This self-made man from a log cabin-the great orator, the Emancipator, the savior of the Union, the martyr-was arguably our greatest president; but it takes a master storyteller like Thomas Keneally, author of the award-winning novel that inspired the film Schindler's List, to bring alive the history behind the myth. Acclaimed for his recent Civil War biography, American Scoundrel, Keneally delves with relish-and a keen, fresh eye-into Lincoln's complicated persona. Abraham Lincoln depicts all the amazing man's triumphs, insecurities, and crushing defeats with uncanny insight: his early poverty and the ambition that propelled him out of it; the shaping of the man and his political philosophy by youthful exposure to Christianity, slavery, and business; his tempestuous marriage and his fatherly love. We see him, elected to the presidency by a twist of fate, unswerving in the grim day-to-day conduct of the war as his vision and acumen led the country forward. Abraham Lincoln is an incisive study of a turning point in our history and a revealing portrait of its pivotal figure, his greatness etched even more clearly in this very touching human story.

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 Leeming. Four decades later, Ramsey has yet to make peace with himself over two things: He had slept with Leeming’s wife just prior to their embarkation, and his friend had still been alive when Ramsey left him behind on the ice at the bottom of the world. Closemouthed avoidance has enabled Ramsey to go on with his life in academia, despite the “betrayal obsessions” that have become an integral part of his being, even though what he so vividly recalls may or may not be the truth. But now there will be no silencing Ramsey’s inner demons—because, after forty years frozen in the Antarctic, Leeming’s body has finally been found. An enthralling, profoundly affecting novel of guilt, perception, and endurance, The Survivor is a gripping story from award-winning author Thomas Keneally. Intriguing and intelligent, it is a masterful fictional journey through the complex labyrinth of the human heart and psyche.

Thomas Keneally, of Irish extraction, was brought up in Australia and still lives in Sydney. His novels include The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Confederates, which first led him to study nineteenth century American history. Schindler's Ark was later turne

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 of the George Farquhar comedy The Recruiting Officer using as cast and production crew the highwaymen, whores, cutpurses, killers, and other assorted disreputables exiled there from the British Isles. Pining over the family he left behind, Clark must work miracles with only two printed scripts, a company of unstable and largely illiterate “actors,” and the dubious assistance of his colleagues. But the success—or failure—of the mammoth enterprise rests largely on the shoulders of lead actress Mary Brenham, the mesmerizing and enigmatic female convict to whom Clark finds himself strangely and dangerously attracted. Based on the lieutenant’s real diaries, The Playmaker is a truly remarkable achievement. Atmospheric, dreamlike, and richly evoking time and place, featuring a monumental cast of magnificently drawn, unforgettable characters, it is a work of insight, imagination, and true genius by one of the most notable names in historical fiction.

It is the duty of a good child to let his parents know the second they turn into animals.Barbara Glover's parents metamorphosed when she hit puberty, becoming bovine from the waist down. Fearful of her transformative powers, she tends diligently to them, keeping them like animals on the family's remote farm and—along with her brother, Damian, who harbours incestuous longings for her—protecting their terrible secret from the world. First published in 1971, Thomas Keneally's A Dutiful Daughter is strange and disturbing, and utterly unlike any other Australian novel.'Authentically marvellous.' New York Times'One of the most startling menages ever.' Kirkus Review'A very strange tale of a very strange family.' ABC RN

A disillusioned reporter joins three fellow Westerners on a journey of discovery through the raging fires of a brutal East African conflict With his own life in flux, Timothy Darcy, an Australian journalist, finds escape in the ongoing turmoil of Eritrea. Entering the war-torn East African region with three Western strangers on missions of their own—Christine, a young Frenchwoman searching for her lost cinematographer father; Lady Julia, an aging British feminist; and Mark Henry, an American aid worker whose motives are masked in shadow—Darcy is plunged into the center of a twenty-five-year-long conflict between Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s army and Eritrean guerillas. Witnessing scenes of brutality, starvation, and oppression as they venture ever deeper into the true heart of darkness, the dispassionate reporter and his companions will never be the same. Based on his own firsthand experiences in Africa, Thomas Keneally, the acclaimed Man Booker Prize–winning author of Schindler’s List, delivers a powerful and profoundly moving novel of war, injustice, commitment, courage, and self-discovery set amid the horrors and tragedy of the vicious Eritrean conflict.

Woman of the Inner Sea is Thomas Keneally’s strongest, most compelling work since his Booker Prize-winning Schindler’s List. Like that book, the story of Woman of the Inner Sea arises from a true incident, and once more the imagining of it is utterly convincing. Kate Gaffney-Kozinski, an attractive, well educated woman, has gone on “walkabout” to the inner reaches of the Australian outback. Fleeing her wealthy husband, Paul Kozinski, and his unscrupulous clan, Kate is trying to obliterate herself and the grief that haunts her. At first we do not understand its source, but as the story unfolds a kind of mystery evolves around the tragic loss of her two children. In a small town she tries to change herself into a different woman, seeking the companionship and protection of a reticent but rough local man, an explosives expert known as Jelly. But the violence of the west country’s unpredictable weather forces her on and soon she must confront her husband. No one knows Australian society better than Thomas Keneally, who offers here a rich cross-section of his people: from Kate’s prominent father to her controversial uncle, a renegade priest; from the grasping Kozinskis who rule Sydney’s construction business to colorful small-town men like Jelly and his friend Gus, who travels with a kangaroo and emu he has rescued from an entertainment park. And at the center of this panorama stands Kate, a passionate woman of great integrity caught in a nightmare of grief and deception. Woman of the Inner Sea, with its evocation of the heroic in the midst of disaster and evil, will be remembered as one of Thomas Keneally’s best works.  

