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Annabelle Brayley

An in-depth look at the challenging lives of Australia’s gutsy rural vets – smart, spirited men and women who care for animals, big and small, in remote communities all over the country.

Ayaan HIrsi Ali

Continuing her very personal journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad makes a powerful plea for an Islamic Reformation as the only way to end the horrors of terrorism and sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities.

Today, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a minority of fundamentalists, a majority of observant “daily” Muslims and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion. But there is only one Islam and, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues, there is no denying that some of its key teachings–like the subordination of women and the duty to wage holy war–are incompatible with the values of a free society.
For centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi Ali has come to believe that a “Reformation”–a revision of Islamic doctrine aimed at reconciling the religion with modernity–is now at hand, and may even have begun. The Arab Spring may now seem like a political failure. But its challenge to traditional authority revealed a new readiness–not least by Muslim women–to think freely and to speak out.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that ordinary Muslims throughout the world want change. Courageously challenging the fundamentalists, she identifies 5 key amendments to Islamic doctrine that must be made in order to set Muslims free from their 7th-century chains. Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful examples from contemporary Islamic societies and cultures, Heretic is not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new era of toleration.

Jacqueline Hammar

A future Australian classic—an epic story of love and survival in the wilds of the Northern Territory.

Jacqueline Hammar has spent most of her life in the remotest reaches of the Northern Territory. In 1919, her father arrived there on the back of a camel. By the time Jacqueline was born, he’d become a mounted trooper, working in a succession of outback towns chasing down murderers and cattle thieves. Jacqueline’s childhood was spent in isolated bush settlements until her parents sent her to boarding school in Darwin to be ‘civilised’.

After finishing school, Jacqueline found herself drawn back to the Territory where she soon met and fell in love with cattleman, Ken Hammar. Together they moved to one of the most inaccessible regions in the Top End. Starting out in a bark hut they’d built themselves, hard work and determination saw them prosper until they had a thriving million-acre cattle station with a more comfortable house, where they brought up their two children.

A larger-than-life tale of adventure, survival and love in some of Australia’s most isolated country, Daughter of the Territory is an extraordinary autobiography that zips along at a cracking pace, with one entertaining yarn after another.

Anne Gorman

From Strength to Strength meets The Bean Patch as a city girl turned bush wife faces a battle to survive in an alien land she grows to love.

When she is six, Anne Gorman’s family falls apart. Her mother has a breakdown – the fallout of thirteen pregnancies, the death of two children and the struggle to survive during the Great Depression. When her devout Catholic mother smashes a statue of the Virgin Mary, her punishment is to be locked up and given shock treatment. Her children are placed in a convent where they wait in vain to be rescued by their parents.

Anne doesn’t see her beloved father again until years later when he is dying. After his death, her mother is released to mend her broken family. Anne’s determination to escape her fate fires her ambition to find a better life. Education is her passport to freedom and after graduating from university, she is ready to take on the world. But her grand plans come unstuck when she falls in love. Marrying a farmer and becoming a mother to five children is a life she had never imagined. Yet in this alien landscape she finds love and a sense of belonging. But when Anne’s husband becomes suddenly gravely ill, she has to battle to keep the property afloat and bring up her children alone.

Against a backdrop of historic change, from the Second World War to Vietnam to the sexual and political revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, a uncertain young girl becomes a women of substance.

Ian Moore

After six years in the idyllic Loire Valley, comedian Ian Moore, his family and their ever-expanding menagerie feel like they’re on the cusp of the peace and tranquility they hoped for when they moved from dreary suburban England. Their grand project, a writing school called Les Champs Créatifs, is finally complete – only, nobody’s signed up. On top of contending with the ever-colourful locals, including a Sicilian faith healer, threatening hunters and the ‘Christmas Pudding Man’, Ian must now test his mod mettle against a pair of disappearing goats. Meanwhile, his family stand back and wonder just how he manages to make things so hard for himself…

Andrew Morton

Historian Andrew Morton’s 17 CARNATIONS combines his considerable research background with his proven talent for addictively readable narrative, giving us a true story steeped in intrigue, suspense and historical drama.

17 CARNATIONS tells the story of the feckless Edward VIII, Duke of Windsor, and his wife Wallis Simpson, whose affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop embroiled the duke in a German plot to use him as a puppet king during their takeover of the British Empire. Although we know that the war ended with Hitler’s defeat, Edward’s story was far from over. The Duke’s collaboration with Hitler had resulted in piles of correspondence between them; this damning correspondence, now hidden in a German castle that had fallen to American soldiers, could forever tarnish the reputation of the royal family. 17 CARNATIONS reveals, for the first time in history, the story of the cover-up of those letters, starting with a daring heist–by order of Churchill and the King themselves–to bring the letters back safely to England, out of American hands.

Morton’s unique experience and training make him the perfect person to tell this story as it’s never been told before, fusing history and entertainment to create a vivid, atmospheric chronicle of the Windsors’ darkest secrets. The shadowy connection between the House of Windsor, the German aristocracy, and Hitler has hovered on the edges of public consciousness for decades, but no royal biography or historical chronicle has been able to tell the full story-until now. Drawing on FBI documents, material from the German and British Royal Archives, and the personal correspondence of Churchill, Truman, Eisenhower, and the Windsors themselves, 17 CARNATIONS is a dazzling historical drama, full of adventure, intrigue, and startling revelations, written by a master of the genre.

Lisa Joy

Sassy foodie Becca Stone is over her job taking reservations in one of London’s most successful restaurant empires. So when she is unexpectedly catapulted into working as PA to celebrity chef, Damien Malone, it seems like the opportunity of a lifetime.

Becca is quickly caught up in an exciting whirlwind of travel, reality TV and opening nights, and even her usually abysmal love life takes a turn for the better. But as Becca is slowly consumed by the chaos of life in the spotlight, she begins to lose touch with her friends, her heart and even with reality. Working with Damien has its challenges and she is soon struggling with his increasingly outrageous demands and sleazy advances, all while managing the ridiculous requests of his self-centered wife. It takes a disastrous trip to Italy for Becca to realize that she may have thrown away exactly what she’s been looking for all along.

Inspired by real-life adventures, this deliciously funny and romantic story reveals a tantalizing glimpse of the trendy restaurant scene: a world where chefs are treated like rock stars, and cooking isn’t all that goes on in the kitchen.

Giles Waterfield

The magical wedding of Thomas, an idealistic German architect, and Irene, an English artist, brings together the Curtius and Benson families. But their peace is soon shattered by the outbreak of war in Europe.While Irene struggles to survive in a country where she is the enemy, her sister Sophia faces the war as a nurse on the Western Front.

Danielle Steel

Twin boys grow up in the same family, in the same town. Dramatically different, they become bitter enemies, even as children: one good, one bad. One leaves his peaceful hometown, but when all else fails, the prodigal son returns, twenty years later, moving into his parents’ lakeside cottage. But the reunion of the brothers, sweet and healing at first, exposes shattering revelations…