Amy heads to Marysville to visit her grandmother, and help in the garden and clean out her gutters. It is, after all, bushfire season.

As summer arrives, so do the fires, and Dad is busy helping control the flames in bushfires that have started burning in Victoria. But it is early February 2009, and the Black Saturday bushfire is about to encircle Amy and her family, and teach Amy first-hand about tragedy and survival.

As the horrors of the First World War are drawing to a close, a danger has arisen that will kill more people around the world that the Great War did—an influenza pandemic.

Charlotte McKenzie, assisting the doctor next door, find herself experiencing at close hand the effects of this devastating disease—and when if finally attacks her own family, how will Charlotte cope?

The war carried the Spanish flu across the world. Faces grew masks. Shops and schools wore signs that said, ‘Closed’. Families nursing the sick drew their curtains together to say their house was quarantined . . . 
From the award-winning creators of Flood, Fire, Cyclone and Drought, comes this powerful story of humanity prevailing during a pandemic.

The True Story of a Girl who Survived the Holocaust with help from Oskar Schindler.

Rena Finder was only eleven when the Nazis forced her and other Jewish people into the ghetto in Krakow, Poland, during WWII. Then, Rena and her mother were taken to a work camp. By chance, they found jobs in the factory of a German man named Oskar Schindler.

Still, Rena was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was Schindler and his wife who would ultimately help her escape.

Inspired by the true story of Muslims who saved the lives of Jewish children in the Second World War. 
In 1942, in the Grand Mosque in Paris, 11-year-old Ruben is hiding from the Nazis. Already thousands of Jewish children have disappeared, and Ruben’s parents are desperately trying to find his sister. Ruben must learn how to pass himself off as a Muslim, while he waits for the infamous Fox to help him get to Spain to be reunited with his family. One hint of Ruben's true identity and he'll be killed. So will the people trying to save him. But when the mosque is raided and the Fox doesn't come, Ruben is forced to flee.

Finding himself in the south of France, he discovers that he must adjust to a new reality, and to the startling revelation of the Fox's true identity.

D-Day, June 6, 1944: the most expansive military endeavour in history.No less than world cooperation would bring down Hitler and the Axis powers. And so people—and kids—across the globe lent their part. From the young US soldiers in the boats, to spies in the French countryside, to kids back on the homefront, the coordination of thousands came together.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

Set in London and Paris, A Tale of Two Cities paints a story of economical and political unrest at the time of the French Revolution.

After serving 18 years as a political prisoner in the Bastille, the ageing Alexandre Manette is finally released and united with his daughter Lucie in England. As the lives of Alexandre and Lucie intertwine with those around them–most namely Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, two very different men drawn together by their love for Lucie–the rising tensions in France and the violent eruption of the revolution climax in the storming of the Bastille.

Initially described as an experiment, and widely considered to be Dickens' most tightly plotted novel, it is easy to see why A Tale of Two Cities remains one of his most popular books.

The shark was pale, shiny grey and quite magnificent. Hypnotised by the creature’s eyes, like large black discs, he was hardly aware of other people gathering tightly around him.

It’s the last summer of the 1970s, and as 12-year-old Toby heads to the coast on a longed-for summer holiday, he finds himself almost invisible to his newly-wed father and step-mum. Toby’s loneliness lifts when he meets Tara, the daughter of the local shark fisherman, who is dealing with family issues of her own. A terrifying incident on the old wharf begins a dramatic chain of events within the small coastal town—revealing secrets and creating ripples through both Toby’s and Tara’s families. A lyrical novel of the joys of childhood, friendship, facing truths, the trials of growing up…and the days of in between.

Telling BITS of history as they really were! Gold fever hit Australia in the 1850s … and it was the start of a wild, crazy hunt that saw people from all over the world come to try their luck. A few people might have dug up a fortune, but what most diggers dug was latrines.

It turns out that the Gold Rush was mostly smelly, dirty, filthy and just yuck. Welcome to the most STINKY look at Australia yet!

The True Stories of Jewish Children who Fled Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport
Through the moving and often heart-wrenching personal accounts of Kindertransport survivors, critically acclaimed and award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson paints the timely and devastating story of how the rise of Hitler and the Nazis tore apart the lives of so many families—and what they were forced to give up in order to escape.

England, 1605. Twelve-year-old Tom must save his father from hanging. He falls in with a mysterious stranger, the Falcon, who promises to help–but can he be trusted? Soon, Tom faces a terrible mission: secure his father’s release and stop the assassination of the king...

Syms Covington has landed the job of a lifetime on Charles Darwin’s ship. But after being shipwrecked on a Galapagos island, he makes a discovery that could change the world—and make his fortune. Should he share his find, or will it lead to the extinction of a legendary species?