He turned: the scapegoat was pointing a fleshy arm directly down at the water, and following it Roland saw a mass of pale, stringy lines suddenly seething up from the deeps to surface all about the ship.He froze in disbelief. It couldn't be—But then the cry went up from the main deck.'Ropes! White ropes!'And so the horror began.A ship and its crew held in thrall by an ancient sea creature, a young girl blinded by foresight, a scapegoat with a gift to foresee death - these haunting short stories set in the Four Isles, the setting of Andrew McGahan's highly acclaimed Ship Kings series, tell fascinating tales of tall ships, ancient grudges and the full significance of the meaning of indefinite survival in an ocean that holds as many mysteries as it does drops of water.'A fitting end to the epic Ship Kings series, Treasures of the Deep moves with mysterious grandeur through lost oceans and wild. Its captains and...

Praise is an utterly frank and darkly humorous novel about being young in the Australia of the 1990s. A time when the dole was easier to get than a job, when heroin was better known than ecstasy, and when ambition was the dirtiest of words. A time when, for two hopeless souls, sex and dependence were the only lifelines.'McGahan's book is a bracing slap in the face to conventional platitudes and hypocrisies.' - The Australian'Praise is one of those books that takes a hefty bite out of a piece of subject matter, chews it to a pulp and then spits it out.' - Peter Craven'A tour de force... revelation of life in the slow lane of drugs and sex and alcohol.' - The Weekend AustralianWinner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in the Pacific Region. Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature and the Canada-Australia Literary Award.

A haunting, powerful novel about the power of the land and the passions of people trying to make it their own. One spring day in late 1992, when William was halfway between his eighth birthday and his ninth, he looked out from the back verandah of his home and saw, huge in the sky, the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. He stared at it, wondering. The thunderhead was dirty black, streaked with billows of grey. It rolled and boiled as it climbed into the clear blue day, casting a vast shadow upon the hills beyond. But there was no sound, no rumble of an explosion. William was aware of the smell of burning . . . but it was a good smell, a familiar smell. The smell of grass, of wheat, of the farm itself. His father dead by fire and his mother plagued by demons of her own, William is cast upon the charity of his unknown uncle - an embittered old man encamped in the ruins of a once great station homestead, Kuran House. It's a baffling and sinister new world for the boy, a place of decay and secret histories. His uncle is obsessed by a long life of decline and by a dark quest for revival, his mother is desperate for a wealth and security she has never known, and all their hopes it seems come to rest upon William's young shoulders. But as the past and present of Kuran Station unravel and merge together, the price of that inheritance may prove to be the downfall of them all. The White Earth is a haunting, disturbing and cautionary tale. 'The novel is beautifully structured, filled with parallels and reverberations which come back to haunt and illuminate the reader as the story unfolds.' - Katharine England, Adelaide

It's closing time in the Queensland underworld. Last Drinks is brilliant, suspenseful and masterfully written. Shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year, the Queensland Premier's Literary Award and winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Crime Novel. It's a decade since the infamous Inquiry into corruption tore the state of Queensland apart. But for George Verney, disgraced journalist and bit-player in the great scandals of his day, the Inquiry has never quite finished. After ten years of self-imposed exile, drawn by the terrible death of a man who was his friend, he reluctantly returns to Brisbane, the city of his downfall. In a town he no longer recognises and through an underworld that has forgotten him, George must seek out the other hidden survivors of his times, to confront the truth about their common past. 'Last Drinks, fast moving, funny and shocking, is a lament for all that can go wrong not only in the life of one man, but in the life of an entire state. This is crime fiction that transcends the genre . . . It's a truly compelling and stylish novel, seamlessly written.' - Debra Adelaide, Sydney Morning Herald

The ancient mapmaker had inscribed a warning within the great empty shadow on his chart, words that echoed down to Dow from half a thousand years before. Here be whales in great number. And here be monsters of the deep that riseth to feast upon them.'Nearly three years have passed since Dow Amber escaped the ruin of the Twelfth Kingdom. In that time, war has raged across the Four Isles, but Dow himself has been hidden away by his Twin Islands hosts, relegated to a backwater of the war in the company of the beguiling Cassandra. But when word reaches Dow that Ignella of the Cave has been imprisoned on the infamous Ship Kings dungeon-isle of Banishment, he can be patient no longer. He sets forth on an epic voyage that will take him halfway around the world — defying storm and monster, betrayal and despair — to the heart of the greatest battle of the age, and to the discovery at last of his true purpose upon the high seas.The War of the Four...

