Australia War

The logistics support of the Small Ships Section was vital to success in the New Guinea Campaign of World War II. This book is the story of the ketch, Forbes Brothers, built in 1912 by Allan's great-great-grandfather, John Ernest Forbes, and two of his brothers. She was built on Lake Macquarie, New South Wales. Unlike the other ships and vessels in the Series, Forbes Brothers was primarily powered by sail. The ketch is included in the Series because thirty years later she served with the United States Army Small Ships Section in support of land operations in New Guinea against the Japanese....

Harold Cavill’s children continue their father’s work to try to prevent humanity from destroying itself in this timeline. Their sister Beatrice continues to live in a self-imposed exile on the fledgling colony on Mars while her oldest sister Judith finds love for the first time. The Cavill lunar installation at Shackleford Crater is soon joined by installations from other nations vying for their own footholds in space. America struggles at first through a disastrous progressive administration before Ronald Reagan is elected President in 1976 to lead a dramatic turnaround in the ...

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Private Joseph Caan, a young Jewish soldier stationed in Germany, seeks the truth about lost family members; in the 1960s a father focuses on his daughter’s wedding even as the Cuban Missile Crisis brings the world to the brink of disaster; in 2001, while planes fly into the Twin Towers, a maid working for US Embassy staff in London wonders if her birth on the day of the Kennedy assassination shaped her life.

It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged toward 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.

Berlin, 1943. As the Allied forces edge closer, the Third Reich tightens its grip on its people. For 18-year-old Susanna Göttmann, this means her adopted family including the man she loves, Leo, are at risk. Desperate to protect her loved ones any way she can, Susie accepts the help of an influential Nazi officer. But it comes at a terrible cost - she must abandon any hope of a future with Leo and enter the frightening world of the Nazi elite.

Bill was massive. He had power, intelligence, and unmatched courage. In performance and character he stood above all the other 200,000 Australian horses sent to the Middle East in the Great War. But as war horses go he had one serious problem. No one could ride him but one man - Major Michael Shanahan. Some even thought Bill took a sneering pleasure in watching would-be riders hit the dust. Bill the Bastard is the remarkable tale of a bond between a determined trooper and his stoic but cantankerous mount. They fought together.

Son of the renowned Sydney obstetrician, Dr William McBride raised the alarm on the anti-nausea drug thalidomide in the 1960s and was later struck off the medical register for falsifying research results in a bid to challenge the safety of another drug. David chose to study Law, firstly at Sydney University and then at Oxford. There he met some British army officers and decided that soldiering was his calling, going on to train at Sandhurst.

Over a decorated 34-year career, Commodore Scott served in 10 submarines, passed the most demanding military command course in the world and served as the Head of Profession of the Submarine Arm of the Royal Australian Navy. During that time his character was forged by the challenges of naval service, success and failure as a leader, catastrophic onboard disasters while dived, and life-threatening traumas. Along the way, he also endured personal battles with self-doubt, addiction, depression and anxiety.

1913. War drums throb across the world. Greed and malice stalk the island. Despite people’s sneers, one woman stands up for the downtrodden. From childhood, Pansy has been an outsider. Her oddness makes her the butt of ridicule. Even her own family struggle to accept her. So, wouldn’t it be prudent to keep her nose out of the affairs of the family next door? Especially in 1913, when the islanders are more tense than ever. The world is lurching towards war. Some businessmen will do anything—even kill—to get rich by exploiting a special indigenous plant. Political debate rages over ...

“You heard me. That old Dutchman has a gold mine on Sulawesi, what else do we need to know?” Clyde exclaimed. “Are you crazy? The Japanese control that island. We don’t have a ship, a crew or any money!” Neville responded. With those words Clyde and Neville, our Coast Watcher duo, several cards short of a full deck are off on another adventure behind enemy lines in the South Pacific. Cunning and devious, they are rarely deterred at having to work outside the law. Their ability to come into the possession of large sums of money quickly is only equaled by their ability to lose it. ...

