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All Souls' Day - the Day of the Dead, 1941. Florence, city of strife. It is Hitler's state visit to Florence and the last of the good times for Mussolini. From now on, he and his lover Clara will cling more closely together, ever more dependent upon each other as their country spirals into civil war and their lives disintegrate.

Annabelle and Enrico, young cousins from an ancient Florentine family, work first with the clandestine resistance, then openly with the partisans. Facing life and death together in the mountains, they forge a passionate life-long bond.

How reliable is memory and can we ever expiate past sins? Are some ghosts better left alone?

'The Sweet Hills of Florence is a sweeping novel spanning time and distance between Italy and Australia, between Mussolini's Italy and that of Berlusconi, between past and present. It is a rich tapestry woven with skilful insight, of the culture and the times. In digging beneath the patina of memory in a search for meaning, it opens doors to the past and raises uncomfortable questions for the present.' - Sandy McCutcheon, author of Black Widow

'I loved how this story brought the contrast of Australia and Italy to life. This is a book that digs deep, as Jan Wallace Dickinson explores the bonds that define us and shape our lives.' - Lisa Clifford, author of The Promise

Its theme is simple: a tale of Miss Susan Brady, a woman with ideas above her station, who is spurned, and whose jealousy corrodes her life and drives her to try and sabotage the happiness of John Iredale, the prosperous South Australian grazier who has broken her heart... Classy stuff, this - the fruit of delighted observation, of a sensuous and irrepressible joie de vivre. You cannot fake this quality, it is remarkable... there lingers in one's mind the rare and special pleasure of the sense-texture which Wenz has created a poignant gift from a Frenchman to Australia, his adopted country. - Helen Garner, from her Foreword.

Paul Wenz (1869-1939) arrived in Australia in 1892 and worked as a grazier in the Forbes district at 'Nanima' from 1898, where he wrote several popular novels and many short stories of Australian bush life that were published in Paris. Close friends with Miles Franklin, Andre Gide and Jack London, this first English translation of a classic French novel was translated by Maurice Blackman.

Three Tari Sisters estranged from the Society they are destined to save.

Elena, more beautiful than any man can resist, is kidnapped, her destiny controlled by the men who desire her.

Yani, warrior woman, brave, strong, able to pass as a man, who will do anything to find Elena.

Marigoth, powerful female mage, determined to never grow up, equally determined to find her missing sister.

In a country oppressed and cruelly ruled, the fate of many people lies in the unsuspecting hands of these three women.

These stories re-create a strange and fascinating world, where a child may look through squares of lattice enclosing a garden of Indian jasmine and Kasmiri roses to the sheepyards and paddocks of the Australian countryside. They are unique in their depiction of life of an Indian family in rural Australia, but they would be distinguished in any case by their quality - their crystalline images and lyrical feeling, their sensitive perception of light and shade, of human suffering, exile and joy.

 

Mena Abdullah and Ray Mathew have created a beautiful new world in Australia: the gay, touching and agonising life of an immigrant Indian family as seen by their younger daughter. - The Australian

 

Never has the other fellow's point of view been put forward with more gentle suavity than in this tale of Indian children growing up in rural Australia ... The style throughout has a simplicity and purity of language that is a delight to read. - The West Australian

 

...a jewel of a book. - Nancy Keesing

Canberra bomb toll 'horrific' - Amongst those believed killed were the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, the Indonesian Chief of Army Staff, the Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs and...

Tension between Australia and Indonesia, the world's largest Moslem nation, brings the two countries to the brink of war. East Timor's sovereignty and rich oil fields shared by the two neighbouring countries become key elements in one man's ambitions. General Nathan Seda, a powerful Indonesian Officer, has a dangerous plan in which he enmeshes Stephen Coleman, a career Intelligence Officer with the Australian Embassy in Jakarta.

The Timor Man, an absorbing thriller, provides a controversial perspective on events in Indonesia from the abortive coup d'etat of 1965 to the present day.