From the award-winning author of Praise and The White Earth comes a magnificent young adult series about destiny and desire, set in a brilliantly realised fantasy world.If you go to sea, you will come to the attention of the Ship Kings. And if they discover who you are, they will kill you.' Young Dow Amber is no sailor. But driven by a strange sea-longing he ventures down to the great grim bay known as the Claw. He hopes to learn there of seafaring, but he finds only a fearful people who scarcely dare sail at all, for they have been cursed by a monstrous whirlpool that haunts the bay, stealing away their sons.Then the rulers of all the world - the proud and cruel Ship Kings - arrive in the Claw. Dow is fascinated by their fine tall vessels, and even more so by a mysterious girl who lives aboard their flagship.It is a perilous attraction to be sure, but could it be that his future somehow lies with the Ship Kings? Or will he be called upon to descend to...

'A lighthouse. A weather station, thousands of miles away. For six months. I drank steadily. With alcohol it all made sense.'It's the Bicentennial year and for Gordon - failed writer and bottleshop boy - it seems his life is going nowhere. It's time to escape. From his overcrowded house, from Brisbane, from Expo 88, from everything. He stumbles into Wayne who has connections in Darwin and the promise of work. So the two of them head north toward swamps and crocodiles, in search of inspiration, and of their rightful place in the culture of Australia.1988, McGahan's second novel, is a prequel to his best-selling debut, Praise.'A fiendish and eventful psychological novel... hugely satisfying.' - New York Times Book Review'The pre-eminent Australian road novel.' - The Australian

### Product Description *Underground* is the novel that at least half the country has been waiting for. Think ahead five or so years from now, to an Australia transformed by the never-ending war on terror. Canberra has been wiped out in a nuclear attack. There is a permanent state of emergency. Security checkpoints, citizenship tests, identity cards and detention without trial have all become the norm. Suspect minorities have been locked away into ghettos. And worse - no one wants to play cricket with us anymore. Enter Leo James - burnt-out property developer and black-sheep twin brother of the all powerful Bernard James, Prime Minister of Australia. In an event all too typical of the times, Leo finds himself abducted by terrorists. But this won't be your average kidnapping. Instead, vast and secret forces are at work here, and Leo and his captors are about to embark on a journey into the underworld of a nation gone mad. Like some bastard child of Dr Strangelove and George Orwell, *Underground* is both an adrenalin-pumped thriller and a gleefully barbed satire that takes a chainsaw to political neo-correctness and Australia's new ultra-nationalism. Blistering and blackly comic, this book goes straight to the heart of the country's future - and it isn't pretty.

Courage, betrayal, an impossible journey. Dow's quest continues in this second adventure set upon the seas of a strange and compelling world. From award-winning author Andrew McGahan.A vast figure loomed above the ice walls. It was made, no doubt, only of cloud or whirling snow, but it was an immense manlike thing, cast hugely against the sky. Its head stared down at them blindly, but one great arm seemed to beckon, urging the Chloe onwards. And from the depths of the gulf ahead the terrible whistling rose again.Dow Amber has set sail at last upon the battleship Chloe, but can an outsider and an enemy ever truly belong in the Ship Kings' world? All too soon, Dow finds himself entangled in rebellion and treachery, and embarked upon a desperate voyage to the frozen north that will decide the future of the very empire. In the icy wastes Dow must take his fate in hand. Is he truly destined to be a mariner? Is the mysterious scapegoat girl Ignella a friend or a foe? And...