Ayaan Hirsi Ali caused a worldwide sensation with her gutsy memoir INFIDEL. Now, in NOMAD, she tells of coming to America to build a new life, an ocean away from the death threats made against her by European Islamists, the strife she witnessed and the inner conflict she suffered.

So who said it FIRST? This collection sets out to credit - as far as it's possible to do so - the people who actually created many familiar terms in common use. For example, poor Ernest Dowson is all but forgotten, but author Margaret Mitchell read his 1891 poem 'Non Sum Qualis' and brought one phrase from that poem to the attention of millions. The phrase that caught her eye was 'gone with the wind'. (In 1867, Dowson also wrote another familiar phrase: 'the days of wine and roses'.)

Written in Max Cryer's delightfully witty style, Who Said That First? is a wonderful book to dip into or settle a friendly dispute.

To rattle off the hits of Neil and Tim Finn reads like a checklist of recent pop history. And to think it all began in sleepy rural Te Awamutu - a town whose name had a 'truly sacred ring', as Neil would famously recount - where Brian Timothy Finn fell in love with the Beatles, an obsession that would also work its way straight into his younger brother Neil's DNA. Success for the brothers was a long time coming: it took several turbulent years in Split Enz - an art-pop band Neil would join in 1977, despite Tim's reservations - before they produced a genuine hit and connected with the mainstream.

Nothing much happens in the sleepy town of Venus Cove. But everything changes when three angels, Ivy, Bethany and Gabriel are sent from heaven to protect the town against the gathering forces of darkness. They work hard to conceal their true identity and, most of all, their wings. But the mission is threatened when the youngest angel, Bethany, is sent to high school and falls for the handsome school captain, Xavier Woods. Will she defy the laws of Heaven by loving him? Things come to a head when the angels realize they are not the only supernatural power in Venus Cove.

After a failed assassination attempt on the president of Zimbabwe, ex-soldier turned mercenary Sonja Kurtz is on the run and heads for her only place of refuge, the Okavango Delta in the heart of Botswana. She's looking to rekindle a romance with her childhood sweetheart, safari camp manager Sterling Smith, and desperately wants a fresh start and to leave her perilous warrior lifestyle behind.

But Sonja discovers her beloved Delta is on the brink of destruction. She is recruited as an "eco-commando" in a bid to halt a project that will destroy forever the Delta's fragile network of swamps and waterways.

Soon Sonja finds herself caught in a deadly web of intrigue involving Sterling, the handsome Martin Steele � her mercenary commander, and a TV heartthrob and wildlife documentary presenter "Coyote" Sam Chapman who blunders out of the bush in a reality show gone wrong.

The story of a mother, her son, a locked room and the outside world

Jack is five and, like any little boy, excited at the prospect of presents and cake. He's looking forward to telling his friends it's his birthday, too. But although Jack is a normal child in many ways � loving, funny, bright, full of energy and questions � his upbringing is far from ordinary: Jack's entire life has been spent in a single room that measures just 12 feet by 12 feet; as far as he's concerned, Room is the entire world.

He shares this world with his mother, with Plant, and tiny Mouse (though Ma isn't a fan and throws a book at Mouse when she sees him). There's TV too, of course � and the cartoon characters he thinks of as his friends � but Jack knows that nothing else he sees on the screen is real. Old Nick, on the other hand, is all too real, but only visits at night � like a bat � when Jack is meant to be asleep and hidden safely in Wardrobe. And only Old Nick has the code to Door, which is otherwise locked...

Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother's love for her son, and of a young boy's innocence. Unsentimental yet affecting, devastating yet uplifting, it promises to be the most talked about novel of 2010.

