It's a mystery that has the nation talking, but while Picasso's Weeping Woman might be absent from the walls of the National Gallery, in other parts of Melbourne the controversial painting's presence is being felt by Guy, Rafi, Luke and Penny for four very different reasons.Life, love, art and one giant party intersect in this offbeat comedy about good intentions, unexpected consequences and the irresistible force of true love.

    The company also sent along a new employee to guard its treasure. He was Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a disgraced and bankrupt man with great charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, he hatched a plot to seize the ship and her riches. The mutiny might have succeeded, but in the dark morning hours of June 3, 1629, the Batavia smashed through a coral reef and ran aground on a small chain of islands near Australia. The captain and skipper escaped the wreck, and in a tiny lifeboat they set sail for Java—some 1,500 miles north—to summon help. More than 250 frightened survivors waded ashore, thankful to be alive. Unfortunately, Jeronimus and the mutineers had survived too, and the nightmare was only beginning.

    They have walked hundreds of miles across a landscape whose features—and inhabitants—they have no way of comprehending. They have lost fourteen companions along the way. Their accounts of the ordeal are evasive.It is Lieutenant Joshua Grayling’s task to investigate the story. He comes to realise that those fourteen deaths were contrived by one calculating mind and, as the full horror of the men’s journey emerges, he begins to wonder whether the ruthless killer poses a danger to his own family.

    . . and Poppy lives at bird Creek Mission near Echuca. Poppy hates the Mission, especially now that her brother, Gus, has run away to pan for gold. What if Poppy escaped, too? Would she survive alone in the bush? And would she ever find Gus, whom she loves more than anything in the world?Meet Poppy and join her adventure in the first of four stories about a Gold Rush girl who dream of a better life.

    But her widow's weeds belie a determined young woman with a big ambition: Amy is going to build the grandest rural hotel in the colony of New South Wales, complete with its very own ‘ascending cabinet'.Meanwhile, her best friend, Eliza Miller, has dreams of her own - to become one of Australia's first female doctors. However when she returns to Millbrooke from her medical studies at the Sorbonne, she finds the job she thought was hers has been taken … by a man.Over the course of two turbulent years both women will face difficult choices – love or duty? Career or marriage? Is it possible to have it all …?

    As daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. But one moment in McPhail’s hut will change the course of their lives forever. Inspired by a true story, Skylarking is a stunning debut novel about friendship, love and loss, one that questions what it is to remember and how tempting it can be to forget.‘Kate Mildenhall’s impressive debut novel takes an historical case and re-imagines it with such sensitivity and insight that we feel this must be how it truly happened.’ —Emily Bitto

    A funny and frank look at the way Australia used to be - and just how far we have come. "It was simpler time". We had more fun back then". "Everyone could afford a house". There's plenty of nostalgia right now for the Australia of the past, but what was it really like? In The Land Before Avocado, Richard Glover takes a journey to an almost unrecognisable Australia. It's a vivid portrait of a quite peculiar land: a place that is scary and weird, dangerous and incomprehensible, and, now and then, surprisingly appealing. It's the Australia of his childhood. The Australia of the late '60s and early '70s. Let's break the news now: they didn't have avocado. It's a place of funny clothing and food that was appalling, but amusingly so. It also the land of staggeringly awful attitudes - often enshrined in law - towards anybody who didn't fit in. The Land Before Avocado will make you laugh and cry, be angry and inspired. And leave you wondering how bizarre things were, not so long ago. Most of all it will make you realise how far we've come - and how much further we can go.

    In playful, musical prose, the book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal Noongar people and the first European settlers.The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. He is even welcomed into a prosperous local white family where he falls for the daughter, Christine, a beautiful young woman who sees no harm in a liaison with a native.But slowly – by design and by accident – things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his new friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia...

