AustLit

'He escaped from Singapore's Changi prisoner of war camp to become one of Australia's great World War II guerrilla fighters.

''The way I look at it is this...When you're behind the line and get yourself into trouble, you've got to get your bloody self out irrespective of anybody else. That's why I like it.'
 
'Scottish-born but a Queenslander to the bone, Jock McLaren was a true Australian hero. As a prisoner he escaped twice, first from Changi and later from the infamous Sandakan POW camp in Borneo. After paddling a dugout canoe across open sea, he fought for two years with American-led Filipino guerrillas, his exploits so audacious the Japanese put a price on his head.

'At the helm of his 26-foot whaleboat, the Bastard, McLaren sailed brazenly into enemy-held harbours, wreaking havoc with his mortar and machine guns before heading back out to sea. In early 1945 he joined Australia's secretive Z Special Unit, parachuting into Borneo to carry out reconnaissance and organise anti-Japanese resistance ahead of Allied landings. He cheated death on numerous occasions and saved his own life by removing his appendix without anaesthetic, using 'two large dessert spoons' and a razor blade.

'Drawing on Allied and Japanese wartime documents, Bastard Behind the Lines brings the story of a courageous digger vividly to life and throws light on a rarely explored aspect of Australia's Pacific war.' (Publication summary)

'Peter Cosgrove’s first volume book of memoirs, My Story, was published in 2006 and sold about 70,000 copies. The book took him to the end of his career in the army and his soft landing in the Qantas boardroom, the first of many plum appointments.'  (Introduction)

'Arnold Zable opens his new book, The Watermill, with a Chinese proverb: “The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory.” Chinese proverbs are usually read as profound and timeless truths, but this seems an odd one for the Melbourne writer to have chosen.' (Introduction)

'Pine Gap is a top secret American spy base on Australian soil, but how much do we really know about it?

'At the height of the Cold War the chief of one of Australia's spy agencies joined three CIA men at a remote site in Central Australia to toast the success of a top secret project known in US intelligence circles as RAINFALL.

'The CIA listening station at Pine Gap was officially called the Joint Defence Space Research Facility, but it had nothing to do with research and was joint in name only: Australians were hired as cooks and janitors but the first spies were all American.

'The job of the satellites controlled from Pine Gap was to eavesdrop on Soviet missile tests. While government ministers denied that Australia was a nuclear target, bureaucrats in Canberra secretly planned for Armageddon in the suburbs of Alice Springs. No longer just a listening station, Pine Gap has metamorphosed into a key weapon in the Pentagon's war on terror, with Australians in frontline roles.

'Drawing on declassified documents in Australian and US archives, Tom Gilling's explosive new book tells, for the first time, the uncensored story of Australia's most secret place.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'The most celebrated World War I memoirs tend to have been written by junior infantry officers. They include Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That, Siegfried Sassoon’s fictionalised Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Edmund Blunden’s superb Undertones of War.' (Introduction)

'A little known story of two Australian battalions abandoned in Java during World War II and the heroes who kept them alive in the worst of Japan's prisoner of war camps.

'They were thrown into a hopeless fight against an overwhelming enemy. Later, hundreds died as prisoners of war on the Thai-Burma Railway and in the freezing coal mines of Taiwan and Japan. Through it all, wrote Weary Dunlop, they showed 'fortitude beyond anything I could have believed possible'.

'Until now, the story of the 2000 diggers marooned on Java in February 1942 has been a footnote to the fall of Singapore and the bloody campaign in New Guinea. Led by an Adelaide lawyer, Brigadier Arthur Blackburn VC, and fighting with scrounged weapons, two Australian battalions - plus an assortment of cooks, laundrymen and deserters from Singapore - held up the might of the Imperial Japanese Army until ordered by their Dutch allies to surrender.

'Drawing on personal diaries, official records and interviews with two of the last living survivors, this book tells the extraordinary story of the 'lads from Java', who laid down their weapons, but refused to give in.'

(Source: publisher's blurb)

'The assassination of Donald Mackay was meant to solve a problem for the mafia. Instead it roused the law-abiding citizens of Griffith to fight against the powerful criminal elements who had made their town synonymous with drugs and murder. Drawing on the personal diaries and memories of Terry Jones—who, as the editor of the local newspaper, knew everyone and heard everything—The Griffith Wars reveals startling new evidence about one of Australia's most notorious unsolved murders. It also powerfully recounts the struggle for the soul of a country town still battling to shake off its criminal past.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Near the end of his rollicking account of Australia’s most notorious outlaw family, Grantlee Kieza zooms in on Ned Kelly’s last words:

'The reporters are all too far away to hear with any certainty what Ned says. One thinks it is “Ah well, I suppose it has come to this”, while another thinks that he has stopped in mid-sentence and simply said, ‘‘Ah well, I suppose …” As the seven stunned journalists … quiz each other in whispers about what Ned might have said with his last desperate breath, [Melbourne Herald reporter Jim] Middleton tells himself he has a great quote. He jots down three words: “Such is life”.' (Introduction)

'A born storyteller, Troy Cassar-Daley has at last turned his talent to sharing his own inspiring life.

''Troy's achievements are many, and perhaps the finest may be his ability to make us listen to his heart.' Joy McKean

'For the first time, Troy talks about his early life - how his parent's divorce changed things for him, about missing his Dad and growing up in Grafton surrounded by the warmth and love of his mother, Irene, his Nan and Pop and his extended Indigenous family.

'A larrikin at heart, Troy includes all the highs and lows on his path to stardom: the thrill of performing on stage at the Tamworth Music Festival with Jimmy Little when he was just 15; the excitement of heading off on tour with Brian Young and then discovering just how lonely life on the road could be; his first record deal; playing with the greats - Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Slim Dusty; his first album Beyond the Dancing, which blended his indigenous heritage with his rural background; meeting the woman who would steal his heart; recording in Nashville; and, finally, releasing True Believer, the album that really launched his career.

'The multiple Golden Guitar, APRA, ARIA and Deadlys winner also lets us in on some of the life lessons he learned the hard way, lessons that kept this prodigiously talented Aussie on the straight and narrow (most of the time).

Things I Carry Around, is the warm, genuine, and inspiring story of a young indigenous Australian who had a dream and turned that dream into reality.

''Troy's a true gentleman, warm and genuine, always a pleasure to be around. He sings straight from his heart and straight from the heart of his country.' Paul Kelly' (Publication summary)

'The powerful true story of the first police officer to lift the lid on police corruption in Queensland and what then happened to him.

''Wherever there is power and money, there is always the risk of corruption. But everyone has a choice: to become involved or to take a stand against it.'

'Colin Dillon is an extraordinary man. He was the first Indigenous policeman in Australia. But that is actually a very small part of his story.

'He was also the first serving police officer to voluntarily appear before the Fitzgerald Commission of Inquiry in 1987 and give first-hand evidence of police corruption. He did this at a time when the Fitzgerald Inquiry was beginning and struggling for traction. His evidence at the Inquiry was instrumental in eventually sending some police, including Police Commissioner Terry Lewis, and politicians to prison.

'Revealing, powerful and uncompromising, this is the story of Colin Dillon's nearly 40 years in a police force rotten to the core. It describes the extraordinary range of criminal activities - drugs, gaming, SP bookmaking, brothels, vehicle theft - that were allowed to operate with impunity in return for bribes. It also tells of the high price an honest man and his family paid for his decision to break the code of silence.' (Publication summary)