Bryce Courtenay Books In Order

The Power of One Books In Publication Order

  1. The Power of One (1989)
  2. Tandia (1992)

The Potato Factory Books In Publication Order

  1. The Potato Factory (1995)
  2. Tommo and Hawk (1998)
  3. Solomon’s Song (1999)

The Persimmon Tree Books In Publication Order

  1. The Persimmon Tree (2007)
  2. Fishing for Stars (2008)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Night Country (1998)
  2. Jessica (1998)
  3. Smoky Joe’s Cafe (2001)
  4. Four Fires (2001)
  5. The Family Frying Pan (2002)
  6. Matthew Flinders’ Cat (2002)
  7. Brother Fish (2004)
  8. Whitethorn (2005)
  9. Sylvia (2006)
  10. The Story Of Danny Dunn (2009)
  11. Fortune Cookie. Bryce Courtenay (2010)
  12. Jack of Diamonds (2012)

Non-Fiction Books In Publication Order

  1. April Fool’s Day (1993)
  2. A Recipe for Dreaming (1998)
  3. The Silver Moon (2014)

The Power of One Book Covers

The Potato Factory Book Covers

The Persimmon Tree Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Non-Fiction Book Covers

Bryce Courtenay Books Overview

The Power of One

The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama. The New York Times Unabashedly uplifting…
asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence The Power of One can prevail. Cleveland Plain DealerIn 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreams which are nothing compared to what life actually has in store for him. He embarks on an epic journey through a land of tribal superstition and modern prejudice where he will learn the power of words, the power to transform lives, and The Power of One. Totally engrossing…
presents the metamorphosis of a most remarkable young man and the almost spiritual influence he has on others…
Peekay has both humor and a refreshingly earthy touch, and his adventures, at times, are hair raising in their suspense. Los Angeles Times Book Review Marvelous…
It is the people of the sun baked plains of Africa who tug at the heartstrings in this book…
. Bryce Courtenay draws them all with a fierce and violent love. The Washington Post Book World Impressive. Newsday A compelling tale. The Christian Science Monitor

Tandia

Tandia is a child of all Africa: half Indian, half African, beautiful and intelligent, she is only sixteen when she is first brutalised by the police. Her fear of the white man leads her to join the black resistance movement. With her in the fight for justice is the one white man Tandia can trust, the welterweight champion of the world, Peekay. Now he must fight their common enemy in order to save both their lives. A compelling story of good and evil from Australia’s most popular storyteller, Bryce Courtenay.

The Potato Factory

Ikey Solomon is in the business of thieving and he’s very good at it. Ikey’s partner in crime is his mistress, the forthright Mary Abacus, until misfortune befalls them. They are parted and each must make the harsh journey from thriving nineteenth century London to the convict settlement of Van Diemen’s Land. In the backstreets and dives of Hobart Town, Mary learns the art of brewing and builds The Potato Factory, where she plans a new future. But her ambitions are threatened by Ikey’s wife, Hannah, her old enemy. The two women raise their separate families, one legitimate and the other bast*ard. As each woman sets out to destroy the other, the families are brought to the edge of disaster.

Tommo and Hawk

Brutally kidnapped and separated in childhood, Tommo and Hawk are reunited at the age of fifteen in Hobart. Together they escape their troubled pasts and set off on a journey into manhood. From whale hunting in the Pacific to the Maori wars of New Zealand, from the Rocks in Sydney to the miners’ riots at the goldfields, Tommo and Hawk must learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to survive. Especially in their last, worst confrontation between good and evil. Brilliantly evoking a time of struggle and triumph in the young colonies, Bryce Courtenay has created an unforgettable tale of the enduring bond between two brothers.

Solomon’s Song

This is the story of two families branches of the Solomons transported to an alien land, both of whom eventually grow rich and powerful but who, through three generations, never for one moment relinquish their hatred for each other. It is also the story of our country from the beginning until we came of age as a nation. I have learned a great deal about Australia and those things which concern us as a people and make us, in many ways, who we are today. To write this book, I visited Gallipoli and came away deeply saddened by the terrible waste of our young blood. We would never be quite the same again. It has been a grand adventure and I hope that you will find Solomon’s Song a good and powerful story. No writer can possibly hope for more.

The Persimmon Tree

The Persimmon Tree is unashamedly a love story. I’ve always wanted to write one but until now have been afraid to do so. The reason is simple enough: most men in my experience have very little idea of what really goes on in a woman’s heart or head. Now, at the age of 74, I just might know enough and have sufficient courage to write on the subject the way of a man with a woman, of a woman with a man. My story is set in the Pacific, although not in the paradise we’ve always been led to believe exists there. It is 1942 in Java and the Japanese are invading the islands like a swarm of locusts. I have tried to capture the essence of love how in a world gone mad with malice and hate, it has the ability to forgive and to heal. As it is in this story, love is always hard earned but, in the end, a most wonderful and necessary emotion. Without love, life for most of us would lack true meaning. Bryce Courtenay

Fishing for Stars

Nicholas Duncan is a semi retired shipping magnate who resides in idyllic Beautiful Bay in Indonesia, where he is known as the old patriarch of the islands. He is grieving the loss of his beautiful Eurasian wife, Anna, and is suffering for the first time from disturbing flashbacks to WWII, the scene of their first meeting and early love. His other wartime lover is the striking Marg Hamilton, a powerful and influential political player in Australia who has remained close to Nick. Marg suspects Nick is suffering the onset of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and organises for a specialist to meet with him in Sydney. But when they meet, Tony Freedman stirs long buried emotions in Nick and the two men don?t hit it off. Nick leaves in an explosion of anger and finds himself in hospital after being hit by a car. Tony visits and encourages Nick to write as a form of therapy ? to write about Anna. So he sets about writing about the woman who has inspired him since his late teens, and in doing so draws us into the compelling tale of the life he has lived post war hero days building a shipping empire, navigating international corruption, supporting his wife’s third world education crusade and loving the women who inspire him.

