Australia War

Submariners are a special breed. Not for them a life on the ocean wave, the fresh air and sunshine of other naval sailors. With stealth and daring they go deep and dark, alone and unseen, in often dangerous waters. They sometimes call themselves the Silent Service, with good reason. Submarines and the sailors who serve in them have been and remain the tip of the spear of Australia's defences. For the first time, this is their unique story.

Morocco, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Frenchwoman Marie-Madeleine is not the kind of woman who goes through life sitting down, something her new husband can attest.

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 ...

Mark Wales thought his life would end in a cornfield in Afghanistan. Mark and his SAS troops emerged from that scorched battlefield 12 hours later, his mentor gunned down, his dream career now a nightmare. Over four deployments of intense warfighting, Mark watched the line between right and wrong become blurred. When he left the SAS he was adrift, crippled by guilt. On a mission to rebuild himself, Mark turned his life around. He fought his way into the gates of a US Ivy League business school and into the boardrooms of top-tier international corporations.

2016 Fresh from her mother's funeral, Mari arrives on Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts to study under the enigmatic painter Elizabeth Devereux. But she soon realises that her relationship to the island runs deeper than she ever thought possible. 1942 It's World War II, and Smith sisters Briar and Cadence are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together as the US army arrives on their island. In an attempt for normalcy, the sisters start a book club that quickly grows in numbers and becomes a lifeline for the women who remain on the island.

In 1915, as World War 1 rages in Europe and the numbers of dead and injured continue to grow, Australian nurse, Sister Cora Barker, leaves her home in Australia for England, determined to use her skills for King and country. When she arrives at Harefield House - donated to the Australian Army by its expatriate Australian owners - she helps transform it into a hospital that is also a little piece of home for recuperating Australian soldiers.

The Second World War is over, with the world being far different than Harold Cavill had remembered in the history of his former life in the future as James Stevenson. But his days are growing short. So Harold's children must now take up the mantle of quietly guiding the world away from a nuclear Armageddon and towards the stars. But the world remains far from a peaceful place, even as the Cavill's refocus their efforts into putting mankind into space while keeping the West strong against a variety of threats.

Dr Dan Pronk served on over 100 combat missions in Afghanistan as a frontline special forces combat doctor, where the casualties he treated were his fellow SAS soldiers and commandos, local civilians and even the enemy. The thrill of adventure and the challenges of battlefield medicine brought out the very best in Dan; he discovered a sense of purpose in pushing his medical skills and courage to the limits. But there was a cost. In this frank memoir, Dan describes the highs and lows of his military-medical career, and the very real toll they took on his mental health and family life.

Havoc-06 is the call sign of former Australian Combat Controller Troy Knight. As a Royal Australian Air Force Airfield Defence Guard, Troy had not found the military adventure he sought: combat operations. His thirst for overseas deployment saw him privately contract his services in Iraq and South East Asia, but when he got whiff that the Australian Defence Force was raising a new defence capability, he couldn’t help but want to be part of it.

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.

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.

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 1977, while she was still in her twenties, Robyn Davidson set off with a dog and four camels to cross 1,700 miles of Australian desert to the sea. The undertaking would make her world-famous. What sets a young woman off on a path like this – thrilling, but often dangerous and lonely? What kept her walking, and what had she left behind her that meant that she could not look back? In Unfinished Woman, Davidson embarks on another journey into uncharted territory: the past.

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....

A little known story of two Australian battalions abandoned in Java during World War II and the heroes who kept them alive in the worst of Japan's prisoner of war camps. They were thrown into a hopeless fight against an overwhelming enemy. Later, hundreds died as prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and in the freezing coal mines of Taiwan and Japan. Through it all, wrote Weary Dunlop, they showed 'fortitude beyond anything I could have believed possible'.

From the author of bestselling Sisters in Captivity, seven remarkable stories of men who served from WWI to Korea–their wartime exploits and achievements through aviation.

In March 1945 Reg Cleworth, a navigator on PBY Catalina seaplanes flying out of Darwin, went missing in action. No details were ever given about the incident that took his life, nor the reason his plane went down. For Reg’s younger brother, Robert, the news came as a prophecy fulfilled. The last time they saw each other, Reg confided in Robert, ‘I don’t think I’m coming back’.

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.

From his early life as an up-and coming AFL player to his tours of duty in Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan and his final battle in the dusty Ghawcha village in the Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan - the powerful biography of Cameron Baird, VC, MG, one of Australia's most decorated modern soldiers.

“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. ...