New Releases by Thomas Keneally

A retelling of the life and exploits of Irish patriot John Mitchel, with a particular focus on his time in exile on Van Diemen''s Land.

The award-winning author of modern classics such as Schindler’s List and Napoleon’s Last Island is at his triumphant best with this “engrossing and transporting” (Financial Times) novel about the adventures of Charles Dickens’s son in the Australian Outback during the 1860s. Edward Dickens, the tenth child of England’s most famous author Charles Dickens, has consistently let his parents down. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself—or at least fail out of the public eye. He soon finds himself in the remote Outback, surrounded by Aboriginals, colonials, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various livestock, bushrangers, shifty stock agents, and frontier battles. By reimagining the tale of a fascinating yet little-known figure in history, this “roguishly tender coming-of-age story” (Booklist) offers penetrating insights into Colonialism and the fate of Australia’s indigenous people, and a wonderfully intimate portrait of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of his son.

Following a lifetime observing Australia and its people, Tom Keneally turns inwards to reflect on what has been important to him. ''When I was born in 1935 I grew up, despite the Depression and World War II, with a primitive sense of being fortunate . . . The utopian strain was very strong . . . if we weren''t to be a better society, if we were simply serfs designed to support a system of privilege, what was the bloody point?'' Thomas Keneally has been observing, reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition for well over fifty years. In this deeply personal, passionately drawn and richly tuned collection he draws on a lifetime of engagement with the great issues of our recent history and his own moments of discovery and understanding. He writes with unbounded joy of being a grandparent, and with intimacy and insight about the prospect of death and the meaning of faith. He is outraged about the treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees, and argues fiercely against market economics and the cowardice of climate change deniers. And he introduces us to some of the people, both great and small, who have dappled his life. Beautifully written, erudite and at times slyly funny, A Bloody Good Rant is an invitation to share the deep humanity of a truly great Australian. Praise for Australians: ''No doubt about it, Australians is a corker.'' - Cassandra Pybus, Weekend Australian ''. . . the story of Australia and the Australians could be in no better hands than Keneally''s.'' - West Australian ''Keneally evokes these distant lives with concrete detail and vivid sympathy . . . his people inhabit the same world we do - we meet them without the hesitation of reaching across voids of space and time. - Sydney Morning Herald ''[Australians] will appeal to the general reader and the avid historian alike, and this is only the first volume. This reader can''t wait for the second.'' - Bookseller + Publisher

Thomas Keneally, the bestselling author of The Daughters of Mars and Schindler’s List, brings his “insightful and nimble prose” (The New York Times Book Review) to this exquisite exploration of community and country, love and morality, set in both prehistoric and modern Australia. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Shelby Apple is obsessed with reimagining the full story of the Learned Man—a prehistoric man whose remains are believed to be the link between Africa and ancient Australia. From Vietnam to northern Africa and the Australian Outback, Shelby searches for understanding of this enigmatic man from the ancient past, unaware that the two men share a great deal in common. Some 40,000 years in the past, the Learned Man has made his home alongside other members of his tribe. Complex and deeply introspective, he reveres tradition, loyalty, and respect for his ancestors. Willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good, the Learned Man cannot conceive that a man millennia later could relate to him in heart and feeling. In this “meditation on last things, but still electric with life, passion and appetite” (The Australian), Thomas Keneally weaves an extraordinary dual narrative that effortlessly transports you around the world and across time, offering “a hymn to idealism and to human development” (Sydney Morning Herald).

The final novel in a fast-paced and gripping historical crime trilogy from the legendary Thomas Keneally and his eldest daughter, Meg Keneally. Set in 1825 during Australia''s colonial period at the notorious Port Macquarie penal colony, The Power Game is the thrilling conclusion to the whip-smart mystery series from the "greatest living practitioner of historical fiction" (Christian Science Monitor).

Charming gentleman convict Hugh Monsarrat returns in this second novel in the thrilling and spellbinding historical crime series from Thomas Keneally and his daughter Meg Keneally featuring his signature “fresh and engaging” (The New York Times) prose. Recently arrived from Port Macquarie, ticket-of-leave gentleman convict Hugh Llewelyn Monsarrat now lives in a small but comfortable house in Parramatta with his loyal housekeeper, Mrs. Mulrooney. Monsarrat is now working for the Attorney General’s office, officially as a clerk, but also as an unofficial advisor on criminal and legal matters. One day, he is informed that the superintendent of the female prison, Robert Church, has been murdered. Apparently, a female convict named Grace O’Leary held a particular grudge against him and is being detained for questioning. Monsarrat’s task is to take a statement from her. Grace doesn’t strike Monsarrat as a murderer and she insists she’s innocent. Monsarrat and Mrs. Mulrooney both believe her, but are at a loss as to how to help her. A number of people held grudges against Church and many are relieved by his death, but who would go so far as to murder him?