Martin Flanagan, journalist at the Age, has often written of the great Wonders of Australian Sport, his love of the AFL, of the importance of Aboriginal players in the highest echelons of Australian sport. A few years ago he threw himself at the mysterious and distressed figure of Tom Wills - our early Colonial cricket celebrity, who put together the Aboriginal Cricket Team set for Great Britain in 1868 - and helped write the original Code for Australian Rules. A hero for several original clubs - Melbourne, Collingwood and Richmond for example. Yet things fall apart, as things have often done for our sporting stars...

So Flanagan went deeper: "I dared myself to actually picture Tom Wills in the various situations I knew him to have been in during his life and backed my fancy. It was like entering a creative delirium. Pictures appeared before me which I wrote down in scenes. If I do the same thing in ten years' time, I may come up with a different story but I doubt that will happen. I doubt the energy that accompanied the writing of this treatment will ever return."

And so we have his TOM WILLS PICTURE SHOW, shedding light on a most complex character...

Lasting barely two centuries throughout the 1700s and 1800s, the Industrial Revolution in Britain propelled the country into the role of the world's premier industrial nation. Known as the 'midwife of the Industrial Revolution' coal was, literally, the driving force behind this power.

Although referred to as 'the black diamond', coal is not a thing of beauty, yet like the true diamond, it is representative of power and wealth.

Coal mining usually evokes images of tough men, glistening with the sweat of underground toil. We talk about man-power and manual labour; the industry has become synonymous with men. Rarely, if ever, do women come to mind, yet, until an Act of 1942 banned them from working down the mines, women worked alongside men, their toil equally as gruelling in conditions jut as appalling. Forbidden by Victorian prudery from working underground, they were replaced, at much greater expense to the mine owners, by ponies.

The efforts of these women, every bit as responsible as men for creating Britain's once greatest industry, have rarely been acknowledged.

During the 1926 general strike and lockout, Herbert Smith, President of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, reported that half the attendees at union meetings were women, "And these", he insisted, "are always the toughest half."

This book tells of the history of coal and coal mining from mediaeval times to the demise of the industry in Britain in the 1990s, and describes women's role in this history and how it affected their lives.

Through a combination of historical narrative, fiction and biography, the book gives a voice to these diminished 'others' - wives, mothers and daughters - whose persistence, courage, pride and sacrifice also contributed to the profits of wealthy mine owners.

Their stories are told through the prism of historical events - the frightened little girl forced to work alone in subterranean darkness, the poverty-stricken young woman confronting an unwanted pregnancy, those enduring the loss of sons and partners to a deadly occupation and women who, through adversity, took the opportunity to publicly reveal their collective strength.

Gentle and gruff, warm-hearted and implacable, these battlers against grime, beaters of carpets, painters, decorators and cooks, activists and staunch supporters of strikes and lockouts, underpinned the foundations of Britain's coal industry.

Woven through this book is the true story of the author's mother, a miner's daughter. Her life too was hard and closely entwined with coal mining to which she made, over many years, a considerable contribution not only to the industry but to the mining communities in which she worked.

The first book written on the natural history of life on the Nullabor Plain, was written by station-master A.G. Bolam and first published in 1923. The author recollects his times with Aboriginal trackers and workers in and around Ooldeah, as the great railway progressed from South Australia across to Western Australia, and in doing so looks at animal and bird life and the unique geographical feature of the Plain. Bolam studied the Ooldeah tribe and records their nomadic social life, their attitude to clothes and footwear, smoking, bartering, marriage, weapons, tools, whip making and water carrying. He records their approach to fire-making and smoke signals, medicine and surgery, amusements, decorations, corroborees and ceremonies, as well as deaths and burials. Of especial interest are his notes on message sticks, writing, tracking and procuring water in desert conditions.

Every four years, the greatest pirate crews on the seven seas gather for an epic tournament of strength and skill.

 

In the Pirate Cup, there is no silver and no bronze, only gold, gold, gold for the winning team, and the legendary Trophy of Champions.

 

As an official entrant, Whisker has more on his mind than victory. He is on the trail of a fox in a black trench coat - and an answer...

Meg is Tune Town's best music performer, but she's having trouble rehearsing. So much trouble, in fact, that the notes have run right off the sheet! Can Meg find the notes in time for her big concert? Or are they closer to home than she thought?

A colourful book for music-loving-and-learning kids of all ages.

