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 Jo Baker

When war breaks out in Europe in 1939, a young, unknown writer journeys from his home in neutral Ireland to conflict-ridden Paris and is drawn into the maelstrom. With him we experience the hardships yet stubborn vibrancy at the heart of Europe during the Nazis’ rise to power; his friendships with James Joyce and other luminaries; his quietly passionate devotion to the Frenchwoman who will become his lifelong companion; his secret work for the French Resistance and narrow escapes from the Gestapo; his flight from occupied Paris to the countryside; and the rubble of his life after liberation.

And through it all we are witness to workings of a uniquely brilliant mind struggling to create a language that will express his experience of this shattered world.

Here is a remarkable story of survival and determination, and a portrait of the extremes of human experience alchemized into timeless art.

E. Haidar and C. Hoffman

A powerful first-person account of Ensaf Haidar’s life wither her husband, Saudi Arabian social activist Raif Badawi, and her worldwide campaign to free him from imprisonment. Ensaf Haidar’s unforgettable account of her marriage to imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi tells the story of the survival of their love against all odds, and of her courageous fight for her husband’s freedom.

When Ensaf and Raif married in 2002 they shed tears of joy; they had overcome the resistance of her family and the rigid conventions of Saudi Arabian culture, and their battle to be together was finally won. But an even greater challenge lay ahead.
After the romance of their clandestine courtship, the triumph of their wedding day, and the ups and downs of married life, Ensaf discovers that Raif is becoming active in the liberal movement. Their partnership grows stronger as Raif works tirelessly, daring to question the social order of Saudi Arabia — until his activities attract the attention of the religious police. With Raif under increasing surveillance, Ensaf reluctantly accepts exile as the only way to protect their three young children, hoping that Raif will soon join them.

But Raif’s arrest and subsequent sentence — to ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes — change everything. Ensaf must take up the fight for her husband’s life, galvanizing global support and campaigning for his freedom — and their right to be reunited as a family again.

This profoundly moving memoir is both a love story and an inspiring account of the making of not one but two heroic human rights activists.

Ken Done

An impressionistic and exuberant memoir by Australia’s best-loved artist.

Ken Done has an extraordinary place in the hearts of Australians – we’ve all worn or decorated our homes with his artwork. His vivid, optimistic images are part of our collective consciousness and have helped define us to the world. But what do we know about the man behind the brush?
A dreamy country kid-turned-art student, Ken took off overseas for a Mad Men-esque advertising career before an epiphany at a Matisse exhibition showed him that painting was where his heart truly lay. But a return to Sydney to paint saw his art overtaken by his entrepreneurial instincts as ‘Ken Done’ became a sought-after global brand.
However there’s more to Ken Done’s story than just commercial success: the sudden loss of the profits from a lifetime’s hard work and a resultant stressful court case was closely followed by a shock cancer diagnosis. It was a dark time, but the powerful paintings that came out of this bleak period have brought him long-overdue acclaim as one of our great artists.
From his studio on sparkling Sydney Harbour to the ochre tints of the outback or the luminous palette of tropical waters, Ken’s artist’s eye is ever drawn to beauty and colour. But through good times and bad, what has sustained him are the simple pleasures of life: family, home and, of course, painting.

Zoe Norton Lodge

Zoe Norton Lodge grew up in Annandale, Sydney in the eighties and nineties. God’s country. Heartland of the Inner West. Because of its location an always fertile mix of working-class, migrant, genteel, intellectual and eccentric residents. As she got older she noticed Annandale was changing, and she started hearing new words like ‘architect’ and ‘labradoodle’, and eventually entire weeks would go by with no backyard bomb explosions.

These stories about neighbourhood warfare, wacky relatives, quashed dreams and facial disfigurement are told with Norton Lodge’s characteristic comic verve and eye for absurdity and menace, inspired by her family, friends, acquaintances and nemeses. Their highlights include Greek grandparents who have lived in mutual resentment for decades and beat each other up with colanders, children who dabble in amateur porn and are sent to school with cat-food sandwiches, ‘distressed’ furniture, rampaging eczema, flying babies and other suburban wonders.

Toni Coutts

For fans of Sheryl McCorry’s DIAMONDS AND DUST and Sara Henderson, this is the story of Toni Tapp Coutts’s extraordinary childhood on the legendary Killarney cattle station in the Northern Territory as the eldest of ten children and daughter of cattle king Bill Tapp.

Toni Tapp grew up on the massive Killarney Station, where her stepfather, Bill Tapp, was a cattle king. But there was no ‘big house’ here – Toni did not grow up in a large homestead. She lived in a shack that had no electricity and no running water. The oppressive climate of the Territory – either wet or dry – tested everyone. Fish were known to rain from the sky and sometimes good men drank too much and drowned trying to cross swollen rivers.

