Tim Low, award-winning author of Feral Future, in an eye-opening book on the unique nature of Australian birds and their role in ecology and global evolution.Renowned for its unusual mammals, Australia is a land of birds that are just as unusual, just as striking, a result of the continent's tens of millions of years of isolation. Compared with birds elsewhere, ours are more likely to be intelligent, aggressive and loud, to live in complex societies, and are long-lived. The...

An authoritative and entertaining exploration of Australia’s distinctive birds and their unheralded role in global evolution Renowned for its gallery of unusual mammals, Australia is also a land of extraordinary birds. But unlike the mammals, the birds of Australia flew beyond the continent’s boundaries and around the globe many millions of years ago. This eye-opening book tells the dynamic but little-known story of how Australia provided the world with songbirds and parro...

Winner of the NIB Waverley Award for Literature.Forget about wilderness, Tim Low says, nature lives in our cities and gardens, exploiting everything we do. Many endangered species now live in industrial zones and cities. In our forests, native creatures have become pests. Fifteen years on, The New Nature continues to challenge the way we view the interactions between human beings and nature, and pushes us to review our relationship with Australia's wilderne...

This ebook edition does not include illustrations.An awe-inspiring journey through the eons and across the globe, in search of visible traces of evolution in the living creatures which have survived from earlier times and whose stories speak to us of seminal events in the history of life.The history of life on Earth is far older – and far odder – than many of us realise. In ‘Survivors’, acclaimed author Richard Fortey traces this history not through fossil records, but in t...

Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is – or should be – is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush. But what do we mean by 'the bush', and how has it shaped us?Starting with his forebears' battle to drive back nature and eke a living from the land, Don Watson explores the bush as it was and as it now is: the triumphs and the ruination, the commonplace and the bizarre, the stories we like to tell about ou...

Explodes the myth that pre-settlement Australia was an untamed wilderness revealing the complex, country-wide systems of land management used by Aboriginal people. Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park. With extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, it evoked a country estate in England. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scient...

The action at Fromelles in July 1916 is Australia's most catastrophic military failure. The story has always appeared simple, but in truth history did not unfold in the way we have for so long been led to believe.Peter Barton has written an authoritative and revelatory book on Fromelles. He describes its long and surprising genesis, and offers an unexpected account of the fighting; he investigates the interrogation of Anglo-Australian prisoners, and the results of shrewd German pro...

Denis Gregory takes us on an unforgettable and hilarious journey through the history of Australia and what it means to be an Australian. Full of quirky observations and little-known facts, this book is a vivid commentary on the life and culture of ' the lucky country'.

'Lori Lansens has created a heart-pounder of a book that is every bit as much of an emotional roller-coaster as an adventurous one. Filled with richly drawn characters, unexpected twists, and gritty details about survival, you'll want to read this right now' Jodi PicoultOn the anniversary of the day his best friend, Byrd, had a tragic accident on the mountain which had been the boys' paradise and escape, Wolf Truly reaches for the summit again with the intention of not coming home....

WINNER OF THE STELLA PRIZE 2013"clever, original and richly rewarding" Australian Bookseller & Publisher"it might just be the sweetest book about sex you will ever read" Sydney Morning HeraldOn the outskirts of an Australian country town in the 1950s, a lonely farmer trains his binoculars on a family of kookaburras that roost in a tree near his house. Harry observes the kookaburras...

'Captivating. Will change the way you think about the natural world, and your place in it' Hugh Fearnley-WhittingstallIn Feral, George Monbiot, one of the world's most celebrated radical thinkers offers a riveting tale of possibility and travel in the wildHow many of us sometimes feel that we are scratching at the walls of this life, seeking to find our way into a wider space beyond? That our mild, polite existence sometimes seems ...

From a remarkable new Australian author comes THE ANCHORESS, a story set within the confines of a stone cell measuring seven paces by nine. Tiny in scope but universal in themes, it is a wonderful, wholly compelling fictional achievement.Set in the twelfth century, THE ANCHORESS tells the story of Sarah, only seventeen when she chooses to become an anchoress, a holy woman shut away in a small cell, measuring seven paces by nine, at the side of the village church. Fleeing the grief ...