AustLit

'Judy Nunn's new blockbuster is a sweeping historical novel about a prosperous sheep-farming family and the enigmatic young man with a dark past they let into their lives . . .

'Black sheep - there's one in every family . . .

'Orphaned at sixteen, James Wakefield was determined to be a gun shearer like his father. Now he’s killed twice, changed his name, and is on the run from the law.

'He had his reasons for both murders, and he felt no joy in taking life … Or did he?

'Ben McKinnon, meanwhile, is heir to the vast Glenfinnan sheep property near Goulburn, New South Wales. He too has a secret that, if ever revealed, would shatter the privileged lives of his father, Alastair, and his sisters, Jenna and Adele.

'When fate brings James and Ben together, a powerful friendship is forged, both men gladly becoming the keeper of the other’s secret.

'Then Ben insists his new friend come to work at Glenfinnan Station. Has James finally found the family he’s always longed for? Or has the McKinnon dynasty just unwittingly adopted a black sheep?

'From the Shearing Wars of Queensland to the close colonial community of Goulburn, to the trenches of the Western Front, Judy Nunn once again brings Australian history vividly to life.' (Publication summary)

'Collected together in print for the first time - including two brand new stories - this Judy Nunn anthology is an intoxicating mixture of suspense, history, romance, supernatural and mystery!

'A captivating collection of six stories from Australia’s master storyteller Judy Nunn.' (Publication summary)

'From the bestselling author of Fat, Forty and Fired comes this entertaining, thought-provoking and poignant account of turning sixty.

'Twenty years ago, Nigel Marsh was an overweight mortgage slave struggling to balance a career, marriage and four children under eight. Until he lost his job.

'In Fat, Forty and Fired, Nigel wrote about falling off the corporate hamster wheel and surviving. Now that he’s approaching sixty, he can’t help but notice it’s been a while since he was asked onto that wheel by other hamsters. One day he reads that a graduate trainee who used to work for him in London is now a global CEO with an office on the top floor of a skyscraper in New York. Nigel, by contrast, is wearing a dressing gown and sitting at his writing desk in a dank storage room under his garage in Sydney. It’s enough to give anyone a moment of self-doubt.' (Publication summary)

'The story of how David Hill and the other Forgotten Children took on the the institutions that tried to break them - and won.

'The Forgotten Children was David Hill's heartbreaking account of the abuse that he and other 'orphans of empire' survived at the Fairbridge Farm School in New South Wales. Part memoir, part oral history, the book became a bestseller. It was also the catalyst in a subsequent battle for justice, which resulted in the Fairbridge kids being awarded a record $24 million in compensation by the NSW Supreme Court. And that was just the start of a reckoning with institutional abuse of power that reverberates to this day.

'In Reckoning David recounts stories of the shocking systemic abuse at Fairbridge, and how he led the fight against the powerful people and organisations - including the Australian and British governments and the Royal Family -- who denied and covered up terrible crimes perpetrated on innocent children, some as young as five years old. David's fight for acknowledgement and restitution was for himself but especially for those kids, who as adults showed remarkable, enduring resilience and determination in holding to account the establishments responsible for their suffering.

'Reckoning is both a tribute to the children who were betrayed by broken system and a compelling account of an extraordinary quest for justice. It is the story of how David Hill and the other Forgotten Children took on the institutions that tried to break them - and won.'  (Publication summary)

'Judy Nunn’s latest bestselling novel will take you from the cotton mills of England to the magnificent theatres of Melbourne, on a scintillating journey through the golden age of Australian showbusiness.

'‘So, Will, are you going to come with me and my team of merry performers to the sunny climes of Australia, where the crowds are already queuing and the streets are paved with gold?’

'In the second half of the 19th century, Melbourne is a veritable boom town, as hopefuls from every corner of the globe flock to the gold fields of Victoria.

'And where people crave gold, they also crave entertainment.

'Enter stage right: brothers Will and Max Worthing and their wives Mabel and Gertie. The family arrives from England in the 1880s with little else but the masterful talents that will see them rise from simple travelling performers to sophisticated entrepreneurs.

'Enter stage left: their rivals, Carlo and Rube. Childhood friends since meeting in a London orphanage, the two men have literally fought their way to the top and are now producers of the bawdy but hugely popular ‘Big Show Bonanza’. The fight for supremacy begins.

'Waiting in the wings: Comedy, tragedy, passion and betrayal; economic depression, the Black Death and the horrors of World War One…' (Publication summary)

'It seems to have happened overnight, Val thought . How extraordinary. We’ve become a khaki town.

