Bryce Courtenay Books in Order

Set in 1930s and 40s South Africa, this coming-of-age story follows Peekay, a small English boy who survives vicious boarding school bullying by learning to box and to think for himself, slowly finding the courage to challenge the racism around him.

Half-Indian, half-African Tandia is brutalised by the police and forced from her home, then rebuilds her life in a brothel and at law school. As an activist lawyer she joins boxer-turned-advocate Peekay to fight apartheid, even as their forbidden love puts both in danger.

This memoir tells the life of Courtenay's son Damon, a haemophiliac who contracted HIV through contaminated blood. It is an intimate portrait of illness, love and stigma, and of a family determined to treat every remaining day as a gift.

In the rookeries of nineteenth-century London, criminal mastermind Ikey Solomon and resourceful servant Mary Abacus build a crooked business empire. Transported to Van Diemen's Land, Mary founds a brewery called the Potato Factory and battles Ikey's embittered wife in a fierce, lifelong feud.

This small gift book gathers Courtenay's reflections on imagination, courage and persistence, pairing brief pieces of advice with striking images. It nudges readers toward bolder plans, kinder self-talk and the confidence to chase long-held dreams.

In rural New South Wales before and during World War I, tomboy Jessica Bergman works the land like the son her father never had. When love, jealousy and greed pit her against her own family, she faces betrayal, wrongful confinement and a long, costly fight for justice.

During a searing African summer in the late Depression years, a young boy and his sister are sent to stay on a remote farm while their mother is ill. There he witnesses a shocking act of racial cruelty that changes how he understands power, fear and courage.

Separated as children and reunited as teenagers in Hobart, brothers Tommo and Hawk flee their brutal past for a life of adventure. From Pacific whaling ships to New Zealand's wars and Australian goldfields, they must test loyalty, courage and the limits of brotherhood.

Closing the Australian Trilogy, this novel follows the next generation of the Solomon families from booming Edwardian Australia to the trenches of Gallipoli and beyond. Love, rivalry and old hatreds collide as young men discover the true cost of war and nationhood.

In a struggling country town after World War II, the Irish-Australian Maloney family claw their way up from the bottom rung. Through bushfires, boxing rings, medical school and Vietnam, five siblings chase very different dreams while learning how passion, faith, war and love can both wound and sustain.

Vietnam veteran Thommo returns to Australia carrying physical scars and nightmares, only to learn his young daughter has leukaemia. As medical bills mount, his old platoon hatches a risky marijuana-growing scheme that forces them to confront trauma, loyalty and what they will do for family.

Once a successful barrister, Billy O'Shannessy now sleeps on a bench outside a great library, watched over by a bronze statue of explorer Matthew Flinders' cat. When he befriends Ryan, a sharp, near street kid, their shared stories spark an unlikely friendship and a chance at redemption.

Sixteen-year-old Mrs Moses survives a Cossack raid with nothing but a cast-iron frying pan on her back. As she leads a band of refugees across Russia toward safety, nightly meals around the pan become the setting for powerful, intertwined tales of loss, courage and hope.

Harmonica-playing Jacko McKenzie grows up on a tiny Tasmanian island, fights in Korea and forges an unlikely bond with American ex-soldier Jimmy Oldcorn and Shanghai-born Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan. Spanning decades, their story blends war, fishing fortunes and the struggle to belong in modern Australia.

English orphan Tom Fitzsaxby is sent to a harsh boys' farm in the mountains of South Africa on the eve of World War II. Ostracised for his name and background, he survives brutal schooling, political tensions and tragedy, and eventually risks everything to right an old injustice.

Written as the memoir of Sylvia Honeyeater, this medieval saga follows a gifted young singer through the chaos of the Children's Crusade. From brothels to convents, she navigates fanaticism, poverty and abuse while stubbornly searching for faith, freedom and her own kind of grace.

In 1942, young Australian Nick Duncan sails among the islands of the Dutch East Indies chasing a rare butterfly and falls in love with Eurasian-Dutch Anna van Heerden. War tears them apart, sending each into dangerous exile and leaving their promised future hanging on survival.

Years after the war, shipping magnate Nick Duncan lives in island semi-retirement, haunted by memories of his great love Anna and of political power-broker Marg Hamilton. Urged to write his story, he revisits decades of business gambles, corruption and tangled loyalties across the Pacific.

Growing up in 1930s Balmain, golden boy Danny Dunn has brains, charm and sporting talent, plus the love of his pub-owning parents. War shatters that promise, and the novel follows Danny, his wife Helen and their children through decades of postwar politics, ambition and obsession.

In 1960s Singapore, ambitious advertising executive Simon Koo uncovers the dark side of his glamorous agency when he falls for Mercy B. Lord, the wrong woman to love. As corrupt partners pull her into drug and sex trafficking, Simon is forced into a dangerous rescue.

Born in Toronto's Cabbagetown slums, Jack Spayd escapes through a gifted ear for jazz. His music carries him to smoky clubs, wartime Europe and the casinos of Las Vegas, where high-stakes poker and the mob push him toward a final reckoning in Africa.

This collection of brief pieces gathers Courtenay's late reflections on writing, illness, family and small everyday pleasures. Part memoir and part advice, it offers a candid look at how he tried to face death while still paying attention to the business of living.