Classics Australia

This annotated edition includes: The complete 1901 novel, with Henry Lawson's original preface — the writer who discovered the manuscript and carried it to his own publishers in Edinburgh A critical afterword, "The Book She Hid," on the novel Miles Franklin was so unsettled by her neighbours' reaction to that she suppressed its sequel for forty years and forbade the book's own republication until after her death A biographical portrait separating the author from the heroine readers insisted on mistaking her for A chronology and a Note on the Text She wrote the most famous "no" in ...

Seven Little Australians is the story of the mischievous seven children of the Woolcot family - Meg, Pip, Judy, Bunty, Nell, Baby, and the General, whose father little understands them and whose young stepmother is hardly an adult herself. The Australian bush sets an iconic backdrop for the misadventures of this energetic mob.

'Charming, very funny indeed. Angela Thirkell is perhaps the most Pym-like of any twentieth-century author, after Pym herself' Alexander McCall Smith It is wartime in Barsetshire, and so much has changed. Belier's Priory is now a hospital for wounded soldiers, and Sir Harry and Lady Waring have...

“A rare kind of writer and a formidable one.” —The New York Times “Wood inserts the reader straight into the jaws of her story, never relenting until the devastating end. If you raced through I Who Have Never Known Men or The Handmaid’s Tale and are looking for something with the same...

Colditz Castle was Nazi Germany’s infamous ‘escape-proof’ wartime prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful Allied prisoners were sent. Despite having more guards than inmates, Australian Lieutenant Jack Champ and other prisoners tirelessly carried out their campaign to...

Jack Middleton likes to imagine himself a country squire. At weekends he retires to Laverings Estate with his wife, Catherine. He may be pompous, and they may seem ill-matched, but the couple are devoted to each other. When Jack's widowed sister, Lilian, and her two stepchildren arrive to spend...

Sybylla Melvin is a misfit. She barely endures the dreary life of dairy farming in a family that can hardly make ends meet. Out of the blue, she is invited to move back to the family property, Caddagat, to live with Grannie, Aunt Helen, and Uncle Jay Jay. With a cast of interesting neighbors and friends, Sybylla finally seems to discover hope in the world. She is nourished by thoughtful conversation, books, and music. Harold Beecham's love, however, throws her into indecision and painful tension.

“The book I most often give as a gift to cheer people up.” —Hilary Mantel * “A deceptively smart comic gem.” —The New York Times Book Review Set in a 1950s Sydney department store during the holiday rush, this “witty and delicious” (People) comedy of manners follows four women...

'An Australian classic in the making.' Australian Women's Weekly 'A rich Australian epic.' New York Times 'A masterful examination of loss . . . A remarkable, poignant tale.' Guardian 'A satisfying and superior work of commercial fiction.' The Australian 'A masterful saga well worth the wait...

'Fast Paced Action Packed and 100% Funny Satirical Parody.' SHAKESPEARE ON THE ROOF Jack Hamma, an SAS Special Forces Commando, is sent on a top secret mission to assassinate a terrorist leader who is bunkered down on an island in the Indian Ocean. The action has only just begun when Jack and his co-assassin are ambushed by right wing terrorists. Jack is the action hero par excellence but has he met his match in the form of the beautiful Kashmere? IN BED WITH JANE AUSTEN Private Detective, Jack Hamma, receives an emergency phone call to escort a seventeen year old girl home from school, the...

Triple J isn't just a radio station, it is the national voice and thumping heartbeat of Australian youth culture. Before the birth of Double J, Australian radio was created for conservative adults. The youth were to be seen and not heard. But in 1972, Gough Whitlam transformed all that. With a...

Deep in the heart of Australia's high country, along an ancient, hidden track, live Molly Johnson and her children. Husband Joe is away droving, leaving his family in the bush to fend for itself. Molly's children are her world, and life is hard with only their dog, Alligator, and a shotgun for...

What makes for a surfing life? With a blaze of groundbreaking performances and a swag of titles claimed from all over the world to his name, Australian world champion surfer Nat Young might know. His seventieth birthday inspired some reflection on exactly that, and on the waves and characters...

A storm stole Midnight from everything he had ever known. Lost among the rugged mountains of the Australian high country, the young black brumby expects only loneliness. Instead, he discovers Fernhill Valley—a peaceful place where kindness is measured not by words, but by deeds. There he meets an unforgettable group of friends: wise old stock horse Old Blue, practical Matilda the wombat, ever-laughing Banjo the kookaburra, adventurous Piper the sugar glider, resourceful Cedric the echidna, mischievous Dusty the young dingo, and the quietly watchful Myrtle. Together they face hidden ...

One family. Thirty years. A continent still becoming itself. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony is the great Australian novel - a sweeping trilogy that follows Richard and Mary Mahony from the chaos of the Victorian gold rush through wealth, ruin, and the devastating beauty of a life lived in the wrong place at the wrong time. First published between 1917 and 1929, this masterpiece by Henry Handel Richardson is now recognised as one of the towering achievements of twentieth-century literature in English. Sinclair Lewis called it a truly major work of fiction. It remains one of the most honest ...

A first-rate thriller about an American millionaire who owns the House of Cain, a haven for murderers wanted by the law. Austilene Thorpe is accused of murder but then disappears from gaol. Her fiance, Martin Sherwood, goes blind from shock. His famous adventuring brother Monty learns that Austilene is in a refuge for murderers in the far north-east corner of South Australia, and together the Sherwoods set out to find her and bring her back to Melbourne....

In the summer of 1944 returning soldiers Canning Christie and his father Michael arrive in South Australia from the desert sands of North Africa. Canning carries the trauma of war and a fractured memory of a terrible event, while charismatic Michael resumes his womanising ways, intent on...

Two full-cast adaptations from the iconic Australian feminist novelist, Miles Franklin These stunning dramatisations recount the life of an impassioned, ambitious Australian heroine, frustrated by rural bush life at the turn of the last century. Born in 1879, writer Stella Miles Franklin grew up...

Between 1922 and 1923, Katherine Mansfield wrote four volumes of short stories: The Garden Party and Other Stories Bliss and Other Stories In a German Pension The Dove’s Nest and Other Stories This recording includes all sixty-three stories from the four collections, including a number of...

Epic Love. Tragic Loss. Beautiful Friendship. The entrancing story of an orphan who grows up surrounded by the beautiful and the broken in the world's most infamous hotel. After her parents' deaths, Aria Jones is sent to live with her reclusive starlet aunt at the Chateau Marmont, the hotel on...