'It’s March 1942. Singapore has fallen. Darwin has been bombed. Australia is on the brink of being invaded by the Imperial Japanese Forces. And Val Callahan, publican of The Brown’s Bar in Townsville, could not be happier as she contemplates the fortune she’s making from lonely, thirsty soldiers.

'Overnight the small Queensland city is transformed into the transport hub for 70,000 American and Australian soldiers destined for combat in the South Pacific. Barbed wire and gun emplacements cover the beaches. Historic buildings are commandeered. And the dance halls are in full swing with jazz, jitterbug and jive.

'The Australian troops begrudge the confident, well-fed ‘Yanks’ who have taken over their town and their women. There’s growing conflict, too, within the American ranks, because black GIs are enjoying the absence of segregation. And the white GIs don't like it.

'As racial violence explodes through the ranks of the military, a young United States Congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, is sent to Townsville by his president to investigate. ‘Keep a goddamned lid on it, Lyndon,’ he is told, ‘lest it explode in our faces …’'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Kerry Tucker seemed to be a typical suburban mother of two, but she had a terrible secret: she had been stealing money from her employers.

'When her offence was discovered it was reported to be the biggest white-collar crime committed by a female in Victoria, and she was sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security prison, alongside the state’s most notorious criminals. Being incarcerated with drug dealers and murderers, however, was not nearly as daunting as having to tell her two young daughters why she was leaving them. The shame was almost unbearable.

'As Kerry adjusted to life behind bars, she began to see her fellow inmates as more than simply ‘murderers’ and ‘drug dealers’ – they became real people with names and broken dreams. And as they opened up to her, she realised that many of these women had violent home lives and were not getting parole simply because they couldn’t fill out the paperwork. Horrified, Kerry set about using her skills to represent them. She also began to study.

'Today, Kerry has a PhD, advocates for women prisoners, and has been reunited with her daughters. In her inspiring memoir, filled with fascinating stories of life behind bars and shot through with wry humour, she reveals how one woman’s darkest hour can become a turning point in her life. And how, just perhaps, it can even be the making of her.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'For ten years a man calling himself Will Power lived in near-total isolation in northern New South Wales, foraging for food, eating bats and occasionally trading for produce.

'To a young girl the life of a student nurse sounds exciting, but with long hours and short shrift it’s never easy. So when Maggie Groff embarks as a student nurse at London’s King’s College Hospital she must quickly get to grips with the demands of her chosen career. It’s sink or swim.

'In a delightful romp through time, played out against the march of feminism and the fashion, music and movies of almost half a century ago, we follow Maggie’s highs and lows as with trial and much error she becomes a highly skilled nurse and sets sail for a new life in Australia.

'From the watchful gaze of stern ward sisters and the ordeals of nursing at a poor housing estate to becoming an industrial nurse at the iconic Sydney Opera House, Maggie shares her stories of mistakes and mayhem, tea and sympathy, and the life-affirming moments that make it all worthwhile.'

Source: publisher's blurb

'If anyone is qualified to talk about sport in Australia, it's David Hill. In this book, with the benefit of his years of personal experience both playing and working in the sporting world, he vividly narrates its rise in Australia since the end of the nineteenth century, from the first cricket tour of England in 1868 by an Australian team – an Aboriginal team – to our earliest successes at the Olympics in 1896, when Edwin Flack was the only Australian competitor and won two gold medals, to the golden age of the 1950s when Australia ruled the world in tennis, swimming and athletics.

'In this book David also recalls his battles as president of the North Sydney Bears with tobacco sponsorship lobby groups; his coup as managing director of the ABC in buying the broadcast rights for the AFL; his gargantuan efforts to clean up soccer as chairman of Soccer Australia. And he takes us through the shift in sport from the relative innocence of the amateur era to its commercialisation, which, through the years, has undoubtedly contributed to the uglier sides of our national obsession: the corruption, the drugs, the sexism and racism. Have we plunged to a nadir in recent times, or are these characteristics of our sporting nation an inevitable and permanent effect of the need to succeed?

'This book is a riveting, personal take on a subject that so many Australians follow fanatically – a must-read for sports lovers, but also a compelling, revealing account for those who have never quite understood the appeal of our national obsession.' (Publication Summary)

'On a barren island off the coast of Western Australia, a rickety wooden dinghy runs aground. Aboard are nine people who have no idea where they are. Strangers before the violent storm that tore their vessel apart, the instinct to survive has seen them bond during their days adrift on a vast and merciless ocean.

