New Releases by Thomas Keneally

Thomas Keneally presents this lively history of the ''First Fleet'' which took convicts from Britain to Australia in 1787. He also tells the story of the early years of Sydney, which was founded as ''an open-air prison'', and the colonization of New South Wales.

From the Booker Prize-winning, #1 international bestselling author of Schindler’s List comes a brilliantly imagined novel reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451—a story of a celebrated novelist caught between the demands of his government and his impulse to run for his life. Thomas Keneally’s literary achievements have been inspired by some of history’s most intriguing events and characters, but in a rare reversal of time his brilliantly imagined new novel takes us into a near future that uncannily is all too familiar. In a detention camp where he is neither granted asylum nor readied to be sent back to his native land, a detainee bides his time. He insists on being called Alan Sheriff, a westernization of his given name; he was born in a country that had once been a friend to the United States but is now its enemy. Little else is known about Sheriff until a writer comes to interview him. Sheriff decides that the time is right to tell his visitor his story and embarks on the unraveling of events that have led to his current state with extraordinary detail—the basis of which forms this novel within a novel. Sheriff is a celebrated novelist in a country in which its brutal leader orders Sheriff to ghostwrite a work of fiction: an uneasy combination of invention, autobiography, and polemic—the very publication of which would overturn Western sanctions and shame the United States. The deadline is impossible, but the government enforcers guard his house and stalk his every move. It is not long before Sheriff becomes the tyrant’s caged canary, as he races against the deadline that threatens to cost him everything and everyone he holds dear. Provocative and possibly prophetic, The Tyrant’s Novel is a literary achievement inspired by recent history’s most intriguing events and characters. Here, Keneally once more combines, as he did in Schindler''s List, his fictional talent with his engagement in world politics.

Oscar Schindler, a German industrialist, a Catholic, arrives in Cracow after the German conquest of Poland in 1939. Secretly disgusted by what he sees his countrymen doing, he sets up a factory, and although it is part of the prison-camp complex, he manages to protect his Jewish laborers and their dependents. When the German retreat begins, he sets up a second factory in his native Sudetenland and succeeds in transferring his work force there, while keeping the SS at bay. At the end of the war, he has saved over a thousand lives.

Hero, adulterer, bon vivant, murderer and rogue, Dan Sickles led the kind of existence that was indeed stranger than fiction. Throughout his life he exhibited the kind of exuberant charm and lack of scruple that wins friends, seduces women, and gets people killed. In American Scoundrel Thomas Keneally, the acclaimed author of Schindler’s List, creates a biography that is as lively and engrossing as its subject. Dan Sickles was a member of Congress, led a controversial charge at Gettysburg, and had an affair with the deposed Queen of Spain—among many other women. But the most startling of his many exploits was his murder of Philip Barton Key (son of Francis Scott Key), the lover of his long-suffering and neglected wife, Teresa. The affair, the crime, and the trial contained all the ingredients of melodrama needed to ensure that it was the scandal of the age. At the trial’s end, Sickles was acquitted and hardly chastened. His life, in which outrage and accomplishment had equal force, is a compelling American tale, told with the skill of a master narrative.

Hailed as one of the year''s top five novels by "Time, " and selected as one of the best books of the year by nearly all major newspapers, national bestseller "Peace Like a River" is now available in paperback. In "lyrical, openhearted prose" (Michael Glitz, "The New York Post"), Enger tells the story of 11-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy who has reason to believe in miracles. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Novel based in war-time Sydney in 1942, telling the story of Father Frank Darragh, an impressionable young priest. When one of his young parishioners is found brutally murdered he is lead on a journey of personal discovery. The highly successful author began his career in 1964 and has written 25 works of fiction and 7 non-fiction titles. His Booker prize-winning title ''Schindler''s Ark'' was adapted to screen as ''Schindler''s List'', directed by Steven Spielberg.

Australian historical novel. When sisters Dimp and Prim Bettany discover the memoirs of their ancestor John Bettany they are drawn into the world of their family''s past. As they read about John''s adventures living on the land of the Aboriginal Moth people and his romantic correspondence with convict woman Sarah Bernard, they look at their own lives in a new light. Author''s previous titles include ''Schindler''s Ark'', winner of the 1982 Booker Prize and filmed as the Oscar-winning ''Schindler''s List'' by Steven Spielberg.

