Ned Kelly - Australia's beloved national icon - was once just a bushranger who had to be punished for his crimes. In 1880, everyone wanted him dead. There are many stories that form the Kelly myth. But the side of the story rarely told is what really happened in the 137 days between Ned's last stand at Glenrowan and the day the hangman's noose was placed around his neck. Who was with him in his last hours, and why did he have so many powerful enemies? Ned Kelly's Last Days exposes the blatant cover-ups, the corruption and the rampant press baying for blood that were ultimately Ned Kelly's deat... View More...
On 8th April 1811, the ship Friends sailed from England carrying 101 female convicts bound for the penal colony that was New South Wales. The crimes of the women and girls on board ranged from pickpocketing to murder, but most were convicted of theft. Susannah Noon, not yet in her teens, tried to steal four pairs of cotton stockings from a shop in Colchester. It earned her a sentence of transportation for seven years' 'beyond the seas'. It was a sentence that reverberated throughout her lifetime; she never returned to England. What drove most of these women, young and old, to crime was what ... View More...
The astonishing life of Ned Kelly's mother While we know much about the iconic outlaw Ned Kelly, his mother Ellen Kelly has been largely overlooked by Australian writers and historians - until now, with this vivid and compelling portrait by Grantlee Kieza, one of Australia's most popular biographers.When Ned Kelly's mother, Ellen, arrived in Melbourne in 1841 aged nine, British convict ships were still dumping their unhappy cargo in what was then known as the colony of New South Wales. By the time she died aged ninety-one in 1923, having outlived seven of her twelve children, motor cars plied ... View More...
'the best Kelly biography by a country mile' The Australian A bestseller since it was first published, NED KELLY: A SHORT LIFE is acknowledged as being the definitive biography. Ian Jones combines years of research into all the records of the era and exhaustive interviews with living descendants of those involved, to present a vivid and gripping account of one of Australia's most iconic figures. About the Author: Ian Jones is Australia's foremost Ned Kelly historian. A former TV and film producer, he was a producer of the film 'The Lighthorsemen' (he also wrote the script) and also created th... View More...
Nemarluk, one of the most feared Aboriginal renegades in the north of Australia, had vowed to rid his land of all intruders. This is the story of the last three years of his life, and his extraordinary battle with the tracker, Bul-Bul, brought in by the Northern Territory police in a final desperate attempt to put an end to Nemarluk's fight. Ion L. Idriess had already brought Lasseter and Flynn to the public's attention with his action-packed stories. He had first-hand knowledge of the courage of Nemarluk and wanted to immortalise the man he called the King of the Wilds. View More...
Through the lives of three different women - grandmother, mother and daughter - this book tells the story of 20th-century China. At times scarcely credible in the details it reveals of the suffering of millions of ordinary Chinese people, it is an unforgettable record of tyranny, hope and ultimate survival under conditions of extreme harshness. In 1924, at the age of 15, the author's grandmother became the concubine of a powerful warlord, whom she was seldom to see during the ten years of their "marriage". Her daughter, born in 1931, experienced the horrors of Japanese occupation in Manchuria ... View More...
The story of Ned Kelly is also the untold story of Michael Kennedy, the police sergeant slain and robbed by the outlaw 140 years ago. Both Kennedy and Kelly were Irish immigrants struggling to make their way in the new colonies of Australia - Kennedy was committed to defending the law, while Kelly was hell-bent on breaking it. When their paths crossed one fateful day at Stringybark Creek, it triggered the end for one and the beginning of an incredible myth about the other. Author Leo Kennedy is the great grandson of Sergeant Michael Kennedy. He was raised in the shadow of his great grandfather... View More...
For much of the World War II conflict, Japan had been a safe haven for its citizens, far, far away from Germany's relentless advance in Europe and the daily horrors of such events as the London blitz, concentration camps and the fall of France. But Alex Faure always felt that one day the war would come with a vengeance to the Land of the Rising Sun, although even he was astonished by the ferocity with which the Allied forces exacted their retribution on the place he's always called home. Up until then, life had been good for Alex in Japan. The son of a French father and White Russian mother, h... View More...
Translated by Alan Leslie Cockerill. Vasily Sukhomlinsky's My Heart I Give to Children is an educational classic that has sold millions of copies in 30 languages. It describes Sukhomlinsky's ground-breaking work with thirty-one students in rural Ukraine, during an experimental preschool year and the subsequent four years of their primary schooling. Sukhomlinsky wrote over thirty books, all based on his personal experience as a teacher and school principal at Pavlysh Secondary School in rural Ukraine during the 1950s and 1960s. His school became famous in educational circles and hosted tho... View More...
The Life and Times of Baron Nikolai Nicolaevich Miklouho-Maclay. From an evocative tale of a feisty science-driven man who lived among the indigenous people of New Guinea, to his suffering from beriberi and malaria, sending him to Australia and a fanfare from the scientific community, Yvonne Webb presents hismultiple passions, achievements and disappointments. A biological research station was built for him in Sydney. A German colleague doublecrossed him. He was instrumental in the British, German and Australian presence in New Guinea. He married aNSW Premier's daughter. Archival material shed... View More...