From the ghostly black horse of Sutton Forest to the butcher of Adelaide Street, a haunted Brisbane lift to the chilling experiments carried out by Doctor Blood of the North Kapunda Hotel, Australia abounds in spooky stories that are all unnervingly based in fact and tied to real places you can visit or avoid. In 100 Tales from Australia's Most Haunted Places, comedy writer and general scaredy-cat Ben Pobjie communes with the spirit world to send a shiver down your spine. A book best read ...

Tales of the strange, unnerving and downright bizarre from one of the weirdest places on EarthFish falling out of the sky, joggers relieving themselves on your doorstep, mysterious monsters constantly springing from the shadows, spooky lights and ill-conceived toast spreads: these are just some of the things you can expect on any given day in our surreal southern land.In 100 Weirdest Tales from Across Australia, comedy writer and accredited weirdness expert Ben Pobjie delve...

History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the poor souls lurking in the shadows of history, the ones who were just as remarkable but perhaps didn't stick their chests out as they crossed the line?In Second Best, Australia's foremost historian and comedian Ben Pobjie celebrates the nobility and altogether more fascinating stories of the silver-medal getters. What drove them on their incredible feats, why did they just miss out, and how did they c...

Australia is a proud country full of proud people, but exactly what are we proud of? Comedian and history buff Ben Pobjie delves deep into Australia’s past and has a good old rummage amongst the nation’s personal effects. With wit, perspicacity and a healthily elastic attitude to historical accuracy, the great saga of Australia is unravelled like an old woolly jumper. For anyone who snoozed through history class at school, this is the book to get you all caught up.

What is a Bloke?What is a Bloke? This is the question that has occupied the greatest minds of the anthropological and sociological worlds for many years. Not in a literal sense, of course, at the base level, the definition of a Bloke is perfectly clear: a Bloke is a human male native to Australia, typically between 150 and 200 centimetres tall, frequently partial to beer and ventilated footwear, who has built a mighty nation from the scraps of colonialism and inapp...

History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the poor souls lurking in the shadows of history, the ones who were just as remarkable but perhaps didn’t stick their chests out as they crossed the line? In Second Best, Australia’s foremost historian and comedian Ben Pobjie celebrates the nobility and altogether more fascinating stories of the silver-medal getters. What drove them on their incredible feats, why did they just miss out, and how did they cope wit...

On the island of St Helena in the south Atlantic ocean, Napoleon spends his last years in exile. It is a hotbed of gossip and secret liaisons, where a blind eye is turned to relations between colonials and slaves.The disgraced emperor is subjected to vicious and petty treatment by his captors, but he forges an unexpected ally: a rebellious British girl, Betsy, who lives on the island with her family and becomes his unlikely friend.Based on fact, Napoleon's Last Island

On March 8, 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail from China. Its mission was "to proceed all the way to the ends of the earth to collect tribute from the barbarians beyond the seas" and unite the whole world in Confucian harmony.When it returned in October 1423, the emperor had fallen, leaving China in political and economic chaos. The great ships were left to rot at their moorings and the records of their journeys were destroyed. Lost in China's long, self-impo...

On the edge of a small town in New South Wales, far from the battlefields of the Second World War, lies a prisoner-of-war camp housing Italian, Korean and Japanese soldiers. For their guards and the locals, many with loved ones away fighting, captive or dead, it is hard to know how to treat them - with disdain, hatred or compassion?Alice, a young woman leading a dull life on her father-in-law's farm, is one of those with a husband held prisoner in Europe. When Giancarlo, an Italian...

Two husbands, four trials and one bloody execution: Winner of the 2015 Davitt Award for Best Crime Book (Non-fiction) -- the terrible true story of Louisa Collins.In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordi...

An unprecedented spate of murders in the 1990s earned Goulburn Jail the ominous name ‘The Killing Fields’. Inmates sentenced or transferred to the 130-year-old towering menace declared they had been given a death sentence. Serial killer Ivan Milat, the ‘Terror Five’ militants who plotted attacks across Sydney in 2005, Brothers 4 Life founder Bassam Hamzy and gang rapist Bilal Skaf are just a few of the inmates inside Australia’s most murderous prison – meet them all here in Phelps’ bestsel...

Kate and Harriet are best friends who are growing up together on an isolated Australian cape in the 1880s. As daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. Ultimately, a moment of skylarking in McPhail’s hut changes everything…