Archive | New Releases

Andrew Moreton
In this entertaining and insightful biography of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, award-winning writer Andrew Morton, author of Diana, Her True Story, takes you behind the scenes to uncover the woman and her world. For years she prayed for her mother to give birth to a son. She longed to be spared her destiny as Britain’s future Queen. Her dream was to live in the country surrounded by children, dogs and horses.

But Elizabeth did her duty, the young princess pledging before her people that she would dedicate her whole life to the service of Britain and the Commonwealth. She hoped that that day would be a long way off. It was not to be. Only twenty-five when she became Queen after the premature death of her father, King George Vl, Elizabeth has become the stuff of superlatives: the longest reigning, most travelled and, for a shy woman, the Queen who has shaken more hands and made more small talk than any other monarch in history. She has been seen and believed by millions, either in person, on television or film.

Elizabeth was set firmly on the road to becoming sovereign because of the D word – divorce. In 1936, her uncle David, King Edward VIII, wanted to marry a twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson. When he couldn’t he abdicated. Since that national trauma, divorce and the fall-out from divorce has shaped her reign. She has witnessed her sister Margaret, three of her children and several grandchildren divorce. And she has lived long enough to see the wheel turn full circle, watching as another American divorcee, Meghan Markle, walked down the aisle with her grandson Prince Harry.

While her reign has been defined by divorce, her private life has been moulded by an irascible husband, an extravagant mother and a querulous eldest son. In the winter of her reign she refereed a war between two of her grandsons, brothers William and Harry who were once inseparable friends. As she celebrates her platinum anniversary, the first monarch to reign for seventy years, she has, during a once in a lifetime pandemic, become the reassuring face of hope and optimism, the grandmother to the nation.

Shelly Gare
A charming story of a young woman who faces challenges and finds joy teaching in outback schools. The year is 1956. Sally Gare is twenty. She’s just out of teachers’ college, and has been sent to work at a two-teacher school more than 3000 kilometres from Perth. With the head teacher away, she starts out alone with a class of forty-five Aboriginal children, ranging in age from five years to thirteen. Thus begins the career of a remarkable teacher and a life-changing adventure in remote Australia.

Outback Teacher is the story of the challenges and delights of teaching in outback schools in the 1950s and 1960s. Sally’s interaction with her students and the local Aboriginal communities is affectionate and heart-warming, although it isn’t without its misunderstandings. But the tensions aren’t just confined to the school and the local community. Some of the characters with whom Sally shares her less than comfortable housing are as eccentric and as curiously interesting as any escapee to the outback.

Full of warmth, humour and kindness, this generous book reminds us how bush people have always found their own solutions to the problems isolation throws at them. But most importantly, and in the most personal way, it confirms how inspiring and passionate teachers can change lives.

Melody Horrill
The compelling, heart-warming story of how a traumatised young woman found peace through her friendship with an injured dolphin called Jock. When Melody Horrill arrived as a student at the University of South Australia she was a troubled and lost young woman, hiding behind a carefully crafted exterior. She had experienced a childhood of emotional and physical trauma mainly at the hands of her violent father that was as damaging as it was brutal.

One day Melody volunteered to help her university lecturer monitor pods of river dolphins that lived in the waters of Port Adelaide. There for the first time she encountered Jock, a solitary dolphin with a maimed fin, who lived apart from the highly social pods. Melody was to form a bond with Jock that gave her the key to freeing herself from the demons of her own past, and their extraordinary friendship was the start of a long-term mission to try to save the river dolphins.

Beautifully written and filled with insight and compassion, Melody’s memoir details her life-changing relationship with the river dolphins, and how Jock helped her to heal.

Frank Chalmers
A town ruled by fear. A cop who won’t be broken. A pulse-pounding debut thriller that pulls no punches.

A STUNNING NEW VOICE IN CRIME FICTION

Queensland in 1976 churns with corruption. When Detective Ray Windsor defies it, he is exiled deep into the state’s west. It’s easy out there to feel alien in your own country.

Royalton is a town on its knees, stricken by drought, riven by prejudice, and plagued by crimes left largely uninvestigated by the local police chief, Kennedy, and his elusive boss.

