Birthplaces of Australian Motor Racing

This book records and now preserves the history of Australian motorsport. Huge proportions of it were just on the very edge of being lost.
By the time you have read this book, you will be unbeatable at Australian motor racing trivia around any race campground fire pit or BBQ. You will know what the deadliest day was trackside in this country, the speedway promoter who discovered and named one of Australia’s biggest international rock groups, the most extreme financial car racing venue disaster of all time, why many residential roads have names the people who live there don’t appreciate, and what venue built its own railway station which is still in use today.
You will discover places worth dragging the family off to so you can take photos of rusting artefacts and sprout knowledgeable but boring nostalgic conversations. You’ll also be amazed at some of the historic car racing locations you’ve unknowingly been driving past.
How do you locate old car venues when some were utterly demolished 90 years ago, an industrial complex built on the same spot, which was in turn torn down and replaced with a university, a lake or a multi-storey housing estate?
This roll call of mine started out with two simple questions that most petrol heads in this country ask themselves sooner or later. How many car racing facilities have closed in Australia – and why?

Black Clouds to Sunshine

These poems are the author’s way of expressing her feelings and thoughts, and a way of coping with mental illness experienced by herself and her family. By putting her thoughts into poems, some sad and some funny, it gives her a sense of belief.

She hopes this experiment of hers will help others out there, knowing there is a way to relieve the pressure of anxiety by putting pen to paper and writing about those pent-up thoughts.

Black Knight Shade

In the 21st century, the god Horus, known as Rama, discovers that his covenant has been broken. The once-protected Secret Falcon Society is now vulnerable, as the Sacred Book of Scrolls has fallen into the possession of Rama’s evil brother. This brother seeks to claim the ‘Fruitful Throne’ and crown himself king, but in doing so, he puts Rama and his home at risk. The fate of the Good Eye of Horus hangs in the balance.

With only one scroll left, Rama is determined to protect his society. He seeks out the Chosen Ones, who hold the key to restoring the ‘world of Truth.’ Together, they embark on an ancient journey, aided by their sacred Falcons, and realize that the fate of their world rests on their shoulders.

Eliash and Celeste, two of the Chosen Ones, quickly discover that knowledge is their greatest weapon. Only the Wedjat Eye can give them the power to protect themselves from the evil Covenant. But as time runs out, they must confront the possibility that the Evil Eye has already awakened. Will they be able to stop Blackheart and save their world, or is it too late?

Bloodstains on the Cocaine Trail

A homicide crisis began sweeping America after massive quantities of cocaine first began their journey into America in 1986. Drugs were trucked along the highways of the Cocaine Trail to every city in America. This influx of a deadly new drug led directly to a series of record deaths from overdoses, suicides and crime-related murders, family breakdowns and destroyed lives. Drugs are credited with driving the highest homicide rates in American history and a raging turf war between street gangs.

Crack cocaine unleashed a brutal era of violence, placing newspapers under enormous pressure to provide coverage. Relations with police were breaking down everywhere and crime coverage was in its death throes. Newspapers could not cover the homicides or give any context or explanations to such a social upheaval. Editors, reporters and police now reveal the shocking truth behind this agonizing episode in American history, when crime reporters had to re-invent journalism to get behind the police blue code. This book combines investigative journalism and narrative style to produce a rare portrait from within the secret inner world of newspapers.

Blowing Away the Bura

In this novel, by October 1991 war in western Croatia between Croats and Serbs is daily and deadly. Navenka Berik, a wimpy 25-year-old Serb mother of two has had her Serb parents and her Croat husband make decisions for her. During the next few months:

- Her father is taken and presumed killed,

- Navenka is raped,

- Her husband is arrested and probably is killed,

- Her mother becomes crippled,

- From the rape, another child is born,

- Remaining family members are on the run as internally displaced persons in the dissolving Yugoslavia,

- The hassled Navenka has to step up and lead.

Unwelcome anywhere, the family languishes with temporary protection visas in Germany. In 1996, they are accepted as refugees in Australia. Peace, the English language and Australia’s very multicultural society bring many new problems. Navenka’s ongoing memories of her husband keep her wishing that he might be alive. Thoughts of moving back to Croatia or to Bosnia end when, briefly, Navenka attends the trial of those accused of murdering her father. There, poverty and the old ethnic prejudices live on. Back in Australia, her long “lost” husband finds her. However, after the initial joy wears off, the terms of his demand, at gunpoint, that his family go and live in Croatia with him are unacceptable. Navenka’s daughter Srebrenka, too young to be burdened by bad memories of Yugoslavia, cleverly resolves the impasse.

People react differently to war. Some think. Some “just feel”.

Blue Bell From Greenfield Parade

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a cat and be able to get into, under and beneath cars, houses and especially trees where you would be able to see everything around you? 

Meet Blue Bell, who is a very special cat who lives in Greenfield Parade.  No one owns Blue Bell, but everyone loves her.

