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 Caroline Scott

In the tradition of Jennifer Robson and Hazel Gaynor, this unforgettable debut novel is a sweeping tale of forbidden love, profound loss, and the startling truth of the broken families left behind in the wake of World War I.

1921. Survivors of the Great War are desperately trying to piece together the fragments of their broken lives. While many have been reunited with their loved ones, Edie’s husband Francis is still missing. Francis is presumed to have been killed in action, but Edie knows he is alive.

Harry, Francis’s brother, was there the day Francis went missing in Ypres. And like Edie, he’s hopeful Francis is living somewhere in France, lost and confused. Hired by grieving families in need of closure, Harry returns to the Western Front to photograph soldiers’ graves. As he travels through France gathering news for British wives and mothers, he searches for evidence his own brother is still alive.

When Edie receives a mysterious photograph that she believes was taken by Francis, she is more certain than ever he isn’t dead. Edie embarks on her own journey in the hope of finding some trace of her husband. Is he truly gone, or could he still be alive? And if he is, why hasn’t he come home?

As Harry and Edie’s paths converge, they get closer to the truth about Francis and, as they do, are soon faced with the life-changing impact of the answers they discover.

An incredibly moving account of an often-forgotten moment in history—those years after the war that were filled with the unknown—The Poppy Wife tells the story of the thousands of soldiers who were lost amid the chaos and ruins in battle-scarred France; and the even greater number of men and women hoping to find them again.

Pip Drysdale

Imagine seeing your loving husband on a dating app. Now imagine that’s the best thing to happen to you all week …

When Charlie sees a man who is the spitting image of her husband Oliver on a dating app, her heart stops. Her first desperate instinct is to tell herself she must be mistaken – after all, she only caught a glimpse from a distance as her friends were laughingly swiping through the men on offer. But no matter how much she tries to push her fears aside, she can’t because she took that photo. On their honeymoon. She just can’t let it go.

Suddenly other signs of betrayal begin to add up and so Charlie does the only thing she can think of to defend her position – she signs up to the app to catch Oliver in the act.

But Charlie soon discovers that infidelity is the least of her problems. Nothing is as it seems and nobody is who she thinks they are …

Danielle Steel

It is 1939 and although she doesn’t know it, it will be the last normal summer Alexandra Wickham will spend for more than thirty years. Alexandra is a young woman who sees her brothers fight and die for their country, and, inspired by their heroism, she is determined to do what she can for the war effort.
As a volunteer for the First Aid Corps, her courage, intelligence and talent for languages do not go unnoticed. Before long, she is approached by MI6 to go undercover and work as a spy. Undertaking some of the most dangerous missions of the war in France, she falls in love with a young soldier, who leaves the army behind for the relative security of the diplomatic corps. They marry, but her identity is a secret, even to her husband.

Over the next thirty years – as she raises a family – Alexandra continues to work undercover in some of the most dangerous trouble spots in the world under the perfect guise of a diplomat’s wife. From India to Hong Kong, Morocco to Moscow, she puts her life on the line serving her country, whilst never receiving recognition.

Spy by Danielle Steel is the page-turning story of a fearless young woman risking everything for what she believes in.

Jenny Ashcroft

Twenty two year old Madeline Bright is leaving England for colonial India, reluctantly moving back to the home of parents she hardly knows. But nothing can prepare Madeleine for the life she’ll find waiting for her in Bombay.

Darry Fraser

Adventure, romance and history combine in this thrilling 19th century journey through the South Australian bush and along the mighty Murray River in the company of a determined heroine.

1895, Renmark, South Australia

Maggie O’Rourke has always had a hard head. No man was going to tie her down to a life of babies and domestic slavery, even if that man was as good (and as annoyingly attractive) as Sam Taylor. Maggie is happily earning her own way as a maid in a house on the Murray River when disaster strikes.

Forced to defend herself and a friend from assault by an evil man, she flees downriver on a paddle steamer. With death at her heels, Maggie begins to realise that a man like Sam might be just who she wants in her hour of need. As for Sam, well, Maggie has always been what he wants.

