John Marsden – författare

'Compulsively readable' New York TimesSomewhere out there Ellie and her friends are hiding.Their country has been invaded. Everyone they know has been captured. Their world has changed overnight.They've got no weapons - except courage.They've got no help - except themselves.They've got nothing - except friendship.How strong could you be, if the world was full of people trying to kill you?Fans of Veronica Roth, Suzanne Collins and Michael Grant - prepare to be hooked by the Tomorrow series.

When Ellie and six of her friends return home from a camping trip deep in the bush, they find things hideously wrong -- their families gone, houses empty and abandoned, pets and stock dead. Gradually they begin to comprehend that their country has been invaded and everyone in the town has been taken prisoner. As the horrible reality of the situation becomes evident they have to make a life-and-death decision: to run back into the bush and hide, to give themselves up to be with their families, or to stay and try to fight. This reveting, tautly-drawn novel seems at times to be only a step away from today''s headlines.

When their country is invaded and their families are taken, eight high school teenagers band together to fight. Seventeen-year-old Ellie and her friends have survived the invasion, but two of their band are captured: Kevin is imprisoned and Corrie is alive, but in a coma. Homer and Ellie are determined to get them back and to continue their campaign against the enemy. They discover that there are other rebels out there, fighting the invaders - but who are they and can they be trusted? As the pressure grows, can Ellie work out her conflicted feelings for the brilliant, arrogant Homer and the strong, gentle Lee? As war rages, and the enemy closes in, Ellie and her friends must once again fight for their lives...but how many of their band will be left? A truly involving story about teenagers facing the incredible challenges of warfare, amid the intensity of first love. Would you sacrifice everything to save your country and your family?

She lives in the best suburb. She goes to the finest school. Her family is wealthy and powerful. She has everything money can buy. So why are there reporters outside her house? And why is her father telling lies on television? And why is the Premier talking about them in State Parliament? Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong. Riveting and compulsively readable, John Marsden''s Checkers plunges us deep in the mind and world of a teenage girl whose life has spun completely out of control.

Sunk by a U-boat, Attacked by Kamikazes tells the story of one man’s experiences during the years 1939 to 1947. Aged sixteen when the war broke out, Joseph Marsden worked casual shiftwork on the Liverpool docks. Lucky to survive an air raid on the night of 4 May 1941, he lost two members of his family before the Liverpool blitz came to an end. On 9 June 1941 - his eighteenth birthday - he volunteered for service with the Royal Navy.After completing basic training at Malvern, he was finally sent to his home town in April 1943 to join HMS Woodpecker, a sloop recently assigned to Johnny Walker’s famous Second Support Group. After seeing action in the Bay of Biscay, the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic, Woodpecker was sunk during an anti-submarine patrol in February 1944, a patrol during which Walker’s ships sank six U-boats.After completing his two weeks of survivors’ leave he was recalled to Devonport. Demoralised by the thought of surviving on half-pay for six months, he lost his appetite for the fray and sought medical attention for an aural complaint, being prescribed a period of rest at a naval base in the Scottish highlands.A restless soul, Marsden did not take to the isolation on the shores of Loch Ewe, and asked to be sent to sea once more. He was posted to the Firth of Clyde to join the crew of the escort carrier, HMS Empress, aboard which he sailed for Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in December 1944. Whilst in the Far East, Marsden saw action during Operation Stacey, Operation Bishop, Operation Livery and Operation Carson, witnessing Kamikaze attacks on allied warships. After the surrender of the Japanese, HMS Empress was detailed to help repatriate Australian and New Zealand troops, before embarking on her homeward journey to the UK. Before being de-mobbed he was transferred to the destroyer, HMS Zealous, then based at Keil in Germany where he witnessed the destruction inflicted upon Hamburg by the allied bombing campaign.

Darkness is the friend and enemy of those who hunt by night. Ellie and her friends have found safety after months of fighting. But the New Zealand Defence Force needs their help to infiltrate occupied Australian territory. And so the friends must fight on.

Through most of eight hundred years, Somerled of Argyll has been variously denounced as an intractable rebel against his rightful king and esteemed as the honoured ancestor of the later medieval Lord of the Isles, but he can be recognised now as a much more complex figure of major prominence in twelfth-century Scotland and of truly landmark significance in the long history of the Gael. In this book individual chapters investigate his emergence in the forefront of the Gaelic-Norse aristocracy of the western seaboard, his part in Gaeldom's challenge to the Canmore kings of Scots, his war on the Manx king of the Isles, his importance for the church on Iona, and his extraordinary invasion of the Clyde which was cut short by his violent death at Renfrew in 1164.Perhaps most impressive is the book's demonstration of how almost everything that is known of or has been claimed for Somerled reflects the same characteristic fusion of Norse and Celt which binds the cultural roots of Gaeldom.It is this recognition which has led its author to his proposal of Somerled's wider historical importance as the personality who most represents the first fully-fledged emergence of the medieval Celtic-Scandinavian cultural province from which is directly descended the Gaelic Scotland of today.

One of the greatest medieval warriors Harald Sigurdsson, nicknamed Hardrada (Harold the Ruthless or hard ruler) fell in battle in an attempt to snatch the crown of England. The spectacular and heroic career which ended at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on 25 September 1066 had taken Harald from Norway to Russia and Constantinople and saw him gain a kingdom by force and determination rather than right or inheritance. He was one of the most feared rulers in Europe and was first and foremost a professional soldier, who acquired great wealth by plunder and showed no mercy to those he conquered. 'Harald Hardrada: The Warrior's Way' reconstructs a military career spanning three and a half decades and involving encounters with an extraordinary range of allies and enemies in sea-fights and land battles, sieges and viking raids across a variety of theatres of war. John Marsden's superbly researched and powerfully written account takes us from the lands of the Norsemen to Byzantium and the Crusades and makes clear how England moved decisively from three hundred years of exposure to the Scandinavian orbit to a stronger identification with continental Europe following the Norman invasion.