Archive | New Releases

Peter Fitzsimons
Sir Hubert Wilkins is one of the most remarkable Australians who ever lived. The son of pioneer pastoralists in South Australia, Hubert studied engineering before moving on to photography, then sailing for England and a job producing films with the Gaumont Film Co. Brave and bold, he became a polar expeditioner, a brilliant war photographer, a spy in the Soviet Union, a pioneering aviator-navigator, a death-defying submariner – all while being an explorer and chronicler of the planet and its life forms that would do Vasco da Gama and Sir David Attenborough proud.

As a WW1 photographer he was twice awarded the Military Cross for bravery under fire, the only Australian photographer in any war to be decorated. He went on expedition with Sir Ernest Shackleton, led a groundbreaking natural history study in Australia and was knighted in 1928 for his aviation exploits, but many more astounding achievements would follow. Wilkins’ quest for knowledge and polar explorations were lifelong passions and his missions to polar regions aboard the submarine Nautilus the stuff of legend.

With masterful storytelling skill, Peter FitzSimons illuminates the life of Hubert Wilkins and his incredible achievements. Thrills and spills, derring-do, new worlds discovered – this is the most unforgettable tale of the most extraordinary life lived by any Australian.

Lisa Curry
Triple Olympian and wellness entrepreneur Lisa Curry has lived her life in the public eye for six decades. In this very personal memoir, she shares the untold story of being Lisa. A swimming prodigy who became one of Australia’s first fitness entrepreneurs, Lisa Curry swam to Olympic fame in the ’80s and ’90s. With celerity and celebrity, she became in equal parts the darling of women’s magazines and tabloid fodder, until, at 58, a family tragedy nearly consumed her. From the golden girl of Australian swimming to a ‘super mum’ and now a proud grannie, Lisa Curry has a powerful story to tell of endurance and enduring.

In 1972, ten-year-old Lisa escaped the heat of a hot and muggy Brisbane day in the local pool when she was spotted by Dawn Fraser’s legendary swim coach, Harry Gallagher. Within two years of joining his swim squad, Lisa would be one of the fastest swimmers of her age in the world.

Over the next 23 years, Lisa honed her natural talent with a legendary work ethic and a punishing training ritual of 5 am starts. Countless hours of long, unbroken swimming of up to 60km a week in solitary union with the black lines of the pool would take Lisa to three Olympic Games: Moscow 1980, Los Angeles 1984, and Barcelona 1992; three Commonwealth Games; and two World Championships. By the time Lisa called time on her sporting career, she had become the only Australian to hold Commonwealth and Australian records in every stroke except backstroke, and from 50 to 400 metres, a feat that has not been repeated to this day.

In this funny, heartbreaking but always life-affirming memoir, Lisa Curry reflects on a life well lived and the experiences that shaped her: swimming, family, marriage, divorce, and love found again. It is a powerful story of resilience, of highs and lows, and of starting out and starting again.

Sally Warriner
Not Just the Wife of the General Manager is a rollicking memoir of one woman’s life on outback cattle stations, and an homage to the many unsung women like her. It was the 1980s and Sally Warriner was in her early 20s when she returned from a backpacking sojourn and hitchhiked to Australia’s far north. But instead of moving back to Canberra as planned, she stayed. After marrying a cattle station manager, Sally lived and worked with him on various stations until she was 50, injecting herself into the lives of the characters who inhabited these isolated places.

With wit and sass, Sally tells the story of how she was so much more than just a wife of a station manager (despite what the blokes of the top end thought). Among other things, she was a nurse (dealing with local accidents, assisting the Flying Doctor service and making emergency 400 km round trips through the outback with sick children), a mother (bringing up several children, not all her own), a travel agent, a social secretary, a host and an organiser (including of Kerry Packer’s New Year’s Eve parties).

Indira Naidoo
After her younger sister died suddenly, broadcaster Indira Naidoo’s world was shattered. Turning to her urban landscape for solace, Indira found herself drawn to a fig tree overlooking Sydney harbour. A connection began to build between the two – one with a fractured heart, the other a centurion offering quiet companionship while asking nothing in return.

As Indira grappled with her heartbreak, an unnoticed universe of infinite beauty revealed itself: pale vanilla clouds pirouetting across the sky, resilient weeds pushing through cracks in the footpath, the magical biodiversity of tiny puddles. With the help of a posse of urban guides, she began to explore how nature – whatever bits of nature are within reach – can heal us during life’s darker chapters, whether nursing a broken heart or an anxious mind.

The Space Between the Stars is a heart-rending, at times funny, and uplifting tribute to love and our innate need to connect to the natural world, a celebration of the reassuring cycle of renewal that sustains and nourishes us all.

(Jack Widow #11)

Scott Blade
From the International Bestselling Author of FireWatch and Gone Forever comes a Jack Widow action-thriller that does more than just deliver the goods. This one will terrify you to the core.

Walking down a lonely country road on a snowy night, Jack Widow discovers the aftermath of a heinous crime ahead in the mist. The only trace he sees of the criminal is a pair of tail lights.

A simple crime turns Widow into a local South Dakota sheriff’s one and only suspect.

Trying to prove his innocence against the doubts of local cops and the FBI, Widow dredges up a hidden network of pure evil.