Ruthless as she is beautiful, when her own team falls down, Giuliett turns to the Australian Ares Outlaw Motor Cycle Gang leader, Robbie L for support and the two outsiders form an alliance.

Book three in the Serpent Series explores the influences of fate and loyalty as it picks apart the impacts of relationships stretched by grief, greed and honour. Underneath, the tale explores the shambolic Italian political landscape as well as the escalating tensions and arrangements between the southern Italian and Nigerian mafia clans. The Trouble with Serpents is set predominantly in Italy, as well as outback NSW, Fiji, Afghanistan, Russia and Poland.

Hiding in plain sight behind the hype of Carnevale in Venice, five mafia families meet to elect a new leader of their combined clans, the Capo di Tutti Capi. Nicholas Delarno has the right to lead, but until recently, everyone thought he was dead.

The Commission members are curious and nervous. In a show of leadership Nicholas claims the coveted role, bringing with him a return to the old ways, values and traditions that have stood the families well for decades. Something most of the clan members are keen to embrace after the chaotic leadership of former boss Don Carlo Seta. And they are willing to sacrifice their misgivings over the new Capo's missing years to satisfy their self-serving needs for secrecy, stability and economic power.

This is the story of Ken Thomas, educated with two university degrees but nothing about trucks, who was mislead into buying a truck by a sham relative at the end of the Second World War.

After this shaky start came problems with government regulations and road taxes. All the state governments wanted to protect their rail networks, so road and rail industries hated each other.

Ken's father was a steam engine driver and Ken could see that the entrepreneurial energy of the private transport companies, and the government railway networks should be partners, not enemies.

With practical, business like common sense, Ken led the way to achieve this, in Australia and overseas. Ken described this as a red-blooded, gutsy, period, culminating in an ambush in the TNT boardroom.

'In the transport game, there is no standing still.' - Ken Thomas

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[Lt Col Edward D (Moke) Murray]… an outstanding officer in the Indian Army and became a Gurkha commander in Malaya. In 1939 he fired the crucial shot that dispersed a strike that threatened the Raj. He became an outstanding leader in the fight against the Japanese in Assam and Burma. He suppressed the Viet Minh in Saigon in 1945, in what can be seen as the start of the Vietnam War. He was Allied Land Commander in Cambodia and supervised the surrender of the Japanese there. In 1953 he was cheered by millions along the eight-kilometre route of Elizabeth II’s coronation parade as he marched at the head of the hugely popular Gurkha contingent. But when he died not a single obituary of him appeared, apart from a short notice in the Gurkha gazette.
From Anthony Barnett’s Introduction

What sort of man was ‘Moke’ Murray, this forgotten Achilles of the dying British Empire? He served his King in wars from Waziristan to Burma and helped to shape the future of Indochina. But, as this touching and fascinating biography recounts, he ended his life in lonely poverty as the Empire itself dissolved and fell out of memory.
Neal Ascherson, novelist, reporter and historian

A daring and thrilling journey into a fantastical world of shamans, vampires and werebears where aboriginal Dreaming and Gothic horror are woven together to create a powerful and seamless narrative.

I, the stranger with strange habits which make me avoid the full light of day, enter into the warm circle of your fire and will exchange my yarn for your company...

The stranger, George, tells a story of wonder and horror. Jangamuttuk, his father and Master of the Ghost Dreaming, is a shaman with ceremonies to send the white ghosts back to their own world. But the ghosts keep coming, settling on the land and destroying the local people.

Initiated into the Dreaming, George learns the secret of transforming into his animal companion, Dingo, and discovers the thrill of the hunt. But he is not alone in his lust for blood. Amelia, the white woman, shares his appetite, feeding on humans and animals alike to maintain her terrible power. Moving into the white settlement, she creates a psychic barrier around it to protect herself and her slaves. The aboriginal people must draw on every resource, both physical and psychic, to overcome this threat to their existence.

ABOUT MUDROOROO'S MASTER OF THE GHOST DREAMING:

'A real page-turner. The prose is lyrical, yet simple, the images real and ironic... an exciting, moving and engaging novel.' - SOPHIE MASSON, AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW

'A most original contribution to Australian literary style... probably the first instinctively Australian magical-realist novel.' - ROD MORAN, WEST AUSTRALIAN