Somehow, I convinced myself it was a good idea. Somehow, I convinced myself that it was do-able. Now I shake my head... We drove through the Gobi desert in Mongolia in a snowstorm, avoided an Iranian sedan doing cartwheels on the freeway near Tehran, wove around the shores of the Caspian Sea and navigated the desert in Turkmenistan. We kicked an Aussie Rules footy across borders and taught customs officers how to do a drop-punt from Timor Leste to Uzbekistan. We ate bark and ox blood and worms and pigs ears and eel and curries so hot we nearly fell off our chairs. We bribed police in five countries, ignored parking tickets in another six and got lost pretty much everywhere. We squabbled over food and farting, snoring and sneezing. It was total folly and it was the best thing you can ever do. I would do it again and I would not recommend it to anyone.
In April 2008, Jon Faine and his son Jack closed their door on their Melbourne home and leaving jobs, studies, family and friends, took six months and went overland to London in their trusty 4-wheel-drive. This intelligent and funny recount of the countries they visited, people they met and trouble they got into, is also the story of a tender father-son relationship.

Top of page

A story of survival, second chances ... and a dance with danger.

Young Billy Marks is a pickpocket, transported to the penal colony of New South Wales. He and his mate reckon they��ll become bushrangers- but that��s before Billy��s had a chance to see the bush up close. And when he buys the big white brumby stallion, covered with scars but refusing to bend to any man��s will, he knows he made the right choice.

Billy��s daughter Mattie Jane thinks her father can ride any horse who ever lived ... and so can she! But when tragedy strikes, the Marks clan, including Mattie and her beloved horse, Rebel Yell, will need all the courage they can find to keep the family together.

The deeds and disputed stories of Jackie French��s own ancestors inspire another novel - a novel of proud and gutsy horses, trailblazing farmers and their resilient wives, and desperate men forced to break the law to survive.

Justin Langer scored more centuries than Ian Chappell, Doug Walters or Bill Lawry and had a better average than Mark Taylor, David Boon or Mark Waugh yet lived almost every moment of his glittering Test career as if it was his last.
In this intimate and at times poignant account, Langer looks back on the mateship, change room antics and onfield triumphs which made up his 105-Test innings as a member of one of the game's greatest teams. Peer behind the scenes to relive the night they soaked the English change rooms at Lords in beer, the midnight frolic around the SCG in their underpants and baggy green caps and the Caribbean dinner which cost the ACB $16,000.

Of all the Australians who fought in the Second World War, none saw more action nor endured so much of its hardship and horror as the crew of the cruiser HMAS Perth.Most were young - many were still teenagers - from cities and towns, villages and farms across the nation. In three tumultuous years they did battle with the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Vichy French and, finally, the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were nearly lost in a hurricane in the Atlantic. In the Mediterranean in 1941 they were bombed by the Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force for months on end until, ultimately, during the disastrous evacuation of the Australian army from Crete, their ship took a direct hit and thirteen men were killed.After the fall of Singapore in 1942, HMAS Perth was hurled into the forlorn campaign to stem the Japanese advance towards Australia. Off the coast of Java in March that year she met an overwhelming enemy naval force. Firing until her ammunition literally ran out, she was sunk with the loss of 353 of her crew, including her much-loved captain and the Royal Australian Navys finest fighting sailor, Hardover Hec Waller.Another 328 men were taken into Japanese captivity, most to become slave labourers in the infinite hell of the Burma-Thai railway. Many died there, victims of unspeakable atrocity. Only 218 men, less than a third of her crew, survived to return home at wars end.CRUISER, by journalist and broadcaster Mike Carlton, is their story

Missie Missinger is busy growing up in a small town. When tragedy hits the community,they call it an accident. But as more accidents unfold, the frightened locals look for an answer and find an easy target. Missie holds the clues to what happened. If she puts the puzzle together and confronts the truth she will be in danger. If she doesnt,an innocent youth could be blamed for anothers death.

Everyone wants to make good food for the people they love. Come on Over is full of recipes for simple, modern food whether you want to keep it casual or are out to impress.It contains new and classic recipes from chilli and paprika seared steak to crme caramel using affordable, seasonal ingredients.Long weekend brekkies, casual eating outside, Friday night meals and delicious desserts are all included.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali caused a worldwide sensation with her gutsy memoir INFIDEL. Now, in NOMAD, she tells of coming to America to build a new life, an ocean away from the death threats made against her by European Islamists, the strife she witnessed and the inner conflict she suffered.

