Geoff Rankin, a returned serviceman, just wants to get away for a quiet weekend up in the tablelands. When he encounters what appear to be visitors from another planet, he deals with them the only way he knows…violently.

This is a collection of short stories that focus not on war but its aftermath. Each story is set on Australian soil but with powerful and enduring links to distant lands.What sort of Australia did the first limbless diggers return to? The First ANZAC Day deals with the first broken soldier to return to his hometown in 1916.The brotherhood-like culture of returned diggers underpins the legend of ANZAC. Us and Them is about what happens when this legend is just a thin veneer pa...

The hit TV show, Castaway, has found the location for its latest season. Dubbed Lincoln Island, it lies in a remote part of the Pacific far from plane routes and shipping lanes. The contestants are a mixture of the old and the young; the fit and the flabby; the noble and the obnoxious; and, of course, the beautiful and the average. Led by their host, the charismatic Trent Slade, they arrive on the island to find the pre-production crew missing and the set trashed. They are taken captive by...

March 1945. Three escaped POWs in a fishing boat on the Baltic Sea are attacked by a lone Luftwaffe fighter plane. The sole survivor, Tom Mueller, an Australian, is rescued by a British submarine and finally makes a "home run" after four long years in captivity.Tom's London debrief retells his amazing odyssey. Captured during ill-fated defence of Greece, a series of desperate escapes and heartbreaking recapture, follow prior to his last and most audacious escape.The US agency...

Ali Ahmad had brought his family to Australia to escape the horrors of the Iraq civil war. He'd worked hard to be a good citizen and establish a small business in order to pay his own way in his new homeland. What he didn't expect was to have his family kidnapped. What the police didn't expect was a bizarre ransom demand to be played out on national television. And what the television networks didn't expect were to be pawns in a twisted game of revenge.

The circus has come to town. Teenage friends Katie, Josh and Luke reckon they're too old for the circus but free tickets are free tickets and it is the school holidays. When Josh visits the glamourous Fortune Teller events take grim turn for the worse and it's up to Katie and Luke to rescue him. But first they'll have to evade a small army of murderous circus performers led by the insidious ringleader, Mysterio.

It was Probationary Constable Alex McMahon's first day on the job. "Speeding tickets and break and enters," said her instructors at the academy, hosing down the rookies' enthusiasm. "Nothing like TV or the movies," they said. Yet here she was, bomb threats, terrorists and her gun drawn, safety catch set to fire.

Old Arthur is a cleaner at Sydney's Central Railway Station. One of those invisible people who carries out the thankless jobs that make our lives that little bit easier. You know, keeping public spaces clean, replacing our toilet paper rolls and removing smudges from the restroom ceramic and mirrors. He keeps to himself and no one can remember the last time he had a sickie. In fact no one knows much about Arthur at all and that's just the way he likes it. But that's about to change when hi...