NON-FICTION

The Secrets Of Anzac Ridge The impact of World War I ripples through time. In this moving and essential book, historian Patricia Skehan brings to light secret details of Anzac experiences on the Western Front.  In the annals of human history, the stakes are highest in war. And in World War I, what was at stake was the future of the world. Anzac troops, fighting and dying so far from home, were crucial to the result that shaped the twentieth century. Those troops wrote letters and diaries, materials that now form the record for the human face of war. Patricia Skehan reveals riveting secrets from the diaries of James Armitage, a young Sydney man who enlisted on his eighteenth birthday, as well as the writings of General Sir John Monash, the military mastermind leading the Anzac troops. With permission from both their relatives, their records of the Western Front are interweaved with stories from doctors, nurses, gunners and many others. The result is a moving portrait of catastrophic events set on Anzac Ridge, in Flanders fields. The Secrets of Anzac Ridge shows us how much humans care for each other even when the world is at its darkest, illuminating the courage and heart of those living in the trenches.

‘Adrian candidly presents the ‘equation of service’: the challenges overcome that create feelings of personal achievement, the mateships that hold people together, and the lows that can shake your belief in self.’ - General David Hurley AC CVO DSC (Retd) "Your past doesn’t define you—it teaches you. Every experience is a lesson, not a life sentence." In Stay Loose, Adrian Hodges delivers a candid reflection on three decades of service in the Australian Army, from navigating the dangers of war to the challenges beyond the battlefield. Adrian chronicles both the highs and lows. From his battalion's deployment to Somalia's famine-stricken chaos—Australia's first major overseas operation since the Vietnam War—to participating in the nation’s first lethal firefight in decades, he offers harrowing frontline insights. His memoir covers a military exchange in Malaysia, as well as service in Afghanistan and Iraq, providing an intimate view of the physical and psychological tolls faced by soldiers. But this memoir isn’t just about combat. Adrian reflects on his struggles after leaving the Army, battling uncertainty and searching for direction. His post-military career led him to work as a court recorder on several high-profile legal cases, including the investigation into the Black Hawk helicopter crash that claimed 18 military lives. He also recounts backpacking through North Africa and the Middle East, contrasting his military service with personal discovery. Eventually re-enlisting, Adrian’s return to operations and military exchanges weaves themes of brotherhood, resilience, and the strength found in family. Now a private military contractor in the UAE, he explores how his past shaped his future. Stay Loose is a deeply personal journey of finding humour and catharsis in extraordinary circumstances, proving that past experiences offer lessons, not life sentences. ‘The motto of The Royal Australian Regiment is “Duty First” Adrian’s story puts life and understanding into that motto.’- General David Hurley AC CVO DSC (Retd)

Nothing can prepare a man for the horrors of war, nor the haunting memories that linger long after the battle is over. In The Impossible Survivor, Jeff Steel invites readers into the life of Neil Lindsay, a retired RAF Bomber Command veteran, as he confronts the shadows of his past. On a seemingly ordinary day in 1995, Neil and his daughter Margaret visit a memorial honouring the fallen soldiers of the Goulburn Valley. What begins as a simple outing soon unravels the buried truths of Neil’s harrowing experiences during World War II. An ambitious young man, Neil's fate intertwined with the legendary figures of the RAF, including the celebrated Wing Commander Guy Gibson. He bravely flew perilous missions over Nazi Germany, becoming the sole survivor of a downed bomber and enduring two years of torment in a German prisoner-of-war camp. As he stands before the memorial stone he provides a glimpse into his past, sharing the first fragments of the extraordinary story that had been hidden for so long. The Impossible Survivor is a powerful tribute to those who fought bravely, capturing the essence of ordinary men faced with extraordinary circumstances. These men did not seek out the risk of death or the challenges of war; they volunteered out of a sense of duty and courage. They faced life-or-death situations with a blend of character, training, determination, and a touch of luck, fully aware of the slim chances of returning home. Neil Lindsay’s story stands as a powerful testament to their extraordinary resolve.

