Thomas Keneally

In this spirited history of the remarkable first four years of the convict settlement of Australia, Thomas Keneally offers us a human view of a fascinating piece of history. Combining the authority of a renowned historian with a brilliant narrative flair, Keneally gives us an inside view of this unprecedented experiment from the perspective of the new colony's governor, Arthur Phillips. Using personal journals and documents, Keneally re-creates the hellish overseas voyage and the challenges Phillips faced upon arrival: unruly convicts, disgruntled officers, bewildered and hostile natives, food shortages, and disease. He also offers captivating portrayals of Aborigines and of convict settlers who were determined to begin their lives anew. A Commonwealth of Thieves immerses us in the fledgling penal colony and conjures up the thrills and hardships of those first four improbable years.

Tells the story of modern Australia begins in eighteenth-century Britain, where people were hanged for petty offences but crime was rife, and the gaols were bursting.

Imagine a Middle-Eastern country that was once a friend of the West becoming an enemy, its people starving and savagely repressed by a tyrant known as Great Uncle. As a celebrated writer and war hero, the man who here relates his story has a better life than most, until he is made an offer he can't refuse. He must write a great novel, telling of the suffering of his people under the enemy's cruel economic sanctions and portraying Great Uncle as their saviour. This masterpiece must be completed in time for its international debut in three months - or else. If the writer cannot - or will not - meet the tyrant's deadline, he and anyone he cares for will pay the ultimate price.Stark, terrifying and utterly compelling, THE TYRANT'S NOVEL is both a gripping thriller and a chilling glimpse of a fictional world that seems all too real.

The best-selling author of Schindler's List re-creates the colorful life and times of nineteenth-century politician and military leader Dan Sickles, a notorious womanizer and scoundrel who killed his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key, and thanks to the influence of political friends, including President James Buchanan, got away with murder. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

Sydney, 1942, and in a nation threatened by a Japanese invasion, with husbands absent and sleek GIs present, a spirit of recklessness takes hold. Frank Darragh, an impressionable young priest, finds the line between saving others' souls and losing his own begins to blur as he becomes entangled with an attractive married woman, a ménage a trois, and a charismatic American sergeant.

And the caddish, good-looking Dan Sickles personifies the extremes of the era: as a womaniser, he introduced his favourite madam to Queen Victoria while his wife stayed at home, and he installed his housekeeper as his mistress while his second wife took up residence nearby.

The thrilling story of an ill-fated expedition to the South Pole by the bestselling and award-winning author of Schindler's List. In the waning years of the Edwardian era, a group of English gentleman- adventurers led by Sir Eugene Stewart launched an expedition to reach the South Pole. More than sixty years later, Anthony Piers, the official artist of the New British South Polar Expedition, finally unveils the sobering conditions of their perilous journey: raging wind, bitter cold, fierce hunger, absolute darkness-and murder. The first two decades of the twentieth century were known as the "heroic era" of Antarctic exploration. In 1911, Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Weeks later, doomed British explorer Robert Falcon Scott arrived-and then perished in a blizzard. And in 1914, Ernest Shackleton embarked on his infamous voyage to Antarctica. Set during this epic period of adventure and discovery, Victim of the Aurora re-creates a thrilling time in an unforgiving place and is a brilliantly plotted tale of psychological suspense.

When Terry Delaney, a young Australian rugby player, falls in love with the daughter of Rudi Kabbel - a survivor of Nazi-occupied Belorussia - he gropes to understand Kabbel's outlook on life. All too slowly he grasps the implications of Kabbel's vision, too late to avert its tragic consequences.

The story of Joan of Arc has always held a special fascination for writers - among them Voltaire, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and Jean Anouilh. Here Thomas Keneally transforms the legend, presenting a Joan who is at once a tough radical, an instinctive soldier, a nagging prophet and a touchingly vulnerable girl - a haunting and compelling heroine framed by the tumultuous times in which she lived.

When Dimp Bettany, a Sydney film producer, comes into possession of her ancestor John Bettany's journals, she believes she has finally found the subject of her next masterpiece. Even her more detached sister Prim, an aid worker in the Sudan, becomes intrigued as the story unfolds of how John Bettany carved out a living in the wilds of New South Wales in the 1840s, and of the internment in the notorious Female Factory of Sarah Bernard, the convict woman he was destined to meet. As John's and Sarah's paths converge, each sister finds her life cast in a new and galvanising light.

