James Vance Marshall Book order (chronological)

Ten of Australia's ancient aboriginal legends, illustrated by one of the most well-known artists working in the tradition.

Mary and her brother, survivors of an aircrash in the Australian desert, face death from exhaustion and starvation. They meet an Aboriginal boy who helps them survive but the inevitable clash of cultures leads to a tragic misunderstanding.

Nebezpečné místo - Richard North Patterson / Patříš mi - Mary Higgins Clark / Zimní slunovrat - Rosamunde Pilcher / Bílá tma - James Vance Marshall

A plane crashes in the vast Northern Territory of Australia, and the only survivors are two children from Charleston, South Carolina, on their way to visit their uncle in Adelaide. Mary and her younger brother Peter set out on foot, lost in the vast, hot Australian outback. They are saved by a chance meeting with an Aboriginal boy on walkabout, who teaches them to find food and water in the wilderness, but whom Mary can’t bring herself to trust. Though on the surface Walkabout is an adventure story, darker themes lie just beneath. Peter’s innocent friendship with the Aboriginal throws into relief Mary’s no longer childish anxiety, and together raise questions about how Aboriginal and Western culture can meet. And in the vivid descriptions of the natural world, we realize that this story—a deep fairy tale in the spirit of Adalbert Stifter’s Rock Crystal —must also be a story about the closeness of death and the power of nature.