A brilliant recreation of the first four years of white settlement in Australia by Booker Prize-winning author Tom Keneally. In 1787, Britain banished its unwanted citizens - uneducated petty thieves, streetwalkers, orphan chimneysweeps and dashing highwaymen - to the fringes of the known world. So remote was Botany Bay - the destination to which the overcrowded, disease-ridden convict ships were bound - that only one European expedition had ever before anchored there. Yet the rejects of Britain, accompanied only by a flimsy complement of soldiers, marines and officers, were expected to start a settlement and flourish. It was an audacious social experiment, unparalleled before or since. To the indigenous inhabitants, the white men came as ghosts through cracks in the cosmos, rudely seizing the bounty of land and sea. On the swampy shores of Botany Bay, and by the sandstone coves of Sydney Harbour, the clash of civilisations was ineviteable, intense and often tragic. From this improbable beginning, through famine, drought, escapes and floggings, the glory of modern Sydney was born. Britain''s penal experiment succeeded against all odds. Impeccably researched and told in the inimitable Keneally style, The Commonwealth of Thievesis the compelling tale of a nation''s beginning, its unforgettable people and their quest for identity.

When Grace married the handsome and worldly Captain Leo Waterhouse in Australia during the middle of the Second World War, she never doubted that she had married a hero and he would come back to her unscathed. But Leo never returns from a commando raid on Japanese ships in the Singapore Harbour, leaving Grace a widow, like so many, to shoulder the pain and regret of losing her husband. Sixty years later, Grace is still bitter and perplexed by the tragic death of the love of her life when the true story of the abortive mission comes to light. As Leo’s diary during captivity, scrawled on toilet paper, and new fragments of the events emerge, Grace must confront her doubts about her hero and his ultimate betrayal.

Artem Samsurov, an ardent follower of Lenin and a hero of the rebellion, flees his Siberian labor camp for the sanctuary of Brisbane, Australia in 1911. Failing to find the worker’s paradise and brotherhood he imagined, Artem quickly joins the agitation for a general strike among the growing trade union movement. He finds a fellow spirit in a dangerously attractive female lawyer and becomes entangled in the death of another Tsarist exile. But, Atrem can’t overcome the corruption, repression, and injustice of the conservative Brisbane. When he returns to Russia in 1917 for the Red October, will his beliefs stand? Based on the true story of Artem Sergeiv, a Russian immigrant in Australia who would play a vital role in the Russian Revolution, The People’s Train explores the hearts of the men and women who fueled, compromised, and passionately fought for their ideals.

"From the bestselling author of Schindler''s List and The Daughters of Mars, a new historical novel set on the remote island of Saint Helena about the remarkable friendship between a young woman and one of history''s most intriguing figures, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the final years of his life in exile. In October 1815, after losing the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was banished to the island of Saint Helena. There, in one of the most remote places on earth, he lived out the final six years of his life. On this lonely island with no chance of escape, he found an unexpected ally: a spirited British girl named Betsy Balcombe who lived on the island with her family. While Napoleon waited for his own accommodations to be built, the Balcombe family played host to the infamous exile, a decision that would have devastating consequences for them all. In Napoleon''s Last Island, "master of character development and period detail" (Kirkus Reviews) Thomas Keneally recreates Betsy''s powerful and complex friendship with the man dubbed The Great Ogre, her enmities and alliances with his remaining courtiers, and her dramatic coming-of-age. Bringing a shadowy period of history to life with a brilliant attention to detail, Keneally tells the untold story of one of Europe''s most enigmatic, charismatic, and important figures, and the ordinary British family who dared to forge a connection with him"--

Set in a remote British penal colony in the late eighteenth century, Bring Larks and Heroes explores the early years of European settlement of desperate men and corrupt soldiers to Australia, the world’s end. Corporal Phelim Halloran, an honest man, poet and lover, attempts to make a home for himself while confronting the demands of his secret bride, a convict-artist, his Irish comrades, and his own conscience. Can he overcome the hellish, sun-parched landscape to believe in something greater than his own existence?

