Kalinda


Evan Green - 1991
    The book starts with Adam living openly with his voluptuous half-caste lover on his desert station in the outback, and gradually the fates of succeeding generations intertwine in this Australian family saga.

The Ghost and the Bounty Hunter: William Buckley, John Batman and the Theft of Kulin Country


Adam Courtenay - 2020
    A few months later, the local Aboriginal people found the six-foot-five former soldier near death. Believing he was a lost kinsman returned from the dead, they took him in, and for thirty-two years Buckley lived as a Wadawurrung man, learning his adopted tribe's language, skills and methods to survive.The outside world finally caught up with Buckley in 1835, after John Batman, a bounty hunter from Van Diemen's Land, arrived in the area, seeking to acquire and control the perfect pastureland around the bay. What happened next saw the Wadawurrung betrayed and Buckley eventually broken. The theft of Kulin country would end in the birth of a city. The frontier wars had begun.By the bestselling author of The Ship That Never Was, The Ghost and the Bounty Hunter is a fascinating and poignant true story from Australian colonial history.

He Who Must Be Obeid: The Untold Story


Kate McClymont - 2014
    New South Wales has Eddie Obeid.Meet Australia's most corrupt politician whose brazen misdeeds were on a scale said to be "unexceeded since the days of the Rum Corps".From the shadows Obeid ran the state as his fiefdom, making and unmaking premiers. Along the way he pocketed tens of millions of dollars following corrupt deals. This explosive book chronicles the grubby deals the powerbroker had been making for decades before he was exposed. His tentacles stretched through all levels of government, encircling almost every precious resource - coal leases, Circular Quay cafes, marinas, even the state's water. All of them were secret money-spinners for Obeid and his family.Above ground, below ground, in the air, on the water, there was no domain beyond Obeid's grasp. Now, many of the key politicians of his era have given a candid account of Obeid's pernicious backroom influence.Following their groundbreaking investigations, the award-winning journalists Kate McClymont and Linton Besser have unearthed the vast but secret empire Obeid built over the decades, producing an authoritative account of how he got away with so much for so long.

Watching Brief: Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice


Julian Burnside - 2007
    Clearly explaining the foundations of many of the key tenets of civil society, this resource reviews some of the world’s most famous trials whose outcomes have turned on prejudice, complacency, chance, or the tenacity and skill of advocates. Powerful and timely, this meditation on ethics also analyzes the impact of significant recent cases on contemporary Australian life, determining what ultimately constitutes a decent human society.

Test Cricket: The unauthorised biography


Jarrod Kimber - 2015
    He takes cricket fans through all the seismic events in cricket’s tragicomic history, from its accidental birth to its run-in with death. Lords, maharajahs and refugees have all played the game that has survived many wars, corruption and terrorism to still be standing – still be captivating – today. Cricket has been dented by history, evolved by nature, grown entire nations and had to fight just to remain. This is not just the story of the people who played the game; this is Test cricket’s story.

The Cattle King


Ion L. Idriess - 1936
    At the age of 13 Sidney Kidman ran away from home with only five shillings in his pocket. He went on to become a horse dealer, drover, cattle buyer and bush jockey and he also ran a coach business. Above all, Kidman created a mighty cattle empire of more than a hundred stations, fighting droughts, bushfires, floods and plagues of vermin to do so. His enterprise and courage won him a huge fortune and made him a legend.

The Curlew's Eye


Karen Manton - 2021
    A shack perched halfway up a hill in an other-world of bizarre shadow plants and dark sentinel trees . . . Every road had been leading here, to this place.'Greta's partner Joel grew up with five brothers and a sister in a feisty household on an isolated NT property. But he doesn't talk about those days-not the deaths of his sister and mother, nor the origin of the scars that snake around his body.Now, many years later, he returns with Greta and their three young boys to prepare the place for sale. The boys are quick to settle in, and Joel seems preoccupied with work, but Greta has a growing sense of unease, struggling in the build-up's oppressive heat and living in the shadow of the old, burned-out family home. She knows she's a stranger in this uncanny place, with its eerie and alluring landscape, hostile neighbour, and a toxic dam whose clear waters belie its poison. And then there's the mysterious girl living rough whom Greta tries to befriend.Determined to make sense of it all, Greta is drawn into Joel's unspoken past and confronted by her own. Before long the curlew's haunting cry will call her to face the secrets she and Joel can no longer outrun.

The Accomplice


Kathryn Heyman - 2003
    Combining a gripping narrative with vivid historical detail, The Accomplice is a beautiful, terrifying, deeply moving novel of love and anarchy.