In The Great Shame, Thomas Keneally--the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler's List--combines the authority of a brilliant historian and the narrative grace of a great novelist to present a gripping account of the Irish diaspora. The nineteenth century saw Ireland lose half of its population to famine, emigration, or deportation to penal colonies in Australia--often for infractions as common as stealing food. Among the victims of this tragedy were Thomas Keneally's own forebearers, and they were his inspiration to tell the story of the Irish who struggled and ultimately triumphed in Australia and North America. Relying on rare primary sources--including personal letters, court transcripts, ship manifests, and military documents--Keneally offers new and important insights into the impact of the Irish in exile. The result is a vivid saga of heroes and villains, from Great Famine protesters to American Civil War generals to great orators and politicians.

In the 19th century the Irish population was halved. first the manine, second the Irish diaspora and the emigrations to places such as America and Canada and thridly the transportations of political activists to Australia. this is an important book in which the main political themes are fascinatingly explored.

In this vivacious memoir, Thomas Keneally conjures up his youthful self at a pivotal period in his life - as a red-haired teenager who idolised Gerald Manley Hopkins, had visions of being a sporting hero, and dreamed of winning the heart of the alluring Bernadette Curran. The one role he did not see himself playing was priest, despite the encouragement of the Brothers at his Catholic school - until Bernadette announced her intention of becoming a nun. Drawing an affectionate portrait of the people who inspired and influenced him, Keneally beautifully captures the agonies and the ecstasies of adolescence.

By the author of Schlinder's List and Woman of the Inner Sea The time is the start of the century. The place is a seemingly peaceful Australian town on the banks of the Macleay River in New South Wales. Here Tim Shea has come from distant Ireland to build a new life free of the crippling poverty and bleak horizons of the past. But he finds that this land of opportunity is a land of perilous choices. As a good man in a less than perfect world, he also finds that the price of goodness can be painfully high. Thomas Keneally has created one of the most wonderfully realized characters in modern fiction, forced to confront questions of duty and desire, race and sex, class and caste, politics and religion, in a town that becomes a vividly moving microcosm of humanity's strengths and weaknesses, tragedies and triumphs. A River Town is engrossing, funny, and touching - vintage Keneally. "A novel of a time with moral question disturbingly like our own . . . a fictional world at once harsh and sensuous and supremely engaging to read about." - Boston Globe "A wonderful piece of writing, a joyously exact and haunting feat of the imagination . . . crammed with magnificent portraits . . . A River Town turns steadily into a chilling and suspenseful mystery, as absorbing a page-turner as this master story-teller has ever written . . . It is the best book of the year." - San Francisco Chronicle

Schoolboy narrator Daniel Jordan, growing up in working-class Sydney during the Second World War, is confused by a world in which the religious dogma of his school conflicts with the communism of his family's terrifying neighbour, the 'Comrade'. Refreshingly unsentimental, this is the funny, ultimately tragic story of a boy struggling to understand a world in which concepts like innocence and guilt, good and evil are clearly open to interpretation.

In turn-of-the-century Australia, Tim Shea supports his young family by running a general store in a remote riverside town, where he finds the same hypocrisy and snobbery which made him emigrate from Ireland, and suffers a series of misfortunes which take him to the brink of disaster. Capturing the spirit of the times, this is the mesmerising tale of a flawed hero whose stubborn integrity is nearly his undoing.

With his genial air of an Australian innocent, Jacko Emptor is New York's most public trespasser, invading people's homes at random for a live television show. Until he undertakes the televised hunt for a missing woman and, finally, meets a barrier even he will not transgress. The dramatic tale of Jacko's exploits probes the dubious ethics behind some television programmes and illuminates how a civilized society can harbour appalling evil.

With a new introduction by Thomas Keneally.'The best novel of the Civil War since The Red Badge of Courage'NewsweekAs the Civil War tears America apart, General Stonewall Jackson leads a troop of Confederate soldiers on a long trek towards the battle they believe will be a conclusive victory. Through their hopes, fears and losses, Keneally searingly conveys both the drama and mundane hardship of war, and brings to life one of the most emotive episodes in American history.

When Palestinian guerillas hijack a flight from New York to Frankfurt, they find an Aboriginal dance troupe among the passengers. Similarly dispossessed of their land, whose side will the Aborigines take? Conflicts of loyalty, terror and revolutionary fervour form the explosive ingredients in this riveting and thought-provoking novel.

In the waning of the Edwardian era, a group of gentlemen wait out a raging blizzard in the perpetual darkness of the Antartic winter, poised for a strike at the South Pole. But as the storm lifts, a new challenge faces Captain Sir Eugene Stewart: to discover which of his men has become a murderer.