The Diggers Rest Hotel


Book Description

Winner: Best Fiction the Ned Kelly Awards 2011 In 1947, two years after witnessing the death of a young Jewish woman in Poland, Charlie Berlin has rejoined the Police force a different man. Sent to investigate a spate of robberies in rural Victoria, he soon discovers that World War II has changed even the most ordinary of places and people. An ex-bomber pilot and former POW, Berlin is struggling to fit back in: grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder, the ghosts of his dead crew and his futile attempts to numb the pain. When Berlin travels to Albury-Wodonga to track down the gang behind the robberies, he suspects he's a problem cop being set up to fail. Taking a room at the Diggers Rest Hotel in Wodonga, he sets about solving a case that no one else can – with the help of feisty, ambitious journalist Rebecca Green and rookie constable Rob Roberts, the only cop in town he can trust. Then the decapitated body of a young girl turns up in a back alley, and Berlin's investigations lead him even further through layers of small-town fears, secrets and despair. The first Charlie Berlin mystery takes us into a world of secret alliances and loyalties – and a society dealing with the effects of a war that changed men forever.




St Kilda Blues


Book Description

Selected for State Library of Victoria's Summer Read Programme 2014-2015 Bookworld Top 10 Crime & Thriller Books of 2014 'This is a terrific read with great plot twists, complex characters and a menacing atmosphere.' Sarina Gale, Books + Publishing, March 2014 It’s 1967, the summer of love, and in swinging Melbourne Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin has been hauled out of exile in the Fraud Squad to investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl, the daughter of a powerful and politically connected property developer. As Berlin’s inquiries uncover more missing girls he gets an uneasy feeling he may be dealing with the city’s first serial killer. Berlin's investigation leads him through inner-city discotheques, hip photographic studios, the emerging drug culture and into the seedy back streets of St Kilda. The investigation also brings up ghosts of Berlin's past as a bomber pilot and POW in Europe and disturbing memories of the casual murder of a young woman he witnessed on a snow-covered road in Poland in the war's dying days. As in war, some victories come at a terrible cost and Berlin will have to face an awful truth and endure an unimaginable loss before his investigation is over.




Fat, Fifty & F***ed!


Book Description

Martin Carter is having a crook day. His home life's a misery, he's been retrenched by the bank and everyone's forgotten his birthday. But a million-dollar payroll, a pistol, and a split-second decision change everything. Hurtling north on a motorcycle with the intriguing Faith, Martin encounters a mysterious hit-man, a new-age bikie gang, a reclusive media mogul, and the booby-trapped mountain hideout of an old schoolmate. With Faith's help he learns about love again, along with some bitter truths about instant coffee, brown suede shoes, and the legendary Great Aussie Truck-stop Breakfast.




Blackwattle Creek


Book Description

Winner of the 2013 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction "A flawless novel that offers everything one could wish for in crime fiction: an enveloping sense of time and place, well-drawn and compelling characters and a suspenseful story that rips along at a cracking pace while still allowing a thought-provoking theme to be explored." Ned Kelly Awards Judges comment. The insane are running the asylum in this cracking Charlie Berlin thriller. It's September 1957, two days before the VFL grand final, and Detective Sergeant Charlie Berlin finally has some time off. But there's no rest for this decent if damaged man, still troubled by his wartime experience as a bomber pilot and POW. A recently widowed friend asks a favour and he's dropped into something much bigger than he bargained for. Berlin discovers a Melbourne funeral parlour has been burying bodies with parts missing and when a Hungarian emigre hearse driver points him in the right direction it quickly becomes clear that anyone asking questions is also asking for trouble. With his offsider beaten and left for dead, witnesses warned off and Special Branch on his case, Berlin realises even his young family may be in danger. His pursuit of the truth leads Berlin to Blackwattle Creek, once an asylum for the criminally insane and now home to even darker evils. And if Charlie thought government machinations during World War II were devious, those of the Cold War leave them for dead.




Oil!


