This book was an eye opener. It makes you wonder why this event that happened so many years ago in the middle of the Pacific has been buried for so long. This is not a cut and dry history, this book is a very readable journey through a culture that is unique. The author lets us know who he is, so it enables the reader to understand the person who is doing the interviews. That was a nice and unexpected touch. I found the book to be thought provoking and would recommend it to anyone who has an interest in studying the history of the Pacific.

My father was stationed in the Pacific during the nuclear testing so I grew up hearing so much about the islands. I enjoyed this book because it gave me a sense of what it must be like to live in such a beautiful place, yet at the same time having to deal with so much tragedy. What surprised me the most was how entertaining and how easy to read this book was. It really gave life to the way people must be and must think in the islands.

I found this book to be remarkably unique and refreshing as the author has found an interesting way to allow the islanders to tell their own story through interviews and vignettes about the islands.

If you can't get advice from this book - you are not trying! An easy to read guide to marketing - logicial, practical - a common sense guide which can be applied to any business, anywhere. THis book, along with Andrew's other guides to business are written to genuinely help you - not to dewilder you. You never feel as though you are being spoken down to - rather you feel as though these steps are so easy, logical and cost effective they have to work. Highly recommended and congratulations Andrew.

"101 Ways to Market Your Business" by Andrew Griffiths is a sensational tool for any small business owner. It's simple to read and the ideas are easy to implement and best of all, don't cost a great deal of money. As a marketing manager for a shopping centre, we find business owners often need inspiration - and something that will help get them back on track. We buy this book in bulk and hand it out to those who need it - and it's great to see them implement the ideas and to see their businesses ultimately improve.

I`ve been in business for 50 years. I make use of this book on a daily basis simply because I learn from every page. It just shows you are never to old to learn from Andrews books. It is very easy to read with practical tips which can be implemented on a daily bases. His sence of humour lightens the learning process. I have bought all Andrews books for my sons 20 birthday.They will be his tools for the rest of his life.

This five-star debut über-novel, a sequence of short stories, takes the reader across oceans of time to Sydney and the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Pierce risks sentimentality on his poignant journey - and comes up with something like a prose poem I could not put away until I reached its last intense page. Other readers have praised the novel's plot and characters. I'd like to extol its poweful nostalgia, its longing for what Proust called les temps perdu. The Australia Stories creates an almost mythical aura about its setting and characters; it is exponentially more radiant than any travel guide. The wonder of the author of this book is that, rather than living like an aesthete in a cork-lined room, Pierce has performed an enormous service to all writers by maintaining a stellar Web site about literary agents. He is both at home in the fictive world he creates in The Australia Stories - and alive and well in his generosity and tirelessness as a member of the workaday literary community. Cozy up to Pierce's pocket-sized The Australia Stories and let it take you to a magical Down Under!

"The Australia Stories" is a beautifully written, captivating novel. Pierce's amazingly clean, crisp writing creates wonderful images that transport the reader to the time and place of each story. The stories would appeal to anyone, young, old, male or female. Each individual story is masterfully woven as a part of the larger story, and the end pulls them all together in an unexpected, but perfect, way. I could not put the book down and, when I finished, I wished there was more!

Pierce, whose short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, shapes his first novel as a series of interlocking stories, each exploring different forms of love and loss, from familial to puppy love to the blood's connection to place. The 30-year-old narrator, Sam Browne, spent a year in Australia as a boy, living with his mother who had left his American father to return to her native land. Here he fell in love for the first time, an experience he deftly describes, remembering how, "I felt older, as though my presence filled more of the world than it had just that morning." From his adult perspective he recalls how it distanced him from his mother, "neither of us understanding we had arrived at a crossroads, a place where our paths would slowly move apart, mine leading more toward school and women, hers bringing her more deeply into the country she again called home."

As Sam enjoys the first pangs of love, his mother turns to the past, attempting to understand her own mother through her unpublished writings, essays on life and nature she wrote in the years she lived alone in Australia's Blue Mountains after leaving her husband, a man who had always yearned for England. It was only after his grandmother's death - a "walkabout" into the mountains from which she never returned - that Sam's mother returns to Australia and assembles her mother's papers for publication, becoming so absorbed and intrigued that she follows - too literally - in her mother's footsteps.

