Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories." In 1943 it became known under the c...

Retrace Australia’s role in the First World War from the trenches of Somme Mud to the wider war on the Western Front.Imagine this. You are a country boy and just eighteen. The war has been raging for two years and because of your age, you have not been eligible for enlistment. Your mates, older by a few months are joining up and disappearing to the great adventure across the world in Europe. And there is forever talk of the need for reinforcements, for men like you to join...

Jarold, aka, Jazz, is a typical sixteen year old boy. He lives at home with his two remarkably un-divorced parents, his holier-than-thou sister, and his overbearing grandmother. It's a life straight out of a TV show. Or so it seemThe truth is that Jazz's life is anything but picture perfect. He's seeing a shrink because his mom and dad found out he's gay; his schoolmates torment him every day; and he keeps bumping into his high school teacher at a local gay bar. To make matters wors...

'Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one - fire! Down goes the firing switch. At first, nothing. Then from deep down there comes a low rumble, and it as if the world is spliting apart...'On 7th June 1917, nineteen massive mines exploded beneath Messines Ridge near Ypres. The largest man-made explosion in history up until that point shattered the landscape and smashed open the German lines. Ten thousand German soldiers died.Two of the mines...

Beautifully presented young readers’ edition of the bestselling memoir of a young soldier on the First World War’s Western Front.'It's the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable. We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can't escape it, not even by dying.'Private Edward Lynch was just 18 when he enlisted in the arm...

Known as The Boy Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Marks, was the youngest battalion commander in the AIF and highly regarded not only as a future military commander, but as a business and community leader.It was a blustery day on the 25th January 1920 at Palm Beach to the north of Sydney and the surf was wild. Two attempts had already been made to save a young woman caught in an undertow and dragged out when a young man; skinny, gangly and frail and known to be ...

In March 1918, with the fear of a one-million-man American army landing in France, the Germans attacked. In response, Australian soldiers were involved in a number of engagements, culminating in the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the saving of Amiens, and Paris, from German occupation.Then came General John Monash's first victory as the Commanding Officer of the newly formed Australian Corps at Hamel. This victory, and the tactics it tested, became crucial to the Allied vi...

When Will Davies discovered the manuscript for Somme Mud he knew he had found a lost treasure. Private Lynch's powerful, personal story of his time in the trenches of the Somme has become a classic.In this new book, Will Davies meticulously follows in the footsteps of Lynch and his battalion, the 45th - from their long route marches to lice ridden billets, into the frontline and seeing action at such infamous battles as Messines, Dernancourt, Stormy Trench and Villers Bret...

Davante—a successful sports agent who has everything but finally realize something money cant buy. Sometimes we look for love in all the wrong place. Davante is now ready for the an exclusive relationship, and had decided to date outside of his race for the first time to see if true love has no color. Which women has chemistry, communication and quality he loves. It's time he starts recognizing what's real versus what's fake, including friends, family, money, trust, love and commitment. Lo...

A man will endlessly torture his muscles until they shriek and complain. But he will not give in. He will take a hammer to his ceiling until the neighbors begin to watch from the window and the journalists knock at the door. He will continue to train and hack away at the house until it is finished and the trapeze is in place.Although his parents thought he was nice and kindhearted and teachers saw him as a good boy, secretly he hated his drab, ordered world and longed for more. Then...

'"And the name of the girl through to next week is..." says Stina, and I want to kill her for pausing once again. I want to see her bludgeoned to death with her own stupid mic, her even stupider skin tight dress all stained with oozing gore...'Thousands of wannabes are auditioning to be part of mega-girlband Purrfect in a new reality TV series. Among them are ice-queen Louise, who thinks she's got god on her side, foulmouthed Joni, desperate to hide the fact that she's got a baby, ...

Where courage drowned, mateship endured, and survival was never certain.Written by returned Australian soldier Private Edward Lynch, Somme Mud stands as one of the most powerful accounts of the First World War. Drafted in pencil across twenty school exercise books in the late 1920s and preserved against the odds, it is a work born directly from experience.Told through the voice of ‘Nulla’, Lynch’s fictionalised self, the narrative follows seven Australian s...