Thomas Keneally’s literary achievements have been inspired by some of history’s most intriguing events and characters, but in a rare reversal of time his brilliantly imagined new novel takes us into a near future that uncannily is all too familiar. In a detention camp where he is neither granted asylum nor readied to be sent back to his native land, a detainee bides his time. He insists on being called Alan Sheriff, a westernization of his given name; he was born in a country that had once been a friend to the United States but is now its enemy. Little else is known about Sheriff until a writer comes to interview him. Sheriff decides that the time is right to tell his visitor his story and embarks on the unraveling of events that have led to his current state with extraordinary detail—the basis of which forms this novel within a novel. Sheriff is a celebrated novelist in a country in which its brutal leader orders Sheriff to ghostwrite a work of fiction: an uneasy combination of invention, autobiography, and polemic—the very publication of which would overturn Western sanctions and shame the United States. The deadline is impossible, but the government enforcers guard his house and stalk his every move. It is not long before Sheriff becomes the tyrant’s caged canary, as he races against the deadline that threatens to cost him everything and everyone he holds dear. In a work reminiscent of the classic Fahrenheit 451, Thomas Keneally has written a dazzling story of a man caught between the demands of his government and his impulse to run for his life. Provocative and possibly prophetic, The Tyrant’s Novel is a literary achievement inspired by recent history’s most intriguing events and characters. Here, Keneally once more combines, as he did in Schindler's List, his fictional talent with his engagement in world politics.

The award-winning author of modern classics such as Schindler's List and Napoleon's Last Island is at his triumphant best with this "engrossing and transporting" (Financial Times) novel about the adventures of Charles Dickens's son in the Australian Outback during the 1860s.Edward Dickens, the tenth child of England's most famous author Charles Dickens, has consistently let his parents down. 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. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various livestock, bushrangers, shifty stock agents, and frontier...

The first volume of a unique history of Australia where people are always centre stage, from bestselling author Thomas Keneally who brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed our national story.In this widely acclaimed volume, bestselling author Thomas Keneally brings to life the vast range of characters who have formed our national story.Convicts and Aborigines, settlers and soldiers, patriots and reformers, bushrangers and gold seekers, it is from their lives and their stories that he has woven a vibrant history to do full justice to the rich and colourful nature of our unique national character.The story begins by looking at European occupation through Aboriginal eyes as we move between the city slums and rural hovels of eighteenth century Britain and the shores of Port Jackson. We spend time on the low-roofed convict decks of transports, and we see the bewilderment of the Eora people as they see the first ships of turaga, or 'ghost people'. We...

As thousands faced death in Nazi-occupied Poland an unlikely savior materialized in the shadow of Auschwitz. A flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. Oskar Schindler was a heavy-drinking, womanizer whom the war transformed into a man with a mission, a compassionate angel of mercy. This is an incredible story of huge risks and enormous gains, as Schindler defied and outwitted the SS to protect the beleaguered Jews who worked for him.

Australia emerged from World War I into a decade of profound change, characterised by a revolution in behaviour amongst the young; by the first great age of consumerism; and by secret right wing armies and the growth of the Communist Party.As in the two previous volumes of Australians, Thomas Keneally brings history to vivid and pulsating life as he traces the lives and the deeds of Australians known and unknown. He follows the famous and the infamous through the Great Crash and the rise of Fascism, and explains how Australia was inexorably drawn into a war that led her forces into combat throughout Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific. At home an atmosphere of fear grew with the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin, the Japanese advance and then the arrival of General MacArthur.The 1950s-depicted by some as an age of full employment, by others as the age of suburban spread and boredom under the serene prime ministership of Robert Menzies-were as complicated...

From the "greatest living practitioner of historical fiction" (Christian Science Monitor) Thomas Keneally and his eldest daughter Meg Keneally comes the first novel in a fast-paced, gripping, and witty historical crime series.In the Port Macquarie penal settlement for second offenders, Hugh Monsarrat hungers for freedom. Originally imprisoned for forging documents to pass himself off as a lawyer, he is now the trusted clerk of the settlement's commandant. His position has certain advantages, including access to the Government House kitchen and outstanding cups of tea from housekeeper Hannah Mulrooney, who is his most intelligent companion. But things change when the commandant heads off on assignment and his beautiful wife, Honora, suddenly falls ill. Only when she dies does it becomes clear she has been slowly poisoned. Monsarrat and Mrs. Mulrooney suspect the commandant's right hand man, Captain Diamond, a cruel man who shared an intimate history with...

Charming gentleman convict Hugh Monsarrat returns in this second novel in the thrilling and spellbinding historical crime series from Thomas Keneally and his daughter Meg Keneally featuring his signature "fresh and engaging" (The New York Times) prose.Recently arrived from Port Macquarie, ticket-of-leave gentleman convict Hugh Llewelyn Monsarrat now lives in a small but comfortable house in Parramatta with his loyal housekeeper, Mrs. Mulrooney. Monsarrat is now working for the Attorney General's office, officially as a clerk, but also as an unofficial advisor on criminal and legal matters. One day, he is informed that the superintendent of the female prison, Robert Church, has been murdered. Apparently, a female convict named Grace O'Leary held a particular grudge against him and is being detained for questioning. Monsarrat's task is to take a statement from her. Grace doesn't strike Monsarrat as a murderer and she insists she's innocent. Monsarrat and...