A “deeply moving, powerful, and unforgettable book" (Michael Ondaatje), Death and Nightingales is an epic story of love, deception, betrayal and revenge, set on a single day in the Irish countryside in 1883.Soon to be a major television event starring Matthew Rhys and Jamie Dornan.It is 1883 and the farms of County Fermanagh, on the border of Ulster and what we now know as the Republic of Ireland, are crisscrossed with religious, political,...

At the age of fifteen, Charlie left his home in Bendigo and signed on as a drover with Nat Buchanan. Two years later he was a key man on one of Australia’s greatest cattle drives – the Durack family’s two-year journey from Cooper’s Creek, Queensland – to the Kimberley.Stumbling on Charlie’s largely unknown story, and filling in the gaps with fiction, the author has created a novel unique in Australian literature. An unprecedented adventure, and a passionate...

A huge prize awaits them, but only if they can escape.The Second Boer War is finally ending, and for three thieves there is the unexpected bonus of stealing an army payroll so large that they have to bury it outside a Free State town until the heat cools off.While they wait for an opportunity to return to their stolen bounty, the entire might of the army gives chase, giving rise to a riotous set of events.Based on a true story, John Harris' adventure entertains an...

One of the great observers of Australian life, Henry Lawson looms large in our national psyche. Yet at his best Lawson transcends the very bush, the very outback, the very up-country, the very pub or selector's hut he conveys with such brevity and acuity: he make specific places universal.Henry Lawson is too often regarded as a legend rather than a writer to be enjoyed. In this selection Lawson is revealed as an author whose delightful, humorous, wry and moving short stories contin...

The first book in a pacey and evocative detective series set in Victorian Dublin. In the 1880s the DMP classified crime in two distinct classes. Political crimes were 'special', whereas theft, robbery and even murder, no matter how terrible, were 'ordinary'. Dublin, June 1887: the mutilated bodies of a man and a child are discovered in Phoenix Park and Detective Sergeant Joe Swallow steps up to investigate. Cynical and tired, Swallow is a man living on past successes in need of a win. In t...

It amazed me that they would imagine I would never walk again. I knew what I was going to do. I was going to break in wild horses and yell 'Ho! Ho!' and wave my hat in the air, and I was going to write a book like The Coral Island.Every so often, there comes a story so brilliant and lively and moving that it cannot be left in the past. Rediscover the magic of our country's most memorable children's books in the Penguin Australia Children's Classics series of stories too precious to ...

In a remote corner of rural Essex, when ploughs were drawn by heavy horses and children walked shoeless to school, young Spike Mays lived with his family in a two-up, two-down cottage, where there was no electricity, no bathroom, no running water and just a shared privy in the back yard. Beset by poverty, this was an England in the shadow of the Great War.In this bittersweet memoir Mays recreates the village, its travelling parson, local poacher and even the local drunkard. And in ...

Stories that take us from the Mallee to the back of Bourke and beyond, an indispensable collection about the enduring appeal of the Australian bush.Australia's national character and spirit have always been defined, rightly or wrongly, by 'the bush'. This entertaining, thought-provoking, humorous, nostalgic and, above all, highly readable collection of stories for the modern reader shows why the romance endures.From Jim Haynes, one of our most successful an...

A newly-wed American Vietnam vet goes on a journey of self-discovery, circling Ireland's coastline on foot with a donkey and cart in this memoir.Kevin O'Hara's journey begins as a mad lark: who in their right mind would try to circle the entire coastline of Ireland on foot—and with a donkey and cart no less?But Kevin had promised his homesick Irish mother that he would explore the whole of the Old Country and bring back the sights and the stories to their hom...

This file includes seven books: In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses, Joe Wilson and His Mates, While the Billy Boils, Children of the Bush, Over the Sliprails, On the Track, and The Rising of the Court. According to Wikipedia: "Henry Lawson (17 June 1867 - 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period."

The Complete Works of Henry LawsonHenry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson was an Australian writer and bush poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest short story writer".This collection includes the following:Joe Wilson and His MatesOn the TrackOver the SliprailsIn the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses

William Young is an MI5 informant, using his working-class background to gain the trust of groups deemed a threat to the Crown. Tiring of his double life, William travels to Dublin for one last assignment: infiltrating a group of IRA supporters. But these "rebels" are not what he expected — and one of them, a firebrand named Adam with a past as painful as his own, shakes William's uncertain footing to its foundation. As the crisis in Dublin escalates, William treads a dangerous path betwee...