Jessica

Jessica is based on the inspiring true story of a young girl’s fight for justice against tremendous odds. A tomboy, Jessica is the pride of her father, as they work together on the struggling family farm. One quiet day, the peace of the bush is devastated by a terrible murder. Only Jessica is able to save the killer from the lynch mob but will justice prevail in the courts? Nine months later, a baby is born…
with Jessica determined to guard the secret of the father’s identity. The rivalry of Jessica and her beautiful sister for the love of the same man will echo throughout their lives until finally the truth must be told. Set in the harsh Australian bush against the outbreak of World War I, this novel is heartbreaking in its innocence, and shattering in its brutality.

Smoky Joe’s Cafe

Thommo returns from Vietnam to an Australia that regards him as a mercenary guilty of war crimes. He begins to develop all kinds of physical and mental problems, and thinks it must only be him until he finds he is not alone. Ten mates, all who remain of his platoon who fought and died in the Battle of Long Tan, are affected the same way. Now Thommo and his mates are eleven angry men out for revenge. They rope in an ex-Viet Cong with ‘special skills’ and his own secret agenda. They’re the ‘Dirty Dozen’, just like the movie. Only it’s real life, and they’re so screwed up they couldn’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag. That is, until a woman of character steps in.

Four Fires

The Four Fires in this story are passion, religion, warfare and fire itself. While there are many more fires that drive the human spirit, love being perhaps the brightest flame of all, it is these four that have moulded us most as Australian people. The Four Fires give us our sense of place and, for better or for worse, shape our national character.

The Family Frying Pan

Mrs Moses is a small woman with a big heart and enormous courage. The only survivor of a Cossack raid on her village, she takes with her a big cast-iron frying pan, so heavy that she can only sling it over her back. Yet this is no ordinary frying pan it’s The Family Frying Pan, blessed with a Russian soul. From this frying pan Mrs Moses manages to feed the various refugees who are travelling with her across Russia to freedom. In return, each of the group must tell a story around the campfire at night stories of compassion and bravery, of human frailty and, above all, of hope.

Matthew Flinders’ Cat

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 window sill rests a bronze statue of Matthew Flinders’ Cat, Trim. Ryan is a ten year old, a near street kid heading for all the usual trouble. The two meet and form an unlikely friendship. Appealing to the boy’s imagination by telling him the story of the circumnavigation of Australia as seen through Trim’s eyes, Billy is drawn deeply into Ryan’s life and into the Sydney underworld. Over several months the two begin the mutual process of rehabilitation. Matthew Flinders’ Cat is a modern day story of a city, its crime, the plight of the homeless and the politics of greed and perversion. It is also a story of the human heart, with an enchanting glimpse into our past form the viewpoint of a famous cat.

Brother Fish

Brother Fish is an inspiring human drama of three lives brought together and changed forever by the extraordinary events of recent history. Brother Fish is an Australian saga spanning eighty years and four continents. Inspired by real events, Bryce Courtenay’s new novel 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.

Whitethorn

Synopsis From Bryce Courtenay comes a new novel about Africa. The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people frantically 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.

Sylvia

The story of Sylvia Honeyeater, who sings like an angel and can literally charm the birds from the trees, this epic tale of a Europe torn by religious intolerance also features the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Francis of Assisi, the Muslim Sultan and his harem, as well as the fervour that became the Children’s Crusade and then later the Crusades.

Fortune Cookie. Bryce Courtenay

Its the 1960s and the world of advertising is coming alive and its an exciting world to be part of. Simon Wong, a Chinese-Australian and promising young advertising executive, is sent to Singapore to establish an office. He finds himself thrust into an environment that is at once strangely familiar and profoundly different; one where the rules that govern behaviour both in business and in personal life differ wildly from what he is used to. And where all is not what it appears to be. Under the veneer of the commercial world lie some shocking truths of people smuggling, drug trafficking and murder. And Mercy B. Lord, the woman Simon falls for, is caught up in it. From wartime Asian comfort houses to CIA spy rings, Bryce Courtenay takes us on a thrilling journey with a great love story at its heart.

April Fool’s Day

Bryce Courtenay’s moving tribute to his son, Damon. Damon Courtenay died on the morning of April Fool’s Day. In this tribute to his son, Bryce Courtenay lays bare the suffering behind this young man’s life. Damon’s story is one of life-long struggle, his love for Celeste, the compassion of family, and a fight to the end for integrity. A tragic yet uplifting story, April Fool’s Day is controversial, painful and heartbreaking, yet has a gentle humour. It is also life-affirming, and, above all, a testimony to the incredible regenerative strength of love how when we confront our worst, we can become our best. April Fool’s Day will change the way you think.

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