The haunting story of an extraordinary Aboriginal woman. Winner of the National Biography Award 2021 Shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Award for Non-fiction 2021 'A compelling story, beautifully told' - JULIA BAIRD, author and broadcaster 'At last, a book to give Truganini the proper attention she deserves.' - GAYE SCULTHORPE, Curator of Oceania, The British Museum Cassandra Pybus's ancestors told a story of an old Aboriginal woman who would wander across their farm on Bruny Island, in south-east Tasmania, in the 1850s and 1860s. As a child, Cassandra didn't know this woman was Truganini, and that Truganini was walking over the country of her clan, the Nuenonne. For nearly seven decades, Truganini lived through a psychological and cultural shift more extreme than we can imagine. But her life was much more than a regrettable tragedy. Now Cassandra has examined the original eyewitness accounts to write Truganini's extraordinary story in full. Hardly more than a child, Truganini managed to survive the devastation of the 1820s, when the clans of south-eastern Tasmania were all but extinguished. She spent five years on a journey around Tasmania, across rugged highlands and through barely penetrable forests, with George Augustus Robinson, the self-styled missionary who was collecting the survivors to send them into exile on Flinders Island. She has become an international icon for a monumental tragedy - the so-called extinction of the original people of Tasmania. Truganini's story is inspiring and haunting - a journey through the apocalypse. 'For the first time a biographer who treats her with the insight and empathy she deserves. The result is a book of unquestionable national importance.' - PROFESSOR HENRY REYNOLDS, University of Tasmania

The brilliant and explosive new novel from the author of the award-winning The Museum of Modern Love. Why is a massive bridge being built to connect the sleepy island of Bruny with the mainland of Tasmania? And why have terrorists blown it up? When the Bruny bridge is bombed, UN troubleshooter Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, her mother is fading and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go. Bruny is a searing, subversive novel about family, love, loyalty and the new world order. It is a gripping thriller with a jaw-dropping twist, a love story, a cry from the heart and a fiercely entertaining and crucial work of imagination that asks the burning question: what would you do to protect the place you love? Praise for The Museum of Modern Love: 'A glorious novel, meditative and special in a way that defies easy articulation.' Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites 'Audacious and beautiful.' Dominic Smith, author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 'I adored it, and it is my book of the year so far.' Amanda Rayner, Readings Reviews ' coruscates with captivating energy Incisive, beautiful, and precise.' Foreword Reviews, starred review 'Captivating a gem of a novel.' Library Journal, starred review 'Deeply involving profound emotionally rich and thought-provoking.' Booklist, starred review 'With rare subtlety and humanity, this novel relocates the difficult path to wonder in us all.' The Christina Stead Prize 2017 'Profound a tender meditation on art, love, grief, and life.' Bustle 'An unusual and lively work of fiction.' Newsday

And as the waves take her apart, piece by piece, she watches the message of the lighthouse spelling itself out on the surface of the water. Its message is composed in the alphabet of light and dark. Flash, eclipse, flash, eclipse. If we see only the light, we are blinded; only the dark and we will never find our way. A tiny coin found inside a Cloudy Bay oyster, a postcard of a white-haired child leaning against a beached dinghy and a coconut peeled and carved once upon a time on the Batavian coast. These trinkets, found in a sea chest, and the fragmented memories of her grandfather's tall tales are all Essie Lewis has left of her family history. After her grandfather's death, Essie returns to Bruny Island, Tasmania and to the lighthouse where her great-great-grandfather kept watch for nearly 40 years. Beneath the lighthouse, she begins to write the stories of her ancestors. But the island is also home to Pete Shelverton, a sculptor who hunts feral cats to make his own peace with the past. And as Essie writes, she finds that Pete is a part of the history she can never escape. 'Absorbing, subtle, impressive writing.' Debra Adelaide 'Wood's writing is sinewy, physical and elemental.' Liam Davison riting.' Debra Adelaide 'Its lyrical probing of several dimensions of Australian/Tasmanian experience make it a fitting recipient for this award. Wood's achievement in her sustained evocation of the bleak Bruny Island landscape and the surrounding seascape is tremendously potent and effective.' Stella Clarke 'The author has that special quality which just jumps off the page. The voice is strong and the sense of place so powerful.' James Bradley 'Wood's writing is sinewy, physical and elemental. She is very good when it comes to the melding of family mythology, storytelling, and colonial history into something which serves a range of purposes. A novel about history rather than a historical novel.' Liam Davison

Elderly and in poor health, Mary fulfils her wish to herself to live out her last days on Bruny Island with only her regrets and memories for company. A long time ago, her late husband was the lighthousekeeper on Bruny, and she'd raised a family on the wild windswept island, until terrible circumstances forced them back to civilisation. The long-buried secret that has haunted her for decades now threatens to break free and she is hoping to banish it once and for all before her time is up.

When Christopher Koch sets out on a journey through Ireland with his friend the folksinger Brian Mooney, each is seeking an aspect of the past. Mooney is returning to a country where he spent much of his adult life, while two of Koch's great-great-grandmothers came from Ireland to Van Diemen's Land: one of them as a convict. Koch is looking for traces of the mid-nineteenth century: the time of the Famine, which flung the ancestors of so many Irish-Australians across the globe. What he finds, between meetings in pubs with folk musicians and IRA supporters, is modern Ireland. Greatly changed from the impoverished country he visited in the 1950s, it's enjoying the boom of the early twenty-first century, despite the unresolved struggle in the North. For Koch, though, the true soul of this land is to be found in the countryside, where doorways can still be seen to the different levels of the Faery Otherworld: the Many-Coloured Land. 'It is difficult to praise this book too highly. When a master like Koch writes, you expect masterly writing. In this book that is what you get.' the Canberra times 'this is one of the most accurately observed books about Ireland, written by a foreigner, that I have read ... [Koch] came well equipped to assess us, and he makes none of the blunders of the tourist-writer. He is well read in our history and literature ... He is in every way a perceptive but courteous visitor.' Irish Independent