Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant's journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare. It is the original and the greatest outback horror story. Bundanyabba and its citizens will forever haunt its readers. This edition includes an introduction by Peter Temple and an afterword by David Stratton. Wake in Fright was made into a film in 1971, arguably the greatest film ever made in Australia. It starred Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, and Jack Thompson in his first screen role. Lost for many years, the restored film was re-released to acclaim in 2009. Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney in 1929. Wake in Fright was published in 1961 to high praise in New York and London, and launched Cook's writing career. Cook wrote twenty-one books in all, along with screenplays and scripts for radio and TV. Peter Temple is one of Australia's finest writers. His novel Truth won the 2010 Miles Franklin Award and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Temple has written nine novels and has been published in more than twenty countries. David Stratton is co-presenter of At the Movies on ABC television and film critic for the Australian. He has also served as a President of the International Critics Jury for the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, written three books and is currently lecturing in Film History at the University of Sydney. textclassics.com.au 'It might be fifty years since the novel appeared yet it retains its freshness, its narrative still compels, and its bleak vision still disquiets...Cook can make us feel the heat, see the endless horizon, hear the sad singing on a little train as it traverses the monotonous plain.' Peter Temple, from the Introduction 'Wake in Fright deserves its status as a modern classic. Cook's prose is masterful and the story is gripping from the first page to the last.' M. J. Hyland 'A classic novel which became a classic film. The Outback without the sentimental bulldust. Australia without the sugar coating.' Robert Drewe 'Wake in Fright is a classic of the ugly side of Menzies' Australia, its brutality, its drunkenness, its anxiety to crush all sensibility. All of this is harrowingly reacorded - the destruction of a young soul fresh to Australia - in Kenneth Cook's remarkable novel.' Thomas Keneally 'A true dark classic of Australian literature.' J. M. Coetzee '...a kind of outback Lord of the Flies...Written entirely from Grant's point of view, the prose is at first straightforward, the landscape and its people evoked simply and vividly. But later, as Grant descends into his own personal hell and finally to the depths of despair, the writing takes on the quality of a delirious dream. The concluding narrative twists will rock both Grant (and the reader) back on their heels.' Crime Time UK ‘A chilling outback horror and an Australian classic.’ Guardian, Top 10 tales from the frontier

The controller stood back. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Spin ’em!’ The man flipped the piece of wood and the coins spun up into the air above his head and dropped down on to the carpet. There was silence. Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant’s journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare. It is the original and the greatest outback horror story. Bundanyabba and its citizens will forever haunt its readers. Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney. Wake in Fright, which drew on his time as a journalist in Broken Hill, was first published in 1961 when Cook was thirty-two. It was published in England and America, translated into several languages, and a prescribed text in schools. Cook wrote twenty-one books in a variety of genres, and was well known in film circles as a scriptwriter and independent film-maker. He died in 1987 at the age of fifty-seven. ‘Wake in Fright deserves its status as a modern classic. Cook’s prose is masterful and the story is gripping from the first page to the last.’ M.J. Hyland ‘A classic novel which became a classic film. The Outback without the sentimental bulldust. Australia without the sugar coating.’ Robert Drewe ‘A true dark classic of Australian literature.’ J.M. Coetzee ‘Wake in Fright is a classic of the ugly side of Menzies’ Australia, its brutality, its drunkenness, its anxiety to crush all sensibility. All of this is harrowingly reacorded —the destruction of a young soul fresh to Australia—in Kenneth Cook’s remarkable novel.’ Thomas Keneally

