During the Second World War Eric Lomax was forced to work on the notorious Burma-Siam Railway and was tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio.Left emotionally scarred and unable to form normal relationships, Lomax suffered for years until, with the help of his wife, Patti Lomax, and of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, he came terms with what happened. Fifty years after the terrible events, he was able to meet one of his tormentors.The...

A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' - the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio, Lomax was emotionally ruined by his experiences. Almost 50 years after the war, however, his life was changed by the discovery that his interrogator, the Japanese interpreter, was still alive - their re...

Now a major film starring Judi Dench and Steve CooganFalling pregnant as a teenager in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to the convent in Co. Tipperary to be looked after as a fallen woman. She cared for her baby for three years until the Church took him and sold him, like countless others, to America for adoption. She spent the next fifty years secretly searching for him, unaware that he was searching for her from across the Atlantic.A compelling and deeply moving true story o...

When the Great War ends, Joshua Connor, a grieving farmer and sometime water diviner from the Mallee in Victoria, sets out to fulfil his wife's dying wish – to travel to Gallipoli to recover the bodies of his three sons and bury them in consecrated ground. Crescent collides with cross, and hope with reason as he discovers that his eldest son, Art, may still be alive. When Connor makes a desperate dash into the perilous heart of Anatolia one question haunts him: if Art is alive, why hasn't ...

Solomon Northup was born in the early 1800s in New York, and was born as a free man. He lived as a free man for over 30 years, until he was tricked into moving to Washington, D.C. by men offering him a job as a musician. Once he made it to D.C., he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana, where he was forced to work on a plantation until he could make his escape. His family had no way of knowing where he was or if he was safe – he was on his own with no hope of escaping the circum...

Escaping an unhappy marriage and an unsatisfactory job, Cassie Holloway moves to the little NSW coastal town of Whitby Point. Here she meets the Aquino family, whose fishing business was founded by their ancestor, Giuseppe, an immigrant Italian, some ninety years before. Life for Cassie on the south west coast is sweet as she sets up a successful restaurant and falls in love with Giuseppe's great grandson Michael. But when the family patriarch dies, a devestating family secret is revealed ...

An incredible tale of one man's adversity and defiance, f****or readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz**.**Horace Greasley escaped over 200 times from a notorious German prison camp to see the girl he loved. This is his incredible true story.A Sunday Times Bestseller - over 60,000 copies sold.Even in the most horrifying places on earth, hope still lingers in the darkness, waiting for the opp...

A sweeping story of wealth, power, privilege and betrayal, set on a grand sugar cane plantation in Queensland.LEGACY IN THE CANE FIELDSIn 1881 'Big Jim' Durham ruthlessly creates for Elianne Desmarais, his young French wife, the finest of the great sugar mills of the Southern Queensland cane fields, and names it in her honour.SUGAR AND SECRETSThe massive estate becomes a self-sufficient fortress and home to hundreds of worke...

In this novel, a woman seeks a new life in a small Australian town, but her future is threatened by a family's secrets."A remarkable story of love and intrigue, The Winter Sea is a book that is hard to put down and impossible to forget." —Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times –bestselling authorEscaping an unhappy marriage and an unsatisfactory job, Cass...

The extraordinary true story that inspired an acclaimed film starring Steve Coogan and Judi Dench, Philomena, by Martin Sixsmith, is a gripping tale of heartache, hypocrisy and ultimately, redemption.It follows the lives of Philomena Lee, who, after falling pregnant in 1952, was treated as a fallen woman by Irish Catholic society, and her son, torn from her by the Church and swept across the Atlantic as one among many forced adoptions.Philomena, sh...

Now a major motion picture starring Mia Wasikowska and Adam Driver'I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back.' So begins Robyn Davidson's perilous journey across 1,700 miles of hostile Australian desert to the sea with only four camels and a dog for company.Enduring sweltering heat, fending off poisonous snakes and lecherous men, chasing her camels when they get...

Twelve Years a Slave (1853) is a memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup, as told to and edited by David Wilson.Solomon Northup (July 1808 – 1863?) was a free-born African American from New York, the son of a freed slave. A farmer and violinist, he owned a property in Hebron, New York. In 1841 he was kidnapped by slave-traders, having been enticed with a job offer as a violinist. When he accompanied his supposed employers to Washington, DC, they drugged him and sold him as a s...