Smoky Joe's Cafe (22 page)

In the aftermath of the Great Depression few opportunities existed for working-class boys, but at just eighteen Danny Dunn has everything going for him: brains, looks, sporting ability – and an easy charm. His parents run The Hero, a neighbourhood pub, and Danny is a local hero.

Luck changes for Danny when he signs up to go to war. He returns home a physically broken man, to a life that will be changed forever. Together with Helen, the woman who becomes his wife, he sets about rebuilding his life.

Set against a backdrop of Australian pubs and politics,
The Story of Danny Dunn
is an Australian family saga spanning three generations. It is a compelling tale of love, ambition and the destructive power of obsession.

Nick Duncan is a semi-retired, wealthy shipping magnate who lives in idyllic Beautiful Bay, Vanuatu, where he is known as the old patriarch of the islands. He is grieving the loss of his beguiling Eurasian true love, Anna, and is suffering for the first time from disturbing flashbacks to the Second World War.

So he puts pen to paper and tells the compelling tale of the life he has lived since his war-hero days. It's an adventurous life that has had at its heart the love of two passionate and unforgettable – but very different – women.

The seductive Anna Til and the beguiling Marg Hamilton have spent a lifetime in contest for Nick's devotion. Nick remains torn between them, and struggles between their two opposing worlds of economic exploitation and environmental crusade – until he is called upon to referee . . .

Moving between the exotic Pacific Islands, Japan and Australia, over several decades,
Fishing for Stars
is an epic drama of adventure, ambition and unconventional love, and the stunning sequel to Bryce Courtenay's best-selling
The Persimmon Tree
.

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 intoxicating Anna van Heerden.

Their time together is brief, as both are forced into separate, dangerous escapes. They plan to reunite and marry in Australia but it is several years before their paths cross again, scarred forever by the dark events of a long, cruel war.

In
The Persimmon Tree
, Bryce Courtenay gives us a story of love and friendship set against the dramatic backdrop of the Pacific during the Second World War.

‘I am Sylvia Honeyeater; I think myself born around 1196, and this is the story of my life.'

From master storyteller Bryce Courtenay comes the colourful epic of
Sylvia
. Late twelfth-century Europe is torn by religious intolerance. Sylvia, with a singing voice that can literally charm the birds out of the trees, and an acute and questioning mind that refuses to accept unreasoned beliefs, embarks on a pilgrimage. She joins the Children's Crusade, bound for the Holy Land.

From a bawdy life as an entertainer in a whorehouse to an austere and frequently cruel existence in a convent, she fights to be true to her destiny. And her mysterious birthmark causes much confusion: can this peasant maid indeed be a chosen messenger?

Sylvia
is a tale of adversity, of adventure and crusades, and of a beautiful and gifted woman.

From Bryce Courtenay comes a novel of Africa. The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people fanatically opposed to the English.

The world is also on the brink of war and South Africa elects to fight for the Allied cause against Germany. Six-year-old Tom Fitzsaxby finds himself in The Boys Farm, an orphanage in a remote town in the high mountains, where the Afrikaners side fiercely with Hitler's Germany.

Tom's English name proves sufficient for him to be ostracised, marking him as an outsider. And so begin some of life's tougher lessons for the small, lonely boy. Like the whitethorn, one of Africa's most enduring plants, Tom learns how to survive in the harsh climate of racial hatred. Then a terrible event sends him on a journey to ensure that justice is done. On the way, his most unexpected discovery is love.

Inspired by real events,
Brother Fish
tells the story of three people from vastly differing backgrounds. All they have in common is a tough beginning in life.

Jack McKenzie is a harmonica player, soldier, dreamer and small-time professional fisherman from a tiny island in Bass Strait. Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan is a strong-willed woman hiding from an ambiguous past in Shanghai. Larger than life, Private Jimmy Oldcorn was once a street kid and leader of a New York gang. Together, they reap a vast and not always legitimate fortune from the sea.

Spanning eighty years and four continents,
Brother Fish
is an inspiring human drama of three lives brought together and changed forever by the extraordinary events of recent history. But most of all it is about the power of friendship and love.

Billy O'Shannessy, once a prominent barrister, is now on the street where he sleeps on a bench outside the State Library. Above him on the windowsill rests a bronze statue of Matthew Flinders' cat, Trim. Ryan is a ten-year-old, a near-street kid heading for the usual trouble. The two form an unlikely bond.

Through telling Ryan the story of Flinders' circumnavigation of Australia as seen through Trim's eyes, Billy is drawn deeply into Ryan's life and into the Sydney underworld.

Matthew Flinders' Cat
is a modern-day story of friendship and redemption by internationally bestselling author Bryce Courtenay.

In a small town like any other small town around Australia live the Maloneys. They are a fifth-generation Australian family of Irish Catholic descent who are struggling to reach the first rung of the social ladder. TheMaloneys are a family you won't forget: a strong mother, a father broken by war, three boys and two girls, one of whom has an illegitimate daughter. Each of their lives is changed forever by the four fires – passion, religion, warfare and fire itself.

Four Fires
is a story of the power of love and the triumph of the human spirit against the odds.