The Journey: My Story, from Backyard Cricket to Australian Captain


Steve Smith - 2017
    From childhood backyard cricket with mates and family, and net sessions with his dad that laid the foundations for his later success, Steve traces the influences and events that started him on his cricket journey.He takes us inside his quest to play cricket at the highest level, from formative club and grade games, to his first overseas experiences, and finally to state cricket and the Australian squad. It's a journey with both ups and downs, where valuable and lasting lessons were learned from the successes and, more importantly, the failures.And Steve compellingly describes the key moments that shaped him into the cricketer and leader he is today, from his definitive hundred at Centurion in South Africa, to the soul-searching and resolve that accompanied the Australian team's lowest point in the 2016 Hobart Test, to the epic 2017 series in India.The Journey is a revealing and fascinating insight into Steve Smith-the cricketer and the man.

Scheisse!: The Real German You Were Never Taught in School


Gertrude Besserwisser - 1994
    Scheisse! introduces readers to the fine art of cursing and basic slang to spice up their German speech.If you think you have a fairly good command of German, think again. For it's a sure bet that Frau Schultz never taught you those nasty little guttural curses and humiliating invectives so expressive of real low German speech. But relax--here at last is the one book that can introduce you to the very worst beer-hall German. Scheisse! is an indispensable guide to off-color German colloquialisms and profanities--lascivious bedroom slang and boozy insults, jeering scatological put-downs and scurrilous ridicule. This hilarious illustrated cornucopia of creative expletives, guaranteed to vex, taunt, aggravate, and provoke as only overwrought low German can, will help you master the fine art of German verbal abuse--with triumphant one-upmanship.

Sea of Wolves


Philip K. Allan - 2020
    Across the stormy North Atlantic battle rages between wolfpacks of U-boats and escort ships fighting to protect the Allies’ vital convoys. Meanwhile teams of codebreakers at Bletchley Park struggle to penetrate the German Navy’s Top-Secret Dolphin code, and unlock the flow of vital intelligence that will swing the battle in the Allies favour.Sea of Wolves plots the lives of three people caught up in the centre of the battle. Vera Baldwin, a young crossword-enthusiast, lifted from her quiet suburban life and thrown into the middle of the greatest codebreaking effort the world has seen. Otto Stuckmann, the rookie commander of U70, a German naval veteran struggling with the ceaseless demands being placed on him. Leonard Cole, the newly appointed first lieutenant of HMS Protea and a man with unfinished business to resolve.Each is unknown to the others as their fates spiral around each other, touching and twisting towards a final encounter that will change their lives forever.

Fracture


Heleyne Hammersley - 2016
    She's horrified to see a body on the beach. However the 'body' is the very much alive and enigmatic Alfie. The two women become friends and spend time together in Sydney where Alfie's wild nature becomes apparent. When Alfie is attacked the situation takes a turn for the worse and they decide to leave the city.It's a road trip that ends in murder...Who is Alfie? What is Rosie hiding?Detective Sergeant Pete Norton wants answers to these questions.What he will discover is that this case is a killer.

Violet Black


Eileen Merriman - 2021
    They have never met:I couldn’t speak, but I was trying so hard to communicate and then . . . then . . .I pushed. And something, someone, pushed back.Her name is Violet. Violet, but she is sunshine-yellow, and I need to find her because I think she might be just like me.But there is a far more serious reason for Ethan to find Violet: the sinister Foundation is trying to hunt them down.

The Thorn Birds


Ann Ward
    [Penguin Readers Level 6]

On Mutiny


David Speers - 2018
    If we really do get the government we deserve, On Mutiny might provoke a civilian rebellion.

Toward the Sea of Freedom


Sarah Lark - 2010
    Imagining a life beyond the kitchen and fields of the wealthy family they both work for, they plot to leave their homeland, marry, and raise the child Kathleen is secretly carrying. The luck of the Irish, however, is not on their side.Soon, they find themselves swept up in circumstances they never could have fathomed. Kathleen is forced to marry against her will and immigrate to New Zealand. Michael is imprisoned for rebellion and exiled to Australia. As time passes and their new lives march on, they long for those stolen moments in the lush green fields of their native land. And they both still dream of escape, with no idea of how close fate will eventually bring them.

Pastel Orphans


Gemma Liviero - 2013
    However, not even the pastoral surroundings of their new home can protect them from the terrors of war. When the Nazis invade and Greta is kidnapped, Henrik must shed his youthful innocence and search for his lost sister, a quest that will further reveal a harrowing landscape of violence and struggle―but also unexpected connections.Uniquely told from the perspective of youth plunged into adult chaos, Pastel Orphans is a coming-of-age story that explores profound lessons in self-belief, kindness, and human endurance. Revised edition: This edition of Pastel Orphans includes editorial revisions.