As a National Public Radio reporter covering the last stand of the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern borderland, Sarah Chayes became deeply immersed in the attempt to rebuild a broken nation. With her NPR assignment finished in early 2002, she left reporting to help turn around the country's fortunes, accepting a job running a nonprofit founded by President Hamid Karzai's brother. With remarkable access to leading players in the postwar government, Chayes witnessed a tragic, perverse turn of events.

Berlin, 1934. Sofie Rhodes is the aristocratic wife of a scientist whose post-WWI fortunes change for the better when her husband, Jurgen, is recruited for Hitler's new rocket project. But too late they realise the Nazis' plans to weaponise Jurgen's technology as they begin to wage war against the rest of Europe. Alabama, 1949 Jurgen is one of hundreds of Nazi scientists offered pardons and taken to the US to work for the CIA's fledgling space programme. Sofie, now the mother of four, misses Germany terribly and struggles to fit in among the other NASA wives.

Evelyn Varley has always been ambitious and clever. As a girl, she earned a scholarship to a prestigious academy well above her parents’ means, gaining her a best friend from one of England’s wealthiest families. In 1939, with an Oxford degree in hand and war looming, Evelyn finds herself recruited into an elite MI5 counterintelligence unit. A secret society seeks an alliance with Germany and, posing as a Nazi sympathizer, Evelyn must build a case to expose their treachery. But as she is drawn deeper into duplicity, some of those close to her become embroiled in her investigation.

In mid-2017, whispers from Australia's most secretive and elite military unit reached Walkley Award-winning journalist Nick McKenzie. McKenzie and veteran reporter Chris Masters began an investigation that would not only reveal shocking information about Australia's most famous and revered SAS soldier but plunge the two reporters into the defamation trial of the century.

Under the fierce heat of the Australian outback, the laws of nature serve a rough justice. When a man vanishes deep in the Northern Territory, local police write it off. But his family suspect otherwise—and when the call for help goes out, Ben Hope and Jeff Decker are there to hear it. Ben’s instincts, honed by years of Special Forces missions, soon see the story told by a trail of bullet casings, rumours of a missing map and a lethal cocktail of greed, power and money.

With the introduction of Conscription in the 1960s, it was realised that Australia’s defence forces would now have access to a wider pool of talented men, other than those that normally volunteer for service. Major Jack Roberts was tasked by the defence department to form a small group from the National Servicemen to take on some unique tasks. He chose three young men that had shown signs of being able to work with anyone from different backgrounds or ethnic groups. These three men were a Christian, a Jew and a Moslem. After being whisked away from their regiment, as it sailed for Vietnam...

Severine Kassel is asked by the Louvre in 1963 to aid the British Museum with curating its antique jewellery, her speciality. Her London colleagues find her distant and mysterious, her cool beauty the topic of conversations around its quiet halls. No one could imagine that she is a desperately damaged woman, hiding her trauma behind her chic French image. It is only when some dramatic Byzantine pearls are loaned to the museum that Severine's poise is dashed and the tightly controlled life she's built around herself is shattered....

Undersea Warrior: a submarine designed to pursue and attack enemy submarines and surface ships using torpedoes. This will follow the careers of four daring British submarine captains who risked their lives to keep the rest of us safe, their exploits consigned to the shadows until now. Their experiences encompass the span of the Cold War, from voyages in WW2-era submarines under Arctic ice to nuclear-powered espionage missions in Soviet-dominated seas. This is the dramatic untold story of Britain’s most-secret service.

March 1945. A handful of very young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island's Indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most speak next to no Borneo languages and know little about Dayaks, other than that they were once headhunters who might kill them on arrival. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face.

South Australia, 1914 When war against Germany erupts on the other side of the earth, a huge wave of suspicion, prejudice and persecution floods the community. There’s even a harsh concentration camp built for men branded as enemy aliens. Here in Adelaide, five diverse people are made vulnerable by the war. Elsie, gifted and ambitious child pianist, with German ancestry. Oskar, famous sportsman and businessman, also with German origins. Wilfred, a caring Anglican parish priest, opposed to the war. Pansy, an outsider by her very nature, but a fighter for justice to others. Little Neddy, a ...