Pacific

by Judy Nunn

  They had driven into the mountains and pulled up beside the banks of the mighty Snowy, and Lucky had painted the pictures in Italian for Pietro. Normally he insisted upon speaking English to further the boy’s education, but he’d wanted to communicate his passion.

  ‘During the snowmelt, Pietro,’ he’d said, ‘she roars down the mountain like herds of wild white horses. She is magnificent.’ He’d been silent for a while, before adding with a touch of regret, ‘I sometimes think it is sad that we are harnessing her.’ Then he’d started up the Land Rover and they’d driven still higher, to where the track ended and where, far above them, the craggy tips of the Snowies were clothed in white.

  ‘Your new mountains, Pietro. Perhaps not as high as your alps in Italy, but just as splendid, do you not agree?’ Pietro had nodded, and Lucky had said, ‘They are your home now.’

  As they’d wound their way back down the track, Lucky had waved through the windows, an all-embracing gesture at the trees passing by. ‘Just look at them,’ he’d said admiringly, and Pietro had. They were so varied, he’d thought, different from the alpine forests he could still vaguely recall. Some were black and stunted, while the pure white trunks and graceful limbs of others shimmered in the sun.

  ‘The trees are like women, Pietro,’ Lucky had smiled. ‘See how the blackbutt bends? She looks plain now, but when winter comes she will accept her burden of snow with ease, for she is a contortionist and she knows she is pretty in white. And the snow gum,’ he’d added, with a mock frown of disapproval, ‘the snow gum is shameless. She is a hedonist, basking in the sun. She is white and virginal now, but in the early autumn, she will flaunt her summer tan and turn a deep shade of terracotta.’ He’d laughed out loud, thoroughly enjoying himself.

  ‘And now I will show you Monaro country. It is a good time of year for you to see it, before the snow covers the high plains.’

  When they were back in the valley, his mood had again become serious. ‘You thought this land was barren when you first arrived, Pietro, but you were wrong. There are whole worlds that live in these hills and plains.’

  And he’d driven Pietro through a landscape that made him breathless with its beauty and variety. A landscape of rolling hills and grassy valleys. Of escarpments overlooking vast, treeless plains where the orange heads of the kangaroo fronds mingled with the silver-gold of the native grasses to ripple in the summer breeze like a massive multi-coloured river.

  ‘It is so alive,’ Pietro said as they gazed across the plain. He was reminded of the children’s picture book Sister Anna Maria had given him for his thirteenth birthday, Animals of Africa it had been called. ‘It looks like a sea of lions’ manes,’ he said. The countryside was taking on a new life to Pietro as he viewed it through Lucky’s eyes.

  Then they were in the granite belt, where huge mottled grey stone sculptures grew out of the soil, infinitesimally larger with the passing of each century as the ground was washed away from beneath them.

  They wandered among the clusters of giant boulders strewn about the rocky plains, many the size of houses. ‘Perhaps, in a thousand years, they might be the size of skyscrapers,’ Lucky had mused. ‘But then perhaps they will be dust. Who can tell?’

  Here and there, the countryside was dotted with the stamps of man’s intervention. The picturesque groves of imported poplars had been planted as memorials to fallen soldiers following World War I, Lucky had explained. Although they had a shorter lifespan than the indigenous trees, the poplars were nonetheless hardy, the mature tree sending up suckers and reinventing itself well before its demise, in order to ensure the survival of its species.

  ‘A fitting choice for a memorial to the dead,’ he’d said.

  During the drive back to Spring Hill, Lucky had been aware that his passion for the countryside had been passed on to the boy, just as he had intended, and he was glad.

  ‘This land and its history are ancient, Pietro,’ he said, ‘as ancient as time itself. But as a civilisation, it is only just being born, and we are a part of that birth. The birth of this country is our own rebirth. It will nurture and protect us, and we will repay it with our love, for we are free here. Free of all that haunts us,’ he said meaningfully. He had not brought up the subject of Pietro’s past since their early conversation and he had no intention of doing so now. ‘Free to build a new life in a country without hate.’

  The day had indeed had a profound effect upon Pietro. On their return to camp in the late afternoon, he’d felt light-headed and, with Lucky’s words still ringing in his mind, strangely reborn. It no longer seemed to matter that his childhood was lost to him.

  Pietro Toscanini couldn’t remember a time when he had been happier. He belonged here, he thought. Here in the Snowy Mountains and the high plains of the Monaro. He was part of this country now, just as Lucky had said. And he would prove himself worthy of it. He would embrace this land. As Lucky had.