Mutual dislike between Kennedy and Ray gradually turns ugly as Ray and his new partner, Arshag, uncover a pattern of crimes that no one seems concerned about solving. But when two girls from local immigrant families are found dead and another disappears, Ray and Arshag are forced to take the law into their own hands. Not knowing who to trust, nor how deep the corruption runs, how long will it be before their lives are also threatened?

A spare and uncompromising crime thriller that pulls no punches.

(Andrea Oliver #2)

Karin Slaughter
A small town hides a big secret… Who killed Emily Vaughn? Prom Night. Longbill Beach, 1982.

Emily Vaughn dresses carefully for what’s supposed to be the highlight of any high school career. But Emily has a secret. And by the end of the night, because of that secret, she will be dead.

Nearly forty years later, Andrea Oliver, newly qualified as a US Marshal, receives her first assignment: to go to Longbill Beach to protect a judge receiving death threats. But Andrea’s real focus isn’t the judge – it’s Emily Vaughn. Ever since she first heard Emily’s name a year ago, she’s been haunted by her brutal death. Nobody was ever convicted – her friends closed ranks, her family shut themselves off in their grief, the town moved on – so the killer is still out there. But now Andrea has a chance to find out what really happened…

(Cyrus Haven #3)

Michael Robotham
The thrilling next instalment in the award-winning Cyrus Haven series sees Cyrus reckoning with his own dark and shocking past . . When a man is murdered and his daughter disappears, forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven must decide if Maya Kirk is running, hiding, or a hostage. Cyrus understands how killers think better than anyone; after all, he’s a survivor.

Evie is a troubled teenager with an incredible gift: she knows when someone is lying. She is working at a Nottingham bar when a second woman goes missing, a nurse with links to Maya Kirk. Both women have a secret they have tried to hide, but the past is never history.

Evie witnesses the second abduction, glimpsing the driver, but only two people believe her.

One is Cyrus.

The other is the killer.

(Rizzoli & Isles #13)

Tess Gerritsen
Mothers know best . . . But who will listen? Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are plagued by what seems like a completely senseless murder. Sofia Suarez, a widow and nurse who was universally liked by all her neighbors, lies bludgeoned to death in her own home.

But anything can happen behind closed doors, and Sofia seemed to have plenty of secrets in her last days, making covert phone calls to old contacts and traceless burner phones. When Jane finally makes a connection between Sofia and the victim of a hit-and-run months earlier, the case only grows more blurry. What exactly was Sofia involved in? One thing is clear: The killer will do anything it takes to keep their secret safe.

Meanwhile, Angela Rizzoli hasn’t had a decent night’s sleep in all the years since her daughter became a homicide detective. Maybe the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. Nothing in her neighborhood gets by Angela – not the gossip about a runaway teenager down the block and definitely not the strange neighbors who have just moved in across the street. Angela’s sure there’s no such thing as coincidence in her sleepy suburb. If only Jane would listen; instead she writes off Angela’s concerns as the result of an overactive imagination. But Angela’s convinced there’s a real wolf in her vicinity, and her cries might now fall on deaf ears.

With so much happening on the Sofia case, Jane and Maura already struggle to see the forest for the trees, but will they lose sight of something sinister happening much closer to home?

Daniel Silver
“In wartime,” Winston Churchill wrote, “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

For Britain’s counterintelligence operations, this meant finding the unlikeliest agent imaginable-a history professor named Alfred Vicary, handpicked by Churchill himself to expose a highly dangerous, but unknown, traitor.

The Nazis, however, have also chosen an unlikely agent: Catherine Blake, a beautiful widow of a war hero, a hospital volunteer – and a Nazi spy under direct orders from Hitler to uncover the Allied plans for D-Day…

(The Golden Age #1)

Conn Igguiden
Ancient Greece, 5th century BC. The age of myths and legends has given way to the world of men. In the front rank stands Pericles, Lion of Athens.

Behind Pericles lies the greatest city of the ancient world. Before him, on land and at sea, stands the merciless Persian army. Both sides are spoiling for war.

Though still a young man, Pericles knows one thing: to fight a war you must first win the peace.

It’s time for a hero to rise. For his enemies to tremble. And for Athens, a city of wisdom and warriors, to shine with glory . .