The story of the bombing of Darwin and the Japanese midget sub attack on Sydney Harbour in one volume from the bestselling author of An Awkward Truth and A Very Rude Awakening.'Grose's compassionate, honest and vivid account deserves to be widely read.' Sun Herald on An Awkward Truth'About as good as any yarn can get . . . a great retelling of a great story.' Sydney Morning Herald on A Very Rude Awakening

The compelling and very human story of the first foreign assault on Australian soil since settlement - the attack on Darwin by the Japanese in February, 1942. Darwin was a battle Australia would rather forget. Yet the Japanese attack on 19 February 1942 was the first wartime assault on Australian soil. The Japanese struck with the same carrier-borne force that devastated Pearl Harbor only ten weeks earlier. There was a difference. More bombs fell on Darwin, more civilians were killed, and ...

During the occupation of France in WWII the villages around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon pulled off an astonishing and largely unknown feat. Risking everything, they underwent a long-running battle of nerves and daring to hide 5,000 men, women and children, 3,500 of them Jews, from the Nazis and their Vichy stooges. Despite the danger, a whole community rallied together, from the pacifist pastor who defied orders to the glamorous female agent with a wooden leg, from the 18-year-old master forger ...

In May of 1942, the war seemed very far away to most Sydneysiders - until the night the three Japanese midget submarines crept into the harbour and caused an unforgettable night of mayhem, high farce, chaos and courage. A ground-breaking new look at one of the most extraordinary stories of Australia at war.On the night of 31 May 1942, Sydney was doing what it does best: partying. The theatres, restaurants, dance halls, illegal gambling dens, clubs and brothels offe...

The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich.On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian c...

"thoroughly researched and compelling . . . a chilling account' The Sun-HeraldAn eye-opening account of Australian combat history, untold . . . until now.In 1969 a ragtag unit of 39 men were thrown together at Nui Dat, Vietnam. It was so slapdash a group it didn’t even have an officer or sergeant in charge. A rugged ex-Royal Marine stepped forward to take the lead. Jim Riddle was only an acting corporal but he knew enough of war to...

February 1942. The Japanese invasion of Timor has begun and attempts to evacuate a group of 29 Australian airmen, charged with keeping an airfield operational until the last moment, are thwarted.Under the leadership of Bryan Rofe, a 24-year-old meteorological officer, the airmen make for remote jungle along the northwest coast. All attempts to rescue the group fail. Malaria-ravaged and starving, these men are taken to the limits of their endurance for 58 days. When a 300-strong Japa...

More than 10,000 Australians served with Bomber Command, a highly trained band of elite flyers who undertook some of the most dangerous operations of World War II. They flew raid after raid over France and Germany knowing that the odds were against them. Stretched to breaking point, nearly 3500 died in the air. Their bravery in extreme circumstances has barely been recognised.Peter Rees traces the extraordinary achievements of these young aviators. He tells their hair-raising stori...

In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture a small village called Pozières. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task.At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed Pozières. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having suffered 23,000 casualties to gain a few miles of barren landscape. Despite the toll, the operation was heralded a...

At a crucial moment, Ed Whitcomb, a B-17 navigator, made a split-second decision and thereby set off a hair-raising, spine-tingling sequence of narrow escapes, captures, unexpected breaks and bitter betrayals that culminated in his final extrication from enemy territory.Whitcomb reached Clark Field just before its demolition by the Japanese. He then evaded capture at the fall of Bataan by fleeing in a row boat to the bastion of Corregidor, where he was caught. Escaping under cover ...

The Korean War was a 20th Century conflict that has never ended. South Korea, a powerhouse economy and dynamic democracy sits uneasily alongside North Korea, the world's most secretive, belligerent, unpredictable and repressive totalitarian state. Today, tensions simmer and occasionally flare into outright violence on a peninsula dense with arms, munitions and nuclear warheads.Cameron Forbes, acclaimed author of Hellfire, tells the story of the war and Australia's ...

Sit down and strap yourself in for an exhilarating ride to the sound barrier and beyond with a real life Topgun!Mac Tucker, or 'Serge' to use his callsign name, is one of an elite group of men trained to fly F-18 jets. Now, for the first time, Serge takes you behind the scenes of the fighter pilot world to reveal what it's really like.Find out how it feels to be shot at by SAS snipers, to be lost in a 50 million jet over Northern Australia with nothing but ...