Archive | New Releases

By Tony Birch
Dark as Last Night confirms, once again, that Tony Birch is a master of the short story. These exceptional stories capture the importance of human connection at pivotal moments in our lives, whether those occur because of the loss of a loved one or the uncertainties of childhood. In this collection we witness a young girl struggling to protect her mother from her father’s violence, two teenagers clumsily getting to know one another by way of a shared love of music, and a man mourning the death of his younger brother, while beset by memories and regrets from their shared past. Throughout this powerful collection, Birch’s concern for the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked shines bright.

by Paula Beavan
Alone. Near destitute. But brave and determined. Can Maddy beat the odds to create a new home in the Hunter Valley? An exciting Australian historical debut, perfect for readers of Darry Fraser.

1831, New South Wales

Reeling from her mother’s death, Madeleine Barker-Trent arrives in the newly colonised Hunter River to find her father’s promises are nothing more than a halcyon dream. A day later, after a dubious accident, she becomes the sole owner of a thousand acres of bushland, with only three convicts and handsome overseer Daniel Coulter for company. Determined to fulfil her family’s aspirations, Maddy refuses to return to England and braves everything the beautiful but wild Australian country can throw at her – violence, danger, the forces of nature and loneliness. But when a scandalous secret and a new arrival threaten to destroy all she’s worked for, her future looks bleak … Can Maddy persevere or should she simply admit defeat?

A captivating historical tale of one young woman’s grit and determination to carve out her place on the riverbank.

By Keith Banks
A story from the inside when Queensland had the most corrupt police force in the country. This is what it’s really like to be an undercover police officer. ‘Banks has told his story in a raw and honest autobiography. It is the best true crime book published in Australia in a decade.’ – John Silvester, Crime Reporter for The Age

Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them. The trick was to keep an eye on that important line between who you were and who you were pretending to be.

This is the true story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland’s most decorated police officers, and his journey into the world of drugs as an undercover operative in the 1980s. In an era of corruption, often alone and with no backup, he and other undercover cops quickly learned to blend into the drug scene, smoking dope and drinking with targets, buying drugs and then having dealers arrested. Very quickly, the lines between his identity as a police officer and the life he pretended to be part of became blurred.

This is a raw and confronting story of undercover cops who all became casualties of that era, some more than others, when not everyone with a badge could be trusted.

By Henry Reynolds
If we are to take seriously the need for telling the truth about our history, we must start at first principles.

What if the sovereignty of the First Nations was recognised by European international law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? What if the audacious British annexation of a whole continent was not seen as acceptable at the time and the colonial office in Britain understood that ‘peaceful settlement’ was a fiction? If the 1901 parliament did not have control of the whole continent, particularly the North, by what right could the new nation claim it?

The historical record shows that the argument of the Uluru Statement from the Heart is stronger than many people imagine and the centuries-long legal position about British claims to the land far less imposing than it appears.

In Truth-Telling, influential historian Henry Reynolds pulls the rug from legal and historical assumptions, with his usual sharp eye and rigour, in a book that’s about the present as much as the past. His work shows exactly why our national war memorial must acknowledge the frontier wars, why we must change the date of our national day, and why treaties are important. Most of all, it makes urgently clear that the Uluru Statement is no rhetorical flourish but carries the weight of history and law and gives us a map for the future.

By Michael Veitch
In the thick of World War II, during the first week of March 1943, Japan made a final, desperate lunge for control of the South West Pacific. In the ensuing Battle of the Bismarck Sea, a force of land-based Australian and American planes attacked a massive convoy of Japanese warships. The odds were against them. But a devastating victory was won and Japan’s hopes of regaining the initiative in New Guinea destroyed.

More importantly for Australians, the victory decisively removed any possibility that Australia might be invaded by Japanese forces. It was, for us, one of the most significant times in our history – a week when our future was profoundly in the balance.

By Lilly Brett
In this disarming, intimate and self-deprecating collection of vignettes about aging, Lily Brett gives us snapshots of her life in New York. After avoiding a large dog that turns out to be a fire hydrant, and mistaking a tall, grey-haired woman for her husband, Lily has to concede that her ophthalmologist is right: she does need cataract surgery. She’s transfixed by a speed-dating dinner at a local cafe, and is told they also have speed-dating dinners for seniors. In the crowded Apple store, in Soho, two young Apple assistants decide it will take both of them to help her.

In Old Seems to be Other People, Lily Brett’s unique take on getting older is simultaneously hilarious, serious and utterly irresistible.

By Simon Winchester
The author of The Professor and the Madman and The Perfectionists explores the notion of property—our proprietary relationship with the land—through human history, how it has shaped us and what it will mean for our future.

Land—whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city—is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing—and have done—with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.

Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World examines in depth how we acquire land, how we steward it, how and why we fight over it, and finally, how we can, and on occasion do, come to share it. Ultimately, Winchester confronts the essential question: who actually owns the world’s land—and why does it matter?

By S.R. White
* From THE AUSTRALIAN TOP TEN BESTSELLER*

When a man is found savagely ‘crucified’ amidst a murky swamp in northern Australia, detective Dana Russo and her team are called to a shocking scene. The victim is a convicted rapist, just released from prison, who years earlier committed an atrocious crime yards from where he was killed.

Who murdered him – and why? With several potential leads, the investigation quickly becomes more complex, and sinister, than anyone imagined. And Dana realises she’ll have to confront her own troubled past to understand the true motives of the killer…

By Laura Shepherd-Robinson
June, 1781. An unidentified body hangs upon a hook at Deptford Dock – horribly tortured and branded with a slaver’s mark. Some days later, Captain Harry Corsham – a war hero embarking upon a promising parliamentary career – is visited by the sister of an old friend. Her brother, passionate abolitionist Tad Archer, had been about to expose a secret that he believed could cause irreparable damage to the British slaving industry. He’d said people were trying to kill him, and now he is missing . . .

To discover what happened to Tad, Harry is forced to pick up the threads of his friend’s investigation, delving into the heart of the conspiracy Tad had unearthed. His investigation will threaten his political prospects, his family’s happiness, and force a reckoning with his past, risking the revelation of secrets that have the power to destroy him.

And that is only if he can survive the mortal dangers awaiting him in Deptford…

By Ruth McIvor
They went out to the woods to have fun. And two of them didn’t return. A dark, twisty thriller of small town buried secrets for readers of IN THE WOODS (DUBLIN MURDERS), THE GIRLS and THE SECRET HISTORY.

Twenty years ago, the devil visited the woods around Southport, Long Island, claiming the lives of two boys. A local youth was charged with murder. Case closed.

Now journalist Erin Sloane has been commissioned to dig deeper into the story and is sent notes from someone long forgotten. But can she trust what she unearths? And how can she unravel what happened when she has her own secrets to hide?

Rich with the sense of a community imploding, buried secrets, corruption and racism, I SHOT THE DEVIL is a stunning portrayal of teenage hysteria and sexuality.