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A Town Like Alice: World War II...The Japanese Army invades Malaya and Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is taken prisoner with other English women and children then forced on a brutal seven-month death march. They trudge from camp to camp, always turned away, leaving graves behind them and secretly learning to trade jewellery for medicines and extra food just to survive. Jean meets Australian P.O.W. Joe Harman, who tells her about the Gulf Country, the vast stock stations and a town called Alice - a town of lovely homes, green lawns, water and gardens. He steals food for the women, is caught by the Japanese and condemned to death by lashing and crucifixion. The women are forced to watch. When their guard dies, they are taken in by a village and work with the locals to grow rice for the Japanese army. After the war, Jean tries to put the nightmare behind her. Then an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved the life of the group of prisoners. There she learns astonishing news which lead her to travel to the desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she takes on an unusual challenge - to make Willstown a town like Alice. The Far Country: Jennifer travels from London to Australia on a small bequest from her late grandmother to visit her married cousin on a rural property. She falls in love with the rugged beauty of Australia and meets Zlinter, a Czech refugee who is a qualified medical practitioner but may not practise in Australia. When two stockmen are injured, Zlinter must make a decision - to break the law and do what he can to save them - or let them die. On The Beach: The classic nuclear war story first published in 1958 and made into a major film less than a year after publication. Nuclear war erupts and lasts less than 30 days - and no-one even knows how it started. The last operating U.S. submarine Scorpion makes its way to Australia ahead of the deadly fall-out creeping down the globe from the Northern hemisphere. The Australian Navy picks up Morse code signals coming from Seattle - could there be survivors? The Scorpion, with Australian officer Lieutenant-Commander Peter Holmes aboard is sent to investigate while Australians hope and prepare for the possible end of life on earth. -
In World War II the Japanese Army invades Malaya and Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is taken prisoner with other English women and children then forced on a brutal seven-month death march. They trudge from camp to camp, always turned away, leaving graves behind them and secretly learning to trade jewellery for medicines and extra food just to survive. Jean meets Australian P.O.W. Joe Harman, who tells her about the Gulf Country, the vast stock stations and a town called Alice - a town of lovely homes, green lawns, water and gardens. He steals food for the women, is caught by the Japanese and condemned to death by lashing and crucifixion. The women are forced to watch. After their guard dies, they are taken in by a village and work with the locals to grow rice for the Japanese army. After the war, Jean tries to put the nightmare behind her. Then an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved their lives. There she learns astonishing news which lead her to travel to the desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she takes on an unusual challenge - to make Willstown a town like Alice. -
In World War II the Japanese Army invades Malaya and Jean Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is taken prisoner with other English women and children then forced on a brutal seven-month death march. They trudge from camp to camp, always turned away, leaving graves behind them and secretly learning to trade jewellery for medicines and extra food just to survive. Jean meets Australian P.O.W. Joe Harman, who tells her about the Gulf Country, the vast stock stations and a town called Alice - a town of lovely homes, green lawns, water and gardens. He steals food for the women, is caught by the Japanese and condemned to death by lashing and crucifixion. The women are forced to watch. When their guard dies, they are taken in by a village and work with the locals to grow rice for the Japanese army. After the war, Jean tries to put the nightmare behind her. Then an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved the life of the group of prisoners. There she learns astonishing news which lead her to travel to the desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she takes on an unusual challenge - to make Willstown a town like Alice. -
The Regans, a grazier family, live on a homestead of their own making. They have become wealthy, yet the life is still demanding and lonely in the vast spaces of the Australian outback where the nearest shop is over 300 miles away - but progress and development are available for those willing to invest the time and effort. Their neighbour, twenty-two-year-old Englishman David Cope, is struggling to survive on land with less water. The Regans are of Irish/Scots descent and fought with the IRA, whereas David's father fought with the Black and Tan. Then Stanton Laird comes to the area, sent by an American company to look for oil. This is not the inevitable love triangle, but a portrait of people with very different cultural backgrounds building relationships in a far from normal environment. -
In The Wet: Nevil Shute
