Penguin Books Australia

This is a story – confronting...

'Whether you're a budding James Bond out to save the world or a gap year student out to explore it, this fantastic book is the one you need to take with you'
CHARLIE HIGSON

During my career as a military peace-keeper and foreign aid worker I've faced many life-threatening situations.

'It was all so sudden. Twenty seconds and then silence. I started calling out, 'Can anyone hear me?' - nothing but silence.
Over the next few hours I heard hysterical sobbing and people clapping as others were rescued. I could hear engines, drilling and what sounded like sledgehammers . . . when the sounds went away I worried they weren't coming back.'
- Ann Bodkin, trapped for 25 hours

The Canterbury...

In this impressive collection, Ryle Winn introduces eight real-life heroes, each with an extraordinary tale to tell.  We meet a fencing contractor who proves you can't judge a book by its cover; two octogenarian sisters with a tragic family secret; a racing enthusiast and horse-breeder who gets the shock of his life; and a gutsy timberman who has sidestepped his date with the devil on more than...

This inspiring collection features nine captivating stories about ordinary bush men and women who lead extraordinary lives.

There's the island cattleman who swims his herd past toothy sharks and beady-eyed crocs; the pineapple grower who builds a stone church for his community; the timber worker who becomes a champion woodchopper; and a dairywoman who, at eighty-eight, is still rescuing birthing cows...

'A gripping hour-by-hour dissection of events in the Western Himalayas over three deadly days. A fitting shelfmate to the modern classic Into Thin Air. A cracking read'  Sunday Times

K2, August 1st, 2008

Thirty climbers are attempting the summit of the most savage mountain on Earth. They make it. But before they start their descent an ice shelf collapses, sweeping away their ropes. It is dark...

Patrick Hennessey is a graduate in his 20s. He reads Graham Greene, listens to early-90s house on his iPod and watches Vietnam movies. He has also, as an officer in the Grenadier Guards, fought in some of the most violent combat the British army has seen in a generation.

This is the story of how a modern soldier is made, from the testosterone-heavy breeding ground of Sandhurst to the nightmare of Iraq...

This is the story of a man who, as a boy, was spearated from his family in Sudan's brutal civil war; who trekked across Africa's punishing wilderness with thousands of other children; who survived aerial bombardment and attacks by militias and wild animals; who ate whatever he could find or nothing at all; who, as a boy, considered ending his life to end the suffering; and who eventually made it to...

The names William Bligh, Fletcher Christian, and the Bounty have excited the popular imagination for more than two hundred years. The story of this famous mutiny has many beginnings and many endings but they all intersect on an April morning in 1789 near the island known today as Tonga. That morning, William Bligh and eighteen surly seamen were expelled from the Bounty and began what would be the greatest...

Their job is to put themselves in the heart of danger – to run into battle to rescue the wounded and to risk their own lives to try and save the dying. Doctors, nurses, medics and stretcher bearers go where the bullets are thickest, through bomb alleys and mine fields, ducking mortars and rockets, wherever someone is hit and the shout goes up – 'Medic! We need a medic over here!' War at...

'I have been a slave – I have felt what a slave feels, and I know what a slave knows . . . '