The story of the second British penal settlement in Australia, where a notoriously brutal convict regime became the template for penal stations in other states. Mark Dunn explores relations between the white settlers and the local Aboriginal landholders, and uncovers a long forgotten massacre. Shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Award for Australian History 2021 In 1790, five convicts escaped Sydney by boat and were swept ashore near present-day Newcastle. They were taken in by the Worimi people, given Aboriginal names and started families. Thus began a long and at times dramatic series of encounters between Aboriginal people and convicts in the second penal settlement in Australia. The fertile valley of the Hunter River was the first area outside the Sydney basin explored by the British, and it became one of the largest penal settlements. Today manicured lawns and prosperous vineyards hide the struggle, violence and toil of the thousands of convicts who laid its foundations. The Convict Valley uncovers this rich colonial past, as well as the story of the original Aboriginal landholders. While there were friendships and alliances in the early years, in the later scramble for land in the 1820s - as the Valley was opened to free settlers - tensions rose and bloodshed ensued. With fascinating stories about convicts, white settlers and the Aboriginal inhabitants that have long been forgotten, The Convict Valley is a new Australian history classic. 'Deeply researched and beautifully written.' - Professor Grace Karskens 'Interweaving the Aboriginal, convict and mining pasts of the Hunter Valley, gifted storyteller Dunn reveals the missing and misunderstood complexities of these histories.' - Professor John Maynard 'In this groundbreaking book, Mark Dunn shows how the Hunter Valley became the heartland of convict Australia.' - Professor Lyndall Ryan

The World Heritage-listed Port Arthur penitentiary is one of Australia's most visited historical sites, attracting over 400,000 visitors each year. Designed to incarcerate 480 men, between 1856 and 1877 thousands of convicts passed through it. In 2016, archaeologists began one of the largest ever excavations of an Australian convict site. Recovering Convict Lives: Historical Archaeology of the Port Arthur Penitentiary makes their findings available to general readers for the first time. Extensively illustrated, it is a fascinating journey into the inner workings of the penal system and the day-to-day lives of Port Arthur convicts. Through the things they left behind - the sandstone base of a prison wall, a clay pipe discarded in a washroom, gambling tokens dropped between floorboards - this book tells their stories. Praise for Recovering Convict Lives 'In this richly illustrated volume readers will be taken on an archaeological tour of a lost world of work, leisure and punishment. A forensic reconstruction of one of Australia's most iconic buildings, Recovering Convict Lives peels away the layers of time to reveal the hidden history of everyday life in a penal station.' - Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, author of Closing Hell's Gates

In 1866 a gang from Indiana led by men named Reno and Sparks pulled off the first train robbery in history. Four years later in a copy-cat crime, the Central Pacific Railroad's Overland Express was robbed of over $41,000 in gold coin by a bunch of petty criminals. Strangely enough, the latter robbery took place near the Nevada cities of Reno and Sparks. It was the West's first train robbery and the first of the new transcontinental railroad. The robbers were quickly caught, tried, and imprisoned, thanks to the determination of a lawman whose dogged perseverance is mindful of Inspector Javert, Jean Valjean's pursuer in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. A year later the robbers instigated the largest prison escape in the country's history, as twenty-nine inmates breached the gates and scattered. Two men were murdered by rioting convicts. Several others, including Nevada's lieutenant governor, were seriously wounded in the battle at the state prison in Carson City. Six of the convicts headed south and along the way killed a young mail rider from the mining camp of Aurora, Nevada, which not long before had been the home of the young Samuel Clemens. The murder was so gruesome that it put the town on the warpath. The convicts holed up in a canyon in the Eastern Sierra near present day Mammoth Lakes, California, some one hundred fifty miles south of Carson City. Using Henry rifles stolen from the prison armory, they outgunned a posse out to take them dead or alive. Two more men were killed, including a popular merchant and Wells Fargo agent. An enraged citizenry from two states would ignore the law in wreaking swift and terrible retribution. The story is told in the context of its time: the construction of the Central Pacific over the Sierras, Reno's birth as a railroad town and its emergence as Nevada's then largest city, the violence of life in the mining camps, the tribulations of imprisoned men, and the preference for vigilantism over tiresome judicial procedures. In some chapters a modified historical fiction approach is used to give some immediacy to the lives-and anxieties-of the desperate men involved, two of whom were murderous psychopaths. The title of the book-"The Fatal Affair in Monte Diablo Canyon"-is taken from a September 30, 1871, article in the Inyo Independent, the newspaper of record in nearby Inyo County. The article describes the gun battle in the canyon and its aftermath. The peak, then called Monte Diablo, is now Mount Morrison, named in memory of the Wells Fargo agent killed in the battle. The lake in the canyon is now Convict Lake, a well known Sierra destination.