So who said it FIRST? This collection sets out to credit - as far as it's possible to do so - the people who actually created many familiar terms in common use. For example, poor Ernest Dowson is all but forgotten, but author Margaret Mitchell read his 1891 poem 'Non Sum Qualis' and brought one phrase from that poem to the attention of millions. The phrase that caught her eye was 'gone with the wind'. (In 1867, Dowson also wrote another familiar phrase: 'the days of wine and roses'.)

Written in Max Cryer's delightfully witty style, Who Said That First? is a wonderful book to dip into or settle a friendly dispute.

To rattle off the hits of Neil and Tim Finn reads like a checklist of recent pop history. And to think it all began in sleepy rural Te Awamutu - a town whose name had a 'truly sacred ring', as Neil would famously recount - where Brian Timothy Finn fell in love with the Beatles, an obsession that would also work its way straight into his younger brother Neil's DNA. Success for the brothers was a long time coming: it took several turbulent years in Split Enz - an art-pop band Neil would join in 1977, despite Tim's reservations - before they produced a genuine hit and connected with the mainstream.

Nothing much happens in the sleepy town of Venus Cove. But everything changes when three angels, Ivy, Bethany and Gabriel are sent from heaven to protect the town against the gathering forces of darkness. They work hard to conceal their true identity and, most of all, their wings. But the mission is threatened when the youngest angel, Bethany, is sent to high school and falls for the handsome school captain, Xavier Woods. Will she defy the laws of Heaven by loving him? Things come to a head when the angels realize they are not the only supernatural power in Venus Cove.

After a failed assassination attempt on the president of Zimbabwe, ex-soldier turned mercenary Sonja Kurtz is on the run and heads for her only place of refuge, the Okavango Delta in the heart of Botswana. She's looking to rekindle a romance with her childhood sweetheart, safari camp manager Sterling Smith, and desperately wants a fresh start and to leave her perilous warrior lifestyle behind.

But Sonja discovers her beloved Delta is on the brink of destruction. She is recruited as an "eco-commando" in a bid to halt a project that will destroy forever the Delta's fragile network of swamps and waterways.

Soon Sonja finds herself caught in a deadly web of intrigue involving Sterling, the handsome Martin Steele � her mercenary commander, and a TV heartthrob and wildlife documentary presenter "Coyote" Sam Chapman who blunders out of the bush in a reality show gone wrong.

The story of a mother, her son, a locked room and the outside world

Jack is five and, like any little boy, excited at the prospect of presents and cake. He's looking forward to telling his friends it's his birthday, too. But although Jack is a normal child in many ways � loving, funny, bright, full of energy and questions � his upbringing is far from ordinary: Jack's entire life has been spent in a single room that measures just 12 feet by 12 feet; as far as he's concerned, Room is the entire world.

He shares this world with his mother, with Plant, and tiny Mouse (though Ma isn't a fan and throws a book at Mouse when she sees him). There's TV too, of course � and the cartoon characters he thinks of as his friends � but Jack knows that nothing else he sees on the screen is real. Old Nick, on the other hand, is all too real, but only visits at night � like a bat � when Jack is meant to be asleep and hidden safely in Wardrobe. And only Old Nick has the code to Door, which is otherwise locked...

Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother's love for her son, and of a young boy's innocence. Unsentimental yet affecting, devastating yet uplifting, it promises to be the most talked about novel of 2010.

