The Lieutenant

Kate Grenville

The Lieutenant is the second book in a trilogy of novels by Kate Grenville about early Australia (the others are The Secret River and a third novel in progress).

Lieutenant Daniel Rooke sails into Sydney Cove with the First Fleet, hoping to advance his career.  Instead his life is unimaginably changed.

A young Aboriginal girl visits and begins to teach him her language. As they learn to speak together, they build a rapport that bridges the gap between their dangerously different worlds.  Then Rooke is given a command that forces him to choose between his duty as a soldier and the friendship that's become so precious to him.

Inspired by the First Fleet notebooks of William Dawes, The Lieutenant is about a unique moment when one world engaged with another, and the two remarkable individuals who found ways to share understanding.

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The Secret River

Kate Grenville

The Secret River is part of a trilogy about early Australia (along with The Lieutenant, published in 2008, and a third novel in progress).

It's set in the early nineteenth century, on what was then the frontier: the Hawkesbury River, fifty miles beyond  Sydney William Thornhill, an illiterate Thames bargeman and a man of quick temper but deep feelings, steals a load of timber and is transported to New South Wales in 1806. Like many of the convicts, he's pardoned within a few years and settles on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. Perhaps the Governor grants him the land or perhaps he just takes it - the Hawkesbury is at the extreme edge of settlement at that time and normal rules don't apply. However he gets the land, it's prime riverfront acreage. It looks certain to make him rich.

There's just one problem with that land: it's already owned. It's been part of the territory of the Darug people for perhaps forty thousand years. They haven't left fences or roads or houses, but they live on that land and use it, just as surely as Thornhill's planning to do.

Sarah Hay

WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN/VOGEL LITERARY AWARD FOR 2001

'She had been left behind on an island with sealers, men who had their own rules. She felt as though she was on the edge of the world, or perhaps she had fallen off into some halfway place. It wasn't living and it wasn't quite hell.'

Shipwrecked off the coast of Western Australia in 1835, Dorothea Newell is marooned on Middle Island with other survivors. Stranded, they seek shelter in a sealers' camp. The desolate environment of the island camp is a place where men from all corners of the globe struggle to trade seal skins, and the appearance of women-rare commodities in that place and time-opens a further form of trade. As a desperate means of survival, Dorothea is forced into an alliance with the camp's fierce leader, John Anderson.

Skins is the compelling story of Dorothea's emotional and physical journey back to civilisation. Featuring an immense, wild landscape of ocean and islands untainted by human existence, Sarah Hay writes a remarkable tale of people who have fallen through the gaps of recorded history.

Rosie Highgrove-Jones grows up hating her double-barrelled name. She dreams of riding out over the wide plains of the family property, working on the land. Instead she's stuck writing the social pages of the local paper.

Then a terrible tragedy sparks a series of shocking revelations for Rosie and her family. As she tries to put her life back together, Rosie throws herself into researching the haunting true story of a 19th century Irish stockman who came to Australia and risked his all for a tiny pup and a wild dream. Is it just coincidence when Rosie meets a sexy Irish stockman of her own? And will Jim help her realise her deepest ambitions – or will he break her heart?

The Stockmen moves effortlessly between the present and the past to reveal a simple yet hard-won truth – that both love and the land are timeless . . .

Bryce Courtney

In the aftermath of the Great Depression few opportunities existed for working-class boys, but at just eighteen Danny Dunn has everything going for him: brain, looks, sporting ability - and an easy charm. His parents run The Hero, a neighbourhood pub, and Danny is a local hero.

Luck changes for Danny when he signs up to go to war. He returns home a physically broken man, to a life that will be changed for ever. Together with Helen, the woman who becomes his wife, he sets about rebuilding his life.

Set against a backdrop of Australian pubs and politics, The Story of Danny Dunn is an Australian family saga spanning three generations. It is a compelling tale of love, ambition and the destructive power of obsession.

Judy Nunn.

A priceless 16th century locket threads two riveting stories together in this saga set in and around Darwin, Australia’s ultimate frontier town. Commissioned by a Dutch noblewoman as a gift to present to her beloved on her arrival in the East Indies, the locket becomes a symbol of strength and inspiration for the woman as she struggles to survive the tragic wreck of the Batavia off the West Australian coast, and endure the hideous events that followed. By the time the survivors were rescued from the small island on which they had sought shelter while their captain sailed away in the longboat for help, they were either speechless with horror or had been driven mad by the atrocities they had witnessed and been forced to commit by the bestial crew aflame with bloodlust. A young passenger resolves to escape and is given the locket as a good luck charm. It saves his life when he is discovered washed up on the mainland shore by a tribe of Aborigines, who take him in give him a new life.
This legendary story of disaster and depravity is told in alternating chapters with the story of the Galloway family, station owners, and the story of Darwin itself, from the day it was bombed by Japanese fighter planes during WW2 and nearly flattened, to that extraordinary Christmas Day in 1974 when Darwin was again devastated by ‘fury from the sky’: this time in the form of Cyclone Tracey. Following the course of the locket and the fortunes of the Galloway clan, Judy Nunn tells a breathtaking story of disaster, courage and passion and that Top End spirit that never says die.

(A) Town Like Alice

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ERIC LOMAX Jean Paget is just twenty years old and working in Malaya when the Japanese invasion begins. When she is captured she joins a group of other European women and children whom the Japanese force to march for miles through the jungle - an experience that leads to the deaths of many. Due to her courageous spirit and ability to speak Malay, Jean takes on the role of leader of the sorry gaggle of prisoners and many end up owing their lives to her indomitable spirit. While on the march, the group run into some Australian prisoners, one of whom, Joe Harman, helps them steal some food, and is horrifically punished by the Japanese as a result. After the war, Jean tracks Joe down in Australia and together they begin to dream of surmounting the past and transforming his one-horse outback town into a thriving community like Alice Springs...

Kerry McGinnis.

Two branches of the McAllister family lead very different lives on cattle stations in Central Australia. Rob, a stickler for correctness, manages a wealthy, company-owned property, while his easygoing brother Sandy struggles to support his wife and son on an impoverished leasehold. When tragedy throws the families together, before ultimately driving them even further apart, it's Sandy's young son Jim who suffers most. Left to rebuild his shattered world, he depends on the larger-than-life station characters and the comfort of horses.

This is tough country, where personal heartache is kept in perspective by drought, fire and isolation. The times are just as unforgiving, and as the years pass, Jim discovers that he must pay for his father's mistakes as well as his own. Yet this harshly beautiful land is full of promise, a source of strength to Jim on his road from innocence to independence.

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Joy Dettman.

The sequel to the bestselling Mallawindy.

Only the strong survive Mallawindy. Some get away, but even they fight to escape the town's dark legacy. Jack Burton escaped. For six years he has been missing, presumed dead. Still, memories of him continue to dominate the lives of his family. His wife, Ellie, stands at the gate each night, waiting for him to return - until a man's body is found.

Once again, the Burtons' turbulent history will be unearthed .