"Executions, murders, suicides, poisonings, shipwrecks, floods, cemetery desecration, airline crashes, fires, pre-historic discoveries - all this and more has occurred in Tasmania's relatively short 210 year history since colonisation... A plethora of true stories about the gruesome, shocking , amazing and amusing events from Tasmania's history..."--Back cover.

A brilliant account of 200 years of Tasmanian history and an acclaimed writer’s discovery of his secret connection with that island and its past. In Tasmania on holiday, novelist and Chatwin biographer Nicholas Shakespeare discovered a house on a 9-mile beach and instantly decided this was where he wanted to live. He didn’t know then that his ancestor was the corrupt and colourful Anthony Fenn Kemp, now known as ‘the Father of Tasmania’, or that he would find relatives living on the island. Shakespeare interweaves his personal journey into a new-found paradise with a brilliant account of the two turbulent centuries of Tasmania’s history in this fascinating and timely book. ‘A delightful book. Nicholas Shakespeare is a fine story teller and here he unveils for us a compendium of fascinating Tasmanian characters past and present, from bankrupt squires to convict cannibals, from love struck romantics to the captivating monstrous Anthony Fenn Kemp, the Flashman of early colonial Australia. From all these lives Shakespeare builds up a rich and powerful portrait of this intriguing land, his adopted home.’ - Matthew Kneale

Fascinating new insights into the famous Australian marsupial Packed with information that has only been published in scientific journals, if ever at all, this collection of biological facts challenges the misconceptions associated with Australia's most famous marsupial. Far from being a scavenging, ferocious oddity, an image perpetuated by the infamous cartoon character, the Tasmanian Devil is actually a treasured and valuable wildlife species facing extinction. By sharing the surprising, controversial, funny, and tragic history behind the world's largest marsupial carnivore, this new guidebo.

Winner, Queensland Premier's Literary Awards 2011 Winner, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2011 For many years, the Tasmanian wilderness has been the site of a fierce struggle. At stake is the future of old-growth forests. Loggers and police face off with protesters deep in the forest, while savage political games are played in the courts and parliaments. In Into the Woods, Anna Krien, armed with a notebook, a sleeping bag and a rusty sedan, ventures behind the battlelines to see what it is like to risk everything for a cause. She speaks to ferals and premiers, sawmillers and whistle-blowers. She investigates personalities and convictions, methods and motives. This is a book about a company that wanted its way and the resistance that eventually forced it to change. Updated with a new afterword, Into the Woods is intimate, intrepid reporting by a fearless new voice. ‘Anna Krien’s intimate, urgent book pulsates with life and truth.’ — Chloe Hooper ‘Anna Krien is Australia’s young, female Hunter S. Thompson.’ — Amanda Lohrey

1952. Tasmania. The beautiful green, rolling hills of the dairy town Mole Creek have a dark underside — a labyrinthine underworld of tunnels that stretch for countless miles, caverns the size of cathedrals and underground rivers that flood after heavy rain. The caves are dangerous places, forbidden to children. But this is Tasmania — an island at the end of the earth. Here, rules are made to be broken. For two young brothers, a hidden cave a short walk from the family farm seems the perfect escape from their abusive, shell-shocked father — until the older brother goes missing. Fearful of his father, the younger and more vulnerable Kip lies about what happened. It is a decision that will haunt him his whole life. Fifty years later, Kip — now an award-winning scientist — has a young son of his own, but cannot look him without seeing his lost brother, Tommy. On a mission of atonement, he returns to the cave they called Kubla to discover if it’s ever too late to have a second chance. To go back and set things right. To be the father you never had. Following the release of her hugely successful first novel Pescador’s Wake, Katherine Johnson is back to share her exceptional writing talent with the world. The Better Son is a richly imaginative and universal story about the danger of secrets, the beauty of forgiveness and the enthralling power of our natural landscape.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OPTIONED FOR TELEVISION BY BRUNA PAPANDREA, THE PRODUCER OF HBO'S BIG LITTLE LIES “A tour de force of original thought, imagination and promise … Kline takes full advantage of fiction — its freedom to create compelling characters who fully illuminate monumental events to make history accessible and forever etched in our minds." — Houston Chronicle The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Orphan Train returns with an ambitious, emotionally resonant novel about three women whose lives are bound together in nineteenth-century Australia and the hardships they weather together as they fight for redemption and freedom in a new society. Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land. During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel—a skilled midwife and herbalist—is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors. Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government in the 1840s considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled, and views the natives as an unpleasant nuisance. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, their land seized by white colonists. One of these relocated people is Mathinna, the orphaned daughter of the Chief of the Lowreenne tribe, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land. In this gorgeous novel, Christina Baker Kline brilliantly recreates the beginnings of a new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a fresh perspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel, and Mathinna. While life in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some, an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom. Told in exquisite detail and incisive prose, The Exiles is a story of grace born from hardship, the unbreakable bonds of female friendships, and the unfettering of legacy.