April/May Gleaner 2023

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From David’s Desk

Sydney Writers’ Festival is, excitingly, upon us again. We’ve taken the opportunity in this Gleaner to highlight some writers that we would love to see (if only we weren’t totally tied up with selling books). Ours is an eclectic list, but even the brief snapshot it represents gives you the flavour of treasure that a well-curated Festival can offer. And there are plenty of live-to-air and podcasts after the event as well. Enjoy.

Meanwhile, back at the (Old Post Office) ranch, we have settled into our delightful new surroundings for a year and would love to see you here. It’s a charming new home.

Connections between Vietnamese history, French colonialism, contemporary Australian society and family and personal identity are explored in depth. What feels like a novel is very much more than that. It’s a fascinating, complex and rewarding book.

I’m now reading an advance copy of the eagerly and long-awaited new work from Anna Funder, Wifedom (July). It’s a knockout, fabulous, great. Curiously, as with Anam, this is a genre-bending and twisting, attention-demanding book, which is absolutely compelling. More about it in a couple of months, but suffice it to say that in “rediscovering” the life of George Orwell’s forgotten wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy, Funder has brilliantly and profoundly interrogated what it means to be a writer and what it means to be a wife.

And for what it’s worth, here’s a book or two I’ve been reading and hoping you’ll enjoy:

Andre Dao’s Anam (May) is the most original and exciting first work I’ve read in ages. Ostensibly a narrative of a grandson’s journey to learn his family’s story, this is a brilliant blend of fiction, history, biography and (primarily post-colonial) theory. It takes us from Hanoi in the 1930s to present-day Melbourne and Cambridge. Anam asks how we can look at the past and make sense of the present and future when so much is unresolved or unknown.

I’ve also just caught up with a couple of beauties from last year that I’d highly recommend if you’ve missed them. Fiona McGregor’s Iris is dazzling, engrossing historical fiction of the first order, an authentic recreation of the underbelly of Sydney life in the 1930s. And

I was delighted by Yiyum Li’s The Book of Goose, a strange and fascinating tale from a thoroughly original writer.

Catch you at the festival!

David

What We’re Reading

Tilda reviews Saha: Saha is a wave of vignettes, of people layered one over the other, sketching out the inequality and tragedy of the world they live in. The titular Saha estate houses people who don’t fit into the carefully controlled and refined Town. They’ve built a community on the outskirts, one whose existence both confirms and defies Town’s power. Their strength lies in the small acts of courage and compassion that hold their community together. Over the course of the novel, the mysteries of this world unfold to reveal the bitter past, and the smallest glimpse of a future beyond Saha. Melancholy and atmospheric.

Nick reviews The Historian: Elizabeth Kostova’s debut novel first appeared in 2005 and has gone on to become a much-loved fantasy/historical lit classic. Kostova cleverly blends the history of Vlad The Impaler and the folklore of vampires and Count Dracula. The result is an utterly engaging and thrilling ride, traversing the centuries as well as the continent of Europe.

Jonathon reviews Suspicion: So good. Suspicion is an example of a prominent socialist writer reflecting on the holocaust only 6 years after 1945. Dürrenmatt was a prominent playwright but also wrote four crime novels. He pioneered a philosophical approach to the form, often challenging its conventions, and particularly the figure of the master detective, but retained the perennial agonised protagonist. This one is an absolutely gripping thriller that dips into some truly horrific suspense and drops you right off a certain 20th century nihilist cliff. (It also comes just years before Stalin’s death, Krushchev’s speech and the invasion of Hungary nixed another hope). Perhaps his best — and The Pledge is absolutely stunning!

Zac reviews Sight Lines: Though parallel lines touch in the infinite, the infinite is here— In Sight Lines, Sze brings seemingly unconnected images face to face. They touch, yet remain distinct. Collapsing space and time, memory and perception, his collection offers a moving exploration of life’s ephemerality as well as its multiplicity. It testifies to the ways in which history, memory, and experience become inscribed on our ways of being and perceiving, so unconsciously that we become, in effect, strangers to ourselves. Marked by the terse beauty of American modernist poetry and a deep, Taoist attentiveness to paradox and enigma, this is a startling work of endlessly deceptive simplicity, one which offers a pure apprehension of the mystery of which we are a part.

Jonathon reviews Scattered All Over the Earth: How do meanings slip across languages and geographies? How can a made-up language work across all of Scandinavia? This is a truly wonderful, playful novel that puts place and identity front and centre. Tawada’s strange sense of a future where countries are disappearing contains so many hilarious and weird moments… just such strange non sequiturs that work at such a funny level. It’s a joy to read this unique voice!

OUR HOPELESS, HOPEFUL WORLD

A novel about the contours of friendship, family, forgiveness, trauma and love.

OUT APRIL

'A writer to be reckoned with.'