All That I Am


Anna Funder - 2011
    Ten years later, Ruth and Hans are married and living in Weimar Berlin when Hitler is elected chancellor of Germany. Together with Dora and her lover, Ernst Toller, the celebrated poet and self-doubting revolutionary, the four become hunted outlaws overnight and are forced to flee to London. Inspired by the fearless Dora to breathtaking acts of courage, the friends risk betrayal and deceit as they dedicate themselves to a dangerous mission: to inform the British government of the very real Nazi threat to which it remains willfully blind. All That I Am is the heartbreaking story of these extraordinary people, who discover that Hitler’s reach extends much further than they had thought.Gripping, compassionate, and inspiring, this remarkable debut novel reveals an uncommon depth of humanity and wisdom. Anna Funder has given us a searing and intimate portrait of courage and its price, of desire and ambition, and of the devastating consequences when they are thwarted.

Paris Savages


Katherine Johnson - 2019
    When German man Louis Müller offers to sail eighteen-year-old Bonny to Europe, along with twenty-two-year-old Jurano and his fifteen-year-old niece, Dorondera, the proud and headstrong Bonny agrees. Accompanied by Müller’s bright and grieving daughter, Hilda, the group begins their journey to perform in Hamburg, Berlin, Paris and eventually London in the hope of seeking help from the Queen of England. While crowds in Europe are enthusiastic to see the unique dances, singing, fights, and pole climbing from the oldest culture in the world, the attention is relentless, and the fascination of scientists intrusive. Bonny is not a passive victim, and starts to earn money from mocking the crowd, but when disaster strikes, he must find a way to return home. A story of love, bravery, culture and the fight against injustice, Paris Savages brings a little-known part of history to blazing life, from one of Australia’s most intriguing novelists.

Fortune


Lenny Bartulin - 2019
    As crowds throng the streets to witness the emperor in his glory, a handful of lives that briefly touch are sprung from their orbits and set on courses that will take them across Europe and around the world—their fates and desires sometimes intersecting—to strange lands in the Caribbean and South America, the Australian continent and Van Diemen's Land, and back to a Europe now transformed.A frustrated general in Napoleon's army, billeted with one of Berlin's finest families. Elisabeth, a passionate young woman living in that house. The young man with whom she locks eyes through a window as he's engaged in a sexual encounter at the moment Napoleon makes his grand entrance. An entrepreneur in New World exotica, whose house is the setting for the tryst. A slave from Suriname, Mr. Hendrik, with his resentful white American companion, who have traveled to Berlin to sell a barrel of electric eels for their master. And a lost soul enamored of philosophy in the coffeehouses where students gather, who decides to join Mr. Hendrik and the American on their return voyage. Through their stories amid war, cataclysm, colliding cultures, and misadventure, Lenny Bartulin imagines the ways that chance and the grand events of history shape the course of ordinary lives.

The Toy Maker


Liam Pieper - 2016
    . .Adam Kulakov likes his life. He's on the right side of middle age; the toy company he owns brightens the lives of children around the world; and he has more money than he can ever spend, a wife and child he adores, and as many mistresses as he can reasonably hide from them. And he is not the only one with secrets. In 1944, Adam's grandfather, Arkady, was imprisoned in Auschwitz and given an impossible choice. Now, as he's coming to the end of his life, he has to keep the truth from his family, and hold back the crushing memories of his time with one of history's greatest monsters. As a mistake threatens to bring Adam's world tumbling down around him, the past reaches for Arkady. Everything he's spent a lifetime building will be threatened, as will everything Adam and his family think they know of the world. Bold, dark and compelling, The Toymaker is a novel about privilege, fear and the great harm we can do when we are afraid of losing what we hold dear. 'Pieper writes superbly. The Toymaker gives immediate and absorbing pleasure, and has similarities to J M Coetzee's Disgrace in terms of the main character's wretched search for redemption, both for himself and for humanity.' Books+Publishing

Go, Went, Gone


Jenny Erpenbeck - 2015
    Here, on Alexanderplatz, he discovers a new community -- a tent city, established by African asylum seekers. Hesitantly, getting to know the new arrivals, Richard finds his life changing, as he begins to question his own sense of belonging in a city that once divided its citizens into them and us.At once a passionate contribution to the debate on race, privilege and nationality and a beautifully written examination of an ageing man's quest to find meaning in his life, Go, Went, Gone showcases one of the great contemporary European writers at the height of her powers.

The Summer of '82


Dave O'Neil - 2016
    The Summer of ’82 is the hilarious and heartfelt story of a boy becoming a man in suburban Australia.Dave O’Neil is one of our most loved comedians. He has been performing stand-up for over twenty-five years, has been part of some of Australia’s most successful FM radio teams, and is a regular on our TV screens, where he holds the honour of having the most guest appearances on ABC’s iconic Spicks and Specks (over fifty!). He is also a successful writer, columnist and actor. The Summer of ’82 is his fifth book.