Rip Off!: Australian Fraud, Deception and Dirty Tricks by Paul Taylor

The fakes, the frauds, the scams, the hoaxes, the shams: the stings that get the conversation around the water cooler running hot.

They're the rip offs. And they've been around in Australia since 1622 when the Trial went down off Western Australia and the surviving captain stole the treasure in its hold. The rip offs never sleep.  They just go on and on. In 33 widely ranging chapters, Paul Taylor looks at some of Australia's best-known rip offs.

• The Wagga Wagga butcher who hoodwinked half of England
• The clever, audacious and ultimately murderous Great Bookie Robbery
• The Dismissal
• The duplicity of Al Grassby, the politician in the pay of the Mafia
• The lies of Lawrence of Arabia that robbed the Light Horse of glory
• Rupert Murdoch's fight to save Max Stuart from a 'stitch up' that had him on the steps of the scaffold.

All riveting ripping yarns spanning three centuries of our history and told in Paul Taylor's light, lucid and engrossing style.