The Real Thing

Les Norton, a big red-headed country boy from Queensland, has just arrived in the big smoke and is set to make his mark. Working as a bouncer at an illegal casino in the Cross, Les encounters a number of fascinating characters who make up the seamier side of one of the most exciting cities in the world – gamblers, conmen, bookies, bouncers, hookers and hit men, who ply their respective trades from the golden sands of Bondi to the tainted gutters of Kings Cross... usually on the wrong side of the law.

All easy-going butcher Bob Davis wanted after his divorce was to get on with his job, have a few beers with his mates, and be left alone. But this was Sydney in the early Eighties-the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic, street gangs, gay bashings and murders. When a gang of skinheads bash Davo's old school- friend to death simply because he was gay, and leave Davo almost dead in an intensive care unit, they unleash a crazed killer onto the city streets.

Aussie Vietnam veteran Ron Milne is on a good thing growing Indian hemp on the tiny Micronesian island of Lan Laroi. Besides being president, the natives treat him as a god. To the American DEA he is a dangerous criminal. U.S. President Clifford J. Clooney decides to invade.

The Tesla Legacy, set in Newcastle, Muswellbrook, Scone and the mysterious Burning Mountain in New South Wales, is an action-packed, pace-driven thriller woven with intrigue and a delightful touch of humour and romance, and an ending guaranteed to send chills down your spine.

This book was first published in 1996 under the title Rider on the Storm and Other Bits of Barrett. It was a one-off book that got under the radar and a lot of Robert G. Barrett's readers weren't aware of it. Fifteen years later, to mark the 25th anniversary of the first Les Norton novel, this collection is being republished. It's the original stories re-edited, as well as some classic articles and columns on a range of subjects such as publishing, fame, dates, and the dole. Plus two brand new Les Norton short stories and a feature article, "Bowling for Bukowski".

An amusing, often outrageous, collection of the best columns Robert G.Barrett wrote for People magazine, focusing on Australian life and its heroes and villains. Together these columns represent an often funny, always entertaining and uniquely telling assessment of modern-day Australia.

Martin Carter is having a crook day. His home life's a misery, he's been retrenched by the bank, and everyone's forgotten his birthday. But a million-dollar payroll, a pistol, and a split-second decision change everything. Hurtling north on a motorcycle with the intriguing Faith, Martin encounters a mysterious hit-man, a new-age bike gang, a reclusive media mogul, and the booby-trapped mountain hideout of an old schoolmate.

Ford laid his fingertips gently on the cut in his shoulder where the bullet had clipped him. His best chance would be to hitch a ride south at the first opportunity, before the police started looking for him. He was alone, enveloped in the monstrous silence of the desert. Free and alone, without assistance and without excuse. Left for dead in the desert, framed as the inside man in a bullion robbery at the remote mine site where he works, and fearing that his daughter and ex-wife have been abducted from their home in Perth, Ford must cross a thousand miles of wilderness to find his family.

Alby's partner Harry is gunned down in a Double Bay coffee shop. By lunchtime Alby realizes someone wants him dead - and they want him dead now. All Alby wants is some pasta, a good bottle of wine and to know more about the mysterious Grace Goodluck. But he also has to figure out who shot Harry and who wants him dead. Unfortunately for Alby, the answer lies over the razor wire and past mines protecting a top-secret US military facility deep in the central Australian desert. Now that can really ruin your day.

David Spiteri was a founding member and long-time president of one of Australia's first outlaw motorcycle clubs from its inception in the early 1960s through to the early 2000s. He has been uniquely placed to witness the clubs develop from loose affiliations of riders to the well-structured and well-connected groups we see today. In this never-before-told inside story, Spiteri puts himself at risk to reveal everything from the drug trafficking which funds the clubs' operations to the extreme violence that continues to make them infamous. 

A brilliantly vivid Second World War memoir by one of 'the Few' Spitfire fighter pilots. Following the D-Day landings, Battle of Britain hero Tom Neil was assigned as an RAF liaison to an American fighter squadron. As the Allies pushed east, Neil commandeered an abandoned Spitfire as his own personal aeroplane. Erasing any evidence of its provenance and stripping it down to bare metal, it became the RAF's only silver Spitfire. Alongside his US comrades, he took the silver Spitfire into battle until, with the war's end, he was forced to make a difficult decision.

In 1947, two years after witnessing the death of a young Jewish woman in Poland, Charlie Berlin has rejoined the police force a different man. Sent to investigate a spate of robberies in rural Victoria, he soon discovers that World War II has changed even the most ordinary of places and people.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Killing Floor by Lee Child, read by Jeff Harding. Killing Floor is the first book in the internationally popular Jack Reacher series. It presents Reacher for the first time, as the tough ex-military cop of no fixed abode: a righter of wrongs, the perfect action hero. Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks 14 miles down a country road into Margrave, Georgia. An arbitrary decision he's about to regret.

The world's toughest car race. Twenty-one days of searing heat and rock-hard desert tracks; of blowouts and breakdowns; of subterfuge and sabotage. Ten thousand miles of dust and glory. Driving at breakneck speed over Australia's roughest roads and through the most appalling conditions imaginable, six competitors break free from the pack and fight for the lead, gradually finding themselves entangled in a web of deceit, betrayal and danger. Dust and Glory is best-selling author Evan Green's stirring account of the most grueling race of them all.

All Alby wants is a decent coffee and a day off. But there's a hijacked tanker with a deadly cargo in Sydney Harbor, and bullets are flying on board a U.S. Navy cruiser. Three sailors are dead and a Seahawk chopper is missing.