. .It’s 1929, and the world is changing. Cars are no longer the privilege of the rich. Hemlines are rising. Movies are talking. And more and more women are entering the workforce.For Edwina Baker, however, life on her family’s farm in Western Queensland offers little opportunity to be anything other than daughter, sister and, perhaps soon, wife.But Edwina wants more. She wants to see the world, meet new people, achieve things. For while she has more business sense than her younger brother, it will be Aiden who one day inherits the farm.Then the circus comes to town. Banned from attending by her father, Hamilton, Edwina defiantly rides to the showground dressed as a boy. There she encounters two men who will both inadvertently alter the course of her life: pastoralist Mason with his modern city friends; and Will, a labourer who also dreams of escape.And when the night ends in near-disaster, this one act of rebellion strikes at the heart of the Baker family. Yet it also offers Edwina the rare chance to prove herself in a man’s world. The question is, how far is she prepared to go, and how much is she prepared to risk?

    Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life.They weren’t alone, not with over a hundred quirky animals to care for, each lost and hurt in its own way: a pair of suicidal, bra-stealing monkeys, a frustrated parrot desperate to fly, and a pig with a wicked sense of humor. The humans, too, were cause for laughter and tears. There were animal whisperers, committed staff, wildly devoted volunteers, handsome heartbreakers, and a machete-wielding prom queen who carried Laura through. Most of all, there were the jungle—lyrical and alive—and Wayra, who would ultimately teach Laura so much about love, healing, and the person she was capable of becoming.Set against a turbulent and poignant backdrop of deforestation, the illegal pet trade, and forest fires, The Puma Years explores what happens when two desperate creatures in need of rescue find one another.

    Since Roald Amundsen completed the first successful crossing of the fabled Northwest Passage in 1906, only twenty-four pleasure craft have followed in his wake. Many more people have gone into space than have traversed the Passage, and a staggering number have died trying. From his home port of Newport, Rhode Island, through the Passage and around Alaska to Seattle, it would be an 8,500-mile trek filled with constant danger from ice, polar bears, and severe weather. What Theobald couldn't have known was just how life-changing his journey through the Passage would be. Reuniting his children and stepchildren after a bad divorce more than fifteen years earlier, the family embarks with unanswered questions, untold hurts, and unspoken mistrusts hanging over their heads. Unrelenting cold, hungry polar bears, and a haunting landscape littered with sobering artifacts from the tragic Franklin Expedition of 1845, as well as personality clashes that threaten to tear the crew apart, make The Other Side of the Ice a harrowing story of survival, adventure, and, ultimately, redemption.TO WATCH THE OFFICIAL HD TEASER FOR "The Other Side of The Ice" (book and documentary) PLEASE GO TO SPRAGUETHEOBALD.COM50 color illustrations

    or to remember? A compelling drama about broken dreams, first love and the mystery of a lost sister, for all fans of Hannah Richell and Kate Morton. She remembered this part of the trip during the day time. Her sisters on either side in the back. The sunlight flickering through branches was like looking through a kaleidoscope. How could that be so long ago? How could so much have gone wrong?Phoebe's life has fallen apart and there's only one place left to go. Alone and adrift after a failed marriage proposal, she flees Sydney to her family's abandoned holiday cottage.On the slow-moving river Phoebe is confronted with the legacy of her older sister's suicide, a year before. Why did Karin leave a note written in flowers and walk into the water?Phoebe's childhood love, Jez, has moved back to the beautiful old house, Driftwood, one jetty down. He's married now and the home has become a refuge for an unlikely little community.As the river begins to give up its secrets, Phoebe finds herself caught up in old feelings and new mysteries. The Lost Summers of Driftwood is a story of lost loves, rekindled passions, tragedy and betrayal set against the backdrop of an idyllic south coast town.