A new non-fiction book recounting the 19th century history of Ireland. The book traces the three causes of the halving of the Irish population in that century: the famine, the Irish emigrations to American and Canada, and the transportation of political activitists to Australia. It is a quest for the author''s Irish ancestors.

During a bout of appendicitis, ten-year-old Ned Kelly is reduced to the size of a bee and spends the summer in a beehive.

Historical fiction about a man and the Jews he saved from the Holocaust in Poland.

In Australia in 1787, Lieutenant Ralph Clerk is assigned to direct a play featuring a cast of prisoners he is there to supervise.

The fatal and desperate politics of Eastern Europe collide with the comparative innocence and complacency of suburban Australian life in this powerful and disturbing love story about two families and the madness that invades their lives. Terry Delaney''s comfortable life is upset when he falls in love with Danielle Kabbel, daughter of charismatic emigre Rudi Kabbel, and succumbs to Rudi''s obsessive visions of approaching doom.

Biography of a rugby league utility player with Sydney''s Manly Club who has also represented Australia in international competitions. The author, whose previous books include the 1982 Booker Prize winner ''Schindler''s Ark'' and, more recently, ''Our Republic'', is an ardent rugby league fan.

Chronicles the people and landscape of the American Southwest, and profiles the characters, past and present, who have played a key role in its history.

This book is an attempt at fiction. There are none the less references to Eritrean events of 1987 and early 1988, though these have sometimes been compressed or relocated for fiction''s sake. Thomas Keneally who, to research this tale, visited Eritrea under the protection of the Eritrean rebels -- memorably charts the experience of a group of travellers through the eyes of one of their own.

After a successful American tour the four members of the Barramatjara Aboriginal Dance Troup fly out from New York on a plane bound for Frankfurt, their next performance destination. Shortly after the takeoff terrorists emerge from amongst the passengers and by force of arms quickly transfer the plane into a flying prison. As a result of information received by means of a sophisticated intelligence network, the terrorists take three hostages.

A revised version of the author''s novel The Fear, this is a portrait of urban Australia during World War II. It is the story of Daniel Jordan, a boy growing up in a working-class neighbourhood. The author also wrote Schindler''s Ark and Flying Hero Class.

Inspired by a true incident, this powerful and disturbing novel focuses on Rudi Kabbel, a survivor of Nazi-occupied Belorussia, and Terry Delaney, a young Australian rugby player who falls in love with Kabbel''s daughter. With the optimism and innocence of those unscathed by war, Delaney gropes to understand Kabbel''s outlook on life and all too slowly grasps its implications.

In the bitter Antarctic winter of 1910, in the waning years of the Edwardian era, a group of gentlemen adventurers wait out a raging blizzard in the close, perpetual darkness, poised for a strike at the South Pole. As the storm lifts, a new challenge faces Captain Sir Eugene Steward - to discover which of his twenty-five carefully chosen men has become a murderer - and what began as a probe for the bottom of the world becomes a probe for the depths of a man''s soul.

"The classic by Booker Prize-winner Thomas Keneally When Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman, the backlash from both Jimmie''s tribe and white society initiates a series of dramatic events. As Jimmie tries to survive between two cultures, tensions reach a head when the Newbys, Jimmie''s white employers, try to break up his marriage. the Newby women are murdered and Jimmie flees, pursued by police and vigilantes. the hunt intensifies as further murders are committed, and concludes with tragic results. thomas Keneally''s fictionalised account of the 1900 killing spree of half-Aboriginal Jimmy Governor is a powerful story of a black man''s revenge against an unjust and intolerant society."

La 4è de couverture indique : " A young doctor struggles to run a hospital on a small island off the Dalmatia coast under the devastating and barbarous conditions of World War II and has passionate, necessarily clandestine affair with a partisan heroine"

This story explores the ambivalent relationship between children and their parents by means of a fable charged with poetry, compassion, and shocking comedy. When Barbara Glover reached puberty, her parents suddenly assumed bodily forms so unnatural that they had to be kept from the world and tended like farm animals. Uncertain of whether she or they caused the "accident", she has found herself bound in dominance over them, impelled by a fierce love to organise them and her younger brother around the family''s affliction. Now this equilibrium is doubly threatened: the mother has a fatal disease of her species, and the brother is trying to break into a life and love outside the family.