$15.00Written in 1953 and set 30 years in the future, there is an inner story and an outer story: the first crowded with the great figures of the British empire and the second set in the wilds of Queensland during the rains from November to April when a strange adventure takes place. Great Britain is still great - its people determined, tenacious and disciplined. A young airman and the girl he loves find themselves at the very hub of the affairs of Empire during the course of a very astonishing Constitutional crisis. -
In The Wet: Nevil Shute
$9.00This extraordinary story opens in the wilds of Queensland. The year is 1953. Roger Hargreaves, an Anglican priest in the Bush Brotherhood, is called to minister to the dying Stevie - an aged, alcoholic, opium-smoking, diseased ex-pilot and ex-ringer. Caught in Stevie's squalid cabin in a heavy rainy season, Hargreaves struggles with recurring malaria whilst on deathwatch for Stevie. As both men are in altered mental states the story shifts and Stevie becomes David Anderson, a decorated member of the Royal Australian Air Force, telling his story to Hargreaves. But 'David Anderson', a man of mixed European and Aboriginal ancestry, is a first rate pilot chosen by his country to be a member of an elite test pilot team in the UK. - in 1983. Not only that, 'David' is involved in an astonishing constitutional crisis in this strange future. -
Landfall: Nevil Shute
$20.00A World War II adventure about the strength of true love and how it can overcome any obstacle. A British air reconnaissance officer falls for a pub waitress, but finds his life in chaos when he accidentally bombs a British submarine, mistaking it for a German U-boat. What begins as a romantic fling develops into true love as Mona fights to present the evidence she has discovered about this tragedy in the hope that it will absolve her lover. -
Marazan: Nevil Shute
$9.00It began in June. I was one of the pilots of the Rawdon Air Taxi Service then; as everyone knows, a civilian pilot, like a dramatic critic, is merely a young man who is too lazy to work for a living... So begins this story of the exciting early days of passenger aviation, a story of small ships and high stakes and of a family broken in two by crime. Pilot Philip Stenning crashes his aircraft while flying from London to Devon. He is rescued by escaped prisoner Denis Compton, who claims he was sent to prison for embezzlement after being framed by his half-brother, Italian baron Rodrigo Mattani. Owing Compton his life, Stenning agrees to investigate Mattani's illegal activities. Shute's first book. -
Most Secret: Nevil Shute
$9.00Four men, each an expert in his own special field and each with a reason for hating the Germans are thrown together in World War II. The plan: to use a French fishing boat, the Genevieve, to attack the German Raumboote patrolling the French coast. The mission: a daring night raid against the Germans occupying the Breton fishing port of Douarnenez using a horrifying weapon - the flame thrower. -
No Highway: Nevil Shute
$10.00Theodore Honey is a shy, inconspicuous engineer whose eccentric interests are frowned upon in aviation circles. When a passenger plane crashes in Newfoundland under unexplained circumstances, Honey is determined to prove his unorthodox theory about what went wrong to his superiors, before more lives are lost. But while flying to the crash scene to investigate, Honey discovers to his horror that he is on board one of the defective planes and that he and his fellow passengers, including a friendly young stewardess and an aging movie actress, are in imminent peril. -
On The Beach: Nevil Shute
$12.00The classic nuclear war story first published in 1958 and made into a major film less than a year after publication. Nuclear war erupts and lasts less than 30 days - and no-one even knows how it started. The last operating U.S. submarine Scorpion makes its way to Australia ahead of the fall-out creeping down the globe from the Northern hemisphere. The Australian Navy picks up Morse code signals coming from Seattle - could there be survivors? The Scorpion, with Australian officer Lieutenant-Commander Peter Holmes aboard is sent to investigate while Australians hope and prepare for the possible end of life on earth. -
Pastoral: Nevil Shute
$10.00World War II pilot Peter Marshall leads the most successful bombing crew at his airbase, having survived an unusual number of extremely dangerous missions over Germany. However, when Peter falls hopelessly in love with an attractive WAAF officer - one who insists that wartime duties should take precedence over emotions - his concentration begins to suffer. Soon it looks as though his perfect run of successful missions may be at risk - along with the lives of Peter and his men - unless she can be persuaded to relent. -
Sidelined by a wartime injury, fighter pilot Alan Duncan reluctantly returns to his parents' remote sheep station in Australia to take the place of his brother Bill, who died a hero in the war. But his homecoming is marred by the suicide of his parents' parlormaid, of whom they were very fond. Alan soon realizes that the dead young woman is not the person she pretended to be. Upon discovering that she had served in the Royal Navy and participated along with his brother in the secret build-up to the Normandy invasion, Alan sets out to piece together the tragic events and the lonely burden of guilt that unravelled one woman's life. -
Round The Bend: Nevil Shute
