The notorious baby killer Frances Thwaites, in her day as famous perhaps as Ned Kelly, and whose execution in 1894 led the hangman to kill himself rather than perform the deed. Frances was alternately demonized and fantasised over, though her role as one of the colony's most infamous baby farmers has usually been depicted as evidence of a depraved psychopath. This novel, based on a meticulous re-examination of letters, trial transcripts and first-hand accounts, tells a different tale. In the style of Alias Grace and The True History of the Kelly Gang, The Notorious Frances Thwaites tells the poignant story of a young girl unfairly condemned to life in the colony who struggled through adversity to survive the harsh environment of Australia - a girl hanged for a crime she may not have committed. Beautifully written and evocatively told, this is a story at once lyrical and bold. The first work in a trilogy about the lives of Frances and her two daughters, this book both introduces a fresh new voice into the Australian literary scene, and resurrects the voice of a tragic Australian heroine so that her true story can at last be told.

The notorious baby killer Frances Thwaites, in her day as famous perhapsas Ned Kelly, and whose execution in 1894 led the hangman to kill himselfrather than perform the deed. Frances was alternately demonized andfantasised over, though her role as one of the colony's most infamous babyfarmers has usually been depicted as evidence of a depraved psychopath. This novel, based on a meticulous re-examination of letters, trialtranscripts and first-hand accounts, tells a different tale. In the style ofAlias Grace and The True History of the Kelly Gang, The Notorious FrancesThwaites tells the poignant story of a young girl unfairly condemned to lifein the colony who struggled through adversity to survive the harshenvironment of Australia - a girl hanged for a crime she may not havecommitted. Beautifully written and evocatively told, this is a story at oncelyrical and bold. The first work in a trilogy about the lives of Frances andher two daughters, this book both introduces a fresh new voice into theAustralian literary scene, and resurrects the voice of a tragic Australianheroine so that her true story can at last be told.

With humor, rage, and confessional detail, Virginie Despentes—in her own words “more King Kong than Kate Moss”—delivers a highly charged account of women’s lives today. She explodes common attitudes about sex and gender, and shows how modern beauty myths are ripe for rebelling against. Using her own experiences of rape, prostitution, and working in the porn industry as a jumping-off point, she creates a new space for all those who can’t or won’t obey the rules.

Do you want to...Help distribute money to the poor and be given a fee to do so? Share in Al Qaeda's hidden gold? Help a young girl orphaned in the tsunami? In their highly entertaining and often shocking new book James Morton and Susanna Lobez follow up their bestselling Gangland Australia by delving into the world of Australian con artists such as Mario Condello, Helen Demidenko, Christopher Skase, Brenton Jarrett, Peter Foster, Lola Montez and Fairlie Arrow. Here are highly talented men and women and their tricks: changing paper into banknotes, selling other people's property, faking deaths, and forging paintings; promising miracle cures and impersonating aristocracy, preachers, military gents, lawyers and doctors. In fact, whatever it takes to separate the unwary from their money. Read about the scams and think twice about that offer that seems almost too good to be true.

p.B. J. Whiting savors proverbial expressions and has devoted much of his lifetime to studying and collecting them; no one knows more about British and American proverbs than he. The present volume, based upon writings in British North America from the earliest settlements to approximately 1820, complements his and Archer Taylor's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880. It differs from that work and from other standard collections, however, in that its sources are primarily not "literary" but instead workaday writings - letters, diaries, histories, travel books, political pamphlets, and the like. The authors represent a wide cross-section of the populace, from scholars and statesmen to farmers, shopkeepers, sailors, and hunters. Mr. Whiting has combed all the obvious sources and hundreds of out-of-the-way publications of local journals and historical societies. This body of material, "because it covers territory that has not been extracted and compiled in a scholarly way before, can justly be said to be the most valuable of all those that Whiting has brought together," according to Albert B. Friedman. "What makes the work important is Whiting's authority: a proverb or proverbial phrase is what BJW thinks is a proverb or proverbial phrase. There is no objective operative definition of any value, no divining rod; his tact, 'feel, ' experience, determine what's the real thing and what is spurious."