In the wilds of Paraguay live blue-eyed South Americans with surnames like Smith and McCreen. This is the intriguing story of their ancestors, an idealistic Australian journalist called William Lane, and a colony called New Australia.In 1893, Australian journalist William Lane dreamed of creating a utopia where his socialist ideals could flourish, far away from his home in Queensland. He enlisted 238 followers and convinced them to sail across the Pacific with him to Paraguay, where...

Outsiders think of South Australia as being different, without really knowing much about it. Combining his own travel across the million-square kilometres of the state with an investigation of its history, Ben Stubbs seeks to find out what South Australia is really like. In the spirit of the best travel writing and literary non-fiction, he lingers in places of quiet beauty and meets some memorable people. Along the way he debunks most of the cliches that plague the state. Travelling to Mar...

This book stems from the question that we as co-authors grappled with for the past 3-plus years while in our own periods of stasis during the pandemic: What place does the travel writing genre hold in a post-COVID world? With the massive interruptions to travel and travel writing across 2020-2023 as the pandemic forced us indoors and into isolation, it also raised many other pertinent questions about the practice of and future of travel writing. Part of the prompt for this book comes from ...

This book examines writing that has been created in isolation and confinement, and it explores the stories, characters, and situations that have arisen from these states throughout history. It offers a deeper understanding of how others have found inspiration, purpose, and clarity in these difficult and challenging conditions.By traversing the narratives of writers, wanderers, mariners, prisoners, recluses, and soldiers, this book offers writers and readers a chance to re-think the...

In 1762 the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau observed that we are blind half our lives because of what we miss during the night. Yet we fear the dark, and are led to believe that bad things happen during the small hours, especially in cities. This is when insomniacs, psychopaths and photophobics—those who are afraid of the light—roam the streets; the time when “normal” people should be tucked up in their beds. The Elizabethan playwright Thomas Middleton wrote that there should be “no occu...

Laura Fraser grows up in Sydney, motherless, with a cold, professional father and an artistic bent. Ravi Mendis lives on the other side of the globe -- exploring the seductive new world of the Internet, his father dead, his mother struggling to get by.Their stories alternate throughout Michelle de Kretser's ravishing novel, culminating in unlikely fates for them both, destinies influenced by travel -- voluntary in her case, enforced in his.With money from an inheritance, Laura sets...

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes—charged with the brutal murder of her former master and sent to await execution on an isolated farm.Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at ...

A fantastic Maeve Binchy - written specially for the World Book Day Quick Reads promotion.'Her storytelling ability is second to none' SUNDAY EXPRESS'It's little wonder that Maeve Binchy's bewitching stories have become world-beaters' OK MAGAZINE'Maeve Binchy is a master storyteller' NEW YORK TIMESDee loves her children very much, but now they are all grown up, shouldn't they leave home?Rosie moved o...

An unthinkably shocking event sends shockwaves through a tight-knit mother's group, testing their bonds and revealing closely-held secrets that threaten to shatter their lives in an explosive, enthralling debut novel about motherhood, friendship and love.'All those things no one ever tells you about motherhood. It's like secret mothers' business. Lots of my friends had babies before me, but not one of them ever told me it would be this hard. It's like a code of...

A bestselling tale of passion and belief, magic and adventure from the author of The Secret Chord and of March, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.Bethia Mayfield is a restless and curious young woman growing up in Martha's Vineyard in the 1660s amid a small band of pioneering English Puritans. At age twelve, she meets Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a secret bond that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's father ...

From the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of Homecoming, The Distant Hours, The Forgotten Garden, and The House at Riverton comes a spellbinding novel of family secrets, murder, and enduring love.During a picnic at her family’s farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson witnesses a shocking crime, a crime that challenges everything she knows about her adored mother, Dorothy....

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER • MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • A magisterial novel of love and war that traces the life of one man from World War II to the present.Available now on Prime Video: Justin Kurzel’s highly anticipated series based on this Booker Prize–winning novel by Richard Flanagan; starring Jacob Elordi, Ciarán Hinds, Odessa Young, Olivia DeJonge and Simon Baker."Magnificent." —*The New York Times Book Review"Nothing short of a masterpiece.