AustLit

'"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false."

'In TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semi-literate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.' (From the publisher's website.)

'Throwim Way Leg is unputdownable, a book of wonder and excitement, of struggle and sadness, a love letter to Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya.

'This book brims with marvellous stories. Tim Flannery meets skilled hunters and befriends a shaman. He climbs mountains never before scaled by Europeans, discovers new species and stumbles across the giant bones of extinct marsupials.

'And he writes movingly about the fate of indigenous people when their intricate cultures collide with mining companies and the high-tech world of the late twentieth century.

'‘In New Guinea Pidgin,’ Tim Flannery explains, ‘throwim way leg means to go on a journey. It describes the action of thrusting out your leg to take the first step of what can be a long march…’

'With these words he invites us to share in his breathtaking adventures in the jungles of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya. You will never think about the bird-shaped island to our north in the same way again.'