Sam's short marriage disintegrates painfully and inevitably. He too, immerses himself in his grandmother's writings, plumbing his own Australian roots as, more vulnerable, but wiser, he grows into a new love, finds new hope.

Pierce has a lot going on - first love, mature love, the emotional resonance of place in self-identity, the difficulty of knowing those closest to us, particularly family. Sam is an introspective, tentative character who makes more effort than most to understand the people in his life. Pierce's writing is nuanced, reflective and assured, with an atmospheric sense of place. A fine debut.

This book is fascinating. What most do not know is that Mose Richards wrote this entire book, while Cousteau supplied the inspiration and pictures. This book has excellent writing and fabulous photography. An excellent read. Props to the author, Mose Richards!

A very informative book about the great white. The photos are amazing. This Shark is one of the most interesting animals alive. A real predator.

For surviving for 400 million years. For refusing to submit yourself to mankind's aquariums and corporate SeaWorlds. For never allowing your secrets of mating or birth to become known to the prying eyes of man. For not even leaving a skeleton for science to attempt to examine. For being the Master of the Seas, without even using mechanical aids to assist you, like we, the Humans, the Wimps, the Know-Nothings, the Arrogant Pestilence of the World must resort to to even attempt to conquer you. Keep fighting, Terrible, Beautiful Lordly Ones. We offer you humble, unworthy obeisance in the form of this book, under the aegis of your most dutiful admirer, Jacques Cousteau, Poseidon rest his soul. Never has your grace nor your fearful symmetry appeared to such great advantage. Keep cruising. May your fins glide through the oceans long after the peasants have ceased to crawl upon the earth--or dared to trawl upon the waters!

I read this book without knowing very much about the writer. Someone mentioned it to me at a party. I found a copy and from the first sentence I was hooked. Great storytelling and imagery and I was moved to tears at least four or five times through the story. Gabriella is a gem but so is almost every single character in this book. They come to life and you just love them. There are no totally good or bad characters, just the sheer humanity of us all. Sadly ignored by the book-buying public, it may only be a matter of time before people wake up to the wonderful delights of Gabriella's Book of Fire. I will read every single thing written by this writer. Genius.

Having read the reviews preceding mine, I couldn't help but put a few words to paper (well keyboard/screen) to support the things already said.

The first book I read of Veny's was, "My Beautiful Friend", in which it had one of the loveliest quotes (the beauty of the construction of the words was remarkable) I'd come across (a quote on a tombstone, no less). The next book I read, as it then came out, was his young adult book, "The Ghost Of Deadman's Beach". Though just a short story, I found myself lost in it as though I were one of the characters living a part of his life. I read his other novels while he wrote Firehead, in fact working my way backwards.

And then he finally released, "Firehead" (or Gabriella's Book Of Fire as you know it) and I found myself reading pages without even realising I was following a storyline as I was lost in my admiration of the exquisite construction of every sentence. He's inherently gifted at writing in an immensely descriptive manner (that is never convoluted) that can carry you away into the story if you let it. Ideal for those readers who see a movie in their mind as they read, for you're inevitably going to live it in your senses as well.

Unlike his other novels, to which I had more difficulty relating to at the time, I found myself re-reading sentences or paragraphs of this one, as though I were reminiscing my own life. The descriptions were so encompassing that I felt like I was reading a journal of my life some 40 years later, with a somewhat faded memory. Everything felt familiar, yet unknown at the same time.

He writes straight from the soul and what he feels and you can tell that there's no effort toward or consideration of what the public may or may not want to read; he envisions a story and writes what is true to his style and remains true to it the whole book through. For this reason alone I know a number of times I was shocked by what I read, which only furthered the feeling as though you knew this character (nothing fake, but not blunt as such either; simply very candid). If you don't like his style, so be it ' but if you do, he will not disappoint you.

From his first published book of short stories (Jumping At The Moon; equally candid) through to this most recent novel; he's writing has extended its boundaries so much and he has really let himself go with this one, and I can't even imagine how much further he will be able to go, for his work is brilliant now.

