When Afghan entrepreneur Abdul Wade first brought his camel trains to the outback, he was hailed as a hero. Horses couldn't access many remote settlements, especially those stricken by flood or drought, and camel trains rode to the rescue time and time again. But with success came fierce opposition fuelled by prejudice. The camel was not even classed as an animal under Australian law, and, in a climate of colonial misinformation, hyperbole and fear, camel drivers like Wade were shown almost as little respect. Yet all the while, for those in need, the ships of the desert continued to appear on the outback horizon. After his interest was piqued by a nineteenth-century photo of a camel train in a country town, Ryan Butta found himself on the trail of Australia's earliest Afghan camel drivers. Separating the bulldust from the bush poetry, he reveals the breadth and depth of white Australian protectionism and prejudice. Told with flair and authority, this gritty alternative history defies the standard horse-powered folklore to reveal the untold debt this country owes to the humble dromedary, its drivers and those who brought them here.

Return to Uluru explores the cold case that strikes at the heart of Australia’s white supremacy—the death of an Aboriginal man in 1934; the iconic life of a white, "outback" police officer; and the continent's most sacred and mysterious landmark. Inside Cardboard Box 39 at the South Australian Museum’s storage facility lies the forgotten skull of an Aboriginal man who died eighty-five years before. His misspelled name is etched on the crown, but the many bones in boxes around him remain unidentified. Who was Yokununna, and how did he die? His story reveals the layered, exploitative white Australian mindset that has long rendered Aboriginal reality all but invisible. When policeman Bill McKinnon’s Aboriginal prisoners escape in 1934, he’s determined to get them back. Tracking them across the so called "dead heart" of the country, he finds the men at Uluru, a sacred rock formation. What exactly happened there remained a mystery, even after a Commonwealth inquiry. But Mark McKenna’s research uncovers new evidence, getting closer to the truth, revealing glimpses of indigenous life, and demonstrating the importance of this case today. Using McKinnon’s private journal entries, McKenna paints a picture of the police officer's life to better understand how white Australians treat the center of the country and its inhabitants. Return to Uluru dives deeply into one cold case. But it also provides a searing indictment of the historical white supremacy still present in Australia—and has fascinating, illuminating parallels to the growing racial justice movements in the United States.

First published in Germany in 1929, The End and the Beginning is a lively personal memoir of a vanished world and of a rebellious, high-spirited young woman's struggle to achieve independence. Born in 1883 into a distinguished and wealthy aristocratic family of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hermynia Zur Muhlen spent much of her childhood travelling in Europe and North Africa with her diplomat father. After five years on her German husband's estate in czarist Russia she broke with both her family and her husband and set out on a precarious career as a professional writer committed to socialism. Besides translating many leading contemporary authors, notably Upton Sinclair, into German, she herself published an impressive number of politically engaged novels, detective stories, short stories, and children's fairy tales. Because of her outspoken opposition to National Socialism, she had to flee her native Austria in 1938 and seek refuge in England, where she died, virtually penniless, in 1951. This revised and corrected translation of Zur Muhlen's memoir - with extensive notes and an essay on the author by Lionel Gossman - will appeal especially to readers interested in women's history, the Central European aristocratic world that came to an end with the First World War, and the culture and politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Discover Lachlan Page's Magical Disinformation: a spy action-thriller with a satirical edge set amongst the Colombian peace process. Described by one reviewer as "Our Man in Havana meets A Clear and Present Danger." Oliver Jardine is a spy in Colombia, enamoured with local woman Veronica Velasco. As the Colombian government signs a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, Her Majesty's government decides a transfer is in order to focus on more pertinent theatres of operation. In a desperate attempt to remain in Colombia, Jardine begins to fabricate his intelligence reports. But the consequences soon take on a life of their own. In the era of 'fake news' in the land of magical realism, fiction can be just as dangerous as the truth.

In 1951 the Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston left grey, post-war London for Greece. Settling first on the tiny island of Kalymnos, then Hydra, their plan was to live simply and focus on their writing The result is Charmian Clift's best known and most loved books, Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus. Peel Me a Lotus, the companion volume to Mermaid Singing, relates their move to Hydra where they bought a house and grappled with the chaos of domestic life whilst becoming the center of an informal bohemian community of artists and writers. That group included Leonard Cohen, who became their lodger, and his girlfriend Marianne Ihlen Clift paints an evocative picture of the characters and sun-drenched rhythms of traditional life, long before backpackers and mass tourism descended.

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'Any of Frank Moorhouse's books are rewarding and stimulating. But his trilogy following a young Australian diplomat at the founding of the League of Nations is a masterpiece. In Edith Campbell Berry, his heroine, he created one of the enduring characters in literature. The trilogy is Grand Days, Dark Palace and Cold Light. All are must reads.' - Michael Williams, Qantas magazine On a train from Paris to Geneva, Edith Campbell Berry meets Major Ambrose Westwood in the dining car, makes his acquaintance over a lunch of six courses, and allows him to kiss her passionately.Their early intimacy binds them together once they reach Geneva and their posts at the newly created League of Nations. There, a heady idealism prevails over Edith and her young colleagues, and nothing seems beyond their grasp, certainly not world peace. The exuberance of the times carries over into Geneva nights: Edith is drawn into a dark and glamorous underworld where, coaxed by Ambrose, she becomes more and more sexually adventurous. Reading Grand Days is a rare experience: it is vivid and wise, full of shocks of recognition and revelation. The final effect of the book is intoxicating and unplaceably original.

A powerful, poetic and moving memoir of family, violence and estrangement, from a stunning new literary voice. After Michelle Tom's house was damaged by a deadly magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011, she and her young family suffered through another 10,000 aftershocks before finally relocating to the stability of Melbourne, Australia. But soon after arriving, Michelle received the news that her estranged sister was dying. Determined to reconnect before her sister died, Michelle flew home to visit, and memories of childhood flooded back. Told through the five stages of an earthquake via remembered fragments, Michelle Tom explores the similarities between seismic upheaval and her own family's tragedies: her sister's terminal illness, her brother's struggle with schizophrenia and ultimate suicide, the sudden death of her father, her own panic disorder and, through it all, one overarching battle – her lifelong struggle to form a healthy connection with her mother. A powerful, poetic and moving memoir of family, violence and estrangement, Ten Thousand Aftershocks weaves together a series of ever-widening and far-reaching emotional and seismic aftershocks, in a beautifully written and compelling account of a dark family drama. For readers of The Erratics and One Hundred Years of Dirt. 'Emotionally visceral ... both destabilising and alluring ... Tom's use of language is so deft.' The Sunday Age 'A compelling narrative' The Saturday Paper 'An intricately structured memoir weaving the Christchurch earthquakes with the lifelong effects of family trauma and mental illness, Ten Thousand Aftershocks is brave, eloquent and suspenseful.' Louisa Deasey, A Letter from Paris