An Edwardian murder mystery set on the unforgiving Antarctic tundra . . . Captain Sir Eugene Stewart chose the gentlemen to join his great 1910 expedition to the South Pole with great precision, each man selected for his skills to survive the Antarctic winter. Reflecting sixty years later, Sir Anthony Piers, an oil painter and watercolorist chosen to capture the long midnight lights of the South Pole, finally reveals the truth of the New British South Polar Expedition and the murder committed on their journey. Who among the expedition would kill Victor Henneker, an unlikeable and mischievous journalist only six months into the trek? Telling of complete isolation, absolute darkness, unrelenting wind, and slowly-approaching starvation, Sir Anthony Piers confronts the demons and truths of this hellish expedition after sixty years of silence.

In this playful and poignant memoir, Thomas Keneally returns to his adolescence in the suburbs of Sydney in 1952. At sixteen, the red-haired teenager idolized the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and had aspirations of becoming a star on the track or rugby field. He also dreamed of wooing the beautiful and alluring Bernadette Curran until the day she announces her desire to become a nun. For the first time, Keneally started to consider priesthood himself. An insightful portrait of the transition from childhood to adulthood, Homebush Boy affectionately captures the awkwardness, grace, and all the contradictions of being a teenager.

A powerful novel of America’s Civil War told through the voices of Confederate soldiers, turncoats, and Stonewall Jackson in the weeks leading up to the great slaughter at Antietam In the summer of 1862, as the Civil War rages on, a ragtag Confederate army consisting of young boys and old men, storekeepers, farmers, and teachers, gathers in Virginia under the leadership of Tom “Stonewall” Jackson, ready to follow their sainted commander to glory—or hell. One of these men, Usaph Bumpass left his wife, Ephie, behind to join the Shenandoah Volunteers, only to discover Ephie’s lover, Decatur Cate, among his comrades. Still, Usaph remains steadfast in his devotion to a cause he does not fully understand, even as troubling memories of home invade his mind on the march north. But a dark destiny awaits brilliant military strategist Jackson and his Southern boys, as hard truths about war, loyalty, love, life, and death are revealed in the fires and bloodshed at Antietam. A breathtaking work of historical fiction that captures the human face of war as few novels have done before, Confederates has been compared to Tolstoy’s epic War and Peace as an artful, honest, and profoundly moving depiction of the lot of the soldier. Shortlisted for Great Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize, this masterful tale of love, duty, and conflict from author of Schindler’s List Thomas Keneally is an enduring and unforgettable classic of Civil War literature.

The past returns to haunt a guilt-stricken man who survived a tragic Antarctic expedition in this novel from the author of Schindler’s List. A professor at an Australian university, Alec Ramsey has lived an eventful life, much of which he is reluctant to discuss. In the 1920s, he was a member of a small expedition to Antarctica that resulted in the tragic death of its leader and Ramsey’s dear friend, Stephen Leeming. Four decades later, Ramsey has yet to make peace with himself over two things: He had slept with Leeming’s wife just prior to their embarkation, and his friend had still been alive when Ramsey left him behind on the ice at the bottom of the world. Closemouthed avoidance has enabled Ramsey to go on with his life in academia, despite the “betrayal obsessions” that have become an integral part of his being, even though what he so vividly recalls may or may not be the truth. But now there will be no silencing Ramsey’s inner demons—because, after forty years frozen in the Antarctic, Leeming’s body has finally been found. An enthralling, profoundly affecting novel of guilt, perception, and endurance, The Survivor is a gripping story from award-winning author Thomas Keneally. Intriguing and intelligent, it is a masterful fictional journey through the complex labyrinth of the human heart and psyche.

Booker Prize Finalist: A “gripping” novel of the World War I armistice negotiations that set the stage for World War II, by the author of Schindler’s List (The Guardian). In November 1918, after four long years of murderous conflict, six men gather in a railroad car in a secluded forest outside Paris, France, to negotiate an end to World War I. A pacifist, left-leaning diplomat with no military knowledge or experience, Matthias Erzberger has been selected by the German high command to represent their surrendering nation, for reasons as baffling to him as to anyone. He is joined by France’s aging, vindictive Marshal Foch and Britain’s unbending Admiral Wemyss in an attempt to bring peace to a war-torn world. In these claustrophobic quarters the future is to be decided by men driven by ego, prejudice, fear, exhaustion, vengeance, delusion, and, in Erzberger’s case, conscience. But the well-meaning diplomat’s futile efforts to secure lenient surrender terms will have devastating consequences for Europe, the Fatherland, and Erzberger himself. Renowned for his enthralling fictional accounts of historical events, award-winning author of Schindler’s List Thomas Keneally once again brings the heart-stopping human drama of history to life, as he brilliantly envisions the earth-shattering events that transpired in the forest of Compiègne, setting the stage for the Treaty of Versailles and the rise of the Third Reich.