  Tiger Men

  The eagerly awaited new novel by Judy Nunn

  ‘This town is full of tiger men,’ Dan said. ‘Just look around you. The merchants, the builders, the bankers, the company men, they’re all out for what they can get. This is a tiger town, Mick, a place at the bottom of the world where God turns a blind eye to pillage and plunder.’

  Van Diemen’s Land was an island of stark contrasts: a harsh penal colony, an English idyll for its landed gentry, and an island so rich in natural resources it was a profiteer’s paradise. Its capital, Hobart Town, had its contrasts too: the wealthy elite in their sandstone mansions, the exploited poor in the notorious slum known as Wapping, and the criminals and villains who haunted the dockside taverns and brothels of Sullivan’s Cove. Hobart Town was no place for the meek.

  Tiger Men is the story of Silas Stanford, a wealthy Englishman; Mick O’Callaghan, an Irishman on the run; and Jefferson Powell, an idealistic American political prisoner. It is also the story of the strong, proud women who loved them, and of the children they bore who rose to power in the cutthroat world of international trade.

  Tiger Men is the sweeping saga of three families who lived through Tasmania’s golden era, who witnessed the birth of Federation and who, in 1915, watched with pride as their sons marched off to fight for King and Country in the Great War.

  Available from November 2011

  Araluen

  He sorely missed Araluen and the vineyards, but that couldn’t be helped. One day he would buy a vineyard of his own. One day. In the meantime, he had to make his fortune …

  On a blistering hot day in 1850, George and Richard Ross take their first steps on Australian soil after three long months at sea. All they have is each other, and a quarterly remittance from their irate father who has banished them to the Colonies.

  A decade on, and the brothers are the owners of successful vineyard, Araluen, nestled in a beautiful green valley not far from Adelaide. Now a successful businessman, George has laid down the roots of his own Ross dynasty, born of the New World.

  But building a family empire – whatever the cost – can have a shattering effect on the generations to come …

  From the South Australian vineyards of the 1850s to the opulence and corruption of Hollywood’s golden age … From the relentless loneliness of the outback to mega-budget movie-making in modern-day New York … Judy Nunn weaves an intricate web of characters and locations in this spellbinding saga of the Ross family and its inescapable legacy of greed and power.

  Kal

  They hugged each other and there were tears in Rico’s eyes as he held his brother tightly to him. ‘Find gold for me, Gio. Find gold for me at the bottom of the world.’

  Kalgoorlie. They called it Kal. It grew out of the red dust of the desert over the world’s richest vein of gold. People were drawn there from all over the world, to start afresh or to seek their fortunes.

  People like Giovanni Gianni, fleeing his part in a family tragedy. Or Maudie Gaskill, one of the first women to arrive at the goldfields, and now owner of the most popular p
ub in town. Or Caterina Panuzzi, banished to the other side of the world to protect her family’s honour.

  The burgeoning town could reward you or it could destroy you, but it would never let you go. You staked your claim in Kal – and Kal staked its claim in you.

  In a story as sweeping as the land itself, bestselling author Judy Nunn brings Kal magically to life through the lives of two families, one Australian and one Italian. From the heady early days of the gold rush to the horrors of the First World War, to the shame and confrontation of the post-war riots, Kal tells the story of Australia itself and the people who forged a nation out of a harsh and unforgiving land.

  Beneath the Southern Cross

  ‘A night of debauchery it was …’ Thomas Kendall stood with his grandsons beside the massive sandstone walls of Fort Macquarie. He smiled as he looked out across Sydney Cove. ‘That night they brought the women convicts ashore …’

  In 1788, Thomas Kendall, a naïve nineteen-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself bound for Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross.

  Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last more than two hundred years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations.

  It is only at the dawn of the new Millennium – as an ancient journal lays bear a terrible secret – that the family can finally reclaim its honour …

  Beneath the Southern Cross is as much a story of a city as it is a family chronicle. Bringing history to life, Judy Nunn traces the fortunes of Kendall’s descendants through good times and bad, wars and social revolutions to the present day, vividly drawing the events, characters and issues that have made the city of Sydney and the nation of Australia what they are today.

  Territory

  He didn’t talk of the war or the missions he’d flown, but of his home in Australia. The Northern Territory, he called it. And the cattle station. ‘Bullalalla’. She thought it was a beautiful name.

  Territory is the story of Henrietta Southern, a young Englishwoman who trades her war-torn homeland for a place of wild tropical storms and searing heat, crocodile-infested rivers and barren red wilderness. Six months after the bombing of Darwin, she joins her new husband, Spitfire pilot Terence Galloway, at his family cattle station, just as he is faced with the desperate defence of the Top End against the Imperial Japanese Air Force.