Through all of this he manages to bring into view the realities of life that are so prevalent, yet so often not spoken of openly. Of intense love at a young age, or the notion through the decades of that continued love still burning despite what by then would be a considerable age gap. A love so intense that it remained strong as she grew with him inside of him in every aspect of his life, despite the reality that his memories were not of an 'adult' love (as they say), but rather those of a young heart first feeling a complexity of emotions that were never given the time to be understood. And so a lifetime is spent, not obsessing, but trying to follow those emotions to a natural end, without reciprocation. And on no matter what level, you can relate in some way to the struggles that Salvatore endures inside his heart for all those years. And the undying and unescapable need to just ' 'know'. To close his open and broken heart; but not before he is sure that he can't first complete a love that started, but never ended ' and never continued. That lingered inside, hanging on by hope and despair and loneliness and fear and anger and so much more.

And add to that, the events outside the fictitious story line are as close to the facts as you can get (the places mentioned are all real, the street names all real and for someone who lives/d in Brisbane it's historically informative actually). The novel is extremely well researched and thus why it feels almost like it could be true, were it not for the centre of the storyline. Venero's parents come from Sicily and he has lived and known that culture to have that real feeling to write with. He's also lived and known Brisbane (his hometown) as the son of Sicilian parents, growing up in the years he portrays in his book in the same city living the same sort of life. It's so close to real, it's difficult to discern when he's speaking directly of his own past, or when he's writing a story.

Also, to the 'reader from Australia' reviewer, yes there was speak of the book being made into a movie, and though I shan't say anymore of what I'd heard; let's just hope that it's one day released. I can't imagine it ever comparing to the language of his books though. And as someone who has known Veny personally, and during the time he wrote this novel and when it was first launched; I must say that if you can see as much into it as there is to see, you can truly get a sense of who Veny is as a person and how he grew during the time he wrote the novel (more so than with any of his other novels). He really opened himself up and it's remarkable the result that was produced. He's a beautiful person, a beautiful writer and I hope his work gets the respect it deserves and he continues to write to the pleasure of readers like all of you.

What a fantastic writer. This was my first reading of Mr. Armanno's works, and the sensory images he creates are unbelievabley magical. The subject matter is deep and riveting, but the scenes he writes about transport you to the time and place. He creates pictures in your mind. You really feel and smell and see what is on the pages.

For anyone who enjoys getting "into" the writers world, and having their senses awaken, this is the book for you.

We feel the sun, we see the colors of the trees, every item, no matter how insignificant is brought out in vivid detail and imagery. Colors burst behind your pupils, in your brain and keep you alive and wanting more.

Even to the end and the last scenes of the book, you are still there with the characters, feeling, seeing, enjoying. Not all authors have the ability to stay the length of the book. Many only create small pockets of images and then fade, Mr. Armanno keeps you with him and keeps you enjoying and experiencing all through the book.

I have discovered Madeleine Brent's novels recently and liked those so much that I have tried to read all of them. Two of these novels I have not managed to find yet (for a reasonable price), but so far Golden Urchin is my favorite of Brent's novels. Mitji is a white girl which has been raised by aborigenes and as the novel starts she is leaving her tribe to go search for the tribes of more white people. And Mitji's personality is fascinating, she looks at things very differently than expected because of the way she was raised and it is touching to watch her adapt to Western civilization. The love story is also believable and touching. Excellent novel, very recommended.

This is the first of the Madeleine Brent books I ever read and I am so addicted to her!!! Maiti is the white orphan child taken in by a tribe of Aborigines in the Austrailian outback, but after a falling out with one of her closest friends in the tribe, Maiti decides to leave the tribe in search of her own kind, the white people. She becomes Meg, the young English lady who wins the heart of a kindly couple in Perth and finds out that she in the heiress to a grand fortune. There's no sense in spilling a drop of the complex, rich plot that carries Meg from England to the Skeleton Coast. Just read this book and get to know an extraordinary young woman who proves herself a hero over and over again!!!

A very good books, interesting to read, and with excellent historical research! I have reread it several times, and each time I enjoy it again!

