Author Archive | admin

 P.J. Parker

My mother is dead, my father killed her. And so begins an extraordinary memoir by outstanding new talent P.J. Parker.

Spanning three generations, The Long Goodbye takes us deep into the lives of an Australian family as they survive record-breaking floods, outlast epic droughts and face the unforgiving realities of life on the land. This remarkable true story of grit and resilience depicts a family at their zenith, set against the spectacular backdrop of rural Queensland where life and death are never far apart. But not even the harshness of the Australian landscape can prepare them for what is to come.

Written with astounding lyricism, warmth and humour, The Long Goodbye is a deeply moving memoir about the unbreakable bonds of marriage, love and family. And it poses the most heartbreaking moral dilemma of all: when a loved one is suffering, is euthanasia the answer?

 Joel Alexandra

The scandalous Australian woman who enchanted British society. Headstrong and beautiful, in 1905 Rosetta escaped her safe Melbourne life, deserting her respectable husband and five-year-old daughter to run away with Zeno the Magnificent, a half-Chinese fortune teller and seducer of souls. The pair reinvented themselves in London, where they beguiled European society and risked everything for a life of glamour and desire. Rosetta said she was American; Zeno claimed to be a brilliant Japanese professor. Together they attracted the patronage of famous writers, inventors and scientists, lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses. Empress Eugenie, the widow of Napoleon III, and Princess Charlotte, sister of Germany’s last Kaiser, were among their greatest devotees.

Rosetta revelled in a life few women of her time would have dared to embrace, yet all the while she hid her secret shame: the daughter she had left behind. This is the compelling story of Alexandra Joel’s quest to uncover the truth about her scandalous great-grandmother, and the shocking century-old secret she would discover at the heart of her family.

 Peter Popham

She was a heroine of our time, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a symbol of supreme courage in the face of tyranny. Then, in 2010, Burma’s generals opened the door a chink: Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, and her country began to change.

Suu Kyi’s acclaimed biographer, Peter Popham, describes what happened next. Travelling across the country, meeting aristocrats, monks and politicians, freedom fighters, punks and rebels, he shows how hope has slowly returned to the lives of ordinary Burmese. He also examines the fate of the hill tribes, and how the world’s politicians and businessmen are striving for influence.

But with greater openness, long-suppressed prejudices have burst into the open: intolerant Buddhist preachers have whipped up the latent hostility of the Burmese against people of other races and beliefs, especially the Muslim Rohingya.

When Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to parliament, she began to negotiate with the military. Yet she has declined to take a firm stand on minority rights – to the dismay of many in the West.The Lady and the Generals offers a trenchant and compelling portrait of this fascinating country and asks where Burma and Suu Kyi herself – with her bravery, her brilliance and her limitations – are heading next.

 Aminah Hart

A heart-warming story of triumph after terrible tragedy, of finding love and happiness in a most unusual way – the extraordinary, back-to-front romance of IVF recipient Aminah Hart and her anonymous sperm donor, Scott Andersen.
Born in London to an Australian mother and West Indian father, Aminah Hart was brought up in Melbourne by her gutsy single mum, Helen, and devoted grandparents. Despite their loving embrace, she grew into a rebellious teenager only too aware of racial and social prejudice.

By her early thirties Aminah seemed to have it all – a successful career in advertising, an adoring husband, and a baby on the way. But then she experienced such terrible tragedy it would have broken many people. Somehow, despite her grief, Aminah found the resilience to get back on her feet, only to encounter further tragedy.

After the joy and happiness of giving birth to a baby girl, Leila, via IVF, Aminah contacted Leila’s sperm donor, Scott, to see if he’d be interested in meeting the daughter he helped create. To Aminah’s delight he agreed and Leila and her dad soon developed a close relationship. What Aminah didn’t expect was to fall in love with Scott herself…

How I Met Your Father is the extraordinary true story of a woman who overcame terrible losses to find love and happiness in a most unexpected way.

 Paul Theroux

One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked

Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America — the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation’s worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It’s these parts of the South, so often ignored, that have caught Theroux’s keen traveler’s eye.  On road trips spanning four seasons, wending along rural highways, Theroux visits gun shows and small-town churches, laborers in Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi where they still call the farm up the road “the plantation.” He talks to mayors and social workers, writers and reverends, the working poor and farming families — the unsung heroes of the south, the people who, despite it all, never left, and also those who returned home to rebuild a place they could never live without.

