Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Audiobooks Narrated by Steve Shanahan
Browse audiobooks narrated by Steve Shanahan, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
Australia's greatest escape stories from two world wars
Australia's Greatest Escapes is a collection of stories about the most hazardous aspect of the prisoner of war experience - escape. Here is all the adventure, suspense and courage of ordinary Australians who defied their captors; men who tunnelled to freedom, crawled through stinking drains, or clawed a passage beneath barbed wire in a desperate attempt to flee captivity.
They were willing to risk the odds and even death in the loneliest war of all - the fight to be free. Each possessed in spades the noble qualities of boldness, resourcefulness, cunning, determination and mateship we have come to admire about our Australian service men and women under adversity.
Featuring stories of Australian POWs from all theatres of war, including one who fled a German work camp during World War I, another involved in a mass tunnel escape from a notorious Italian camp, and an airman who brazenly attempted to steal a German fighter and fly it back to England. We also re-live the tragic saga of the Sandakan death marches in which six Australian escapers became the only survivors from 2000 POWs, and follow the perilous journeys to freedom undertaken by Australian infantrymen following the appalling massacre of their fellow soldiers
on the Japanese-held island of Ambon.
Hirsch is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now hated and despised. Exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. Threats. Pistol cartridge in the mailbox.
So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he's found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his 'backup' is about to put a bullet in him.
He's wrong on both counts. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.
'One of ¬Australia's best-written crime fictions to date.' Australian
'Bitter Wash Road is superb.' Weekend Australian
'Peter Temple and Garry Disher will be identified as the crime writers who redefined Australian crime fiction in terms of its form, content and style...'Disher's eye for detail is acute and his poetic analogies precise...Bitter Wash Road continues the work of re-imagining the crime genre in a very Australian way, and does it beautifully.' Age/Sydney Morning Herald
'Disher is definitely not to be missed.' Globe & Mail
'Smooth, assured mastery.' New York Times Book Review
'Exceptional crime fiction.' Courier-Mail
'Not a word is wasted: here the ancient, bare, distinctive landscape of the hardscrabble country bordering Goyder's Line is conveyed with admirably atmospheric economy.' Adelaide Advertiser
'A top-class writer.' The Times
'Disher turns out to be a superb chronicler of macho cop culture.' Sunday Times
'An absolute corker of a crime novel and puts him up there with the likes of Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and John Harvey...This is a superbly well-plotted thriller, beautifully written-especially the descriptions of the harsh outback-and with an intriguing hero, an honest cop faced with dishonesty at every turn.' Shotsmag
'Fast-paced, funny, and believable.'Bookmunch
Hirsh was a promising metropolitan officer - until he blew the whistle on a case of police corruption. Now he's been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. Called a dog by his own cop brothers. So when he's sent to investigate gunfire up isolated Bitter Wash Road he suspects his 'back-up' might be the one to put a bullet in him. He's wrong. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister.
* WINNER OF THE NED KELLY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD *
SMALL CRIMES CAN HAVE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES
Winter in Tiverton, and Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women's underwear, and Hirsch knows how that kind of crime can escalate. Then two calls come in: a child abandoned in a caravan, filthy and starving. And a man on the rampage at the primary school.
Hirsch knows how things like that can escalate, too. An absent father who isn't where he's supposed to be; another who flees to the back country armed with a rifle. Families under pressure can break. But it's always a surprise when the killing starts.
The harrowing story of the Allied airmen who experienced the true horrors of Nazism firsthand.
It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged towards Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city's infamous Fresnes Prison, they were about to face evacuation into the blackest, bloody heart of Germany and experience the most acute evil of the war. Amid great secrecy, those 168 airmen – including several from Australia and New Zealand – were transported on a filthy, overcrowded nightmare train journey which ended at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, accompanied by orders for their execution. At Buchenwald they witnessed extreme depravity that would haunt them to the end of their days. Yet, on returning home, they were confronted by decades of denials from their own governments that they had ever been held in one of Hitler's most vile concentration camps.
In conducting his original deep research for this book – now completely expanded and updated – Colin Burgess personally interviewed or corresponded with dozens of the surviving airmen from a number of nations, including their valorous leader, New Zealand Squadron Leader Phil Lamason. Destination Buchenwald tells a compelling story of extraordinary bravery, comradeship and endurance, when a group of otherwise ordinary servicemen were thrust into an unimaginable Nazi hell.
'This was the first book to provide an insight into our experiences as a group of captured allied airmen, betrayed to the Gestapo, tortured and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp. I consider it to be one of the best interpretations of the events as it reflects the voices of the survivors and their challenges to stay alive in such dehumanising circumstances.' Sqn Ldr Stanley Booker, RAF (Rtd.), MBE, Légion D'Honneur: Last surviving member of the Buchenwald airmen
A city lawyer and an Aboriginal boy become targets in a high-stakes conspiracy.
Award-winning narrator Steve Shanahan (Jane Harper's Bestsellers The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man and more) delivers a riveting performance, bringing the Australian outback and its characters to life in a heart-stopping thriller loaded with action and shocking twists.
Tom McLaren is the go-to negotiator for a corporate law firm, and is accustomed to success and all its trappings. His skills are put to the test when he and his colleagues head to the outback, hoping to persuade Aboriginal Elders to give up their land to a powerful mining company. The land is worth billions, but the Elders won’t budge, and Tom faces the rare prospect of failure. Yet there are hidden forces at play that will stop at nothing to make sure a deal is done, even if that means taking the life of an Aboriginal boy. When Tom and his colleagues discover the shocking plot, they also become targets, and the result is murder. In his frantic hunt for answers, Tom realizes his most dangerous enemy may be closer than he feared. With relentless killers closing in fast, Tom must uncover the truth…before it’s too late!
Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He's still new in town but the community work-welfare checks and working bees-is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a ute and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch's life has been peaceful. Until he's called to a strange, vicious incident in Kitchener Street. And Sydney police ask him to look in on a family living outside town on a forgotten back road... Suddenly, it doesn't look like a season of goodwill at all.
'Disher is the gold standard for rural noir' CHRIS HAMMER
"An utterly compelling mystery with rare heart and humanity. If you enjoyed Jane Harper's The Lost Man, this novel is for you.' DERVLA McTIERNAN
"A scorchingly good novel" MICHAEL ROBOTHAM
'A scorchingly good novel' MICHAEL ROBOTHAM
'Disher is the gold standard for rural noir' CHRIS HAMMER
AN ACT OF INEXPLICABLE CRUELTY. A FAMILY DESTROYED.
Constable Paul Hirschhausen runs a one-cop station in the dry farming country south of the Flinders Ranges. He's still new in town but his community work - welfare checks and a light touch - is starting to pay off. Now Christmas is here and, apart from a grass fire, two boys stealing a vehicle, and Brenda Flann entering the front bar of the pub without exiting her car, Hirsch's life has been peaceful.
Until he's called to an incident on Kitchener Street, a strange and vicious attack that sickens the community. And when the Sydney police ask him to look in on a family living on a forgotten back road, it doesn't look like a season of goodwill at all...
'In this brilliant novel, Disher takes his readers on a harrowing journey' JOCK SERONG
'There has been a lot of fuss about Australian rural noir in recent years, but few, if any, do it better than Disher' Canberra Weekly
'An utterly compelling mystery with rare heart and humanity' DERVLA MCTIERNAN
'Peter Temple and Garry Disher will be identified as the crime writers who redefined Australian crime fiction' Sydney Morning Herald
Garry Disher has published fifty titles across multiple genres, and is best known as Australia's King of Crime. He has won the Deutsche Krimi Preis three times, the Ned Kelly Award twice, and his novel The Sunken Road was nominated for the Booker. In 2018 he received the Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.
Chris Flood - a married father of two with plummeting self-esteem and questionable guitar skills - suddenly finds himself in the depths of polyamory after years of a near-sexless marriage. His wife, Sarah - a lover of the arts, avid quoter of Rumi, and always oozing confidence - wants to rediscover her sexuality after years of deadening domesticity.
Their new life of polyamory features late nights, love affairs and rotating childcare duties. While Sarah enjoys flings with handsome men, Chris, much to his astonishment, falls for a polydactylous actor and musician, Biddy.
Then there's Zac Batista. When Chris and Sarah welcome the Uruguayan child prodigy and successful twenty-two-year-old into their lives they gratefully hand over school pick-up and babysitting duties. But as tensions grow between family and lovers, Chris begins to wonder if it's just jealousy, or something more sinister brewing...
A searing and utterly engrossing debut, Poly is a raw, hilarious, and moving portrait of contemporary relationships in all their diversity, and an intimate exploration of the fragility of love and identity.
Japanese Major General Horii TomitarO, commanding the South Seas Force, had the Australians on the back foot. Australia was holding the last defendable ridge in the Owen Stanley ranges, Imita Ridge. Horii to his distress was then given orders from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo that he was to fall back across the mountains to the Japanese beachheads at Gona, Sanananda, and Buna, leaving a force between Templeton's Crossing and Eora Creek to stop any Australian advance through the mountains. The Japanese, unknown to the Australians evacuated Ioribaiwa Ridge just before they launched their attacks and to their amazement on storming the heights, the Australians encountered no resistance – the Japanese had gone.
This, however, did not mean the fighting on the Kokoda Track was over, far from it. Three more desperate actions would be fought by the Australians and Japanese, before the decisive battles for the Japanese beachheads could be decided – the battles for Templeton's Crossing, Eora Creek, and finally the Oivi-Gorari positions on the northern lowland plains. Just 15-kilometres east lay the Kumusi River, the last geographical barrier before reaching the strongly fortified Japanese beachheads themselves.
Powerfully written by Australia's leading military historian, Saving Port Moresby commemorates the 80th Anniversary of the Battles in New Guinea.
Japanese Major General Horii TomitarO, commanding the South Seas Force, was after taking Kokoda Plateau in late July tasked with entering the Owen Stanley Range to capture Port Morseby.
After the battles for Deniki and Isurava, his troops were pushing south through the mountains. The Australians under Brigadier Arnold Potts, however, were not in rout, but were involved in a determined fighting withdraw. After fighting a delaying action at Templeton's Crossing, the Australians took up a position along Mission Ridge, just south of Efogi Village.
Horii and his battalions attacked and after two days of bloody hand-to-hand fighting, the Australians were forced to again withdraw. To the veterans who fought here the battle would become known as ‘Butcher's Corner'. After several further delaying actions, Potts and his men took up a position on Ioribaiwa Ridge, just 50-kilometres north of Port Moresby.
His brigade by now numbered fewer than 300 men. Here they were reinforced with the men of the 25th Brigade. Horii decided that he would establish himself of Ioribaiwa Ridge as his base for operations against the township. After a week of fighting the Japanese cut through the centre right flank of the Australian 25th Brigade, forcing the Australians to fall back to Imita Ridge, the last defensible ridge in the Owen Stanleys immediately behind lay Port Moresby.
