MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Gemma O'Connor

In "Following The Wake," author delves into the complexities of grief and loss in a heartfelt exploration of one woman's journey to find meaning and solace after a tragic accident. The novel weaves together themes of love, redemption, and the resilience of the human spirit as the protagonist navigates through her sorrow. With lyrical prose and poignant insight, "Following The Wake" is a moving tale that will resonate with readers who have experienced loss and are searching for hope in the face of adversity.

NY. Jove books. 2004. 280p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Robert Whitaker

In 1735 a team of French scientists set out on a daring expedition into the South American wilderness to resolve one of the great scientific challenges of the time: the precise size and shape of the Earth. Scaling the Andes and journeying along the Amazon, the mapmakers faced all manner of danger, while madness, disease and violent death each took their toll. However one, Jean Godin, fell in love with a local girl called Isabel Grameson. When the time came for the expedition to return to France, Godin travelled ahead to ensure the way was safe for his new family. But on reaching French Guiana, disaster struck: Spain and Portugal closed their borders and he was stranded, unable to return to Isabel. What followed lies at the core of this extraordinary tale - a heartbreaking 20-year separation that ended when Isabel, believing she might never see her husband again, decided to make her own way across the continent: a journey that began in hope but became hell on earth...

Drawing on his own experience retracing Isabel's epic trek as well as contemporary records, Robert Whitaker recounts a captivating true story of love and survival set against the backdrop of what many still regard as 'the greatest expedition the world has ever known'.

LONDON. BANTAM. 2004. 416p.

By Rolf Boldrewood

The Miner's Right, as 'A Tale of the Australian Goldfields', is the counterpart of Boldrewood's bushranging classic . Written out of the author's immediate experience as Goldfields Commissioner at Gulgong in the 1870s, it also casts back to the Chinese riots at Lambing Flat, to the robbery of the gold-escort at Eugowra, and to some aspects of the Eureka stockade. While these events are set in the romantic framework of the nineteenth-century novel, the democratic sentiment of the time is reflected to a greater degree than Boldrewood himself could have realised. The Miner's Right is both an example of the colonial romance, and an account 'from the life' of conditions on the Australian goldfields in a time of social and political change.

Macmillan, 1890, 397 pages

By Charles Dickens.

Dickens traveled to America in 1842 and wrote letters home to his friend John Forster. These were published in a book in the same year. It was not received well because of his criticism of American manners, slavery, and the American press.

Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1842) 240 pages.