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In 1907, Perth woman Alice Mitchell was arrested for the murder of five-month-old Ethel Booth. During the inquest and subsequent trial, the state's citizens were horrified to learn that at least 37 infants had died in Mitchell's care in the previous six years. It became clear that she had been running a 'baby farm', making a profit out of caring for the children of single mothers and other 'unfortunate women'.The Alice Mitchell murder trial gripped the city of Perth and the nation. This book retraces this infamous 'baby farm' tragedy, which led to legislative changes to protect children's welfare.
Susan Mason, the child of an Irish convict and his wife, was uneducated but streetwise and canny. From colonial Adelaide to the barracks towns of the British Isles, she fought her way, sometimes literally, through life. One man called her a little whore. Her husband once accused her of being a drunkard. Life often dealt her a poor hand. Yet she managed to survive the poverty of her childhood, the indignities of being an army wife and the joys and tragedies of being a mother with her fighting spirit intact. In following her story and that of her family, the author reveals not only the complexity of Susan's character, but also what life was like for women on the edges of society in the Victorian era.
“Breathtaking…Riveting and profound! I adored this book!” —Ellen Marie Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Collector “A deeply involving and important novel by a master storyteller.” —Susan Wiggs, # 1 New York Times bestselling author INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER In this moving, suspenseful debut novel, three courageous women confront the complexities of trust, friendship, motherhood, and betrayal under the rule of a ruthless dictator and his brutal secret police. Former foreign correspondent Gina Wilkinson draws on her own experiences to take readers inside a haunting story of Iraq at the turn of the millennium and the impossible choices faced by families unde...
Eyrie is Tim Winton's heart-stopping novel written with breath-taking tenderness. Funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting, it asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing. Tom Keely has lost his bearings. His reputation in ruins, he finds himself holed up in a flat at the top of a grim high-rise, looking down on the world he’s fallen out of love with. He has cut himself off, and intends to keep it that way, until one day he runs into some neighbours: a woman from his past and her introverted young boy. The encounter shakes him up in a way he doesn’t understand and, despite himself, Keely lets them in. But the pair come trailing a dangerous past of their own, and Keely is soon immersed in a world that threatens to destroy everything he has learnt to love.
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The inspiration for the annual Pleasure of Reading Prize A charming and revealing collection of essays from some of our best-loved writers about the pleasures of reading, with royalties donated to the Give a Book charity In this delightful collection forty-three acclaimed writers explain what first made them interested in literature, what inspired them to read and what makes them continue to do so. Original contributors include Margaret Atwood, J. G. Ballard, Melvyn Bragg, A. S. Byatt, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Gray, Germaine Greer, Alan Hollinghurst, Doris Lessing, Candia McWilliam, Edna O'Brien, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Sue Townsend and Jeanette Winterson, while this new edition includes e...
As a child, Julie dreamed of being somewhere else, of making a difference. Now, she can't wait to meet the nuns she will live with and the children she will provide physiotherapy for in Ethiopia. But Julie has trouble sticking to convent rules and soon finds herself wondering how much difference a single physio can make anyway. When she takes a teaching role at a university, Julie finally feels closer to fulfilling her dreams – training Ethiopia's first physiotherapists, treating paediatric patients, and losing her heart to a handsome colleague. Then civil unrest reaches the university, forcing Julie's students to choose between their safety and their future. When it comes to being a part of change, why do all steps feel like small steps?
People would have known about Australia before they saw it. Smoke billowing above the sea spoke of a land that lay beyond the horizon. A dense cloud of migrating birds may have pointed the way. But the first Australians were voyaging into the unknown. Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century,...
As Australia's largest wartime port, Fremantle played a unique role in the nation's story. Featuring extraordinary photographs, this volume is a fascinating account of our homefront during the Boer War, World War I, World War II and more. It records our history of departure and reunion, victory and celebration, grief and loss, and dissent and activism.
In August 1925, Audrey Jacob shot dead her former fiancÉ, Cyril Gidley, in full view of hundreds of guests at a charity ball in Perth's Government House. When she was arrested, she still held the gun in her hand. It was a open and shut case of wilful murder—that is until Jacob assigned prosecutor Arthur Haynes to her defence. His ability to play the press and the jury for sympathy would lead to a sensational result. Not only did Jacob escape the gallows, she was found not guilty of Gidley's murder. Straw, the author of a number of books about notable Australian female criminals, tells a story that is rich with first-hand newspaper accounts from the day.