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Set in Melbourne and England at the end of the 19th century, the difficult young man is Dominic, grandson of Alice and Austin and older brother of the narrator, Guy Langton. Intense, proud and handsome, Dominic is considered eccentric by those who have no sympathy for him. His uncontrollable spiritual energies and old fashioned chivalry clash with pre-1914 society. When he is taken to his ancestral home in Somerset, he meets beautiful Sylvia Tunstall and his career temporarily reached the most promising heights. Yet the vulgarity of his social climbing Aunt Baba is that which unleashes the rebellion with which Dominic can really cause offense. -
After the end of World War II, Australia's Directorate of War Graves Services uncovered an extraordinary document hidden in a bottle buried in a grave in Singapore. It was a summary of the secret diary of Dr. Rowley Richards, a P.O.W. and medical officer on the notorious Burma Railway. Richards, just 23 when the war broke out, witnessed the horror of camp life first-hand and through his work treating fellow prisoners suffering in the harsh conditions. In a series of diaries he recorded the everyday brutality of the P.O.W camps as well as the courage, humour and mateship of his comrades. Just before being transferred to prison in Japan, he buried a summary of his contraband writings. Astonishingly, it was returned to him intact. -
Terry Delaney leads a relatively satisfying life as a security guard and as a passionate rugby player with a shot at pro-team success. But Terry's life is shaken beyond recognition when he falls obsessively in love with Danielle Kabbel, the daughter of his employer, Rudi Kabbel. Rudi, a half-mad/half-charming immigrant from Eastern Europe, suffers from visions of an impending apocalypse and from the demons of a tormented childhood. The family madness runs deep, from the Kabbel family patriarch, Stanek, a Nazi collaborator who betrayed his wife to save his own neck, to Rudi's traumatic childhood in which he was a pawn between the Nazis and the Russians. It is into this maelstrom of devastating history and present day insanity that Terry is drawn - to his own desperate peril. -
In the remote barren wasteland of North-western Australia, three wandering thugs make a murderous bid to gain ownership of a newly discovered nickel fortune by crippling the legitimate owners' vehicles and setting the occupants adrift, without food or water, to die in the searing heat. The victims attempt the seemingly-impossible desert crossing, close-herded by the thugs. But the killers have reckoned without the power of gratitude, when the victims receive assistance from someone they never expected to meet... -
With contributions by Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Lamb, Dryden and many more of the great classical poets. With beautiful engraving-style black and white illustrations. -
The story of ex-quartermaster, James Hyde. From a modest store he established on the waterfront at Sydney in 1837 he develops his business which assumes overwhelming proportions and drains the lifeblood of his family, whose attempts to escape its grip are fruitless. Through his energy and foresight the years of the gold rush bring increased prosperity-but they also heighten the tension under which the family lives. But all the wealth in the world will not keep tragedy away - and the great house Hyde wanted is built - but to what end? This novel, written in 1929 by two young women graduates of Sydney University - Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw - was the judges' first choice in the Sydney Bulletin's competition for the best novel submitted by an Australian author and has gone into edition after edition. -
In 1943, with the men off to war and the existence of baseball threatened, the All American Girls' Professional Baseball League was created. This is a story on this event. Scouts scoured the countryside to find the best women softball players and brought them to Chicago to create the first and only professional women's baseball league. These pioneering women triumphed over the hardships of training, the ridicule and initial rejection by baseball fans and went on to assure themselves a place on sports history and the Baseball Hall of Fame. A novelisation of the film starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna. -
At the Cauldron we don't generally go in for romance, but a romance written by a man and set in the provincial middle-class at the turn of the century was just too interesting an idea to pass up. George Pearson, the traveling draper, thinks his friend school-teacher Freddie Bates needs to get married - to a nice little widow who 'knows the ropes'. Freddie gets his nice little widow but the next ten years of his life are not all plain sailing. He gets involved in troubles such as never occurred in his bachelor days but the delicate silk strands that bind him to the unpredictable little woman who has taken him for her second husband are firm.
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HMS Royston, Coastal Forces Depot Ship, is mother ship to a battered, war-worn bunch of MTB and MGBs. New on board is Sub-Lieutenant Royce, aged twenty, commissioned three months, sea experience three months in an Asdic trawler. His C.O. is Lieutenant Harston, aged 23. His predecessor has been killed in action forty-eight hours earlier and is now hardly remembered. The crew are all young, but old before their time. Royce realised that on the little ships it was a young man's war - the horizon was always near.