A tormented and humiliated mixed-race Australian man reaches his breaking point and takes terrifying revenge on his abusers in this critically acclaimed novel based on actual events In Australia at the turn of the twentieth century, Jimmie Blacksmith is desperate to figure out where he belongs. Half-Anglo and half-Aboriginal, he feels out of place in both cultures. Schooled in the ways of white society by a Protestant missionary, Jimmie forsakes tribal customs, adopts the white man’s religion, marries a white woman, and seeks a life of honest labor in a world Aborigines are normally barred from entering. But he will always be seen as less than human by the employers who cheat and exploit him, the fellow workers who deride him, and the wife who betrays him—and a man can only take so much. Driven by hopelessness, rage, and despair, Jimmie commits a series of savage and terrible acts of vengeance and becomes something he never thought he’d be: a murderer, a fugitive, and, ultimately, a legend. Based on shocking real-life events, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a powerful tale of racism, identity, intolerance, and murder from the celebrated bestselling author of Schindler’s List, Thomas Keneally. This magnificent historical novel remains a stunning, provocative, and profoundly affecting reading experience.

On the edge of a small Australian town, far from the battlefields of the Second World War, a camp holds thousands of Japanese, Italian and Korean prisoners of war. The locals are unsure how to treat the ''enemy'', though Alice Herman, whose young husband is himself a prisoner in Europe, becomes drawn to the Italian soldier sent to work on her father-in-law''s farm. The camp commander and his deputy, each concealing a troubled private life, are disunited. And both fatally misread their Japanese captives, who burn with shame at being taken alive. The stage is set for a clash of cultures that has explosive, far-reaching consequences.

Australia emerged from World War I into a decade of profound change, characterised by a revolution in behaviour amongst the young; by the first great age of consumerism; and by secret right wing armies and the growth of the Communist Party. As in the two previous volumes of Australians, Thomas Keneally brings history to vivid and pulsating life as he traces the lives and the deeds of Australians known and unknown. He follows the famous and the infamous through the Great Crash and the rise of Fascism, and explains how Australia was inexorably drawn into a war that led her forces into combat throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific. At home an atmosphere of fear grew with the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin, the Japanese advance and then the arrival of General MacArthur. The 1950s-depicted by some as an age of full employment, by others as the age of suburban spread and boredom under the serene prime ministership of Robert Menzies-were as complicated as Menzies himself. Most Australians believed there would be nuclear war before the end of the decade. The Korean War and British testing of the atomic bomb in South Australia were seen as preludes. With the defection of the Soviet spy Ivan Petrov, Australians were convinced they were living in the last of days. On the street, the face of Australia was undergoing an Italian, Greek and Slavic-led change. And in even greater upheaval, Asian trade and immigration were coming our way as we advanced towards a war in Vietnam and the firming of the American alliance. The result of masterly writing and exhaustive research, this volume of Australians brings our more recent history to vibrant and robust life.

In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father''s dairy farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front. Yet they find courage in the face of extreme danger and become the friends they never were before. And eventually they meet the kind of men worth giving up their precious independence for - if only they all survive. At once epic in scope and extraordinarily intimate, The Daughters of Mars brings the First World War to vivid life from an unusual perspective. Profoundly moving, it pays tribute to the men and women who voluntarily risked their lives for peace.

Bestselling author Thomas Keneally brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed our national story, in the second volume of a unique history of Australia.

A South Pacific penal colony in the late eighteenth century. An honest man named Phelim Halloran and Ann Rush, his secret bride. Poet, soldier, lover and grand innocent, Halloran must confront his destiny in a place of tyranny and searing horror.

Austin North sees himself as a fine English teacher in his local high school. His students respect him, and he finds personal fulfillment in teaching them the power of poetry to move and inspire. However, Austin''s self-perceptions are upset by his infatuation with a young Sudanese girl, a recent immigrant to Australia. When Austin realises that he is just another predator in her difficult journey, he is forced to re-examine his own values and relationships.

