Books

Tom and Jordy have been living with their gran since the day their mother, Loretta, left them on her doorstep and disappeared.

Now Loretta’s returned, and she wants her boys back.

Tom and Jordy hit the road with Loretta in her beat-up car. The family of three journeys across the country, squabbling, bonding, searching and reconnecting. [click to continue…]

Frank Delage, piano manufacturer from Sydney, travels to Vienna, a city immersed in music, to present the Delage concert grand. He hopes to impress with its technical precision, its improvement on the old pianos of Europe. [click to continue…]

I am Melba – how a Melbourne girl defied her father and left her husband to become the most famous singer of the age. Growing up in Melbourne, Nellie Mitchell showed musical promise and dreamed of fame, but her father had more orthodox plans in mind. Early marriage took her to the Queensland cane-fields – but her ambitions remained, and she soon fled to London, trusting in talent and luck to get her by. Within a few years, reborn as Nellie Melba, she was performing to overflowing concert halls, hobnobbing with royalty and collaborating with Europe’s most renowned musicians. [click to continue…]

Van Diemen’s Land is a new, groundbreaking history of the settlement of Tasmania. James Boyce’s book is filled with new facts and new ideas about one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of British colonialism. [click to continue…]

Toyo learned to ask nothing, to wait and count the days. But they passed and passed and still the doorway remained empty of his deep voice, calling out her name.

Blending the intimacy of memoir with an artist’s vision, Toyo is the story of a remarkable woman, a vivid picture of Japan before and after war, and an unpredictable tale of courage and change in today’s Australia. [click to continue…]

Ghost Wife is the deep, funny, heartwarming and brave story of that trip. Along the way, Michelle reflects on why anyone would want to get married anyway, on the power of acceptance, and on the startling stories she uncovers in her family’s past. [click to continue…]

Sarah Thornhill is the youngest child of William Thornhill, convict- turned-landowner on the Hawkesbury River. She grows up in the fine house her father is so proud of, a strong-willed young woman who’s certain where her future lies.

She’s known Jack Langland since she was a child, and always loved him. But the past is waiting in ambush with its dark legacy. [click to continue…]

Victor Radcliffe, prominent Melbourne businessman, on the committee of the Carlton Football Club, lies murdered in a deserted warehouse—the bayonet wound suggests a trained killer, but Police Inspector James Maclaine, and his smart-talking sidekick Harry Devlin, are having trouble tracking down the killer.

Why do the members of Radcliffe’s household seem strangely offhand about his murder? Was there a woman on the scene of the crime? [click to continue…]

In this fascinating collection, John Hirst has assembled the key assessments of the national character of Australia and Australians. There are insiders and outsiders. There is celebration and criticism. There is the difference between what Australian think of themselves and what they are really like. [click to continue…]