Thomas Keneally
21) Homebush Boy
Author
Language
English
Description
In this playful and poignant memoir, Thomas Keneally returns to his adolescence in the suburbs of Sydney in 1952. At sixteen, the red-haired teenager idolized the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and had aspirations of becoming a star on the track or rugby field. He also dreamed of wooing the beautiful and alluring Bernadette Curran until the day she announces her desire to become a nun. For the first time, Keneally started to consider priesthood himself....
Author
Language
English
Description
Following a lifetime observing Australia and its people, Tom Keneally turns inwards to reflect on what has been important to him.
'When I was born in 1935 I grew up, despite depression and World War II, with a primitive sense of being fortunate... The Utopian strain was very strong... if we weren't to be a better society, if we were simply serfs designed to support a system of privilege, what was the bloody point?'
Tom Keneally has been observing,...
Author
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English
Description
Set in a remote British penal colony in the late eighteenth century, Bring Larks and Heroes explores the early years of European settlement of desperate men and corrupt soldiers to Australia, the world's end. Corporal Phelim Halloran, an honest man, poet and lover, attempts to make a home for himself while confronting the demands of his secret bride, a convict-artist, his Irish comrades, and his own conscience. Can he overcome the hellish, sun-parched...
Author
Language
English
Description
An English lieutenant is ordered to stage a play starring prisoners of the Australian penal colony he supervises in this phantasmagoric historical fiction masterwork from the author of Schindler's List In the penal colony of Sydney Cove, Australia, at the farthest reaches of the late-nineteenth-century British Empire, Lieutenant Ralph Clark has received a bizarre commission. In honor of the king's birthday, Clark is charged with staging a production...
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English
Description
When Grace married the handsome and worldly Captain Leo Waterhouse in Australia during the middle of the Second World War, she never doubted that she had married a hero and he would come back to her unscathed. But Leo never returns from a commando raid on Japanese ships in the Singapore Harbour, leaving Grace a widow, like so many, to shoulder the pain and regret of losing her husband. Sixty years later, Grace is still bitter and perplexed by the...
Author
Language
English
Description
Jehannette, an illiterate peasant girl of seventeen, hears voices that tell her she must help the Dauphin become king. But this proves hard to accomplish in 15th century France as the British occupy parts of the country, including Rheims where the crowning must take place. Jehannette must first convince the Dauphin of her mission and then help lead his army to push back the occupiers. Will this tough, radical yet vulnerable girl be able to triumph...
Author
Language
English
Description
The past returns to haunt a guilt-stricken man who survived a tragic Antarctic expedition decades earlier in this powerful and thought-provoking novel from the author of Schindler's List A professor at an Australian university, Alec Ramsey has lived an eventful life, much of which he is reluctant to discuss. In the 1920s, he was a member of a small expedition to Antarctica that resulted in the tragic death of its leader and Ramsey's dear friend, Stephen...
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English
Description
A gripping reimagining of the drama, ego, intrigue, and madness at work during the World War I armistice negotiations In November 1918, after four long years of murderous conflict, six men gather in a railroad car in a secluded forest outside Paris, France, to negotiate an end to World War I. A pacifist, left-leaning diplomat with no military knowledge or experience, Matthias Erzberger has been selected by the German high command to represent their...
29) The Dickens boy
Author
Language
English
Description
"Edward Dickens, the tenth child of England's most famous author Charles Dickens, has consistently let down his parents. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself--or at least fail out of the public eye. He soon finds himself in the remote Outback, surrounded by Aboriginals, colonials, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. Even on the other...
Author
Language
English
Description
When I was born in 1935 I grew up, despite the Depression and World War II, with a primitive sense of being fortunate... The utopian strain was very strong... if we weren't to be a better society, if we were simply serfs designed to support a system of privilege, what was the bloody point?'Thomas Keneally has been observing, reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition for well over fifty years. In this deeply personal, passionately...
Author
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English
Description
"From the bestselling author of Schindler's List and The Daughters of Mars, a new historical novel set on the remote island of Saint Helena about the remarkable friendship between a young woman and one of history's most intriguing figures, Napoleon Bonaparte, during the final years of his life in exile. In October 1815, after losing the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was banished to the island of Saint Helena. There, in one of the most remote...
Author
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Formats
Description
From one of our greatest living writers, a bold and timely novel about sin cloaked in sacrament, shame that enforces silence, and the courage of one priest who dares to speak truth to power. Sent away from his native Australia to Canada due to his radical preaching against the Vietnam War, apartheid, and other hot button issues, Father Frank Docherty made for himself a satisfying career as a psychologist and monk. When he returns to Australia to lecture...