It was quite silent in the scrub. No breeze stirred the leaves and no bird moved, except for the kite hawks wheeling silently, eternally, high in the hot air. She smelt her attacker before she saw him. A heavy stench hit her with such force that she started with shock. It was a smell she’d never encountered before. Not man, not animal, something like carrion, but alive. It seemed to envelop and suffocate her, then became tangible as two arms wrapped around her body and began tearing at her clothing. A young man driving from Sydney to Adelaide for work decides to take a short detour into the desert. He turns his hatchback on to a notoriously dangerous track that bisects uninhabited stone-covered flats. Out there, under the baking sun, people can die within hours. He’s not far along the road when a distraught young woman stumbles from the scrub and flags him down. A journalist from Sydney, she has just escaped the clutches of an inexplicable, terrifying creature. Now this desert-dwelling creature has her jeep. Her axe. And her scent... From the author of the classic novel Wake In Fright comes a chillingly brilliant short novel that’s part Wolf Creek and part Duel. Fear Is the Rider is a nail-biting chase into the outback, towards the devil lurking at its centre. Wake In Fright was made into an internationally acclaimed film. Fear Is the Rider is a previously unpublished manuscript from the 1980s that was recently rediscovered among Kenneth Cook’s papers. Kenneth Cook was born in Sydney. Wake In Fright, which drew on his time as a journalist in Broken Hill, was first published in 1961 when Cook was 32. It was published in England and America, translated into several languages, and was a prescribed text in schools. Cook wrote twenty-two books in a variety of genres, and was well known in film circles as a scriptwriter and independent film-maker. He died in 1987. ‘Fantastic, breath-taking, edge of the seat stuff.’ Col’s Criminal Library ‘This lost Ozploitation gem is pure horror adrenaline, as characters and reader alike are hunted by a relentless golem—the nightmare outback monster we've always feared.’ Chris Flynn, author of A Tiger in Eden and The Glass Kingdom ‘The moment to moment effect of reading Fear Is the Rider is one of gasping attentiveness to the urgent needs of the present...There is special, pulpy kind of genius to the kind of book that almost swipes ahead for us, like a concert pianist’s assistant.’ Australian ‘Another great retro thriller. Treat it like going to a movie, because it will only take you a couple of hours to power through it...It’s just pure adrenaline and survival.’ Herald Sun ‘A suspense packed ride until the final page.’ QANTAS Magazine ‘Possibly the scariest, most spine-chilling and nerve-wracking book I’ve read. Ever...It’s incredibly filmic—think Wolf Creek meets Mad Max—and so visceral I could feel my heart rising up in my throat as I turned the pages.’ Reading Matters ‘A schlocky, old-school thriller in the best possible way...A kind of literary Mad Max, a master class in Ozploitation, or simply as a short, sharp burst of literary adrenaline, Fear is the Rider is a hell of a lot of fun.’ Readings ‘[A] short but powerful novel, Cook takes the reader on an action-packed, tension-filled ride...Definitely a page-turner.’ BookMooch

Secret, strange, dark, impure and dissonant...Enter the haunted landscapes of folk horror, a world of ­pagan ­village conspiracies, witch finders, and teenagers awakening to evil; of dark fairy tales, backwoods cults and obsolete technologies. Beginning with the classics Night of the Demon, Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan's Claw, We Don't Go Back surveys the genre of screen folk horror from across the world. Travelling from Watership Down to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with every stop inbetween, We Don't Go Back is a thoughtful, funny and essential overview of folk horror in TV and cinema."A beautiful rumination on the dark films and television that shaped me and a generation of odd children, for good or ill, worth a year of your time, because you won't just read the book, you'll feel a burning desire to watch everything mentioned within." - Robin Ince"A comprehensive, accessible and often riotously funny tome weaving together folk horror in all its forms, from British television to the American backwoods, from Eastern European fairytales to the vengeful ghosts of East Asia. Ingham explores uncanny landscapes haunted by things buried, old cultures converging with the reluctance of contemporary reason, that very tension that gives his book its name. He attempts to both define folk horror and free it from definition, creating the ultimate guide to the genre's manifestations on film and offering a convincing argument as to why the genre resonates so compellingly with people today." - Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

The critically acclaimed, bestselling novel from Gayle Forman, author of Where She Went, Just One Day, and Just One Year. Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Chloe Moretz! In the blink of an eye everything changes. Seventeen ­year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall what happened afterwards, watching her own damaged body being taken from the wreck. Little by little she struggles to put together the pieces- to figure out what she has lost, what she has left, and the very difficult choice she must make. Heartwrenchingly beautiful, this will change the way you look at life, love, and family. Now a major motion picture starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Mia's story will stay with you for a long, long time.

In 1985 Jacqueline Kent was content with her life. She had a satisfying career as a freelance book editor, and was emerging as a writer. Living and working alone, she relished her independence. But then she met Kenneth Cook, author of the Australian classic Wake in Fright, and they fell in love. With bewildering speed Jacqueline found herself in alien territory: with a man almost twenty years older, whose life experience could not have been more different from her own. She had to come to terms with complicated finances and expectations, and to negotiate relationships with Ken’s children, four people almost her own age. But with this man of contradictions – funny and sad, headstrong and tender – she found real and sustaining companionship. Their life together was often joyful, sometimes enraging, always exciting – until one devastating evening. But, as Jacqueline discovered, even when a story is over that doesn’t mean it has come to an end.

Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever he the same...

In 1788 Watkin Tench stepped ashore at Botany Bay with the First Fleet. This curious young captain of the marines was an effortless storyteller. His account of the infant colony is the first classic of Australian literature.

'When men in police uniforms came to execute me on the roadside, beside dark fields, it was a definite sign that my new life was over.' A regular at the local pub, a mainstay of the footy team, Mac Faraday is a man with a past living the quiet life of a country blacksmith. But when his best friend Ned Lowey is found hanged, Mac - who has learned the hard way never to accept things at face value - isn't convinced he committed suicide and starts asking questions. Why did Ned keep press cuttings about the skeleton of a girl found in an old mine shaft? What was he doing at Kinross Hall, the local detention centre for juvenile girls? Who was the beaten girl found naked beside a lonely road? As Mac's search for answers pushes deeper into the past, it resurrects the terrifying spectre of what he calls his 'old life', forcing him to turn to long-discarded skills not only to discover why his best friend died, but also to save his own life.