    Tolkien.Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand.Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: fifty things he wanted Royd to do after his death. His first task? Mike wants his mild-mannered brother to trip up on his way to the lectern to deliver his eulogy. What follows is a set of emotionally charged tests that will push Royd firmly out of his comfort zone.This is the story of Royd’s journey to accomplish a challenging, humorous, and often heart-breaking list of unknown tasks that chart the brothers’ lives from childhood to adulthood. But above all, it is a story of the sibling bond, of grief—and of treasuring every moment.

    During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst-and enjoy every moment of it. In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement-and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff. You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth-especially your own.

    But when he discovers a shocking secret about his father on the same day Mick dies in a car accident, Dallas’s world is turned upside down. Now it’s up to him to protect his mother from the truth, and to keep the family farm Rollingstone Ridge afloat. And he will do everything in his power to do so.Charlize Dawson is a successful city journalist whose marriage is in tatters. Begrudgingly sent to the country to write about Dallas, she is surprised to find that he isn’t the arrogant cowboy she’d assumed he’d be. Instead she and Dallas and share an intense chemistry and deep connection that lead to a stolen kiss at the Rodeo Ball.But when Charlize’s research for her article puts her on the path of uncovering Dallas’s secret, he demands she stop or lose him forever. Dallas or her career, which should she choose? How can she turn her back on the people who have welcomed her into their lives with open arms, all in the name of her job? Her career is all she has left, and she has worked so very hard to be where she is. But how can she reveal what she knows, if it means losing the love of her life?

    Heartbroken, Teagan flees to her Aunt Vanessa's property in the idyllic Falls Valley where she soon catches the attention of sexy local farrier Lucas Knight. With a new job, new friends and the prospect of a new relationship, Teagan's hope in the future slowly returns.But beneath the tranquil village surface lies an underbelly of gossip and division, and when Teagan gets caught up in town politics, Lucas and Vanessa worry she's entered a dangerous game.As tension escalates, Teagan must decide who to trust, but nothing is ever clear-cut in The Falls. Is Lucas too good to be true? And what is her aunt hiding? When she discovers the truth, the fallout may split Teagan apart forever.With its menagerie of cute animals and colourful locals, family drama and romance, The Falls is an uplifting story of healing and hope.

    They maintain their sanity through a friendship built on black humour, but as the constant exposure to trauma takes its toll, both, in different ways, must fight to preserve their mental health and relationships – even with one another. How much pressure can they handle, and what will happen when they finally crack?With each chapter revolving around an emergency – some frightening, some moving, some simply funny –Rachael Mead digs beneath the surface of gore and grit to lay bare the humanity of emergency services personnel and their patients. This breathtaking novel reveals not only the trauma of a life lived on the front line of medicine, but also the essential, binding friendships that make such a life possible.

    The other big event of that year was the outbreak of the Second World War, but for the moment, that did not affect me.' In the first instalment of Clive James's memoirs, we meet the young Clive, dressed in short trousers, and wrestling with the demands of school, various relatives and the occasional snake, in the suburbs of post-war Sydney.

    A traumatic, violent upbringing saw to that. But after serving a short sentence for theft as a teenager, she worked hard to break the cycle. Thirteen years later Angela was studying, teaching, providing a stable home for her son, and finally feeling like she'd got her life together. Then she got hit by a postie bike. Police realised that Angela still had ten months to go on the prison sentence she'd thought was in her distant past. However, Angela was a different prisoner the second time around: no longer a scared, damaged nineteen-year-old, she knew how to speak up for herself and her fellow prisoners against a system of power, privilege and cruelty that controls the lives of Australia's most vulnerable women and offers little hope for redemption. With unwavering courage, intelligence and humour, SNAKES AND LADDERS reveals an astonishing true story of falling through the cracks, and what it takes to climb back out again.

     I have zero practical skills. I can't survive if I am more than a three minute walk from a supermarket. For the last seven years I have suffered with crippling anxiety I bolt when panicked. I cannot bear to witness humans or animals in distress I have no ability to learn languages. I am a terrible hypochondriacOh, and I am no good with boats.So I said yes.

