A vivid story of the men and women who took a stand when sport mixed with politics.

In 1971, when the racially selected all-white Springbok rugby team toured Australia, it became a nation at war with itself. There was bloodshed as tens of thousands of anti-apartheid campaigners clashed with governments, police, and rugby fans - who were given free reign to assault protestors. Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen declared a state of emergency. Prime minister William McMahon called the Wallabies who refused to play 'national disgraces'. Barbed wire ringed the great rugby grounds to stop protestors invading the field.

Pitched Battle recreates what became of the most rancorous periods in modern Australian history - a time of courage, pain, faith, fanaticism, and political opportunism - which ultimately made heroes of the seven Wallabies who refused to play, played a key role in the later political careers of Peter Beattie, Meredith Burgmann, and Peter Hain, and ultimately led to the abandonment of apartheid.

The sprawling saga of legendary Australian cop, Bumper Farrell, the most feared and revered policeman in Australia's history. Frank 'Bumper' Farrell was the roughest, toughest street cop and vice-squad leader Australia has ever seen. Strong as a bull, with cauliflowered ears and fists like hams, Bumper's beat from 1938 to 1976 was the most lawless in the land - the mean streets of Kings Cross and inner Sydney. His adversaries were such notorious criminals as Abe Saffron, Lennie McPherson, Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh and their gangs as well as the hooligans, sly groggers, SP bookies, pimps and spivs. Criminals knew just where they stood: he would catch them, he would hurt them, and then he would lock them away. He was a legendary Rugby League player for Newtown, and represented Australia against England and New Zealand. Here's Bumper Farrell in brutal, passionate and hilarious action . . . saving Ita Buttrose from a stalker; sparking a national scandal when accused of biting off a rival player's ear; beating Lennie McPherson so severely the hard man cried; single-handedly fighting a mob of gangsters in Kings Cross and winning; terrorising the hoons who harassed the prostitutes in the brothel lanes by driving over the top of them; commandeering the police launch to take him home to his beach home, diving overboard in full uniform and catching a wave to shore; dispensing kindness and charity to the poor. Bumper Farrell: lawman, sportsman, larrikin . . . legend. 'fascinating . . . [a] fine biography' SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

The recent floods that ravaged Queensland saw three-quarters of the state declared a disaster zone.from the capital city on the Brisbane River to remote rural communities.and caused billions of dollars worth of damage, forcing thousands to abandon their homes. This latest assault by nature reminds us all that, despite its stark beauty, the Australian landscape has a deadly edge. It is a place of flood, fire, earthquake and ferocious storms. The Australian Book of Disasters features enthralling stories of catastrophe.and survival and courage in the face of enormous odds. With chapters covering the breadth of this harsh land, it includes detailed accounts of the events burnt into Australia's national memory, from the Dunbar shipwreck in 1857 to the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009, and finishing with an in-depth look at the Queensland floods of 2010-2011. From the same series as The Australian Book of True Crime and The Australian Book of Heroism.

Based on never-before-published family, police and court records, photographs, interviews with people who knew him, including criminals, football colleagues and police officers, this is the biography of Frank 'Bumper' Farrell. He was a gambler, a hard drinker, a devoted husband and father, a devout Catholic, a staunch friend and a deadly enemy.

Shortlisted for the 2015 William Hill Australian Sports Book of the Year Award This is a tale of innocents abroad. Thirty-three athletes left Australia in May 1936 to compete in the Hitler Olympics in Berlin. Believing sporting competition was the best antidote to tyranny, they put their qualms on hold. Anything to be part of the greatest show on earth. Dangerous Games drops us into a front row seat at the 100,000-capacity Olympic stadium to witness some of the finest sporting performances of all time - most famously the African American runner Jesse Owens, who eclipsed the best athletes the Nazis could pit against him in every event he entered. The Australians, with their antiquated training regimes and amateur ethos, valiantly confronted the intensely focused athletes of Germany, the United States and Japan. Behind the scenes was cut-throat wheeling and dealing, defiance of Hitler, and warm friendships among athletes. What they did and saw in Berlin that hot, rainy summer influenced all that came after until their dying days.