Book picks similar to
Framed! A Young Boy's Fight to Survive in the Wild Australian Bush by M.E. Skeel
historical-fiction
aussie-authors
5000-books
familiar-places
A Little Bush Maid
Mary Grant Bruce - 1910
Norah's prim and proper aunts, who live in the city, consider she is in danger of "growing up wild" - riding all over Billabong on her beloved pony, Bobs, helping with mustering, and joining in all the holidays fun when Jim and his friends come home from boarding school. A fishing trip results in unexpected drama when they discover a mysterious stranger camped in the bush. Who is this stranger and why is he there? Norah's resourcefulness is tested to the full!
A Girl Like Me
Penny Matthews - 2010
She's funny and knowing and wild, and she distracts Emmie from the monotony of farm life in their tiny, isolated community. But, as Emmie soon discovers, Bertha has secrets. Terrible secrets.This heartbreaking story is based on a real crime that took place more than a century ago, capturing headlines all around Australia.
The Things She's Seen
Ambelin Kwaymullina - 2018
He's also the only one who has been able to see and hear her since the accident. But now she's got a mystery to solve, a mystery that will hopefully remind her detective father that he is still alive, that there is a life after Beth that is still worth living.Who is Isobel Catching, and why is she able to see Beth, too? What is her connection to the crime Beth's father has been sent to investigate--a gruesome fire at a home for troubled youth that left an unidentifiable body behind? What happened to the people who haven't been seen since the fire?As Beth and her father unravel the mystery, they find a shocking and heartbreaking story lurking beneath the surface of a small town, and a friendship that lasts beyond one life and into another...
The Getting of Wisdom
Henry Handel Richardson - 1910
In telling lies, Laura learns both the astonishing allure of fiction and the social costs of stepping beyond the bounds of propriety, gender, class, and family ties.The novel is only in part a fictionalised account of Richardson's school years at the Presbyterian Ladies College, Melbourne, where (unlike her fictional counterpart) she was not only academically successful but also an outstanding student of music. Unusual for stories of school-life, The Getting of Wisdom was clearly aimed at a mature readership able to understand irony and a critique of the colonial educational provision of its day, including a determination to preserve sexual ignorance in young women.
The Invitation
Belinda Alexandra - 2018
Emma Lacasse has been estranged from her older sister for nearly twenty years, since Caroline married a wealthy American and left France. So when Emma receives a request from Caroline to meet her, she is intrigued. Caroline invites Emma to visit her in New York, on one condition: Emma must tutor her shy, young niece, Isadora, and help her prepare for her society debut.Caroline lives a life of unimaginable excess and opulence as one of New York's Gilded Age millionaires and Emma is soon immersed in a world of luxury beyond her wildest dreams - a far cry from her bohemian lifestyle as a harpist and writer with her lover, Claude, in Montmartre.Emma hopes for an emotional reunion with her only family, but instead she finds herself in the vice-like grip of her charismatic and manipulative sister, who revels in the machinations of the ultra rich. As Emma begins to question her sister's true motives, a disaster strikes, and New York society is stripped bare - beneath the glittering exterior lies a seething nest of deceit, betrayal, moral corruption ... and perhaps even murder.From the bestselling author of Tuscan Rose comes a mesmerising tale of two sisters and the dangers and seductions of excess.
Darkwater
Georgia Blain - 2010
Her body was found floating facedown by the riverbank, and no one knows what happened. As rumours fly and fear grows, it seems that everyone suspects Lyndon, one of Amanda's friends. He's known for his temper, his cruelty and his criminal family - and now the police want to talk to him. It's the end of summer, 1973, the heat is enough to melt asphalt and a sleepy riverside suburb is losing some of its innocence. Fifteen-year-old Winter went to the same school and hung out in the same places as Amanda. As she finds herself alone in trying to defend Lyndon, Winter learns that you can never really know someone - and the answers she has been looking for are closer than she has ever wanted to believe.
An Unconventional Officer
Lynn Bryant - 2017
An Unconventional Officer’ is the story of Paul van Daan, younger son of the wealthy owner of a shipping line, who joins the 110th Infantry as an ambitious junior officer and travels to India in 1802 to serve under a young and relatively inexperienced general with a reputation to make. The book charts Paul’s early career from a junior lieutenant in India through the wars in Europe to Portugal and Spain. A talented and charismatic leader of men, he needs to learn to curb his temper and adjust to the rigid army hierarchy in order to rise in his chosen profession. On the way he makes enduring friendships forged on the battlefields of India and Europe and builds an unexpected bond with the difficult, unemotional commander of the Peninsular army, Sir Arthur Wellesley. There are many women in Paul’s life but only two who touch his heart. Rowena Summers, a shy young governess straight from a charity school. Serene and gentle, her love and companionship give Paul a stability he had not known he lacked. Anne Howard the extraordinary daughter of a wealthy manufacturer who marries a fellow officer and changes everything Paul thought he knew about women. Amidst the violence and tragedy of the war against Napoleon an unforgettable love story unfolds which affects the lives of everybody it touches and changes the 110th forever. This is the first book in the Peninsular War series which tells the story of the men and women of the 110th infantry, a regiment like no other in Wellington’s army.
My Brother Jack
George Johnston - 1964
Through the story of two brothers who grew up in patriotic, suburban Melbourne, George Johnston created an enduring exploration of two Australian myths - that of the man who loses his soul as he gains worldly success, and that of the tough, honest, Aussie battler.