Nicky Barr. Australian Air Ace. 

Peter Dornan. 

Nicky Barr’s story is of adventure, war, courage and mortality, and the love for his wife that sustained him through it all. 281 pp.

Jeff Hatwell.

Black & Murray were plain hard-working Australians whose paths crossed in Western Australia when they enlisted in support of country and empire.

A well-wrought chronicle of two unassuming, iconic Anzacs who acted with resolve and fortitude under great pressure and in the most difficult circumstances. In their laconic way these tow would have said they simply did what they had to, they did their job.

The autobiography of outback publican, Mayse Young.

Sandy Thorne

A story of a huge land and livestock deals done on the shake of a hand, back when a man's word was his bond.

Arthur Earle became Queensland's biggest sheep trader, developer of rural residential real estate, and investor in pastoral properties. A man of honour, his deals were all done on the shake of a hand.

Hardcover, 287 pages.

Our Father Who Wasn't There 

Can a memoir begin without memories? Can a father be invented? When David Carlin was only six months old, his father, Brian, died. It was the 1960s in isolated Western Australia , a place in which emotions were discreetly veiled, women did not attend funerals — and suicide was a sin. Brian became a mysteriously absent figure in David's family story, hardly spoken of again.  As an adult, David yearns to conjure up his father, to uncover what led to his death at his own hand. Gradually, he begins to piece together Brian's story from the faltering memories of friends and relatives, and from the voices and incidents that emerge from Brian's medical records. Into the inevitable gaps that remain, David cannot help but stray with his own imaginings.

Through David, Brian's story starts to fill out — up rise the hessian-walled house of his childhood on the edge of the wheat belt during the Depression, the outposts of heady undergraduate bohemia in late-1940s Perth , and Brian's happily married life with a brilliant and loving young wife, and an equally brilliant career. But, in among it all, there also rises a darkness — a damaging undertow of electric-shock therapy, insulin comas, and whispered wartime events.

In this masterfully rendered memoir, David moves like a ghost through time and place, deftly weaving a story from what he has always known, and from all that he will never know. 225pp

Joanne van Os was just twenty-two when she met Rod Ansell. At twenty-three Rod was already a legend in Australia and around the world, having survived alone for two months without supplies in one of the harshest and most remote parts of northern Australia. To Joanne, Rod was a a genuine hero who could do anything, could make anything out of nothing, told the funniest yarns, had a philosophy on everything. She married him, and they had two beautiful sons who idolised their father. Together they lived the tough life of outback bull catchers and cattle musterers. But as time went on Joanne came to realise that Rod was both a complicated and deeply troubled man. For the sake of her sons she never gave up on Rod, even after their divorce, but just how far he'd gone only became apparent when his life ended in tragedy: out of his mind on drugs, Rod became involved in a shootout in which a young police office was killed. 'How does someone, whose extraordinary story of survival in the wild inspired so many Australians, become a psychotic, drug-crazed gunman?' Joanne asks. OUTBACK HEART captures the Territory life on paper: the dust, the heat, the struggle and the larger-than-life characters. But it's also a deeply moving and powerful story of a love affair and a marriage, and the pain when it all falls apart. It's the story of Rod Ansell, but even more it is Joanne's story, of how a young, naive woman grows up the hard way, and has the most exhilarating and the most heartbreaking times doing it.

Outback Spirit: Inspiring True Stories of Australia's Unsung Heroes               Sue Williams

In 1950s Brisbane the Cold War is hot news, and so were the cakes at Lunns for Buns, Fred and Olives famous Annerley Junction cake shop. Enter one Jim Egoroff: Russian agent, all-round tough guy (aged 9), and the boy Hugh Lunn (also aged 9) is destined to make his left-hand man. This delightful memoir of an Australian childhood has now become a classic bestselling family favourite. I defy you to read it without laughing out loud - Ray Martin A triumph for Australian publishing - Ian Macca McNamara