    . .'An endearing novel about one gutsy, smart and inspirational woman. I want to be Shirley when I grow up.' Rachael Johns'Elderly. Is that how the world sees me? A helpless little old lady? If only they knew. I allow myself a small smirk.'When Shirley Sullivan signs her 83-year-old husband, Frank, out of the Sunset Lodge Nursing Home, she has no intention of bringing him back.For fifty-seven years the couple has shared love, happiness and heartbreak. And while Frank may not know who his wife is these days, he knows he wants to go home. Back to the beach where they met in the early 1960s . . .So Shirley enacts an elaborate plan to evade the authorities – and their furious daughter, Fiona – to give Frank the holiday he’d always dreamed of.And, in doing so, perhaps Shirley can make amends for a lifelong guilty secret . . .

    The good and the bad. You had to laugh to cry. You had to love to hurt. You had to jump to fall or fly. Best friends Abbie, Jess and Ricki are set to recreate a school trip they took ten years earlier to the historic port town of Albany, the oldest city on the stunning turquoise coastline of Western Australia.Ricki, a dedicated nurse, harbours a dream she hasn't chased. Is she actually happy or stuck in a rut?Jess, a school teacher and single mother to little Ollie, had a tough upbringing but found her way through with the help of her closest male friend, Peter. But Peter has bought an engagement ring and is ready to propose to Ricki . . .Abbie had it all: a career, a loving boyfriend and a future, but a visit to the doctor bears scary news. Her world is tumbling down and she feels adrift at sea.

    Taken by Collingwood at pick 58 in the 2001 ‘super draft’, no one saw a future Brownlow medallist but the scruffy kid knew how to get the ball. Right from the start he made two things clear: he didn’t like training and his mates and social life came first. Swan made front page news in 2003, and faced the sack after playing only three senior games. The infamous Collingwood Rat Pack took him under their wing, he thrived under Mick Malthouse’s coaching, and grew into a talented and nerveless big-occasion player with an incredible mix of power and speed. Off the field, his tattoos, deadpan delivery, transgressions and blunt refusal to become an AFL robot meant he was often used as clickbait.Despite mastering the art of appearing not to care about anything, in Dane Swan: My Story, Swan – for the first time – reveals the pride that drove him to succeed, his loyalty to family, mates and the club that gave him many last chances, and how he worked hard, his way. He takes us inside the highs of the premiership, and through the tumultuous years of the transition from Malthouse to Nathan Buckley. Footy might be only a game, but it’s one hell of a ride with Dane Swan.There’s no one like him at all in this day and age.Nick MaxwellOne of the greatest players in the history of this club. He marched to the beat of his own drum, always, off the ground more so than on it, but I always liked the fact that he was an individual. And whatever he was doing, it worked.Eddie McGuireThe bigger the game, the more turned on he was, and that became evident at the peak of his career because he played his best footy on the biggest stages.Nathan BuckleyWhat made Swanny so good? It was talent, hard work and mental toughness to be that consistent.Ben JohnsonIt was quite extraordinary the way that he just got on with it. He loved winning, he loved the challenge and underneath it, he is a very proud person.Mick MalthouseAbout the author: Dane Swan played 258 games for Collingwood Football Club. He achieved the ultimate team success as a premiership player, and his haul of individual awards is impressive: a Brownlow Medal, three Copeland Trophies, five All Australians, an AFLCA Most Valuable Player award, a Jim Stynes Medal, a couple of Anzac Medals, as well as a swag of top-three finishes in many awards. His unbelievably consistent output meant he averaged 26.85 disposals across 15 seasons, second only to Greg ‘Diesel’ Williams. Swan’s career came to an untimely end in round 1 of 2016. He is acknowledged as one of the best modern midfielders and a one-of-a-kind champion of the competition.