Author Archive | admin

 Mary S. Lovell

The Riviera Set is the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped and politicked at the Château de l’Horizon near Cannes, over the course of forty years from the time when Coco Chanel made southern French tans fashionable in the twenties to the death of the playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1960.

At the heart of this was the amazing Maxine Elliott, the daughter of a fisherman from Connecticut, who built the beautiful art deco Château and brought together the likes of Noel Coward, the Aga Khan, the Windsors and two very saucy courtesans, Doris Castlerosse and Daisy Fellowes, who set out to be dangerous distractions to Winston Churchill as he worked on his journalism and biographies during his ‘wilderness years’ in the thirties.

After the War the story continued as the Château changed hands and Prince Aly Khan used it to entertain the Hollywood set, as well as launch his seduction of and eventual marriage to Rita Hayworth.

Mary Lovell tells her story of high society behaviour with tremendous brio and relish, and this book has all the charm and fascination of her bestselling The Mitford Girls and The Churchills.

 Mark Tedeschi

One of the most shocking murder trials in Australia’s legal history, and the tribulations of the man who conducted it. ‘A deeply moving account of a massacre that is a stain on our nation’s soul – and the prosecutor who brought the perpetrators to justice’. Peter FitzSimons

In 1838, eleven convicts and former convicts were put on trial for the brutal murder of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children at Myall Creek in New South Wales. The trial created an enormous amount of controversy because it was almost unknown for Europeans to be charged with the murder of Aborigines. It would become the most serious trial of mass murder in Australia’s history.

The trial’s prosecutor was the Attorney General of New South Wales, John Hubert Plunkett. It proved to be Plunkett’s greatest test, as it pitted his forensic brilliance and his belief in equality before the law against the combined forces of the free settlers, the squatters, the military, the emancipists, the newspapers, and even the convict population.

From the bestselling author of Kidnapped and Eugenia, Murder at Myall Creek follows the journey of the man who who arguably achieved more for modern-day civil rights in Australia than anyone else before or since.

Praise for Murder at Myall Creek

‘The Myall Creek massacre is a stain on our nation’s soul, with the only positive note being that the law brought the evil perpetrators to justice in a key trial that was a foundation stone for the integrity of our legal system. This wonderful book brings that trial, and the marvellous prosecutor, John Hubert Plunkett, back to life.’
Peter FitzSimons

‘A much needed and appreciated historical insight into the profession of a man who gained respect through the colonial era of Australia and his fight for justice through the law for my people, the Kamilaroi.’
Aunty Noeline Briggs-Smith OAM, Aboriginal researcher.

 Ben Smee, Christopher Walsh

Goings-on in Northern Territory politics from 2012-2016 may read like satire, but it is all true. These are stories you couldn’t make up. This book is an instruction manual on how NOT to run a government. In the Northern Territory, politics isn’t a numbers game, it’s a blood sport.

The recent goings-on in Top End politics make the Rudd, Gillard, Abbott and Turnbull skirmishes in Canberra look positively civil and Bronwyn Bishop’s travel expenses like small change. Not since the night Malcolm Fraser lost his trousers has the Australian political scene provided such entertainment. Laying bare the backstabbing, scandals, power struggles and flawed characters that took the Country Liberal Party from the Northern Territory’s dominant political force to near extinction in four short years, CROCS IN THE CABINET may read like a satire, but it is all true. You have to read it to believe it.

Find out exactly how bonkers the NT parliament really was, as you read of …

• a drunk Territory minister, a seedy Tokyo ‘cabaret’ club, a $5000 bar tab and taxpayer-funded credit card. Priceless!
• the lewd videos a masturbating minister sent someone, not his wife
• the anguished words ‘WE ARE IN LOVE!’ echoing from the floor of parliament
• a Chief Minister defying a coup by throwing his phone in a pool
• the ‘gone fishing’ MP who chose baiting up instead of turning up
• the minister, charged with assault, who sold her ‘MY HUSBAND IS HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH MY NIECE’ story to TAKE 5 magazine.

Two of the NT NEWS’s best journalists, Walkley Award-winning Ben Smee and award-winning Christopher A Walsh, show that the NT NEWS is not just crocodiles and quirky front pages – its hard-hitting investigative journalists also deliver a memorable bite.

This is FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL meets FAWLTY TOWERS.

 Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah is the host of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, where he gleefully provides America with its nightly dose of serrated satire. He is a light-footed but cutting observer of the relentless absurdities of politics, nationalism and race – and in particular the craziness of his own young life, which he’s lived at the intersections of culture and history.

In his first book, Noah tells his coming of age story with his larger-than-life mother during the last gasps of apartheid-era South Africa and the turbulent years that followed.

Noah was born illegal – the son of a white, Dutch father and a black Xhosa mother, who had to pretend to be his nanny or his father’s servant in the brief moments when the family came together.

 Diana Gabalden

A young Jamie Fraser learns what it really means to become a man in this Outlander prequel novella. Featuring all the trademark suspense, adventure, and history of Diana Gabaldon’s #1 bestselling novels and the Starz original series, Virgins is now available for the first time as a standalone ebook.