  It is also the story of their sons. Of Malcolm and Kit, two brothers who grow up in the harsh but beautiful environment, and share a baptism of fire as young men in the jungles of Vietnam.

  And what of the Dutch East Indies treasure ship which foundered off Western Australia in 1629? How is the Galloway family’s destiny linked with Batavia’s horrific tale of mutiny and murder …?

  From the blazing inferno that was Darwin on 19 February 1942 to the devastation of Cyclone Tracy, from the red desert to the tropical shore, Territory is a mile-a-minute read from one of Australia’s best loved writers.

  Floodtide

  Four men … Four Families … Four memorable decades in the mighty ‘Iron Ore State’ of Western Australia.

  The prosperous 1950s when childhood is idyllic in the small city of Perth … The turbulent 60s when youth is caught up in the Vietnam War … The avaricious 70s when Western Australia’s mineral boom sees the rise of a new young breed of aggressive entrepreneurs … The corrupt 80s, when greedy politicians and powerful businessmen bring the state to its knees …

  Each of the four who travel this journey has a story to tell. An environmentalist fights to save the primitive and beautiful Pilbara coast from the ravaging of mining conglomerates; a Vietnam War veteran rises above crippling injuries to discover a talent which gains him an international reputation; and an ambitious geologist joins forces with a hard-core businessman to lead the way in the growth of Perth from a sleepy town to a glittering citadel of skyscrapers.

  But all four know one thing – the tides of change are irreversible. And as the 90s issues in a new age when innocence is lost, actions must be answered for.

  Floodtide is a character-driven, merciless rush of blood from the pen of Judy Nunn, one of Australia’s master storytellers.

  Maralinga

  Maralinga, spring 1956. A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; a top-secret atomic testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men. A cocktail for disaster.

  Maralinga is the story of Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner, who accepts a posting to the wilds of South Australia on a promise of rapid promotion; Harold Dartleigh, Deputy Director of MI6 and his undercover operative Gideon Melbray; Australian Army Colonel Nick Stratton and the enigmatic Petraeus Mitchell, bushman and anthropologist. They all find themselves in a violent and unforgiving landscape, infected with the unique madness and excitement that only nuclear testing creates.

  Maralinga is also a story of love; a love so strong that it draws the adventurous young English journalist Elizabeth Hoffmann halfway around the world in search of the truth.

  And Maralinga is a story of heartbreak; heartbreak brought to the innocent First Australians who had walked their land unhindered for 40,000 years …

  During the darkest days of the Cold War, in the remote wilderness of a South Australian desert, the future of an infant nation is being decided … without its people’s knowledge.

  The Glitter Game

  The stage lights hit her and she turned to face the sea of people. Flashbulbs popped and the moment was hers. Little did she or anyone else know that in a matter of hours the industry would never be the same again.

  Edwina Dawling is the golden girl of Australian television. The former pop singer is now the country’s most popular actress, an international star thanks to the hit TV soap The Glitter Game.

  But behind the seductive glamour of television is a cutthroat world where careers are made or destroyed with a word in the right ear … or a night in the right bed. Where success breeds envy and corruption, concealed in the flashing smiles at every premier event, every party.

  Only the ruthless make it to the top. And, as Edwina is soon to discover, they will stop at nothing to stay there. Not even murder.

  The Glitter Game is a delicious exposé of the glitzy world of television, a scandalous behind-the-scenes look at what goes on when the cameras stop rolling.

  Centre Stage

  1970 was indeed the year that shaped Maddy’s destiny. It was the year she went to NADA, and it was the year she met Alex …

  Alex Rainford has it all. He’s sexy, charismatic and adored by fans the world over. But he is not all he seems. What spectre from the past is driving him ever closer to evil? And who will fall under his spell along the way?

  Madeleine Frances, beautiful stage and screen actress. Years before she escaped Alex’s fatal charm, but now she is forced to confront him once again … and reveal her devastating secret.

  Susannah Wright, the finest classical actress of her generation. Not even her awesome talent can save her from Alex’s dangerous charisma.

  Imogen McLaughlin, the promising young actress whose biggest career break could be her greatest downfall. She wants Alex Rainford – but she doesn’t know that he has the power to destroy her …

  Centre Stage is a tantalising glimpse into the world of theatre and what goes on when the spotlight dims and the curtain falls.

  www.randomhouse.com.au