'Fate has cast them ashore with only one thing in common . . . fear. Rassen the doctor, Massoud the student, the child Hamid and the others all fear for their lives. But in their midst is Jalila, who appears to fear nothing. The beautiful young Yazidi woman is a mystery to them all.

'While they remain undiscovered on the deserted island, they dare to dream of a new life . . .

'But forty kilometres away on the mainland lies the tiny fishing port of Shoalhaven. Here everyone knows everyone, and everyone has their place. In Shoalhaven things never change.

Until now . . .' (Synopsis)

'Sir Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, remains Australia's greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, his Australasian Antarctic Expedition left Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below Australia, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. He was on his way to fulfil a national dream he had first conceived three years earlier, while on his first trip to the frozen continent on the Nimrod expedition under the leadership of the charismatic Anglo-Irishman Sir Ernest Shackleton.

'Even as Mawson and his men were approaching Antarctica, two other famous Antarctic explorers were already engaged in nothing less than a race to become the first men to reach the South Pole. While Roald Amundsen of Norway, with his small team, was racing with dogs along one route, England's legendary Scott of the Antarctic, with his far larger team, was relying primarily on ponies and "man-hauling" to get there along another.

'As Mawson and his men make their home on the windiest place on earth and prepare for their own record-breaking treks, with devastating drama to be their constant companion, the stories of Amundsen and Scott similarly play out.

'With his trademark in-depth research, FitzSimons provides a compelling portrait of these great Antarctic explorers. For the first time, he weaves together their legendary feats into one thrilling account, bringing the jaw-dropping events of this bygone era dazzlingly back to life.' (From the publisher's website.)

'In this book, Ngadjon-Jii rainforest people share their beliefs through a creation story about a Rainbow Serpent. We discover an elder's traditional knowledge of bush foods from the rainforest. We also learn about Ngadjon-Jii's continuing connection to special places on their traditional lands of the Atherton Tableland area in North Queensland.' (Publishers' Blurb)

'One car, one caravan, one kid, one continent...

'Greg Bearup and his partner Lisa Upton survived three years living together in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but life with the Taliban was nothing compared to taking a toddler to Caravanastan.

'Following the trail of the superannuated wildebeest, they wind up the jockey wheel, check the safety chains and hitch up the van for the great lap of Australia with their baby son, Joe.

'Along the way they park the van behind the Dagwood Dog stand and run away with the showies, break down in croc-infested waters, talk iambic pentameter with the great poet Les Murray, share tunes with John Butler and pimp Lisa to a brothel in the Pilbara.

'Their blue-eyed, blond-haired little boy has his own adventures: charming madams, attempting to swim with man-eating reptiles, and escaping in dramatic fashion from the van.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Inside the depraved mind of child killer, Derek Ernest Percy.

'Young. White. High IQ. Middle-class family. Naval rating. A portrait of a yuppie success story? No. A portrait of child killer, Derek Ernest Percy.

'In this definitive, graphically chilling account of Percy's life, a man dubbed by a prison officer as 'Australia's answer to Hannibal Lecter', award-winning true-crime author Debi Marshall applies her investigative journalism skills to a forensic examination of the crimes, the man and his modus operandi. Informed by exclusive material never before seen - poignant and insightful interviews with Percy's mother, victims’ families, psychiatrists, police officers and former colleagues - Marshall also takes us on her personal journey as she seeks to unravel the truth about the monster whose lonely, idiosyncratic character has deceived the best psychiatric minds for 40 years.

'Is Derek Percy responsible for Australia's worst unsolved child abductions and murders? Is he mad - or just bad?'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Franz Schmidt arrives in Berlin in January 1939 to take up the position of Chief Auditor at the Reichsbank, the financial heart of the Third Reich. He has been positioned there by the enigmatic von Streck, a high-ranking member of the Nazi party but one who has a different agenda to that of the Fuehrer. Schmidt realises he must tread very carefully to avoid the zealous and passionate Fraulein Brandt, who is determined to destroy anyone unfaithful to the Party. After the murder of a co-worker, Schmidt is driven, despite von Streck's orders to keep a low profile, to help the dead man's assistant, who is now in grave danger herself.

'As the Gestapo's reach extends throughout the freezing city, Schmidt's brief becomes clear. He must steal a copy of the Reich's financing blueprint in an attempt to prevent the country's march to war.' (Publisher's blurb)