MAR2018_(3)

NON - FI CT I ON MARCH 2018

The Sinking of HMAS Sydney: How Australia’s Greatest Maritime Mystery Was Solved

DAV I D L . M E A RN S

‘We just found Sydney. We’ve got it. It’s absolutely crystal clear. She’s sitting upright in a small debris field. There’s no doubt about it.’ For 66 years it was Australia’s greatest maritime mystery: what happened to the ‘pride of the fleet’ HMAS Sydney and the 645 men aboard her? Was she beaten in a fair fight with the German cruiser Kormoran or was there treachery involved? Could the Kormoran survivors’ account of the battle and its aftermath be believed? Why were there no survivors from Sydney? And where was the wreck? March 2018 will mark 10 years since HMAS Sydney was located under more than 2400 metres of seawater, about 200 kilometres off the West Australian coast. Now in trade paperback, David Mearns’s gripping account of the mammoth search, triumphant discovery and piecing together of answers to the enduring mysteries both honours the anniversary and brings the story alive again to a new generation of readers. David and his company, Blue Water Recoveries Ltd, have located 21 major shipwrecks, including the deepest shipwreck ever found at 5762 metres. The search for HMAS Sydney tested all David Mearns’s skills as a detective, engineer, marine scientist and navigator.

*cover to be revealed

9781460756379 | AU $34.99 NZ $40.00 Paperback | 384pp | Released: 26/02/18

Publicity Contact: lara.wallace@harpercollins.com.au

Trafficked Girl: My Story of Fighting Back.

ZO E PAT T E R S ON & J A N E SM I T H

Abused by her mother, humiliated by her father’s sexual innuendos, physically assaulted and bullied by her eldest brother, even as a young child, Zoe thought she deserved the desperately unhappy life she was living. Taken into care at the age of 13, Zoe thought she was finally going to escape from the cruel abuse she had suffered throughout her childhood. But social services placed her in a residential unit known to be ‘a target for prostitution’, and suddenly her life was worse than it had ever been before. Zoe realised that the only way to survive in the unit was to go to the ‘parties’ the older girls were paid to take her to, drink the drinks, smoke the cannabis and try to blank out what was done to her when she was abused, controlled and trafficked around the country. This is the harrowing, yet uplifting, story of how Zoe finally broke free of the abuse and neglect that destroyed her childhood and obtained justice for her years of suffering.

9780008148041 |AU $19.99 NZ $22.99 Paperback | 304pp | Released: 08/03/18

Publicity Contact: nicola.woods@harpercollins.com.au