Somehow, I convinced myself it was a good idea. Somehow, I convinced myself that it was do-able. Now I shake my head... We drove through the Gobi desert in Mongolia in a snowstorm, avoided an Iranian sedan doing cartwheels on the freeway near Tehran, wove around the shores of the Caspian Sea and navigated the desert in Turkmenistan. We kicked an Aussie Rules footy across borders and taught customs officers how to do a drop-punt from Timor Leste to Uzbekistan. We ate bark and ox blood and worms and pigs ears and eel and curries so hot we nearly fell off our chairs. We bribed police in five countries, ignored parking tickets in another six and got lost pretty much everywhere. We squabbled over food and farting, snoring and sneezing. It was total folly and it was the best thing you can ever do. I would do it again and I would not recommend it to anyone.
In April 2008, Jon Faine and his son Jack closed their door on their Melbourne home and leaving jobs, studies, family and friends, took six months and went overland to London in their trusty 4-wheel-drive. This intelligent and funny recount of the countries they visited, people they met and trouble they got into, is also the story of a tender father-son relationship.

Top of page

A story of survival, second chances ... and a dance with danger.

Young Billy Marks is a pickpocket, transported to the penal colony of New South Wales. He and his mate reckon they��ll become bushrangers- but that��s before Billy��s had a chance to see the bush up close. And when he buys the big white brumby stallion, covered with scars but refusing to bend to any man��s will, he knows he made the right choice.

Billy��s daughter Mattie Jane thinks her father can ride any horse who ever lived ... and so can she! But when tragedy strikes, the Marks clan, including Mattie and her beloved horse, Rebel Yell, will need all the courage they can find to keep the family together.

The deeds and disputed stories of Jackie French��s own ancestors inspire another novel - a novel of proud and gutsy horses, trailblazing farmers and their resilient wives, and desperate men forced to break the law to survive.

Justin Langer scored more centuries than Ian Chappell, Doug Walters or Bill Lawry and had a better average than Mark Taylor, David Boon or Mark Waugh yet lived almost every moment of his glittering Test career as if it was his last.
In this intimate and at times poignant account, Langer looks back on the mateship, change room antics and onfield triumphs which made up his 105-Test innings as a member of one of the game's greatest teams. Peer behind the scenes to relive the night they soaked the English change rooms at Lords in beer, the midnight frolic around the SCG in their underpants and baggy green caps and the Caribbean dinner which cost the ACB $16,000.

Of all the Australians who fought in the Second World War, none saw more action nor endured so much of its hardship and horror as the crew of the cruiser HMAS Perth.Most were young - many were still teenagers - from cities and towns, villages and farms across the nation. In three tumultuous years they did battle with the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Vichy French and, finally, the Imperial Japanese Navy. They were nearly lost in a hurricane in the Atlantic. In the Mediterranean in 1941 they were bombed by the Luftwaffe and the Italian Air Force for months on end until, ultimately, during the disastrous evacuation of the Australian army from Crete, their ship took a direct hit and thirteen men were killed.After the fall of Singapore in 1942, HMAS Perth was hurled into the forlorn campaign to stem the Japanese advance towards Australia. Off the coast of Java in March that year she met an overwhelming enemy naval force. Firing until her ammunition literally ran out, she was sunk with the loss of 353 of her crew, including her much-loved captain and the Royal Australian Navys finest fighting sailor, Hardover Hec Waller.Another 328 men were taken into Japanese captivity, most to become slave labourers in the infinite hell of the Burma-Thai railway. Many died there, victims of unspeakable atrocity. Only 218 men, less than a third of her crew, survived to return home at wars end.CRUISER, by journalist and broadcaster Mike Carlton, is their story

Missie Missinger is busy growing up in a small town. When tragedy hits the community,they call it an accident. But as more accidents unfold, the frightened locals look for an answer and find an easy target. Missie holds the clues to what happened. If she puts the puzzle together and confronts the truth she will be in danger. If she doesnt,an innocent youth could be blamed for anothers death.

Everyone wants to make good food for the people they love. Come on Over is full of recipes for simple, modern food whether you want to keep it casual or are out to impress.It contains new and classic recipes from chilli and paprika seared steak to crme caramel using affordable, seasonal ingredients.Long weekend brekkies, casual eating outside, Friday night meals and delicious desserts are all included.