys a marriage and eventually leads to extreme violence and murder. When successful film producer Megan Turner and her director husband David are flagged down by an over-zelaous highway patrol, everything appears normal. Although he lets David off with a warning, the Turners' lives soon spiral out of control as he stalks and psychologically intimidates Megan over a sustained period. As the threats increase and the violence worsens, the Turners vow not to succumb.

'A compelling saga of friendship love and survival

'They came from the ruins of the war in Europe: Sarah Wiseman, the survivor of a German concentration camp, Michael and Helen Francis, a brother and sister fleeing from the Russians in Budapest, and Neil Latham, the young English soldier who broke the rules to help them all survive. The four arrive in Australia seeking a new start in the lucky country.

'But life in post-war Sydney, amid the gangs and corruption, and in the high country of Australia’s Snowy Mountain Scheme, is hardly an idyllic existence. And the past, left so far behind, threatens to jeopardise all their futures in unexpected and terrifying ways. It seems only a matter of time before buried secrets will be revealed . . .'

Source : author's website

'Daniel Johnson and Matthew Conway are currency lads – born and bred in the new land now being called Australia. Closer than brothers, they harbour a secret that binds them for life. But change is coming. When the British government resolves to turn back the clock and renew convict transportation, Daniel and Matthew find themselves on opposite sides of a fierce conflict that threatens to tear their friendship apart.

'Set in the bustling maritime world of 1830s Sydney, and spanning two decades, this is an unforgettable novel of loyalty and love that captures the spirit and energy of early Australia.' (Publication summary)

Based on the real events surrounding the lives of Jessica 'Chubbie' Miller and ex-RAF pilot/adventurer Bill Lancaster, the screenplay follows Miller's departure for England in the early 1920s in search of adventure. There she meets and falls in love with the already-married Lancaster and becomes involved in his unsuccessful attempt to be the first person to fly from Britain to Australia. It also focuses on the murder of Haden Clarke, Miller's American biographer and the man she was also having an affair with. Although Lancaster was charged with Clarke's murder, Miller stood by him and he was eventually acquitted. The series ends with Lancaster's ill-fated attempt to beat Amy Johnson's new record flight from London to Capetown. After his plane disappears in the Sahara Desert, Lancaster's wife and mother prevent Miller from mounting a search and he is eventually presumed dead. An epilogue details the discovery twenty-nine years later of Lancaster's remains and his diary.

While holidaying in Asia, two Australian backpackers, Joanne and Richard, are hauled off a train and taken hostage by Cambodian rebels. A ransom demand is made to the Australian Government for their release. The government refuses to pay. Also kidnapped is French couple Louise and Pierre, who are confident that the French mining company for whom Pierre works will pay the ransom. When Richard and Pierre are executed, Joanne and Louise know their days are numbered and plan their escape.