Penguin Books Australia

It is 1919. The Great War has ended, but the Spanish flu epidemic is raging across Australia. Schools are closed, state borders are guarded by armed men, and train travel is severely restricted. There are rumours it is the end of the world.

  A penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation—and, true to its title, a dark comedy of wartime manners— Comedy in a Minor Key tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who first hide a Jew they know as Nico, then must dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia. This novella, first published in 1947 and now translated into English for the first time...

What would make a soldier betray his country?

In the battle-smoke and chaos of Gallipoli, a young New Zealand soldier helps a Turkish doctor fighting to save a boy's life. Then a shell bursts nearby; the blast that should have killed them both consigns them instead to the same military hospital.

Jan Karski, a young Polish diplomat turned cavalry officer, joined the Polish underground movement after escaping from a Soviet detention camp in 1939. He served as a courier for the underground, ferrying messages between occupied Poland and the exiled Polish leaders, before he was captured and brutally tortured by the Gestapo. 

"Where are we going, where are they taking us?" The Second World War is about to start, but life for a young boy in a small town in Albania is still a game.

1066 - SENLAC RIDGE, ENGLAND.  WILLIAM THE BASTARD, DUKE OF NORMANDY DEFEATS HAROLD GODWINSON, KING HAROLD II OF ENGLAND IN WHAT WILL BECOME KNOWN AS THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

The battle is hard fought and bloody; thousands of lives are spent, including that of King Harold.  But England will not be conquered easily - the Anglo-Saxons will not submit meekly to Norman rule.

May 1940. Fleeing a glamorous Manhattan life built on lies, Claire Harris arrives in Paris with a romantic vision of starting anew. But she didn't anticipate the sight of Nazi soldiers marching under the Arc de Triomphe. Her plans smashed by the German occupation, the once- privileged socialite's only option is to take a job in a flower shop under the tutelage of a sophisticated Parisian florist.

'Remarkable, affecting . . . There are few more interesting stories than this; and few writers who could have told it better' 
Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph

Young Katerina Vassos is full of hope and expectation when her boat pulls in to Sydney Harbour in the 1950s. She is soon devastated to learn that she's been abandoned by her mother. Together she and her father try to stay strong, but they struggle to be accepted in a strange and hostile new land.

Years on, now a beautiful and strong woman, Kate is swept into a passionate love affair, while the Vietnam...

'Kim's story allows for no adornment.  It is written in a mood of total austerity; and yet the passion of the book is perpetually beating up against its seemingly barren surface . . . I am deeply moved.'
- Philip Roth

An epic story of combat and injustice that remains an antiwar masterpiece

A powerful, moving story that details the effects of the infamous Mau Mau war, the African nationalist revolt against colonial oppression in Kenya, on the lives of ordinary men and women, and on one family in particular.
Two brothers, Njoroge and Kamau, stand on a rubbish heap and look into their futures. Njoroge is excited; his family has decided that he will attend school, while Kamau will train...

A wartime story of love, courage and the ties that bind

Sam Delon is a young Frenchman born and raised in Japan.   Florence Carter has led a quiet and lonely life in her native Australia.   One meeting on a Sydney beach is enough to create a lasting bond between the unlikely pair – and enough to share a secret with the potential to transform Sam's life.

The First World War, everyone said in 1914, would be over by Christmas, and Stephen Conway rushes to enlist. Leaving behind a new wife and a baby on the way, he soon finds himself in the trenches of Gallipoli. Four horrific years later, Stephen is the only survivor of his platoon. Shell-shocked and disillusioned, and during the the heat of battle on the blood-stained fields of France, he mysteriously...

The persimmon tree is a symbol of life, a heartwood that will outlast everything man can make . . .

It is 1942 in the Dutch East Indies, and Nick Duncan is a young Australian butterfly collector in search of a single exotic butterfly. With invading Japanese forces coming closer by the day, Nick falls in love with the beguiling Anna van Heerden.

A Vietnam Vet returns to an Australia that regards him as a mercenary guilty of war crimes

Thommo begins to develop all kinds of physical and mental problems, and thinks it must only be him until he finds that he is not alone. Ten mates, all who remain of his platoon, are affected the same way.

Holding on to the one thing you love the most was never so hard . . .

Berlin, 1932.  Thirteen-year-old Gabriella Schramm's is living a happy and privileged life.  But as Hitler rises to power, things quickly change.  People who were once trustworthy are now Nazis.  And many of her friends are fleeing the country or being taken away.  To cope, Gaby turns to the comfort of her...