Showing titles in Australia, New Zealand & Oceania

'They have left here today!' he calls to the others. When King puts his hand down above the ashes of the fire, it is to find it still hot. There is even a tiny flame flickering from the end of one log. They must have left just hours ago. MELBOURNE, 20 AUGUST 1860. In an ambitious quest to be the...

The epic story of the Boer War and Harry 'Breaker' Morant: drover, horseman, bush poet - murderer or hero? Most Australians have heard of the Boer War and of Harry 'Breaker' Morant, a figure who rivals Ned Kelly as an archetypal Australian folk hero. But Morant was a complicated man. Born in...

From peacemakers and strategists to explorers and entrepreneurs, the tūpuna of the North are an inspiration to the people of Te Tai Tokerau. This remarkable book by Melinda Webber and Te Kapua O'Connor introduces a new generation to twenty-four of those tūpuna–Nukutawhiti and Hineāmaru, Hongi Hika and Te Ruki Kawiti, and many more. Through whakapapa and kōrero, waiata and pepeha, we learn about their actions, their places, their values, and their aspirations.

From the Aboriginal Dreamtime to the arrival of the First Fleet, from the gold rushes to the world wars, this audiobook is a magical tale full of wonder and enchantment. And with a narrative style that will transport you to another world, you'll feel like you're right there, watching history unfold before your very eyes.

For nearly three decades, Dr Colin Manock was in charge of South Australia's forensic pathology services. In cases of unexpected or unexplained death, it was his job to determine when a person took their final breath, and whether they had died naturally - or not. But Manock did not have the necessary training for such a specialist role, and made serious errors in several major cases. The full extent of his wrongdoing, and the exact number of cases impacted by it, remain a mystery more than twenty-five years after he retired.

A job as a deckhand on a shark fishing boat in Bass Strait for law student Chris Howse, begets a quest to keep a journal of his dreams as a way of exploring who he is and what he should do and as an antidote to a seemingly lazy zeitgeist. Via the shark boats, the occupation of a barrister at the Victorian Bar and work as a tram conductor in Melbourne (in that order), his dreams lead him to the heart of Aboriginal Australia at the Katherine Regional Aboriginal Legal Aid Service and subsequently to Darwin and the bush courts of the Northern Territory, acting on behalf of the Aboriginal people.

Brought to you by Penguin. An in-depth exploration of one of the little known battles of World War II. It began as a routine attempt by the US to take a small and negligibly strategic airstrip on a remote island in the Pacific and ended up as a blood-soaked battle of over two months which left...

Joseph Leslie 'Squizzy' Taylor was many things to many people: a kind and caring husband, father and stepfather, a reliable son and brother, a generous and considerate neighbour and patron. He was also a criminal willing to consider any type of crime, provided it supported his lifestyle and his ego. Squizzy graduated from teenage pickpocket to adult murderer, from organizing smash-and-grab raids on jewellers to corrupting juries and suborning witnesses.

This is the story of William McKenzie, whose tireless work as a Salvation Army chaplain among the Anzacs in World War I earned him the nickname 'Fighting Mac'. Though he spoke out against booze, brothels, betting, and bad language—favourite vices of the troops—he was much loved and respected.

This book is an exposure of some of the difficulties that challenged the promoters, the legislature, and the settlers. It also records the enterprise and tenacity of the powerful community ethic that saved the settlement from total collapse. A core group of settlers at great cost to themselves by continuing to work when their wages defaulted, showed that notwithstanding a lack of financial capital, they could dedicate abundant social capital to the cause.

Like it or not, 26 January in Australia has become a significant day of both celebration and mourning. Most countries, if not all, have a national day. The reasons to celebrate a national day include independence from a colonial power, the signing of a treaty, or an act by a monarch, political leader or patron saint. Australia is the only country whose national day celebrates the colonisation of an already occupied territory. Controversially, it continues to do this despite most of its citizens both acknowledging this and the devastating impact upon its original inhabitants.

In 1938 sculptor Karl Duldig, his wife Slawa Horowitz-Duldig—inventor of the modern foldable umbrella—and their baby daughter Eva, left their home in Vienna for an uncertain future. They found a brief refuge in Singapore before arriving in Sydney on 25 September 1940. Australia was at war: they were classified as enemy aliens and interned in an isolated camp in northern Victoria.

The first comprehensive biography of the godfather of Australian bushranging – Frank Gardiner – leader of the Lachlan gang and mastermind of the largest gold heist in Australian history. Atop the hierarchy of Australian bushrangers sits Ned Kelly – the ultimate outlaw – and just below...

Australia has a unique place in the history of outlaw motorcycle gangs. From the clubs' beginnings in the swinging '60s, their entry into the amphetamine market in the 1970s, through to the 1984 Milperra Massacre that made world headlines, to the Sydney airport brawl between the Hell's Angels and Comancheros and the brutal murder of Anthony Zervas, Outlaw Bikers in Australia tells how these 'one per cent deviants' grew to dominate the recreational drug market and became major players in the international outlaw biker scene.

The Pursuit is Plan Z is the unlikely origin story of the intelligence coup that led to the largest naval battle in history, in World War II's Pacific Theater, resulting in the most crushing defeat the U.S. Navy has ever inflicted on an enemy force. In March 1944, the Japanese admiral in charge...

In 1931 Molly led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1600-kilometre walk across remote Western Australia. Aged eight, eleven and fourteen, they escaped the confinement of a government institution for Aboriginal children removed from their families. Barefoot, without provisions or maps, tracked by Native Police and search planes, the girls followed the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it would lead them home.

Se trata sin duda del arte más primitivo de nuestro tiempo y presenta serias semejanzas con los estilos más antiguos de nuestra historia, que todavía no puede explicar convincentemente la escasa evolución técnica y social de algunas partes de África y Oceanía. Esta escasa evolución...

Kamehameha the Great became the sovereign monarch during a time of rapid transition for his islands. His rivals were no longer limited to the kings of Hawaii, Maui, Oahu and Kauai. Ambitious men had arrived from America, England, France, Portugal and Spain, either offering their war material and service personnel to the highest bidder or staking a claim of the islands for themselves and their masters.

Mit einer Begrüßung hat er sich gar nicht erst aufgehalten. Schon als dieser scharfe, heiße Fremde behauptete, wir wären verlobt, wurde mir schwindlig. Dann hat er den Tyrannen in die Flucht geschlagen, der uns auf den Fersen war, und mich für die Nacht zu sich nach Hause geschleppt. Der helle Wahnsinn, oder? Falsch gedacht.Wenn du obdachlos und auf der Flucht bist und deinen kranken Vater in einem Truck transportierst, der so alt ist, dass er schon auf der Arche Noah gestanden haben muss, schluckst du deinen Stolz hinunter.

Kate Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005, a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor, an early settler on the Hawkesbury River. More than two decades on, and following the defeat of the Voice referendum, Grenville is still grappling with what it means to descend from people who were, as she puts it, 'on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation'.