Book Description

First edition of Sinclair's savage satire, loosely based on the life and career of Edward L. Doheny, and the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. Although Sinclair's famous novel The Jungle deals with Chicago's meatpacking industry, he moved west to Pasadena in 1916 and began writing novels set in California, the best of which was Oil!, the story of the education of Bunny Ross, son of wildcat oil man Joe Ross after oil is discovered outside Los Angeles. The novel was the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood. In California Classics, Lawrence Clark Powell called Oil! "Sinclair's most sustained and best writing."




D-E-D Dead!


Book Description

In D-E-D Dead!, Geoff McGeachin's riotous adventure thriller, Alby Murdoch - international photographer and Australian special agent – ducks bullets and bombs from Bondi to Bali and back as he attempts to unravel a lethal web of high-level dodgy dealings . . . From the moment Alby drops his gun on a St Kilda tram he knows he's in for a bad day. Then his partner Harry is gunned down in a Double Bay coffee shop. By lunchtime Alby realises someone wants him dead – and they want him dead now. All Alby wants is some pasta, a good bottle of wine and to know more about the mysterious Grace Goodluck . . . long dark hair, legs up to there, and piercing slate-grey eyes...sniper's eyes. But he also has to figure out who shot Harry and who wants him dead. And why. Unfortunately for Alby, the answer lies over the razor wire and past the anti-personnel mines protecting Bitter Springs, a top-secret US military facility deep in the central Australian desert. Now that can really ruin your day . . . Visit YouTube and watch the trailers Dead and Kicking Sensitive New Age Spy D-E-D-Dead!




How the Irish Became White


Book Description

'...from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called ‘path breaking,’ ‘seminal,’ ‘essential,’ a ‘must read.’ How the Irish Became White is such a study.' John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts, Amherst The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country – a land of opportunity – they found a very different form of social hierarchy, one that was based on the color of a person’s skin. Noel Ignatiev’s 1995 book – the first published work of one of America’s leading and most controversial historians – tells the story of how the oppressed became the oppressors; how the new Irish immigrants achieved acceptance among an initially hostile population only by proving that they could be more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists. This is the story of How the Irish Became White.




Life After Life


Book Description

WINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale. What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to? Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in lifeâe(tm)s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.




Pattern Recognition


Book Description

'Part-detective story, part-cultural snapshot . . . all bound by Gibson's pin-sharp prose' Arena -------------- THE FIRST NOVEL IN THE BLUE ANT TRILIOGY - READ ZERO HISTORY AND SPOOK COUNTRY FOR MORE Cayce Pollard has a new job. She's been offered a special project: track down the makers of an addictive online film that's lighting up the internet. Hunting the source will take her to Tokyo and Moscow and put her in the sights of Japanese hackers and Russian Mafia. She's up against those who want to control the film, to own it - who figure breaking the law is just another business strategy. The kind of people who relish turning the hunter into the hunted . . . A gripping spy thriller by William Gibson, bestselling author of Neuromancer. Part prophesy, part satire, Pattern Recognition skewers the absurdity of modern life with the lightest and most engaging of touches. Readers of Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury and Iain M. Banks won't be able to put this book down. -------------- 'Fast, witty and cleverly politicized' Guardian 'A big novel, full of bold ideas . . . races along like an expert thriller' GQ 'Dangerously hip. Its dialogue and characterization will amaze you. A wonderfully detailed, reckless journey of espionage and lies' USA Today 'A compelling, humane story with a sympathetic heroine searching for meaning and consolation in a post-everything world' Daily Telegraph 'Electric, profound. Gibson's descriptions of Tokyo, Russia and London are surreally spot-on' Financial Times




Invisible Sun


Book Description

The alternate timelines of Charles Stross' Empire Games trilogy have never been so entangled than in Invisible Sun—the techno-thriller follow up to Dark State—as stakes escalate in a conflict that could spell extermination for humanity across all known timelines. An inter-timeline coup d'état gone awry. A renegade British monarch on the run through the streets of Berlin. And robotic alien invaders from a distant timeline flood through a wormhole, wreaking havoc in the USA. Can disgraced worldwalker Rita and her intertemporal extraordaire agent of a mother neutralize the livewire contention before it's too late? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.