Goodbye Sweetheart


Marion Halligan - 2015
    A man apparently happily married, yet, with two divorces behind him and three puzzled children. In death it seems that he is not the person everyone thought.As his extended family gathers to mourn, secrets and lies unfold uncomfortably around them. Those pornographic images on his laptop? An unexpected lover - is he still philandering? But somewhere in the turmoil of mourning each of them has to find an answer to the question - who was this man really? What mysteries has he taken to the grave with him?Goodbye Sweetheart is a powerful novel of love, the desire for understanding, and the inevitable messiness of life.

The 10 Rules Of Rock And Roll


Robert Forster - 2009
    My list goes: The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Doors, and then I stall on the fifth. Creedence? The Band - although they're mostly Canadian. Simon and Garfunkel? Jefferson Airplane? The Lovin' Spoonful? But I plump for The Monkees."-Robert Forster In The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll, Robert Forster takes readers on an exhilarating trip through the past and present of popular music - from Bob Dylan, AC/DC and Nana Mouskouri through to Cat Power, Franz Ferdinand and ... Delta Goodrem. To accompany Forster's acclaimed writing for The Monthly, there are some stunning new pieces - 'The 10 Rules' and 'The 10 Bands I Wish I'd Been In' and an appreciation of Guy Clark - as well as a reflection on The Velvet Underground, a short story about Normie Rowe and a moving tribute to fellow Go-Between Grant McLennan. Funny and illuminating, The 10 Rules of Rock and Roll shows a great critic at work.

Killing for Pleasure: The Definitive Story of the Snowtown Serial Murders


Debi Marshall - 2006
    Two bodies buried in a suburban backyard. A further two found in the bush. Such was the findings of one of South Australia's most horrific murder trials.Informed by material never seen before - an interview with Bunting's last lover Elizabeth Harvey, and with the Crown's key eye-witness James Vlassakis and with details of the torture and crimes not previously released - this is a tensely woven and microscopic examination of tawdry lives and tragic deaths.Four men who tortured and killed for fun, for power. Four men who kept each other's dark secrets for years. By the time the police investigation concluded, the story had invited comparison with the nightmare of Rosemary and Fred West, the British House of Horrors. Details of what the killers did to their victims before and after their deaths were deemed so depraved that suppression orders were in place throughout the trial. But the killers were not insane. They made deliberate choices to kill and lived in a culture of complete anarchy, sadistic violence, deviance and chaos.Journalist and author Debi Marshall explores the killers' psychopathic makeup in minute and harrowing detail. She charts the victims' exposure to generational paedophilia, incest, unemployment and hopelessness. Marshall covers the exhaustive trials and interviews the lawyers who ran them. Through interviews, she captures the voices of the victim's families and examines the police and forensic investigation and then wades into the social structure that spawned the people in this story.This book was used as a primary source for the acclaimed Australian feature film, Snowtown.

North Korea: A Bare Bones History


James Friend - 2015
    Kim Il Sung wasted little time before plunging the country into a futile war which cost more than two million people their lives. His son, Kim Jong Il, would wallow in obscene luxury as North Korea suffered one of the Twentieth Century’s most terrible famines. Kim Jong Un has only recently ascended to power. However, he has already ordered his own uncle’s execution by antiaircraft gun. The North Korean people are told that they are the most fortunate in the world. In reality they are the most oppressed. North Korea is a country where criticising the government, or even watching a foreign film, can lead to imprisonment and death.North Korea: A Bare Bones History tells the story of one of the world’s most enigmatic nations. It’s an extraordinary history of war, assassination, kidnapping, terrorism, and an attempt to decapitate a rival head of state.

The Navy’s Air War (Annotated): A Mission Completed


Albert R. Buchanan - 2019
    Author and historian Albert Buchanan recreates the engagements of the Pacific and Atlantic combat theaters with near clinical detail, from the Pearl Harbor Attack to the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Interwoven within these aerial combat narratives is background information on technological innovations, production methods, training programs, and the important players involved. This new edition of The Navy's Air War: A Mission Completed includes annotations and photographs from World War 2. *Annotations. *Images.

The Lincoln Family after 1865


Rebecca Koncel - 2012
    

The Bloody & Brave History of Native American Warriors & the Women Who Supported Them Illustrated


Edwin L. Sabin - 2010
    This 399-page put together by the late Edwin Sabin gives a thorough yet readable account of the awesome feats and bravery of the great warrior leaders of these ancient peoples that occupied and cultivated this continent thousands of years before the white man stumbled upon it by mistake.Chet DembeckPublisher of One