Australia, New Zealand & Oceania

The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.

A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know....

In 1864, Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wreck on the southern end of Auckland Island....

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man....

Dive into the captivating realm of The Legends and Myths of Hawaii, where the mystical allure of the Pacific islands comes alive through the mesmerizing fables and folk-lore shared by none other than the esteemed King David Kalakaua....

The name Captain James Cook is one of the most recognisable in Australian history - an almost mythic figure who is often discussed, celebrated, reviled and debated....

The mysterious disappearance of Michael Rockefeller in remote New Guinea in 1961 has kept the world, and even Michael's powerful, influential family, guessing for years....

The incredible true story of one of the most extraordinary and inspirational prison breaks in history....

The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years....

Over the course of five combat patrols during the Pacific War, Commander Fluckey reinvented submarine warfare, pioneering audacious strategies to hunt and sink Japanese warships and merchant vessels....

The dramatic, untold story of a daredevil bomber pilot and his misfit crew who fly their lone B-17 into the teeth of the Japanese Empire in 1943 and engage in the longest dogfight in history....

We are the people our parents warned us about" is the motto of the Bandidos, one of the world's most feared outlaw motorcycle gangs....

On May 13, 1945, 24 American servicemen and WACs boarded a transport plane for a sightseeing trip over “Shangri-La"....

The iconic Australian exploration story - brought to life by Peter FitzSimons, Australia's storyteller....

This best-selling book, the triumphant fruit of careful research, wide reading and judicious assessment, is the unchallenged contemporary reference on the history of New Zealand....

In this now classic text, Martha Beckwith skillfully navigated an expansive collection of books, articles, and manuscripts to compile the definitive collection of mythological narratives of the native Hawaiian peoples....

Since the Polynesians (the first humans in New Zealand who would become known as the Māori) were the most modern humans to settle in an uninhabited land, it is no surprise New Zealand has always been ahead of its time....

In the 1930s, Jill Ker's parents bought a sheep farm on the western plains of New South Wales. In 1944, they lost nearly everything when a drought hit....

Spanning several centuries of history in the Pacific, The Legends and Myths of Hawaiʻi: Fables and Folk-Lore of a Strange People is a collection of Hawaiian stories that were preserved through the ages by oral tradition and documented for posterity by King David Kalākaua in 1887....

First colonized around 200 A.D. by intrepid Polynesian islanders, Hawaii existed for hundreds of years in splendid isolation. Foreigners did not visit the islands until 1788....

Long before Australia started to be considered one of the best places in the world to live, it was thought to be completely unlivable. In the 15th century, the European race to claim land began....

In November 1943, while on war patrol in the Makassar Strait, the USS Billfish submarine was spotted by the Japanese, who launched a vicious depth-charge attack....

The Battle of Le Hamel on 4 July 1918 was an Allied triumph and strategically very important in the closing stages of WWI. A largely Australian force, commanded by the brilliant Sir John Monash, fought what has been described as the first modern battle....

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial....

On September 15, 1944, the United States invaded the tiny Pacific island of Peleliu. With the famed 1st Marine Division making the amphibious assault, Pacific High Command was confident that victory would be theirs in just a few days. They were drastically wrong....