$10.00Told in the first person by Tom Cutter, aircraft pilot, engineer, and entrepreneur, the story starts with Cutter's boyhood - he gets a job with the Alan Cobham "National Aviation Day" flying circus of barnstorming aircraft which take customers up for short joyrides, with other entertainment provided. Cutter meets Shaklin, a boy a little older than himself, half Chinese and half Russian - British subject with a deep interest in religion. When the air circus folds, the two drift apart. Cutter apprentices in aviation engineering and learns to fly. He marries Beryl, a co-worker and soon afterwards he's posted overseas as a civilian working in military aviation work during World War II. While overseas, he learns his wife has been unfaithful. He is stern, but forgiving, in letters to her, but when she realises that he is soon to return, she commits suicide. Cutter blames himself and unable to return to his old job or remain in England, he buys and rebuilds a small aircraft and flies it to Bahrain, operating a freight business. In Indonesia he meets Shaklin again, and Shaklin's brand of spirituality begins to make profound changes, not only for Cutter but for a great many people. -
Round The Bend: Nevil Shute
$20.00Told in the first person by Tom Cutter, aircraft pilot, engineer, and entrepreneur, the story starts with Cutter's boyhood - he gets a job with the Alan Cobham "National Aviation Day" flying circus of barnstorming aircraft which take customers up for short joyrides, with other entertainment provided. Cutter meets Shaklin, a boy a little older than himself, half Chinese and half Russian - British subject with a deep interest in religion. When the air circus folds, the two drift apart. Cutter apprentices in aviation engineering and learns to fly. He marries Beryl, a co-worker and soon afterwards he's posted overseas as a civilian working in military aviation work during World War II. While overseas, he learns his wife has been unfaithful. He is stern, but forgiving, in letters to her, but when she realises that he is soon to return, she commits suicide. Cutter blames himself and unable to return to his old job or remain in England, he buys and rebuilds a small aircraft and flies it to Bahrain, operating a freight business. In Indonesia he meets Shaklin again, and Shaklin's brand of spirituality begins to make profound changes, not only for Cutter but for a great many people. -
Ruined City: Nevil Shute
$15.00Through a series of mishaps, Henry Warren, a recently divorced City financier, ends up in hospital in a Northern town ruined by the closure of its shipyard. Moved by the fate of the town's inhabitants, Warren risks his fortune and reputation to save the shipyard and restore the town to its former prosperity. In seeking to change the fate of the town, he radically changes his own. -
Slide Rule: Nevil Shute
$15.00The fascinating autobiography of the author who gave the world the classic stories On The Beach, A Town Like Alice, What Happened To The Corbetts, The Pied Piper, In The Wet and so much more. Nevil Shute, in his own words: Most of my adult life, perhaps all the worthwhile part of it, has been spent messing about with airplanes. For 30 years there was a period when airplanes would fly when you wanted them to, but there were still fresh things to be learned on every flight, a period when airplanes were small and so easily built that experiments were cheap and new designs could fly within six months of the first glimmer in the mind of the designer. That halcyon period started about 1910 and it was in full flower after WW I when I was a young man; it died with WW II when airplanes had grown too costly and too complicated for individuals to build or even to operate. I count myself lucky that that fleeting period coincided with my youth and my young manhood, and that I had a part in it. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
These two novels were found among Shute's papers after his death -written in the 1920s, they are his first works. Stephen Morris: Stephen Morris studies mathematics at Oxford but when he finishes, the good job in rubber in Malaya he expects has fallen through. He sets his fiancee, Helen, free of any promise of marriage to him He gets a low paid job as a pilot /mechanic in the Isle of Wight Aviation Company with her cousin Malcolm and his partner Stenning. The firm fails after the wartime ministry hangar they are occupying is taken back, and he goes to Captain Rawdon’s Rawdon Aircraft Co. He becomes head of the technical department, studying aeronautical engineering. He turns down an offer from an armament firm Pilling-Henries and gets a rise when Rawdon gets an order for their new two-seater fighter from Denmark. He finds that Helen is shortly to marry Lechlane, who is going into politics and needs a hostess wife. Morris gives up hope of Helen, but is he being premature in abandoning hope?Pilotage: While on holiday in England,Peter Denniston proposes to Sheila Wallace, who he has known for four years; he has a job in Hong Kong with his uncle, as a maritime solicitor. She turns him down, saying she could not live in China. While yachting on the Solent, his yacht Irene collides with Sir David Fisher’s large yacht Clematis which fails to give way to him. Fisher realises that he was in the wrong and takes him on board the Clematis to recover. Two other men, Rawdon and Morris are also on board, discussing a secret aeronautical venture, a proposed transatlantic urgent cargo service that will reduce the transit time from 7 days to 5. Denniston is offered the position of navigator in this bold new venture.