This was without question one of the most gripping novels I've read in many a day. I first ran across this work in a brief mention by British travel writer/popular historian James Morris, where he thought it akin to the gulag novels of post-Stalinist Russia in subject matter and philosophical content. Add to that a wealth of striking narrative detail, immensely memorable characters (Maurice Frere, Sarah Purfoy, and particularly James North leap to mind), some truly transporting (no pun intended) and incredibly creepy passages, mind-blowing plot twists and turns, and a persistent refusal to provide too pat solutions to characters' problems... Clarke wasn't better than Dickens or Eliot, but neither of the latter could have written this book.

Clarke's masterpiece was published in 1874, after being serialized in 1870-72. Critics have lambasted a few of the less believable elements and some of the pat characterization of a number of supporting characters, but these are flaws to be found in most novels of that time (and ours). Clarke redeems himself by taking the cliches and mannerisms of the nineteenth-century English novel and using them to illuminate a whole new society, one practically mythical to the metropolitan consciousness of the Victorian Anglophone world. This work is a great counterpoint to all those English novels of the day where the hero or villain gets packed off to the antipodes and returns mysteriously changed. The main thrust of the novel, though, was the need to tell the true story of (white) Australian society's beginnings. Clarke, in telling the story of the unjustly convicted Rufus Dawes (aka Richard Devine), provides a panoramic view of early Victorian Australia, from the hellish convict settlements of Macquarie Harbor and Norfolk Island to the nascent frontier towns of Hobart and Melbourne, from the aging memories of the "First Fleeters" (the original convicts who arrived in 1788) to the controversial Eureka Stockade Uprising of 1854. The narrative frequently moves at a deliciously whirlwind pace to accomodate the exciting interaction of characters and history.

Clarke's novel is generally cited as nineteenth-century Australia's greatest and points the way towards more nuanced examinations of the colonial experience in the twentieth century (Peter Carey's JOE MAGGS, about the "off-stage" life of Dickens antihero Abel Magwitch, is apparently very much in this vein). Don't read it just for this reason, though. Please be sure to find the longer, original version, as I was fortunate enough to do. Clarke was forced to produce a revised, shortened version for the original publication, one dictated by his editors that turned the novel into a much more "conventional" Victorian literary production (and has a longer title--FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE). I understand a TV series was made in the mid-80s with Anthony Perkins as North. If this was the case, then it badly needs to be remade on celluloid, because I can't seem to find the series. It's a magnificent novel whose flaws, I think, are amply counterbalanced by its unexpected joys.

The well-known phrase 'for the term of his natural life' is used by Marcus Clarke to bring home the horrors of transportation and the Tasmanian penal system in the 19th century.
Richard Devine, an innocent man (under an assumed name of Rufus Dawes) convicted of a crime he did not commit, is sent for transportation and assumed killed in a shipwreck. In reality, he is heir to a vast estate (unbeknown to him) and the convolutions of the tale that evolve from this are wonderfully written; the gradual demolishing of Dawes, the unspeakable duality of Frere, the calculating guile of Sarah and the gullible innocence of Sylvia are woven together in a plot that does not end happily ever after. This I think, serves to underline the barbarism and futility of the transportation system.
Based on actual events, Clarke uses his 'hero' to illustrate the depravation and privations that prisoners (and their guards) had to endure. Graphically showing how degradation degrades and power corrupts, the narrative never dwells on gruesome details, instead it relies for effect on the imagination of the reader, which can be more terrifying.
A book that deserves a wider readership.

It's a collation of events by various persons involved in the penal settlement of early Australia. Marcus Clarke has interwoven these events into a novel of fiction. These are stark facts; and show, as far as I've researched, very detailed. L.P. Hartely said it all,in this case.."The past is a foreign country.They do things differently there." The more you read on, the more you want to know..

The title above is what my great-uncle inscribed on the inside cover of this book. He is the Tommy Morris whose story is told in the pages of this book. Like many more famous sailors and soldiers, Uncle Tommy (who died only two weeks ago after a long decline, for those readers who might be interested)used to tell me and my grandfather (Tommy's brother) that it was impossible for him to think of people as "civilized" having seen how we turn our new discoveries and technology so easily to the unhappy task of killing each other. He also said to me once that his role in the Quincy sinking was that of a "damsel in distress".. which description was follwed by that sort of masculing deep-seated chuckle which only come forth from heroic men who have seen hell on earth.