    Neale McShane The Birdsville police posting is one of the most remote in Australia. It can be extremely lonely and incredibly busy at the same time. Nothing might happen for weeks or months, then problems come crawling out of the woodwork.There aren't many who can handle the job for long - unless you're Senior Constable Neale McShane, who has single-handedly taken care of this beat the size of the UK for the past ten years. Recently retired from this 'hardship posting', Neale now has a stock of stories and adventures from his life and colourful times living with his family in Birdsville.In recounting these tales to his good friend and bestselling author Evan McHugh, Neale delights us with yarns that could only come from the furthest corner of our country. Here are stories of desert dangers, dead bodies, droughts and floods, drinkers and dreamers - and, of course the infamous Birdsville Races, when the town's population swells from 50 to 500.So if Birdsville has remained just a little too far off the beaten track for you, sit back and let Birdsville come to you.

    Peter Cosgrove, the former 'Australian of the Year', looks back over his respected and decorated military career and his personal life with wit and warmth on top of the steel that made him one of Australia's most popular and widely recognised military leaders.

    Presenting the one and only Mr Paul Keating – at his straight-shooting, scumbag-calling, merciless best.Paul lets rip – on John Howard: “The little desiccated coconut is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on.”On Peter Costello: “The thing about poor old Costello is he is all tip and no iceberg.”On John Hewson: “[His performance] is like being flogged with a warm lettuce.”On Andrew Peacock: “...what we have here is an intellectual rust bucket.”On Wilson Tuckey: “...you stupid foul-mouthed grub.”On Tony Abbott: “If Tony Abbott ends up the prime minister of Australia, you’ve got to say, God help us.”And that’s just a taste.

    A group of men—convicts, a farmer, two free black traders, and Black Bill, an aboriginal man brought up from childhood as a white man—are led by Jon Batman, a notorious historical figure, on a “roving party.” Their purpose is massacre. With promises of freedom, land grants and money, each is willing to risk his life for the prize. Passing over many miles of tortured country, the roving party searches for Aborigines, taking few prisoners and killing freely, Batman never abandoning the visceral intensity of his hunt. And all the while, Black Bill pursues his personal quarry, the much-feared warrior, Manalargena. A surprisingly beautiful evocation of horror and brutality, The Roving Party is a meditation on the intricacies of human nature at its most raw.

    As the matriarch at the head of the most notorious and violent family of habitual offenders in Australian criminal history, her life has revolved around murder, drugs, prison, prostitution and bent coppers–and the intrigue and horror that surround such crimes.Her eldest son Dennis Allen was a mass murderer and a $70,000-a-week drug dealer who dismembered a Hell's Angel with a chainsaw. Two younger sons were acquitted of the Walsh Street murders, the cold-blooded assassination of two police officers which changed forever the face of crime in Melbourne. One of the two, Victor, was gunned down himself in the street 14 years later, becoming the third son Kathy has buried.In this authorised book Kathy Pettingill reveals the chilling truth behind many of the myths and legends that surround her family, including her experiences in the blood-spattered charnel house at the centre of Dennis's empire of drugs and violence. But The Matriarch is no plea for pity–gritty, forthright and deeply disturbing, like its subject this story pulls no punches.

    An ongoing feud has existed between the Kinkaids and the Thorntons for generations, unknown to Cassandra until a few weeks ago. Now someone isn't happy and wants her out.Cassandra’s mother Beth holds a welcoming home party for Jake Thornton, hoping to end the feud for good. How can they end a feud when the air sizzles like the Capulets and Montagues, although Beth states there was never a Romeo and Juliet involved? Little does she realise Romeo and Juliet did exist, but they are far from star-crossed lovers.How can Cassandra forgive Jake for breaking her heart, and how can she give up on her Grandfather’s wishes? He’d turn over in his grave if he ever knew she was and still is in love with a Thornton. Besides, her grandfather left the property to her for a good reason and she isn’t about to give in for love, or is she?

    Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than most people have ever realized. For more than a decade, he has examined written and visual records of the Australian landscape. He has uncovered an extraordinarily complex system of land management using fire, the life cycles of native plants, and the natural flow of water to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year. Aboriginal people spent far less time and effort than Europeans in securing food and shelter, and this book reveals how. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires Australians now experience. With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, this book rewrites the history of the continent, with huge implications for today.