Mourning the death of his father and gravely injured at the hands of the English, Jamie Fraser finds himself running with a band of mercenaries in the French countryside, where he reconnects with his old friend Ian Murray. Both are nursing wounds; both have good reason to stay out of Scotland; and both are still virgins, despite several opportunities to remedy that deplorable situation with ladies of easy virtue. But Jamie’s love life becomes infinitely more complicated—and dangerous—when fate brings the young men into the service of Dr. Hasdi, a Jewish gentleman who hires them to escort two priceless treasures to Paris. One is an old Torah; the other is the doctor’s beautiful daughter, Rebekah, destined for an arranged marriage. Both Jamie and Ian are instantly drawn to the bride-to-be—but they might be more cautious if they had any idea who they’re truly dealing with.

Note: Originally published as part of the Dangerous Women anthology.

 Nicholas Sparks

At 32, Russell Green has it all: a stunning wife, a lovable six year-old daughter, a successful career as an advertising executive and an expansive home in Charlotte. He is living the dream, and his marriage to the bewitching Vivian is the center of that. But underneath the shiny surface of this perfect existence, fault lines are beginning to appear…and no one is more surprised than Russ when he finds every aspect of the life he took for granted turned upside down. In a matter of months, Russ finds himself without a job or wife, caring for his young daughter while struggling to adapt to a new and baffling reality. Throwing himself into the wilderness of single parenting, Russ embarks on a journey at once terrifying and rewarding—one that will test his abilities and his emotional resources beyond anything he ever imagined.

 Janet Evanovich

In the heart of Trenton, N.J., a killer is out to make sure someone gets his just desserts.

Larry Virgil skipped out on his latest court date after he was arrested for hijacking an eighteen-wheeler full of premium bourbon. Fortunately for bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, Larry is just stupid enough to attempt almost the exact same crime again. Only this time he flees the scene, leaving behind a freezer truck loaded with Bogart ice cream and a dead body—frozen solid and covered in chocolate and chopped pecans.

As fate would have it, Stephanie’s mentor and occasional employer, Ranger, needs her to go undercover at the Bogart factory to find out who’s putting their employees on ice and sabotaging the business. It’s going to be hard for Stephanie to keep her hands off all that ice cream, and even harder for her to keep her hands off Ranger. It’s also going to be hard to explain to Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, why she is spending late nights with Ranger, late nights with Lula and Randy Briggs—who are naked and afraid—and late nights keeping tabs on Grandma Mazur and her new fella. Stephanie Plum has a lot on her plate, but for a girl who claims to have “virtually no marketable skills,” these are the kinds of sweet assignments she does best.

 Danielle Steel

Capturing historical events, terrifying moments of danger, tragedy, the price of war, and the invincible spirit of a woman of honor, The Award is a monumental tale from one of our most gifted storytellers—Danielle Steel’s finest, most emotionally resonant novel yet.

Gaëlle de Barbet is sixteen years old in 1940 when the German army occupies France and frightening changes begin to occur. She is shocked and powerless when French gendarmes take away her closest friend, Rebekah Feldmann, and her family for deportation to an unknown, ominous fate.

The local German military commandant makes Gaëlle’s family estate outside Lyon into his headquarters. Her father and brother are killed by the Germans; her mother fades away into madness. Trusted friends and employees become traitors. And Gaëlle begins a perilous journey with the French Resistance, hoping to save lives to make up for the beloved friend she could do nothing to help.

Taking terrifying risks, Gaëlle becomes a valuable member of the Resistance, fearlessly delivering Jewish children to safety under the eyes of the Gestapo and their French collaborators. Then she is suddenly approached by the German commandant with an astonishing, dangerous plan to save part of France’s artistic heritage. Conducted in secret, flawlessly carried out, her missions will mark her for years, when she is falsely accused of collaboration at the end of the war. Orphaned and alone, she begins a new life in Paris, with the ghosts of the past always close at hand.

Gaëlle’s life will take her from Paris to New York, from a career as a Dior model to marriage and motherhood, unbearable loss, and mature, lasting love. She returns to Paris to run a small museum, honoring victims of the Holocaust. But her label as a collaborator remains, until her granddaughter, a respected political journalist, ensures that her grandmother’s brave acts are recognized. Now a grateful nation will finally absolve this remarkable woman and honor her as the war hero she was.

 Andy McNab

Accompanying a group of veteran soldiers on an expedition to the North Pole should be a simple job for ex-deniable operative Nick Stone. But when they’re intercepted in their tracks by hulking men with powerful weapons and an enormous ice-breaker ship claiming to be US Navy, Stone immediately understands that not everyone on this trip is who they say they are.

When members of the crew begin to die, it is clear that the murderer must be amongst them. And when the very motivations of the trek are called into question, Stone doesn’t only have multiple murders on his hands, he has an international crisis to deal with too.

 Annie Proulx

From Annie Proulx—the Pulitzer Prize-¬ and National Book Award-¬winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.

In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters—barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions—the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.

Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid—in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope—that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination..