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These twenty-three stories were selected by Moorhouse from his first three books: Futility and Other Animals, The Americans, Baby and The Electrical Experience and were written between 1964 and 1974, spanning the vastness of distance between Sydney's bohemian intelligentsia and the apparent certainties of life in an Australian country town. The old-fashioned attitudes of T. George McDowell, a manufacturer of aerated soft drinks, leading country town resident, Rotarian and an apostle of Progress are juxtaposed with the shifting values of the urban tribe. Cindy - tribal member - a university lecturer living with Roger, the father of of her forthcoming child, is unable to quite shake off the fears and doubts that her conventional upbringing have instilled in her; and on the fringes is Becker, an American Coca-Cola executive who is overwhelmed by Australia - to his doom. In this volume: The Story Of The Knife; Across The Plains, Over The Mountains And Down To The Sea;The First Story Of Nature; Lou Shouted 'Hey!'; Walking Out; The Train Will Shortly Arrive; Futility And Other Animals; The Second Story Of Nature; The Third Story Of Nature; Dell Goes Into Politics; Becker And The Boys From The Band; The Machine Gun; Becker On The Moon; A Person Of Accomplishment; The Coca-Cola Kid; Soft Drink And The Distribution Of Soft Drink; The St Louis Rotary Convention 1923, Recalled; Jesus Said To Watch For Twenty-eight Signs; George McDowell Does The Job; George McDowell Changes Names; Business No Picnic; Rules And Practices For The Overcoming Of Shyness; The Enterprising Spirit Of The Anglo-Saxon Race. -
Charlotte: Norah Lofts
$12.00When young John Vincent died, the outward respectability of the Cornwall household was undermined. Strangers pried, asked too many questions and pointed accusing fingers at Charlotte - herself eager to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of her father's home. She fled deep into the countryside and there taught at a school run by the untrusting and untrustworthy Mrs Armitage, who was prepared to keep quiet about Charlotte's past - but only up to a point. When the events come to be recreated, some questions naturally arise. Had Charlotte been responsible for the death of the little pupil she loved? And has that crime been repeated? In darker moments, even Charlotte herself cannot be sure. -
Serpent’s Delight: Ruth Park
$12.00An unusual offering from Ruth Park. When Geraldine, the youngest of the beautiful Pond sisters announces that she has had a vision of the Blessed Virgin, her family is shot from mundane middle-class existence into the glare of publicity and hysteria. The formerly peaceful and close-knit family is suddenly full of mistrust and tensions. First published in 1961, it is just as valid today when images of the Virgin Mary are to be regularly found in toasted sandwiches and fence posts. -
Book III of Conqueror. Genghis Khan leads the nation united from the tribes, victorious in the long war against the Chin, the Mongolians' ancient foe. Now there is trouble from another direction - his embassies to the west are rebuffed, his ambassadors murdered. The nation must embark on the greatest journey yet, through modern day Iran and Iraq to the edges of India, led by the khan who has chosen a path that will led to victory or utter destruction. Genghis has proved himself as a warrior and leader - he must now face the challenges of civilisation. https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/khan-empire-silver-conn-iggulden/ -
Sheba: Jack Higgins
$12.00As German armies gather in Poland, Hitler has found a masterly diversion. Muller, a German archeologist from Dahrein, has been summoned to Berlin. Still in Dahrein, Gavin Kane, an American trader and Ruth Cunningham search desperately for Ruuth's husband, an archeologist who disappeared in the desert while on a quest for the legendary and long lost Temple of Sheba . With cunning and ingenuity they survive outlaws and treachery, and stumble on a conspiracy that may have devastating consequences for the world. -
Les Norton 19. Les is quite happy resting up after the flu, when Warren has to tip him into an earn. Norton's mate from the Albanian Mafia, Bodene Menjou, is planning to make the most politically correct movie ever made in Australia, Gone With the Willy Willy, and has a script stolen. If Les can find it, a lazy $50,000 could fall in. How can Norton say no? After almost getting his head blown off in a drug lab, being attacked by crazed women with broomsticks and beaten up by monstrous drag queens, Les is wondering if it is all worth it. The trip to Terrigal and the magical mystery tour with Marla is good. And Topaz with her chicken soup is an unexpected delight. But apart from that, Les doesn't find much joy at all in his search for the missing film script. Especially not trapped in a fight for his life with a sadistic giant, where only one thing can save him: the Mongolian Death Lock. Set in Bondi and Terrigal, this is vintage Les Norton doing exactly what he does best: his worst. -
Angels And Demons: Dan Brown
$12.00When world-renowned symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyse a mysterious symbol - seared into the chest of a murdered physicist - he discovers evidence of the resurgence of the Illuminati, an ancient and powerful secret organisation. The Illuminati is now ready to carry out the final phase of its vendetta against the Catholic Church. Langdon's worst fears are confirmed when, on the eve of the Vatican's holy enclave, an Illuminati messenger announces there is an unstoppable time bomb hidden in the heart of Vatican City. With the beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist Vittoria Vetra, Langdon embarks on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs and deserted cathedrals following a 400 year-old trail of symbols toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair, which holds the only hope for Vatican salvation.
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In this volume, Biggles, Algy, and the other pilots are at the front lines, towards the end of World War 1. There's dangerous missions against zeppelins, airbases and fortified positions, a dragon hunt, 'ditching the kite' escaping captivity and more. Stories include: The Professor; The Joy Ride; The Bridge Party; The Bottle Party ; The Trap ; The Funk ; The Professor Comes Back ; The Great Arena; The Dragon's Lair ; Biggles's Day Off ; Scotland For Ever! -
Come In Spinner: Dymphna Cusack and Florence James
$12.00–$25.00Come In Spinner! is the exhortation of two-up players in Australia's most famous gambling game. And life is a gamble for the girls working in the beauty salon of the luxurious Hotel South Pacific in Sydney in World War II. Deb, Guinea and Claire are faced with challenges, the tensions of war, romantic entanglements and family troubles as well as the American troops in 'occupation'. The book was an immediate sensation when first published in 1951. -
The War Chest: Porter Hill
$12.00Captain Adam Horne is sent on a new mission with his motley yet loyal band of ex-convict fighters: he must proceed as a passenger to Madagascar where he will receive further instructions. The war against the French is at stalemate; the British Chiefs of Staff are looking for an 'unofficial' means of reactivating the conflict in India - and who better than that quasi-official and expendable band of cut-throats...Captain Adam Horne and the Bombay Marine?
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The classic adventure tale of early American and Canadian exploration in the 18th century - thrilling tale of naval adventure, rival love, and wilderness experience that captures the rough-and-tumble life on the shores of Lake Ontario during the French and Indian War and the story is set after the events of The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper's works (The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans) were described by J.B. Priestley as having ' a sense of vastness and mystery of the American scene, of a presence in it, half-poetic, half-sinister, of the vanishing tribes of the red men, of painted, shadowy faces in the forest, of fading clouds of dust on the prairie.' Cover art by Fred Exell. -
'What a world of dreams is this Pompeii, where each one seeks to be what he is not.' The classic tale of betrayal, lust, decadence and intrigue set against the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Pompeii, pleasure ground of the wealthy, decadent and rife with corruption. A cast of characters to rival any soap opera: Cloodius, poor yet noble, in love with Julia, the daughter of nouveau riche merchant Diomed, who is trying to forget that his grandfather was ever a slave; Glaucus, the young and wealthy Greek playboy who falls in love with Ione, a wealthy orphan under the wardship of Arbaces, High Priest of Isis, who will stop at nothing to secure Ione and her fortune for the temple; Nydia, the blind slave girl who sells her flowers and yearns for Glaucus; Lydon, the gladiator, the darling of Pompeii, fighting to win enough money to buy the freedom of Medon, his father; there is Apaecides, Ione's brother who learns of Christ from Olinthus, the sail maker...and still more in the cast that make up the last days of the city that was believed to be the wickedest place on earth.
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Omnibus volume with three complete novels. Hell Is Always Today: The 'Rainlover' killer has claimed four victims and left no clues. His motives are neither sex nor money. He just wants to kill women. And if the streets are empty of potential prey through fear, he's prepared to come in from the rain, through locked doors and barred windows. Toll For The Brave: Ellis Jackson, old Etonian and ex-Sandhurst, survived the hell of a North Vietnamese prison camp and escaped from it, thanks to living legend Brigadier-General James Maxwell St. Clair. Back in England, close to the edge of mental collapse, he is overtaken by the past and in desperate need of the help of 'Black Max' St. Clair. The Valhalla Exchange: In the dying hours of the Third Reich, the Fuhrer and his henchmen are making their final preparations in Berlin. It's suicide - or escape.The thoughts of Martin Bormann are centred on a group of V.I.P. prisoners held in the mountain fortress of Arlberg: bargaining counters he must reach to ensure his own survival . -
Frankie and Taz didn't think about killing and dying when they lied about their age to join the Australian army. They thought the war would be a beaut adventure. Now they're marching to the Front. Richard is another 16 year old heading to war. He's inside the massive German tank Mephistos as it powers towards the battle-lines at Villiers-Bretonneux, France. The other side have their tanks ready too. Warfare is about to change forever. Based on true stories of the world's first tank-versus-tank battle, and what it was like to be an under-aged soldier in World War I.
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The Brethren: Trumble is a minimum-security federal prison, a 'camp,' home to the usual assortment of relatively harmless criminals--drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, two Wall Street crooks, one doctor, at least five lawyers. And three former judges who call themselves the Brethren: one from Texas, one from California, and one from Mississippi. They meet each day in the law library, their turf at Trumble, where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours writing letters. They are fine-tuning a mail scam, and it's starting to really work. The money is pouring in. Then their little scam goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, a powerful man on the outside, a man with dangerous friends... and the Brethren's days of quietly marking time are over. The Chamber: Twenty -six-year-old Adam Hall stands on the brink of a brilliant legal career. Now he is risking it all for a death-row killer and an impossible case. Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances - except for one: the young, liberal Chicago lawyer who just happens to be his grandson. While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather and the TV cameras wait, Adam has only days, hours, minutes to save his client. For between the two men is a chasm of shame, family lies, and secrets - including the one secret that could save Sam Cayhall's life... or cost Adam his. -
Heidi: Johanna Spyri
$12.00First published in 1880, here is Heidi's story - a young Swiss girl whose parents' sudden death leaves her to be brought up by her Aunt Dete - a hard-working woman who loves Heidi, but does not have the time or resources to look after a child in busy Frankfurt. She leaves Heidi with Heidi's grandfather, who lives in the Swiss mountains. The lonely, embittered old man lives like a hermit on the mountain-top and has nothing to do with the people in the village below. Known to all as “Alm-uncle”, Heidi's grandfather is good-hearted but mistrustful of the villagers. He refuses to send Heidi to school and allows her to roam the pastures with a mischeivous young goat herder, Peter. They become good friends but events take a turn when Aunt Dete decides that Heidi must stay in Frankfurt and learn to earn a living as a companion to a rich invalid child, Clara, and soon learns to read and write along with the little girl. The city begins to take its toll on the young Heidi and she becomes ill and depressed, longing for the open spaces. How Heidi returns to her beloved mountains, reforms her crotchety old grandfather and helps Clara regain her health forms the rest of this perennial classic. -
A triumph of good over evil; the pioneering spirit of adventurous Englishmen, far from the villages of their birth, overcoming the perils of a new land: bushfires, bushrangers, kangaroo hunts and cattle-branding are just some of the new experiences. It traces the adventures of the Buckles and Brentwoods, Devonshire county families whose dwindling incomes could not sustain their position, leading them to seek better fortune in Australia. First published in 1859, it was acclaimed as the 'first great Australian novel'. -
Chris Andersen loves cricket. He may not be a legend like Bradman or Boonie, but in the Yarraville West Fourths, Chris Andersen is king. He is the captain, the coach, the manager and, thankfully, a player. They are getting hard to find, players. Every Saturday in summer Chris ropes together a motley team of men and a couple of boys to turn up in their cricket whites to try to win a game. Everyone has a different reason for being there: to hear the music from a nearby house, to block out the memories of another place, to be entertained, to please their dad, or just to have a go. And everyone has a story to tell. -
In this volume: Flying Squirrels; Song Of The Future; The Weather Prophet; Black Harry's Team; Australian Scenery; Sunrise On The Coast; At The Melting Of The Snow; The Old Australian Ways; A Singer Of The Bush; By The Grey Gulf-water; With The Cattle; The Wind's Message; The Travelling Post Office; Black Swans; Buffalo Country; A Mountain Station; The Daylight Is Dying; Clancy Of The Overflow; On Kiley's Run; Pioneers; The Uplift; Song Of The Wheat; In Defence Of The Bush. Lavishly illustrated with colour reproductions of Australian landscapes of the late 1800s and early 1900s by noted artists.
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Barbed Wire: Hall Caine
$12.00Set on the Isle of Man during the First World War, the novel relates the life of Mona Craine, a young woman who lives with her brother and their aging father. Mona's life is disrupted first by her brother being called up to fight in France, and then by the authorities agreeing to set up an internment camp for enemy aliens there at Knockaloe. Mona consents to live there still and supply food for them odious Germans against her wish and only for the sake of her ill father. However, her hard and unforgiving attitude towards the Germans begins to lessen when she meets the polite and well-spoken Oskar Heine. As they begin to fall in love, they also need to deal with the fierce hostility of the local community.Originally published as The Woman of Knockaloe. -
Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin was born in Talbingo in central New South Wales, in 1879. Her parents belonged to the "Squattocracy" - Europeans who lived off the land because they were the only ones there, but had no land rights. Up The Country - a tale about mid-19th-century pioneer families in New South Wales based on tales handed down from her maternal grandmother. This is not only a story of the adventures of the Mazere, Poole and Brennan families; it's also the pioneer life, the challenges and benefits of community and the harshness of the environment as well as ex-convicts, gold-fossickers, picnics, dances and all the ideals of genteel society together with the raising of cattle, mining camps and all lush natural wonders of Australia. Illustrated with black and white sketches. https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/my-career-goes-bung-miles-franklin/ -
On of Dickens' classics written to rouse society to the sufferings of the poor and the Government's ineptness to do anything practical to help those who had no choice but the grim workhouse. It also illustrates the complete lack of feeling toward the poor, and the corruption that was rife in a mean welfare system that actually made things worse, not better. Oliver's mother dies while bringing him into the world; and the sensitive boy is buffeted from the horrific workhouse to being sold to an undertaker and thence into the foul slums of London. He naively falls in with the Artful Dodger and the evil Fagin, fencer of stolen goods and schooler of children in the art of thievery. There is the vicious Bill Sikes and his pathetic lover Nancy, who is kind to Oliver; Mr Bumble the bullying beadle, Mrs Sowerberry and a whole raft of other vivid Dickensian characters. Oliver's story is unforgettable. This is the complete and unabridged text; with illustrations by George Cruikshank from the 1892 and 1897 editions. -
Opal Fever: Nicholas Miles
$12.00An opal buyer is ambushed in the remote Australian interior and hunch-backed Chilla and his young companion Snow escape with $150,000 in gems. Burying the swag, they hole up in a mining settlement until the hue and cry dies down. It's a rough life in the settlement: night and day, men and women dream of opal, dig for opal, live for opal. To Delese, falling in love with Chilla, it means security for her and her baby; to bluff, warm-hearted Bill the hunt for it is the only life he wants; to Chilla and Snow, it means freedom but it also threatens to destroy the strange intense bond between them. To all of them it is a fever, creating deep love and loyalty in some and overpowering greed and envy in others. An authentic story of human endurance. -
England's New Forest is a place of mystery, myth and legend. Witchcraft, smuggling, poaching and treachery run through the bloodlines of Rutherfurd's characters - well-born ladies, lowly woodsmen, sailors and monks, merchant families and proud nobles. There are great deeds and small, cruel laws, the dangers of the Armada and the elegance of the Georgian period. All these events and people - and more - affect the ancient life of the Forest.
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The Third Twin: Ken Follett
$12.00Beautiful scientist Jeannie Ferrami stumbles across the baffling mystery of identical twins Steve and Dan, yet they were born on different days to different mothers - and one is a law student and the other is a convicted murderer. They are a world apart - but when Steve is accused of a terrible crime, Jeannie begins to question just how different they really are. As she begins to fall in love with Steve, not only her professional future is threatened - so is her life. They will uncover the mystery and bring the secrets to life, but some secrets were meant to be left alone.
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Book IV of Conqueror. The Great Khan is dead. His vast empire hangs in the balance, an empire he forged with raw courage, guile, tactical brilliance, unswerving dedication to his people, and the force of his own indomitable will. Now the very qualities that united the fierce Mongol tribes threaten to tear them apart, as the heirs of Genghis maneuver for dominance. In the end, only one can command...Now, even as they struggle for supremacy among themselves, Genghis’s sons and grandsons extend the reach of his vision, taking their armies farther than ever before, into southern China and across the steppes and rugged mountains of Russia to the vulnerable heart of Europe, where they will face the most courageous warriors the West commands. Genghis’s tough and canny heir, Ogedai, is on the verge of being proclaimed the new Khan. But Ogedai has mysteriously delayed his coronation ceremony to complete a fantastic project many deem a folly: the building of Karakorum, a magnificent city amid the wild plains. His puzzling decision emboldens his arrogant brother Chagetai to violently challenge him, while their noble sibling Tolui and his beautiful, wily wife, Sorhatani, will be caught between the two. Chagetai’s attempt at rebellion reveals shocking truths about Ogedai’s health and imperiled future. As one brother awaits his fate, another awaits his moment to seize power, while spies and assassins play out the ambitions and destinies of their masters. -
They dismissed the Mary Deare as a piece of leaking ironmongery taken off the junk heap. For forty years, this 6,000-ton freighter had tramped the seas, suffered shipwreck twice and been torpedoed three times in two world wars. Then one March night, battered and bruised, she steamed out of the fog of the English Channel, her lights ablaze and her bridge deserted. Cabins that had been lived in recently were empty; food lay ready on the mess table - and of the crew, not a sign. Where were the crew? And what secret did she carry in her hold?