Revealing the forgotten stories of Aboriginal convicts, this book describes how they lived, labored, were punished, and died. Profiling several of the 130 Aboriginal convicts who were transported to and within the Australian penal colonies, this collection features the journeys of Aboriginal warriors Bulldog and Musquito, Maori warrior Hohepa Te Umuroa, and Khoisan soldier Booy Piet.

To the convicts arriving in Van Diemen's Land' it must have felt as though they'd been sent to the very ends of the earth. In Tasmania's Convicts Alison Alexander tells the history of the men and women transported to what became one of Britain's most notorious convict colonies. Following the lives of dozens of convicts and their families' she uncovers stories of success' failure' and everything in between. While some suffered harsh conditions' most served their time and were freed' becoming ordinary and peaceful citizens. Yet over the decades' a terrible stigma became associated with the convicts' and they and the whole colony went to extraordinary lengths to hide it. The majority of Tasmanians today have convict ancestry' whether they know it or not. While the public stigma of its convict past has given way to a contemporary fascination with colonial history' Alison Alexander debates whether the convict past lingers deep in the psyche of white Tasmania.

Alone. Near destitute. But brave and determined. Can Maddy beat the odds to create a new home in the Hunter Valley? An award-winning Australian historical debut, perfect for readers of Darry Fraser. ARRA Winner of Favourite Debut Romance Author of 2021 1831, New South Wales Reeling from her mother's death, Madeleine Barker-Trent arrives in the newly colonised Hunter River to find her father's promises are nothing more than a halcyon dream. A day later, after a dubious accident, she becomes the sole owner of a thousand acres of bushland, with only three convicts and handsome overseer Daniel Coulter for company. Determined to fulfil her family's aspirations, Maddy refuses to return to England and braves everything the beautiful but wild Australian country can throw at her - violence, danger, the forces of nature and loneliness. But when a scandalous secret and a new arrival threaten to destroy all she's worked for, her future looks bleak ... Can Maddy persevere or should she simply admit defeat? A captivating historical tale of one young woman's grit and determination to carve out her place on the riverbank. PRAISE: 'Richly detailed, inspiring and romantic - this engrossing story of a brave young woman overcoming insurmountable odds brings to life the early years of the Hunter Valley with clarity and authenticity.' - Tea Cooper, author of The Cartographer's Secret

TIME’S #1 FICTION TITLE OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 FINALIST for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE and the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD LONGLISTED for the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room earned tweets from Margaret Atwood—“gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled”—and from Stephen King—“The Mars Room is the real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny.” It’s 2003 and Romy Hall, named after a German actress, is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: her young son, Jackson, and the San Francisco of her youth. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, portrayed with great humor and precision. Stunning and unsentimental, The Mars Room is “wholly authentic…profound…luminous” (The Wall Street Journal), “one of those books that enrage you even as they break your heart” (The New York Times Book Review, cover review)—a spectacularly compelling, heart-stopping novel about a life gone off the rails in contemporary America. It is audacious and tragic, propulsive and yet beautifully refined and “affirms Rachel Kushner as one of our best novelists” (Entertainment Weekly).

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‘It’s a good story, Samuel. You’re a piece of living history.’ Oxford 1863: Young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight in the hope it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants nothing more than a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. What he receives is a sentence of seven years’ servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia. When Samuel boards the transport ship Belgravia, he is stripped of his clothing and even his name, and given regulations of when to rise, eat, clean and sleep. On arrival at Fremantle Prison, hard labour is added to the mix and he wonders if life can get any worse. The only solace he finds is a love of reading, which allows the likes of Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist to become his lifelong friends. Samuel is granted a ticket of leave in 1867 and full freedom in 1871, but what sort of life can a man forge for himself in the colony, with no skills, no money and no family? Will it be the beginning of the life he has always dreamed of, or do some sentences truly never end? A colourful recreation of the life and times of the last known convict to be sent to Australia, The Last Convict is a moving study of old age and loneliness, as one social outcast finds meaning in his impoverished life through the power of literature. Meticulously researched and brilliantly woven into an engaging fictional account, it is an unforgettable story by an award-winning writer and historian. 'A story of hardship and privation, alongside high adventure, a fresh start in the colonies, and the protagonist's enduring solace in discovering the delights of literature. A ripping yarn.' The Age

As Europeans moved into new lands in Queensland in the 19th century, violent encounters with local Aboriginals mostly followed. Drawing on extensive original research, Timothy Bottoms tells the story of the most violent frontier in Australian colonial history.