AbyssThe 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was the most perilous event in history, when mankind faced a looming nuclear collision between the United States and Soviet Union. During those weeks, the world gazed into the abyss of potential annihilation.Max Hastings’s graphic new history tells the story from the viewpoints of national leaders, Russian officers, Cuban peasants, American pilots, and British disarmers. Max Hastings deploys his accustomed blend of eye-witness interviews, archive documents, and diaries, White House tape recordings, top-down analysis, first to paint word-portraits of the Cold War experiences of Fidel Castro’s Cuba, Nikita Khrushchev’s Russia, and Kennedy’s America; then to describe the nail-biting Thirteen Days in which Armageddon beckoned.Hastings began researching this book believing that he was exploring a past event from twentieth-century history. He is as shocked as are millions of us around the world, to discover that the rape of Ukraine gives this narrative a hitherto unimaginable twenty-first-century immediacy. We may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between nuclear-armed superpowers.To contend with today’s threat, which Hastings fears will prove enduring, it is critical to understand how, sixty years ago, the world survived its last glimpse into the abyss. Only by fearing the worst, he argues, can our leaders hope to secure the survival of the planet.

Published to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day and the 80th anniversary of the start of the Battle of Britain, Merlin is the extraordinary story of the development of the Rolls-Royce engine that would stop Hitler from invading Britain and carry the war to the very heart of Germany.The story of the Merlin engine encompasses the history of powered flight, from the ingenuity of the Wright Brothers to the horrors of World War I, and from the first crossing of the Atlantic to the heady days of flying in the 1920s. There is also the extraordinary story of the Schneider Trophy – an international contest wherein nations poised on the precipice of war competed for engineering excellence in the name of progress.And at the heart of this story are the glamorous lives of the pilots, many of whom died in their pursuit of speed; the engineers, like Henry Royce of Rolls-Royce, who sketched the engine that would win WWII in the sand of his local beach; and perhaps most importantly the Lady Lucy Houston who after the Wall Street Crash singlehandedly funded the development of the engine and the iconic Spitfire.Never was so much owed by so many to so few – and without the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine, the few would have been powerless.

Vietnam became the Western world’s most divisive modern conflict, precipitating a battlefield humiliation for France in 1954, then a vastly greater one for the United States in 1975. Max Hastings has spent the past three years interviewing scores of participants on both sides, as well as researching a multitude of American and Vietnamese documents and memoirs, to create an epic narrative of an epic struggle. He portrays the set pieces of Dienbienphu, the Tet offensive, the air blitz of North Vietnam, and less familiar battles such as the bloodbath at Daido, where a US Marine battalion was almost wiped out, together with extraordinary recollections of Ho Chi Minh’s warriors. Here are the vivid realities of strife amid jungle and paddies that killed 2 million people.Many writers treat the war as a US tragedy, yet Hastings sees it as overwhelmingly that of the Vietnamese people, of whom forty died for every American. US blunders and atrocities were matched by those committed by their enemies. While all the world has seen the image of a screaming, naked girl seared by napalm, it forgets countless eviscerations, beheadings and murders carried out by the communists. The people of both former Vietnams paid a bitter price for the Northerners’ victory in privation and oppression. Here is testimony from Vietcong guerrillas, Southern paratroopers, Saigon bargirls and Hanoi students alongside that of infantrymen from South Dakota, Marines from North Carolina, Huey pilots from Arkansas.No past volume has blended a political and military narrative of the entire conflict with heart-stopping personal experiences, in the fashion that Max Hastings’ readers know so well. The author suggests that neither side deserved to win this struggle with so many lessons for the 21st century about the misuse of military might to confront intractable political and cultural challenges. He marshals testimony from warlords and peasants, statesmen and soldiers, to create an extraordinary record.