Best Selling Books by David Hill

When Hildegard was young, everywhere she went she saw colors and swirls, pictures, and designs. Music filled her soul and she was flooded with ideas--so many that she thought her mind would explode. Then one day it all stopped. In this beautiful book children will join Hildegard on her journey toward devotion to God, service to others, and toward a blessed and solitary life filled with artistic expression.

The thrilling race of Frenchman Nicolas Baudin and Englishman Matthew Flinders to chart the map of Australia. On the afternoon of 8 April 1802, in the remote southern ocean, two explorers had a remarkable chance encounter. Englishman Matthew Flinders and Frenchman Nicolas Baudin had been sent by their governments on the same quest: to explore the uncharted coast of the great south land and find out whether the west and east coasts, four thousand kilometres apart, were part of the same island. And so began the race to compile the definitive map of Australia. These men's journeys were the culmination of two hundred years of exploration of the region by the Dutch - most famously Abel Tasman - the Portuguese, the Spanish and by Englishmen such as the colourful pirate William Dampier and, of course, James Cook. The three-year voyages of Baudin and Flinders would see them endure terrible hardships in the spirit of discovery. They suffered scurvy and heat exhaustion, and Flinders was shipwrecked and imprisoned - always knowing he was competing with the French to produce the first map of this mysterious continent. Written from diaries and other first-hand accounts, this is the thrilling story of men whose drawings recorded countless previously unknown species and turned mythical creatures into real ones, and whose skill and determination enabled 'terra australis incognito' to become Australia.

The story of how a struggling convict settlement grew into six dynamic colonies and then the remarkable nation of Australia, told through the key figures who helped build it into the thriving nation it is today Tracing the story of the Australian nation from its European beginnings, this book is history at its most entertaining and accessible. When James Cook landed on the east coast of Australia, the rest of the world had some idea of how empty, vast, and wild the continent was, but so little was known of it that in 1788 most people thought it was two lands. In the subsequent years, its coastline was charted, its interior opened up, and its cities, laws, and economy developed. In this riveting, wide-ranging history, David Hill traces how this happened through the key figures who built this country into the thriving nation it is today: from its prescient and fair-minded first governor, Arthur Phillip, to the unpopular William Bligh, the victim of the country's first and only military coup; from the visionary builder and law-maker Lachlan Macquarie to William Wentworth, the son of a convict who secured Australia's first elected parliament; from Henry Parkes, the grand old man of politics who started the fraught process of Federation, to the first prime minister, Edmund Barton. It was Barton who formed the first Australian government just in time for the inaugural celebrations on January 1, 1900, when the nation of Australia was born.

An extraordinary narrative history of the First Fleet, by the bestselling author of The Forgotten Children. Never before or since has there been an experiment quite as bold as this. Set against the backdrop of Georgian England with its peculiar mix of elegance, prosperity, progress and squalor, the story of the First Fleet is one of courage, of short-sightedness, of tragedy but above all of extraordinary resilience. It is also, of course, the story of the very first European Australians, reluctant pioneers who travelled into the unknown - the vast majority against their will - in order to form a colony by order of the King's government. Separated from loved ones and travelling in cramped conditions for the months-long journey to Botany Bay, they suffered the most unbearable hardship on arrival on Australian land where a near-famine dictated that rations be cut to the bone. But why was the settlement of New South Wales proposed in the first place? Who were the main players in a story that changed the world and ultimately forged the Australian nation? How did the initial skirmishes with the indigenous population break out and how did the relationship turn sour so quickly? Using diaries, letters and official records, David Hill artfully reconstructs the experiences of these famous and infamous men and women of history, combining narrative skill with an eye for detail and an exceptional empathy with the people of the past.