Toni grew up with the Aboriginal people who lived and worked on the station, and got into scrapes with her ever-increasing number of siblings. She loved where she grew up – she was happy on the land with her friends and family, observing the many characters who made up the community on Killarney. When she was sent to boarding school all she wanted to do was go back to the land she loved, despite the fact that her parents’ marriage was struggling as Bill Tapp succumbed to drink and June Tapp refused to go under with him.

Toni’s love of the natural world and of people alike has resulted in a tender portrait of a life that many people would consider tough. She brings vividly to the page a story seldom seen: a Territory childhood, with all its colour, characters and contradictions.

Pamela Hart

January, 1920. Young Englishwoman Margaret Dalton is full of excitement as she arrives in Sydney to begin a new life in the warm, golden land of Australia. She leaves behind the horrors of WWI and can’t wait to see her husband, Frank, after two years of separation.
But when Margaret’s ship docks, Frank isn’t there to greet her and Margaret is informed that he already has a wife . . .
Devastated, Margaret must make a new life for herself in this strange city, but she soon falls in love with its vibrant harbour, sweeping ocean and clean sea breezes. A growing friendship with army sergeant Tom McBride gives her a steady person to rely on. But just as Margaret and Tom begin to grow closer, news arrives that Frank may not have abandoned her. Will Margaret’s life be thrown upside down once again? And where should her loyalties lie: with the old life or with the new?
Inspired by the true stories of war wives who arrived in Australia, THE WAR BRIDE is a gorgeously romantic, inspiring story of love and forgiveness, of healing hurts past, and of making a new home for yourself on the other side of the world, by the author of THE SOLDIER’S WIFE.

Angela Flournoy

There ain’t no haints in Detroit. So spoke Francis Turner—patriarch and provider, former preacher and current truck driver—when his children claimed to have seen a ghost. A rising homeowner set to banish all the old ways for the promise of the new, Francis was having none of it. He and his wife worked hard to secure that house, to move up from Arkansas to Detroit, to make this life possible. He would not be haunted by the past.

And so a myth was born, where any one of the Turners might later repeat that phrase and be telling about so much more than haints.

The Turners live on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house sees thirteen children get grown and gone—and some return; it sees the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit’s East Side, and the loss of a father. Despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs, the house still stands. But now, as their powerful mother falls ill and loses her independence, the Turners might lose their family home. Beset by time and a national crisis, the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called back to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts might haunt—and shape—their family’s future.

A major contribution to the literature on American families, The Turner House brings us a colorful brood full of love, pride, and unlikely inheritances. It’s a striking examination of the American dream and a celebration of the ways in which our families bring us home.

Fiona McCallum

The sequel to the much-loved Wattle Creek. Former city girl Jacqueline Havelock, Wattle Creek’s newly arrived psychologist, has settled in to country life and is slowly coming to terms with the town’s quirky ways. Farmer Damien McAllister’s plans with his animal welfare venture are falling into place nicely and it finally feels like he has a future to look forward to.

But everything can change as quickly as the fickle weather – and it does. A fire challenges the community and soon Damien and Jacqueline find themselves in a situation neither had anticipated. But is their growing relationship also under threat? Although the town comes out in support of their newest resident, is the Wattle Creek community strong enough to stand together and win this David and Goliath battle? And could happily-ever-after still be possible for Damien and Jacqueline?

Wilbur Smith

Two men are responsible for the death of Hector Cross’ wife and only one is left alive: Johnny Congo – psychopath, extortionist, murderer, and the bane of Cross’s life. He caught him before and let him go. Now, Hector wants him dead. So does the US government.

Congo is locked up on Death Row in the most secure prison in the free world, counting down the days until his execution. He’s got two weeks. He wants out. He’s escaped before and knows he can again, and with whizz kid D’Shonn Brown enlisted, he might just have a chance.

Cross, still licking his wounds from his last bruising encounter with Congo, is back and ready for work. In the middle of the rough Atlantic stands oil supertanker Bannock A. Terrorist activity in the area has triggered panic and there’s only one person they can trust to protect her.

What is promised as a cakewalk turns out to be much more, a mission that will test Cross to his emotional and physical limits. But a life spent in the SAS and private security has left Cross hard-wired for pain and as he is thrown into the bull pit once more, he will not stop until he has snared his prey.

Hector Cross is Predator.

Tom Wood

It takes a bad man to hunt evil. If the assassin known only as Victor once had a moral compass, it is long since buried, along with his many victims. Yet some men are so evil even Victor accepts they must die for reasons other than just money.
One such is Milan Rados, a former commander in the Serbian army who has escaped trial at The Hague to become a formidable criminal power. Tracking down and killing this brutal man will win Victor a reprieve for his own recent crimes on British soil.
But Victor isn’t the only one who wants Rados dead. Ana, whose family was butchered on the tyrant’s orders, will do anything to see Rados’ blood spilled on the snow of Eastern Europe. Now Victor has an unlikely ally – but an army stands between them and justice.