Patrick Frost's collection of short stories, A Sky Populated by Tongues, is constantly surprising. The settings seem familiar enough - until some twist throws you off balance. There's a strange visitor in the kitchen. Will he ever move? A sinister meal on the island bench in snow country. And if you don't do as your host advises on the open garden tour, what exactly are the consequences? When what you decide to wear to work to shake things up a bit doesn't have the impact you had ...

At the age of 13 Sidney Kidman ran away from home with only five shillings in his pocket. He went on to become a horse dealer, drover, cattle buyer and bush jockey and he also ran a coach business. Above all Kidman created a mighty cattle empire of more than a hundred stations, fighting droughts, bushfires, floods and plagues of vermin to do so. His enterprise and courage won him a huge fortune and made him a legend.

I Can Jump Puddles is Alan Marshall’s story of his childhood - a happy world in which, despite his crippling poliomyelitis, he plays, climbs, fights, swims, rides and laughs. His world was the Australian countryside early last century: rough-riders, bushmen, farmers and tellers of tall stories - a world held precious by the young Alan Marshall.

First published in 1941, Eleanor Dark's classic novel of the early settlement of Australia is a story of hardship, cruelty and danger. Above all it is the story of conflict: between the Aborigines and the white settlers. In this dramatic novel, a large cast of characters, historical and fictional, black and white, convict and settler, brings alive those bitter years with moments of tenderness and conciliation amid the brutality and hostility. All the while, behind the veneer of British civ...