Interested and curious in all things living, Blue Bell has great freedom to roam in her neighbourhood and meet many other creatures.

See how Blue Bell is able to discover the Room of Happiness and Song – and how she saves the life of one of its most beautiful residents.

Bonecreake: The Strange Tale of Maudy Jiller

December 1878. North Sea gales batter the wash estuary of England’s east coast, covering the desolate marshes and riverbanks under a near impenetrable blanket of snow and ice. Isolated and alone, the impoverished fishing community of Bonecreake faces hardship like never before.

But when the warmth of spring thaws the freezing conditions of a prolonged winter, a terrible secret is revealed: four children of Bonecreake are missing.

Investigating their disappearance falls on the youthful shoulders of Constable Hollins. With both the inhabitants of Bonecreake and his superiors demanding answers, is the inexperienced Constable Hollins capable of solving the macabre puzzle of the children’s disappearance?

What part does the widowed mother, Maudy Jiller, have to play in an investigation exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of the social and moral values of Victorian England?

As disturbing as it is engaging, Bonecreake: The Strange Tale of Maudy Jiller is every parent’s fear, and every mother’s nightmare.

Bonfire Night

A bonfire blazes in Outback Australia. Two men sit all night in its glow, commemorating their dead friend. He blew his head off with a shotgun. Bonfires burn across Lewes, England, commemorating Guy Fawkes Night. As crowds of revellers lurch through the streets, a boy stands teetering on the ledge of a bridge, waiting for the train to pass below. Two different lives, two different places, one story to tell.

Book Seller

This book is meant as an anthology of minimalist short stories that I have published throughout the time in literary magazines, using a minimum of means to create the artistic background. In terms of style, I could mention Jack London, J.D. Salinger, Raymond Carver, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, as authors that influenced my career as a writer. Though seemingly simple, the short stories in Book Seller are carefully crafted, like exquisite pieces of jewellery and each, in turn, can represent the appropriate starting point for other challenging books. I let my characters speak for myself and give a decisive role to suggestion. This leads to a lyrical outline of the events, described as if my characters sometimes dress themselves in poetry from time to time. A moment in the existence of a character, a snippet of a moment, a coincidence, may be enough to make the beginning of a novel or the beginning of a short story similar to those found in this book.

Breast Cancer Smiles

On a cold day in February, 2018, Shazia goes from a tennis court in the morning to a hospital in the afternoon where she is diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. As her journey unfolds, humour becomes her crutch, writing becomes her tool and a powerful connection to her South Asian roots becomes her purpose.

This isn’t a tale of cancer and the devastation it undoubtedly brings. It’s the story of a life-altering journey enriched by time. Shazia tells a tale of re-birth swathed in love, humour and pain. She unveils the shame of breast cancer in her birth culture that is killing women before their time. In her birthplace, Pakistan, cancer is casually known as ‘the kiss of death’.

For Shazia, it is quite the opposite. This is life through a different lens and a questioning of the status quo. Her musings provoke debate and challenge existing beliefs, holding up a different mirror to society. These chronicles are written during 18 months of chemotherapy, sepsis, surgery and radiotherapy. They are written with hope and an intermittent smile.

Brett: ‘Love of My Life’

Sometimes a girl’s dream is to have a safe home.

Steph’s escape is listening to her Queen records and dancing at the discos. It is the ’80s; music keeps her mind safe – it is the only thing she trusts. At 16, she finds love and friendship in a bikie called Brett. She never knew her first love would be the ‘love of her life’.

Brett is as damaged as Steph; tragedy seems to follow them. He is the only person who ever believed in Steph and her dreams.

However, with no money and no family to help her, Steph hits obstacles at every turn – with sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.

Will Steph ever escape and follow her dream?

Bright Shadow

This is the story of Katherine Plantagenet, self-proclaimed “daughter, sister and aunt of kings” who endures extraordinarily traumatic reversals of fortune, as her life swings through wealth and adversity.  A glittering future as an English princess is swept away by the untimely death of her father, Edward IV, and the usurpation of her brother Edward V's throne. Surrounded by murderous intrigue, conspiracy and ambition, Katherine and her sisters fear what lies in store … The pragmatic marriage of the eldest, Bessy, to the victor of Bosworth, Henry Tudor, brings an uneasy peace to Katherine's young life but the shadows of suspicion and rebellion continue to swirl around her.  

Katherine witnesses first hand the events that plague her brother-in-law's reign. As a political expedient, she is given in marriage to William Courtenay, heir to the Earl of Devon, but Henry Tudor's paranoia soon falls upon her beloved young husband who is imprisoned in the Tower. An intelligent and resilient woman, in a world where men hold all the power, Katherine fights her way alone through a tense decade that ends in personal tragedy. With a vow of celibacy as her chosen route of self-preservation, Katherine continues to tread a wary path of survival ... until the charming Benedict Haute enters her life. However, the failure of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to produce a living son changes the way any Plantagenet is viewed by the king; Katherine knows her royal blood could cause trouble for her family.