October 2009

The search of the Sydney / David L. MearnsSearch of the Sydney

She was the glory ship of the then fledgling Australian Navy: a modern, handsome cruiser which carried a wartime complement of 645 men. But then, on19 November 1941, HMAS Sydney encountered the German raider Kormoran in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. 

 

In 2002, shipwreck hunter David Mearns joined the long list of people who had tried to find the Sydney. He would navigate false clues, conspiracy theories, maddening technical problems and cyclones; but in 2008 he recorded the astonishing words ‘HMAS Sydney found!’. Here he tells the story of the hunt for the Sydney - and the Kormoran - and reveals what really happened on that fateful day in November.

 

The white queen / Philippa Gregory

 

White queenThe first in a stunning new series, The Cousins War, is set amid the tumult and intrigue of The War of the Roses. The White Queen tells the story of a common woman who ascends to royalty by virtue of her beauty, a woman who rises to the demands of her position and fights tenaciously for the success of her family, a woman whose two sons become the central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the Princes in the Tower whose fate remains unknown to this day.

 

From her uniquely qualified perspective, Philippa Gregory explores the most famous unsolved mytery, informed by impeccable research and framed by her inimitable storytelling skills.

 

Black ice / Leah Giarratanoblack ice

Jill Jackson is working undercover in Sydney’s murky drug world. Her sister Cassie’s boyfriend is a lawyer doing pro bono work. He is also Cassie’s supplier of cocaine. Seren Templeton spent two years in gaol for something she didn’t do.

 

Now she is ready to get her revenge on the man responsible. Things start to go awry when these worlds collide.

 

 

The Dakota cipher / William Dietrich

The Dakota cipherEthan Gage, the expatriate American who starred in The Rosetta Key (2007) and Napoleon’s Pyramids (2008), returns for another adventure. The story, which takes place in 1800, finds Ethan joining forces with a Norwegian, the splendidly named Magnus Bloodhammer, to find Thor’s Hammer a magic talisman which supposedly was brought to America by Knights Templar hundreds of years before Columbus sailed. 

 

The quest takes Ethan back home, to America and with the blessing of President Thomas Jefferson, Ethan and Magnus go northwest, where their steps are dogged by vindictive British loyalists, hostile Indians and unlikely disciples of an Egyptian snake cult. Dietrich does an excellent job of creating the historical settings of the novels, and the real-life characters. A spirited installment of what promises to be a long-running series

 

 The Wolf / Richard Gulliatt

 The wolf

During World War I, a young Australian family sails across the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney. Less than a thousand miles from Sydney, a freighter appears out of the emptiness.

  

She is in fact the German warship the Wolf, and the family are about to find themselves captive on one of the century’s most extraordinary wartime sea voyages. 

 

 

Junior/Young Adult Fiction

Adult Fiction

  Adult Non-Fiction