 Liz Harfull

The inspiring true stories of courageous women from the city and overseas, forging new lives in the Australian bush.

 Jason Morgan

Lone Survivor meets Marley & Me in this inspiring buddy memoir of an extraordinary service dog whose enduring love brought a wounded soldier back to life.

A decade ago, Special Forces warrior Jason Morgan parachuted into the Central American jungle on an anti-narcotics raid. He’d served with the famous Night Stalkers on countless such missions. This one turned out very different. Months later, he regained consciousness in a US military hospital, with no memory of how he’d gotten there. The first words he heard were from his surgeon telling him he would never walk again. The determined soldier responded: “Sir, yes, I will.”

After multiple surgeries, unbearable chronic pain, and numerous setbacks, Morgan was finally making progress when his wife left him and their three young sons. He was a single father confined to a wheelchair and tortured by his pain. At this very dark, very low point, Morgan found light: Napal, the black Labrador who would change his life forever.

A Dog Called Hope is the incredible story of a remarkable service dog who brought a devastated warrior back from the brink. It is the story of one funny, lovable dog’s power to heal a family and teach a wounded man how to be a true father. It is the story of an amazing dog with boundless loyalty who built bridges between his wheelchair-bound battle buddy and the rest of able-bodied humankind. It is the story of how one very special dog gave a man’s life true meaning. Humorous, intensely moving, and uplifting, Jason and Napa’s heart-warming tale will brighten any day and lift every heart.

 Lotte Hammer

Lying at the bottom of his apartment stairs, a postman is found dead. At first glance, his death appears to be a tragic accident. However, when Detective Superintendent Konrad Simonsen is called to investigate, he notices that something doesn’t add up. Did he fall?

When life-sized images of a vanished girl are discovered plastering the walls of the dead man’s attic, the case takes a new and sinister turn. Who is she? Could she be alive?

Soon the homicide team find themselves delving into the past, but as they approach the truth, Simonsen is forced to confront long-hidden skeletons in his own cupboard.

 Helen Simonson

East Sussex, 1914. It is the end of England’s brief Edwardian summer, and everyone agrees that the weather has never been so beautiful. Hugh Grange, down from his medical studies, is visiting his Aunt Agatha, who lives with her husband in the small, idyllic coastal town of Rye. Agatha’s husband works in the Foreign Office, and she is certain he will ensure that the recent sabre rattling over the Balkans won’t come to anything. And Agatha has more immediate concerns; she has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master.

When Beatrice Nash arrives with one trunk and several large crates of books, it is clear she is significantly more freethinking — and attractive — than anyone believes a Latin teacher should be. For her part, mourning the death of her beloved father, who has left her penniless, Beatrice simply wants to be left alone to pursue her teaching and writing. But just as Beatrice comes alive to the beauty of the Sussex landscape and the colorful characters who populate Rye, the perfect summer is about to end. For despite Agatha’s reassurances, the unimaginable is coming. Soon the limits of progress, and the old ways, will be tested as this small Sussex town and its inhabitants go to war.

 Erica James

Lizzie has an unfortunate knack for attracting bad luck, but this time she’s hit the jackpot. Losing her heart to her boss at the radio station where she works leads directly to losing her job, and with no money in the bank she’s forced to swallow her pride and return home to her parents. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her mother finds her work at the local care home for the elderly, and it’s there that Lizzie meets Mrs Dallimore.
In her nineties, Mrs Dallimore also finds herself in a situation which she’s reluctantly coming to terms with. Old age has finally caught up with her, and with her life drawing to a close she gives in to the temptation to relive the past by sharing it with Lizzie.
She tells Lizzie of the day when, as a young girl, and shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she left her home in America to cross the Atlantic to England where she hoped to meet her English grandparents for the first time. At best she hoped for a family reconciliation, but before long her visit turned into so much more.
As Lizzie listens to Mrs Dallimore’s story, she begins to realise that she’s not the only person to attract bad luck, or make mistakes, and maybe things aren’t so bad for her after all . . .