Winner: Best Fiction the Ned Kelly Awards 2011 In 1947, two years after witnessing the death of a young Jewish woman in Poland, Charlie Berlin has rejoined the Police force a different man. Sent to investigate a spate of robberies in rural Victoria, he soon discovers that World War II has changed even the most ordinary of places and people. An ex-bomber pilot and former POW, Berlin is struggling to fit back in: grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder, the ghosts of his dead crew and his futile attempts to numb the pain. When Berlin travels to Albury-Wodonga to track down the gang behind the robberies, he suspects he's a problem cop being set up to fail. Taking a room at the Diggers Rest Hotel in Wodonga, he sets about solving a case that no one else can – with the help of feisty, ambitious journalist Rebecca Green and rookie constable Rob Roberts, the only cop in town he can trust. Then the decapitated body of a young girl turns up in a back alley, and Berlin's investigations lead him even further through layers of small-town fears, secrets and despair. The first Charlie Berlin mystery takes us into a world of secret alliances and loyalties – and a society dealing with the effects of a war that changed men forever.

A motley team of art archaeologists sent to excavate a newly discovered castle ruin in England uncovers a legend much older and soul-shredding than anything they could ever have conceived.

The lustre which drew mankind to gold in ancient times has made it the most prized commodity throughout time. Wars have been fought over it, and civilisations have been subjugated and enslaved in the rush to control its sources. In places like Australia, though, the mere possibility of its existence was feared while the country remained a penal colony. Once found though the rush could not be contained. Gold financed great building, paved roads and made Melbourne the most exciting and expensive city in the world for a time. It was stockpiled in banks, and the currencies of nations were valued against it until the twentieth century wars and the Great Depression brought an end to its use as a standard. Its importance as a measure of individual prestige has continues unabated driving prospectors and miners to search for new deposits and to find better means of extracting it from old mines. This book is part of Exisle Publishing's Little Red Books series. Every title in the Little Red Books series provides an overview of key events, people or places in Australian history. They cover the essentials, bringing the reader up to speed on the most important, fascinating or intriguing facts. Appealing to everyone from students to pensioners who've always wanted to "know a bit about that", they're an essential part of every Australian bookshelf.

The social history of New Zealand's gold rushes, as used by Eleanor Catton in her research for The Luminaries. A thorough and carefully researched history of the gold rushes in New Zealand. Based on sound scholarship and aimed at the general reader it's accessibly written in a clear, clean and lively style. The scope is the social history of the goldfields of colonial New Zealand, from the 1850s to the 1870s. The book opens with a survey of worldwide rushes in the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, when for the first time in history a great wheeling movement of gold diggers began to revolve from continent to continent. The main body of the book looks at all the rushes, large and small, that took place in the colony: Coromandel, Golden Bay, Otago, Marlborough, the West Coast and Thames. The early chapters of the main body survey rushes chronologically; the later chapters look at rushes thematically. 'I owe a debt of gratitude to . . . Stevan Eldred-Grigg's history of the New Zealand gold rushes Diggers, hatters & whores.' Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

A journal for British and American youths.

Biographical account of the Mills family beginning in the English Midlands, and tracing their immigration to the small mining township of Mount Britton in Queensland in 1865. Their son John Henry became an accomplished pioneer photographer. Author, who is grandson of Henry, describes life on a goldfield and explores themes of mateship, courage in adversity, faith in God and love of family. Includes photos, family trees, measurement conversion chart, bibliography and index. Author is an accomplished historical researcher having written other family histories.