Fleeing to Australia to escape the repressive life of British-controlled Ireland, Tim Shea is alarmed by his new home''s equally stifling social order and its inclination towards prejudice. By the author of Schindler''s List.

Woman of the Inner Sea is Thomas Keneally’s strongest, most compelling work since his Booker Prize-winning Schindler’s List. Like that book, the story of Woman of the Inner Sea arises from a true incident, and once more the imagining of it is utterly convincing. Kate Gaffney-Kozinski, an attractive, well educated woman, has gone on “walkabout” to the inner reaches of the Australian outback. Fleeing her wealthy husband, Paul Kozinski, and his unscrupulous clan, Kate is trying to obliterate herself and the grief that haunts her. At first we do not understand its source, but as the story unfolds a kind of mystery evolves around the tragic loss of her two children. In a small town she tries to change herself into a different woman, seeking the companionship and protection of a reticent but rough local man, an explosives expert known as Jelly. But the violence of the west country’s unpredictable weather forces her on and soon she must confront her husband. No one knows Australian society better than Thomas Keneally, who offers here a rich cross-section of his people: from Kate’s prominent father to her controversial uncle, a renegade priest; from the grasping Kozinskis who rule Sydney’s construction business to colorful small-town men like Jelly and his friend Gus, who travels with a kangaroo and emu he has rescued from an entertainment park. And at the center of this panorama stands Kate, a passionate woman of great integrity caught in a nightmare of grief and deception. Woman of the Inner Sea, with its evocation of the heroic in the midst of disaster and evil, will be remembered as one of Thomas Keneally’s best works.

A standout history told with Tom Keneally panache. This is the story of three great famines. The first is an Gorta M r, the great hunger of Ireland, which began in 1846 and whose end-date is a matter of debate. The second is the less well-known but more deadly famine that struck Bengal in 1943. The third is the Ethiopian famine, which first sprung up in lethal form in the 1970s under Emperor Haile Selassie and then again under the brutal dictator Mengistu in the 1980s. Keneally himself visited Eritrea in 1984 to see the effects of this grave event. In those who suffered these famines; in those who denied their suffering; in those who propounded theories to excuse it; in those who - against the wishes of each government - told the world what was happening; and in those who tried to relieve it, there is a remarkable continuity of impulse and experience and dilemma. Though these famines are diverse, they are in many ways as similar as if they were related by DNA, or a malignant force of fallibility. Tom Keneally shares these three shocking histories with his customary penetrating wisdom, and he presents a controversial theory in his utterly compelling narrative- in all three famines, ideology, mindsets of governments, racial preconceptions and administrative incompetence were, ultimately, more lethal than the initiating blights, the loss of potatoes or rice or the grain named teff.

The first volume of a unique history of Australia where people are always centre stage, from bestselling author Thomas Keneally who brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed our national story.

***Winner of the Booker Prize*** ''ONE OF THE WORLD''S GREATEST WRITERS'' Spectator ''Extraordinary'' Graham Greene ''Powerful'' The Times ''Marvellous'' Sunday Times The acclaimed bestselling classic of Holocaust literature, adapted into the award-winning film Schindler''s List In the shadow of Auschwitz, as thousands faced death in Nazi-occupied Poland, an unlikely saviour emerged. Oskar Schindler was a heavy-drinking, womanising industrialist who defied and outwitted the SS to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. Based on a true story, Schindler''s Ark is an astonishing tale of huge risks and great courage in the face of unspeakable evil. PRAISE FOR THOMAS KENEALLY ''A superb storyteller'' Alan Sillitoe ''One of the historical novel''s most expert practitioners'' Guardian ''A grand talent'' The Times

In this spirited history of the remarkable first four years of the convict settlement of Australia, Thomas Keneally offers us a human view of a fascinating piece of history. Combining the authority of a renowned historian with a brilliant narrative flair, Keneally gives us an inside view of this unprecedented experiment from the perspective of the new colony’s governor, Arthur Phillips. Using personal journals and documents, Keneally re-creates the hellish overseas voyage and the challenges Phillips faced upon arrival: unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, bewildered and hostile natives, food shortages, and disease. He also offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines and of convict settlers who were determined to begin their lives anew. A Commonwealth of Thieves immerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up the thrills and hardships of those first four improbable years.