The further Maggie runs, the more she discovers there are some things she cannot escape…

Andrew Goss

February, 1939. Europe teeters on the brink of war. In New York City, twenty-two thousand cheering Nazi supporters pack Madison Square Garden for a raucous, hate-filled rally. In a Hell’s Kitchen bar, Charles Mossman is reeling from the loss of his job and the demise of his marriage when a group draped in Nazi flags barges in. Drunk, Charlie takes a swing at one with tragic results and a torrent of unintended consequences follows.
Two years later. America is wrestling with whether to enter the growing war. Charles’s estranged wife and six-year-old daughter, Emma, now live in a quiet brownstone in the German-speaking New York City neighborhood of Yorkville, where support for Hitler is common. Charles, just out of prison, struggles to put his life back together, while across the hall from his family, a kindly Swiss couple, Trudi and Willi Bauer, have taken a liking to Emma. But Charles begins to suspect that they might not be who they say they are.

As the threat of war grows, and fears of a “fifth column”—German spies embedded into everyday life—are everywhere, Charles puts together that the seemingly amiable Bauers may be part of a sinister conspiracy. When Pearl Harbor is attacked and America can no longer sit on the sideline, that conspiracy turns into a deadly threat with Charles the only one who can see it and Emma, an innocent pawn.

Christos Tsiolkas

‘They kill us, they crucify us, they throw us to beasts in the arena, they sew our lips together and watch us starve. They bugger children in front of their mothers and violate men in front of their wives. The temple priests flay us openly in the streets. We are hunted everywhere and we are hunted by everyone …

We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You have to wonder, how is it that we not only survive but we grow stronger?’

Christos Tsiolkas’ stunning new novel Damascus is a work of soaring ambition and achievement, of immense power and epic scope, taking as its subject nothing less than events surrounding the birth and establishment of the Christian church. Based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focusing on characters one and two generations on from the death of Christ, as well as Paul (Saul) himself, Damascus nevertheless explores the themes that have always obsessed Tsiolkas as a writer: class, religion, masculinity, patriarchy, colonisation, exile; the ways in which nations, societies, communities, families and individuals are united and divided – it’s all here, the contemporary and urgent questions, perennial concerns made vivid and visceral.

In Damascus, Tsiolkas has written a masterpiece of imagination and transformation: an historical novel of immense power and an unflinching dissection of doubt and faith, tyranny and revolution, and cruelty and sacrifice.

Catherine Chambers

The Great Sphinx of Giza, painted friezes in pyramid chambers, and symbolic paintings of the eye of Horus are familiar and breathtaking works of art. Yet behind them lies a deep cosmological tapestry in which the origins of the Earth and riches brought by the Nile flood are explained through deities.

As pharaohs, kingdoms and dynasties rise and fall, so the roles of gods, goddesses and myths change, making Ancient Egypt’s mythology a fascinating journey that reflects shifting power, fortune and influence in the lives of Egyptians.

Ancient Egyptian Myths takes a broad approach to the cosmology of Ancient Egypt, describing the function of myth to both the powerful and the powerless. It includes internal and external political and economic influences on the status of deities and their myths.

The book examines iconography and texts that transported Egyptians from practical stories explaining the world around them to the mystery and magic that led them into the realm of the dead. It explains the roles of priests and the exclusiveness of temples.

Finally, it reveals influences of Egypt’s myths on belief systems and the arts that continue to this day. Illustrated throughout with artworks and photographs, Ancient Egyptian Myths is an engaging and highly informative exploration of a rich mythology that still fascinates today.

 Ashlee Vance

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius’s life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in South Africa and flight to the United States to his dramatic technical innovations and entrepreneurial pursuits.

Vance uses Musk’s story to explore one of the pressing questions of our age: can the nation of inventors and creators who led the modern world for a century still compete in an age of fierce global competition? He argues that Musk is an amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs. More than any other entrepreneur today, Musk has dedicated his energies and his own vast fortune to inventing a future that is as rich and far-reaching as the visionaries of the golden age of science-fiction fantasy.

Rod Laver

Between the 1950s and 1970s Australia was the world’s tennis superpower, producing players who dominated the grand slam events and the tour in both the amateur and professional eras. Of all of our players, none were more successful, famous, or influential than Rod Laver, whose two singles Grand Slams have never been equaled in men’s tennis.

The Golden Era is Rod’s account of those great years. As a participant and eye witness, he captures the excitement and drama of the great wins, and gives us genuine insight into the Australian champions who gave us so many victories. Written with all of Rod’s incredible tennis knowledge, and with key interviews from Frank Sedgman, Ken Rosewall, the late Lew Hoad, Mal Anderson, Ashley Cooper, Roy Emerson, Fred Stolle, John Newcombe and Margaret Court The Golden Era is the definitive story of a quarter century of Australian tennis domination that will almost certainly never be repeated.