(Jack Widow #10)

Scott Blade
Star Harvard is beautiful. She’s smart. She’s tough. She’s all alone. She’s nine months pregnant. And she’s in grave danger. Deadly trouble waits…and Jack Widow steps right into it. His first misstep is a curiosity, triggered by a gothic headstone, a grave, unmarked and unexplained, right in the middle of a shadowy New Hampshire town.

Looking for answers, Widow meets Harvard, who is more out of place than he is. She’s a woman in distress, pregnant, alone, and unwilling to give up. Now she faces a secluded community that could turn hostile at any second.

All she wants is to find the father of her unborn child, her missing husband, a Navy SEAL, who was supposed to be KIA in Iraq, only according to Harvard’s hired PI, her husband never made it to Iraq. The PI tracked his last known location to the wilderness of New Hampshire.

Alone, surrounded by danger and afraid her husband is dead, Jack Widow is her only hope.

(Jack Widow #9)

Scott Blade
Jack Widow hunts for a sniper with deadly range, and an even deadlier secret in book nine of Scott Blade’s bestselling series. A deadly range. The world record for longest range of a sniper kill shot. Ever. No contest. No question. What happens when a new sniper comes along and takes out the world’s top shooters from further away? Terror.

Jack Widow is unlucky enough to end up in the hospital after an accidental train crash. Wrong place. Wrong time. But his luck goes from bad to worse when CIA Agent Benico Teller, forgotten, walks out of Widow’s past and into back into his life with classified intel that Widow must hear and an offer that he can’t refuse.

Turns out that the US government needs Widow’s help. He’s the only man alive to ever survive an encounter with their only suspect: a whisper, a phantom, a ghost sniper, known as Rainmaker.

Rainmaker’s skills fall somewhere between the best there ever was and godlike.

As more snipers on the list of top shooters are being murdered, one by one, only Jack Widow can track the sniper and stop him.

Mary-Anne O’Conner
A vivid, romantic story of Sydney in the 1930s Depression – the heartbreak, the glamour, the dark underbelly, the struggle towards a better day – and one young woman’s dream of designing her way from rags to riches. For readers of Natasha Lester and Victoria Purman.

1930: Seventeen-year-old Iris Mitchell dreams of designing clothes, but there’s little spare cash for fashion in their shanty-town home. The gift of a single purple ribbon from would-be boyfriend John Tucker, however, creates an unexpected opportunity … and when Iris’s brother Jim joins the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction, the large, dirt-poor but loving Mitchell family can move to the city. Iris will be torn away from John, but he’s Protestant and she’s Catholic, taboo in their world, so perhaps it wasn’t meant to be …

1932: By day, Iris scrubs the floors at Caron’s, an upmarket department store. By night, she designs and sews in her family’s tiny, crowded house. Friendship with gorgeous, livewire Natasha, one of Caron’s models, allows Iris to show her skills, but will her talent be acknowledged … or exploited?

When John reappears, passions are reignited, and Iris must face not only their religious divide, but the apparent impossibility of having both marriage and a career. Meanwhile, the Mitchells must navigate life in a city riven by corruption, dirty politics and gambling. Will their faith, determination and deep family bond save them when tragedy and adversity strike? In 1930s Sydney, the stakes have never been higher …

Fleur McDonald
Red Dirt Country features the thrilling return of Detective Dave Burrows, now a member of the stock squad in Western Australia. Recovering from an undercover case in outback Queensland, Dave Burrows finally returns to Perth, to join his pregnant wife, Melinda, and their small daughter, Bec.

Things have been off-kilter between Mel and Dave for some time and nothing he says or does seems to make it right. Once Dave starts waking violently in the dark nights, reliving the horrors of the Queensland job, Mel issues an ultimatum.

But Dave’s work, despite its dangers, means everything to him. He’s finally achieved his long-held dream and is now a Detective Senior Constable in the stock squad. And as soon as his shoulder wound is declared fully healed, Dave jumps into an investigation of stock theft in the north of Australia. There’s a standoff between two stations and a history of disappearances and grief to uncover.

It’s also a long way away from his problems with Mel.

With the prospect of going back to Queensland to give evidence as a protected witness, a dangerously ruthless enemy on the loose, and a family to protect, Dave’s first experience on the stock squad is deep in an underbelly of racial divide with family secrets, long-repeated lies, kidnapping and murder.

Cathy Kelly
You never have to go very far… Kenny’s Department Store isn’t just a place to shop; it’s the heart of Ardagh, Ireland. Behind its stately Edwardian facade is an up-to-date store featuring unusual boutique products in an elegant setting. Here lives intersect…and secrets hide. TV reporter Ingrid Fitzgerald has watched her husband, David Kenny, pour his heart and soul into the family store — the “other woman” in her marriage — for years.

Now, as their children fly the nest, Ingrid discovers something that will shake her world to its foundation. …to see that you aren’t alone.

Charlie Fallon is a dedicated Kenny’s employee who adores her husband and son, but her selfish, dominating mother seems determined to ruin everything. Free spirit Star Bluestone, who sells her beautifully crafted tapestries at Kenny’s, has her own secrets and wisdom to share. But when unexpected tragedy shocks everyone at Kenny’s and threatens its future, the women of Ardagh find that secrets have a way of always coming out — with repercussions that lead them to rely on one another more than ever before.