Showing titles in Australia, New Zealand & Oceania

Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows. By way of H. G. Wells and Rebecca West’s affair through 1930s nuclear physics to Flanagan's father working as a slave labourer near Hiroshima when the atom bomb is dropped, this daisy chain of events reaches fission when Flanagan as a young man finds himself trapped in a rapid on a wild river not knowing if he is to live or to die.

March 1945. A handful of very young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island's Indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most speak next to no Borneo languages and know little about Dayaks, other than that they were once headhunters who might kill them on arrival. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face.

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'.

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. Their journey – longer than many of the celebrated treks of recognised explorers – reveals a past more cruel than we could ever imagine.

The New World of the 18th century was dotted with failed colonies, and New South Wales nearly joined them. The motley crew of unruly marines and bedraggled convicts who arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 in leaky boats nearly starved to death. They could easily have been murdered by hostile locals, been overwhelmed by an attack from French or Spanish expeditions or been brought undone by the Castle Hill uprising of 1804. Yet through fortunate decisions, a few remarkably good leaders and, most of all, good luck, Sydney survived and thrived.

According to the Australian government’s website, at the time of first contact with Europeans, there were some 500 distinct Indigenous nations, speaking different languages and following their own religious and cultural practices. As with all human societies, that of the Indigenous Australians is abounding in stories. Stories of how the world came to be the way it is, stories of heroism and perfidy, stories about animals and birds, and stories about love and hate all have parts to play in the wide array of myths, legends, and tales created by Indigenous Australians.

King David Kalākaua introduces us to the people upon whom the legend of the Pele family is based. They departed Samoa as war refugees in the 12th century, settling in the foothills of Mauna Loa. As earthquakes and eruptions occurred during their interactions with the Hawaiians, this family of kahuna were accorded what the king described as “unique sanctity and power”. Pele was as mighty as she was beautiful. The tales of the volcano goddess earned the attention of Kamapuaa, the outcast son of the chief of Oahu who terrorized the island with his band of renegades.

In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.

The Truro Murders presents the shocking true story of Christopher Worrell and his accomplice, James Miller. The events in this audiobook unveil one of the worst serial killing sprees in Australian history. Over the course of two months 1976-1977, seven young women were brutally raped and murdered. Worrell and Miller met in prison and upon release developed a dominant and submissive relationship that centered around feeding Worrell's sadistic urges towards women.

The harrowing, dramatic and profoundly moving story of the Australian and New Zealand nurses who served in the Great War. Now a major six-part television series. By the end of the Great War, 45 Australian and New Zealand nurses had died on overseas service and over 200 had been decorated. These were the women who left for war looking for adventure and romance but were soon confronted with challenges for which their civilian lives could never have prepared them.

On 20 May 1999, the South Australian Police were called to investigate a disused bank in the unassuming town of Snowtown, in connection to the disappearance of multiple missing people. The police were not prepared for the chilling scene that awaited them. The officers found six barrels within the abandoned bank vault, each filled with acid and the remains of eight individuals. The smell from inside the vault was so stifling that the police required breathing equipment.

In 1963 – a year of agitation for civil rights worldwide – the Yolŋu of northeast Arnhem Land created the Yirrkala Bark Petitions: Näku Dhäruk. ‘The land grew a tongue’ and the land-rights movement was born. Näku Dhäruk is the story of a founding document in Australian democracy and the trailblazers who made it. It is also a pulsating picture of the ancient and enduring culture of Australia’s first peoples. And it is a masterful, groundbreaking history.

Outback Outlaw is an unflinching and uncompromising account of a man forever cemented in the annals of Australian true crime. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the listeners into the real-life horror experienced by the victim, and has all the elements of a classic thriller.

The book continues the story of Second Lieutenant Neil Rankin and the survivors of his platoon as they arrive at the evacuation beach. Instead of the tense crowds of evacuees awaiting rescue, they find themselves standing on a deserted beach in a ruined town. Rankin knows the first duty of every soldier is to evade and escape. Adding immense pressure to this imperative are his orders that the RAF’s secret Air Ministry radar technicians must not fall into enemy hands “under any circumstances.” To succeed, he must first come to terms with failure. His efforts to lay to rest the ghosts ...

When my full-blooded Hawaiian mother was a very young girl, she was hanai adopted by her Aunty Ida. Being a personal friend of Queen Emma, Anty Ida lived in her summer palace in Nu'uanu. It was there that my mother lived and played. Many years later, my brother and I went to visit Queen Emma's summer palace with my mother. The palace was now a museum. I did not understand my mother's subdued spirit and silence. As we walked the palace, I could clearly see emotions welling up within her and then being suppressed.

This book invites you to step into the magical world of Aboriginal Dreamtime and to share in the world's oldest living culture - its ancient knowledge and spiritual wisdom. Inside are Dreamtime concepts that everyone can understand. Come on a journey with Aboriginal elder Aunty Munya as she guides you in discovering your purpose in life and how to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors. Learn what it means to truly belong and be family to everyone and everything.

Delivering Destruction is the first detailed study of American triphibious (land, sea, and air) firepower coordination in the Pacific War. In describing the Amphibious Corps' development of fire coordination teams and tactics in the Central Pacific, Hemler underlines the importance of wartime adaptation, battlefield coordination, and the primacy of the human element in naval combat.

The oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws' reputations are so weighted with legend and myth that the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun.

In 1769, Captain James Cook’s historic expedition in the region would lead to an English claim on Australia, but before he reached Australia, he sailed near New Zealand and spent weeks mapping part of New Zealand’s coast. Thus, he was also one of the first to observe and take note of the indigenous peoples of the two islands.

In the first part of this audiobook, you will learn about extinct animals that used to call New Zealand home.