History

Books

Lost for Words
Lost for Words More gems than a Lightning Ridge mine
EVER THOUGHT THAT THE language used today is just plain boring? Ever wished at the right moment you could have said “he couldn’t train a choko vine over a dunny”?

Hugh Lunn is on a mission to bring rich colour back to the Australian language. By exploring the phrases of his early years, Lunn doesn’t simply bring back hundreds of funny, apt, poignant and cutting sayings, he evokes a lost world of Australia; one that anyone, whatever their age, will enjoy.

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The Great War
The Great War History at its most compelling
AFTER THE CRITICAL ACCLAIM and enormous success of Gallipoli, Les Carlyon has broadened his scope to produce the definitive Australian account of the First World War and the Anzacs on the Western Front. From the power plays in the palaces of Europe, to the stench of rotting flesh in the trenches, Carlyon covers the entire scope of this most terrible of wars.
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Tobruk
Tobruk The triumph of mateship
IN 1941 ROMMEL WAS sweeping across Libya reconquering the territory lost by Italy in the Second World War. His progress came to a serious halt in a small town with a strategically vital deep-water port—Tobruk. With few other forces available, the town was left to the Australian Imperial forces and a contingent of British artillery, the toughest most determined bunch of mates that could be assembled. The Rats of Tobruk became a legend, not just for Australians but also for everyone involved in the war in Northern Africa.
My Place book
My Place Over 600,000 copies sold

This is a story of extended family, the treatment of Aboriginals, and history lost and found. Nan, the author's grandmother, wants to "forget" about her heritage. She teaches her grandchildren about birds and bullfrogs to make sure they know nature's side of life and instils in them a certain distrust of white people, but she won't talk about her past.

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Year of Wonders cover
Year of Wonders “An astonishing re-creation of how it felt to be a victim and survivor…vivid in its humanity.” – Thomas Keneally

A young woman’s struggle to save her family and her soul during the most extraordinary year of 1666, when plague suddenly visited a small Derbyshire village and the villagers, inspired by a charismatic preacher, elected to quarantine themselves to limit the contagion.

An Anzac’s Story
An Anzac’s Story It was the war to end all wars.

Roy Kyle was a typical Australian soldier, gripped by patriotism to defend King and country during the First World War. It was the war to end all wars.

Enlisting early and underage, Roy celebrated his eighteenth birthday in the trenches of Lone Pine, Gallipoli where over two and a half thousand Australians were killed or wounded. He was one of the last to be evacuated.

White Gardenia
White Gardenia The national bestseller about a mother and daughter separated by war.

Opening in a small village on the Chinese-Russian border under Japanese occupation in the final days of World War Two, White Gardenia tells the story of a White Russian mother and daughter whose lives are intersected by history.

From the glamorous nightclubs of Shanghai to the harshness of the Siberian wasteland, from a desolate island in the South China Sea to a new life in postwar Australia, and finally to Cold War Moscow, White Gardenia sweeps across cultures and continents.