I am biased, but I wer I not, I would still think this an excellent book!

Gary Morris

Between August 1942 and February 1943, a land-sea and air battle was waged for an island in the south pacific called Guadalcanal. The six-month long battle for the island would be one of the definitive battles of the war. It was also one of the costliest. Thousands of Allied and Japanese soldiers died. And a channel north of the island had so many ships go down there that it was renamed Iron Bottom Sound.

It is possible that more men died in the waters off Guadalcanal then on the island itself. But for many years, most of the ships were out of reach to divers and eventually were all but forgotten. Then, in 1992, Oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had found the Titanic and the Bismarck, decided to explore the area using the latest in technology. It is quite an experience to see a past battlefield on land like Normandy, Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg or Guadalcanal itself. But the battlefields were obviously cleaned up afterward and don't look the way they did when the battle concluded. But time knows no boundaries in Iron Bottom Sound. The paintings by Ken Marshall and the photographs show many of the ships still upright on the ocean floor; Their guns and torpedo tubes still trained outward as if firing at a long gone enemy. But some of the ships are not so beautifully preserved. The Battleship Krishima, for example, lies upside down in two pieces on the ocean floor. And the Destroyer Barton is broken in half and lying on its side from two torpedoes. Nevertheless, most of the ships appear ready to rise up and continue fighting.

Lavishly illustrated and with a detailed text, The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal will make a welcome addition to the collection of any War, Naval or Shipwreck enthusiast (If you can find a copy that is).

Dr. Bob Ballard discovered the Titanic in the mid 1980's using cutting-edge underwater technology. For this book, he turned that skill and knowledge to lead an expedition to examine the wrecks of one of the bloodiest naval battles of World War II, one so full of death and destruction that veterans of the battle gave the waters of Gualdalcanal the nickname of "Iron Bottom Sound" because of the number of ships and aircraft that lay underwater. Guadalcanal was the linchpin of American and Japanese military strategy for control of the south Pacific islands. The Americans controlled the airfield, but the Japanese controlled the island and the waters around it. The Japanese couldn't resupply its army because of attacks to its freighters by Allied aircraft and the Americans couldn't resupply its airfield because of attacks to its fleet of ships. In one single battle in the pitch-black darkness of night, the mighty Japanese fleet engaged a weaker American destroyer group where American guns were aimed by radar and Japanese guns were aimed by looking for the flashes from the American weapons. The American fleet was destroyed but it was a Pyhric victory because the Japanese supply ships failed to reach the starving Japanese troops on the island. Dr. Ballard does a remarkable job of capturing both the essence of the battle and the essence of underwater archeology to create a wonderful book filled with full-color pictures of the wrecks and period black-and-white pictures of the war. He also includes the fantastic paintings and maps in the style that has adorned his other books to show how the wrecks would look if there was absolute clarity underwater and with a "God's Eye". This book is one of the better ones I've found that deal with the ships of Guadalcanal and underwater archeology. I've noticed copies adorning the workbenches of many model-ship builders (including mine). Its a great gift idea and sure to please anyone interested in great battles, maritime history, WW2, underwater exploration, or tales of bravery (by those who fought and those who study the ocean).

My five year old picked out this book from our local libray in Texas. She was absolutely fascinated!! It captured her attention and her heart!!

This wonderful book has surely become an Australian classic by now. We follow the story of Hush and Grandma Poss as they travel around Australia to undo some magic. The pictures of the Australian animals are magic, and simple writing means the kids will be repeating it along with you after one or two readings. This would be a great bedtime reading book for littlies and grown-ups to share.

I bought this while in Australia. I was looking for native stories to bring back for my daughter. This book helped me share my trip with her even though she didn't get to go with me.

This book is a wonderful example of a child's wonder at new experiences. The characters go on a journey to discover the lessons of life. This story shows how you should always work on a problem until you find a suitable solution.