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  The Nationalists

  Vivian Stuart

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  The twenty-first book in the dramatic and intriguing story about the colonisation of Australia: a country made of blood, passion, and dreams.
   
  The fires of nationalism are being kindled across the continent – especially in the hearts of the young.
   
  The children of The Seafarers and The Mariners are growing up in a young country only just coming to nationhood. Some cry for unity while others raise the spectre of race hatred and violence. It is hard to see how these young Australians could ever realise their dream of one free and mighty land.

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  All the Lives We Never Lived - A...

  Anuradha Roy

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  From the Man Booker Prize-nominated author of Sleeping on Jupiter and “one of India’s greatest living authors” (O, The Oprah Magazine), a poignant and sweeping novel set in India during World War II and the present day about a son’s quest to uncover the truth about his mother. In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman. The man was in factGerman, but in small‑town India in those days, all white foreigners were largely thought of as British.So begins the “gracefully wrought” (Kirkus Reviews) story of Myshkin and his mother, Gayatri, who rebels against tradition to follow her artist’s instinct for freedom.Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri’s town, opening up to her the vision of other possible lives. What took Myshkin’s mother from India and Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar universe? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between the anguish at home and a war‑torn universe overtaken by patriotism.Evocative and moving, “this mesmerizing exploration of the darker consequences of freedom, love, and loyalty is an astonishing display of Roy’s literary prowess” (Publishers Weekly).

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  The Canterbury Tales

  Geoffrey Chaucer

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  The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century (two of them in prose, the rest in verse). The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a group of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as courtly love, treachery, and avarice. The genres also vary, and include romance, Breton lai, sermon, beast fable, and fabliau. The characters, introduced in the General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great cultural relevance.The version read here was edited by D. Laing Purves (1838-1873) “for popular perusal” and the language is mostly updated.(Summary by Wikipedia/Gesine)

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  Forever Island

  Patrick D. Smith

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  In a corner of the Big Cypress Swamp, to the north of the Florida Everglades, lives Charlie Jumper, and eighty-six-year-old Seminole man. Unlike the younger American Indians who have adopted white civilization, Charlie and his wife cling to the old ways, hunting and fishing in the great swamp and farming a tiny plot of higher ground. Charlie has been diligently teaching his grandson, Timmy, about the swamp and its creatures.But their simple existence is suddenly threatened when a large tract of swamp is bought by a corporation, and Charlie is told that he will have to leave. From his youth, Charlie remembers the slaughter of egrets and alligators by the white man and the logging of the giant cypress. Rather than surrender the land that is his life to this final indignity, Charlie decides to fight back.It is an uneven contest. First come the great machines that silt up the streams; then the workmen inadvertently poison the marsh; and, attempting to sabotage the construction equipment, Charlie's best friend is killed. Realizing that there can be no compromise with the white man who destroys all he touches, Charlie leaves his family and feels into the swamp, seeking the lost island known in the Seminole legends as Forever Island.

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  Last Train to Waverley

  Malcolm Archibald

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  To commemorate the involvement of Scots Regiments in WWI "Last Train to Waverley" is set in France during one week in March 1918. The Germans launched their final major offensive of the war and pushed the British back thirty miles. One unit of the 20 Royal Scots were cut off. This book follows the fortunes of this unit, and the personal dilemmas of Douglas Ramsay, the officer in charge. Lieutenant Ramsay returns from hospital to the front line in March 1918. Before he has time to get to know his men, the Germans attack and break through the British lines. He is left in an isolated position with a handful of men. Most of his men are very young but he has two veterans in Sergeant Flockhart and Corporal McKim. Unfortunately Ramsay and Flockhart have a bad history, the details of which come out in a series of flashbacks throughout the book. Ramsay leads the survivors of the 20th Royal Scots back through the German lines to try and reach the always moving British positions. He is aided by Flockhart and McKim as he encounters various German formations on the way, including a crack Prussian platoon. As the Royals find their way back, the back stories of the sergeant and the officer are revealed through a series of flashbacks that show the social tensions and difference in lifestyles of the period. The book climaxes when Ramsay leads his men through the town of Albert in Picardy. The German advance slows as the soldiers loot the town. Ramsay's men reach the British lines and a machine gun ambush wipes out the Prussian Guards.

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  A Time to Live

  Vanessa de Haan

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  Will he choose inheritance – or freedom . . . 
  1918: Freddie was destined for a different life, determined to make his fortune in the plantations of Ceylon. But just as the great war comes to an end, the eldest brother and heir to Coombe Hall, Edward, doesn’t return. 
  Torn between duty and freedom, Freddie must now sacrifice his own dreams to keep the estate – and the future of Coombe – alive. And now he must now marry for an heir, not for love. 
  But the turmoil of war didn’t end on the battlefield; the country faces upheavals like never before. And when an unexpected legacy blows in from Edward’s secret past, Freddie’s grip on the estate – and his future – looks more uncertain than ever . . . 
  Sweeping from the smoking battlefields of France to the rich estates of Devon, from Suffragettes to political extremists, this is a story of legacy and scars, of the price of change, the price of family… 
  In A TIME TO LIVE, Vanessa de Haan presents a compelling historical fiction that delves into the romance and military struggles of the 20th century. This latest work is a testament to her literary prowess, making it one of the best releases of the year. 
  For fans of Kristin Hannah (The Women), Dinah Jefferies (The Missing Sister), Kate Mosse (The Ghost Ship), Lucinda Riley (The Shadow Sister), and Elif Shafak (The Island of Missing Trees). 
  HarperCollins 2023

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