Kathleen Glasgow

The Prize

When William Dobell paints a portrait of lover and fellow artist Joshua Smith, he is awarded Australia’s most prestigious art prize. However, Dobell’s celebration is cut short after a protest is lodged by his competitors, who claim the painting is a caricature. Both artist and sitter soon find themselves in the glare of the spotlight when a court case to determine the matter turns into a public spectacle. At the risk of being exposed for their relationship, they must choose between love and artbetween acceptance and exile.

Praiseworthy

In a small town dominated by a haze cloud, a crazed visionary seeks out donkeys as the solution to the global climate crisis and the economic dependency of the Aboriginal people. His wife seeks solace from his madness in following the dance of butterflies and scouring the internet to find out how she can seek repatriation for her Aboriginal/Chinese family to China. A fabulous novel outlining the cry of outrage against oppression and disadvantage, and a fable for the end of days.

Homecoming

On the Christmas Eve of 1959, a local man makes a terrible discovery beside a creek. A case that would become one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia. Years later, journalist Jess finds herself back home in Sydney to take care of her grandmother. She then discovers a true-crime book detailing a long-buried police case, and through its pages she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this murder mystery.

Glass Houses

Raymond causes a stir in country town Glaston when he buys Glastonbridge, a house of vast, neo-Gothic fantasy abandoned for decades. As the restoration goes on, Raymond becomes increasingly isolated, unable to trust anyone, alienating his friends and giving courage to his enemies. He believes that unseen forces are trying to remove him from his grand project. Raymond undoubtedly has the ambition and means to make Glastonbridge thrive again, but will he be able to see it through?

The Anniversary

Novelist JB Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her one-time professor, Patrick is much older than JB. He is a film director. A cult figure. But now his success is starting to wane and JB is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Then a storm hits. When Patrick falls overboard, JB is left alone, as the search for Patrick’s body, the circumstances of his death and the truth about their marriage begins.

Over This Backbone

Peta has a plan that she is determined to follow – a timeline, things to prove – but nothing is as expected. She is ghosted by wild dogs, almost trampled by horses, hunted down by the police, dehydrated and flooded-in; but none of this compares to the rollercoaster that is her relationship of the past year. Shifting between Peta’s journey across the Australian Alps Walking Track and her past, we learn about Peta and Ben’s tumultuous connection.

Kate Morton

Allen & Unwin $33.00

Anne Coombs

Black Inc. $30.00

Stephanie Bishop

Hachette $33.00

Ya Reeves

Ultimo Press $35.00

Kim E. Anderson

Pantera $33.00

Alexis Wright

NewSouth $40.00

Anam

Andre Dao

Penguin, $33.00

A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story? Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of neverending wars and displacements, this is a story about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.

Your Driver Is Waiting

Priya Guns

Atlantic, $33.00

Damani is tired. Every day she cares for her mum, drives ride shares to pay the bills and is angry at a world that promised her more before spitting her out. That is until the summer she meets Jolene and life opens up. Jolene seems like she could be the perfect girlfriend. So maybe Damani can look past the one thing that’s holding her back: Jolene is rich. And not only rich, but white, too. But just as their romance intensifies, just as Damani learns to trust, Jolene does something unforgivable, setting off a truly explosive chain of events.

August Blue

Deborah Levy

Penguin, $35.00, HC

Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens, she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double? Chasing their doubles across Europe, the two women grapple with their conceptions of the world and each other, culminating in a final encounter on a fateful summer rainstorm.

The Imposters

Tom Rachman

Quercus, $33.00

Set during a crisis in democracy, a society in lockdown linked digitally but convulsed by a social media frenzy, and is told by a little-known, little-read Dutch novelist named Dora Frenhofer who has decided that her life as an old woman in this posttruth pandemic world has become too much. Dora spins stories to fend off the evil day, conjuring connections from her past to give meaning to the present.

I Went To See My Father

Kyung-Sook Shin

Soon after losing her own daughter in a tragic accident, Hon returns to her childhood home in the Korean countryside. Her father, a cattle farmer, is elderly and requires her care, and Hon realises that her father is far more complex than she ever realised. The discovery of a chest of letters and conversations with his family and friends help Hon piece together the tumultuous story of his life. As she unravels secret after secret, Hon grows closer to her father, realising that his lifelong kindness belies a past wrought in both private and national trauma.

Shy

Max Porter

Things keep slipping up for Shy. All he wants is sex, spliffs and his own turntables, and for all the red noise in his mind to disappear. But he spirals past his senses and ends up with his head in his hands and carnage around him. At Last Chance - a home for ‘very disturbed young men’ - he is surrounded by people who want to help him, but his night terrors aren’t getting any better. So tonight he’s stepping into it, with the haunted beginnings of a plan.

Enter Ghost

Isabella Hammad

After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen. On her return, she finds her relationship to Palestine is fragile, both bone-deep and new. When Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, she joins a production of Hamlet. Amidst it all, the life Sonia once knew starts to give way to the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home.

Nothing Special

Nicole Flattery

New York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a run-down apartment with her alcoholic mother. She is turned off by the petty girls at her high school, and the sleazy men she typically meets. When she drops out, she is presented with a job offer that will remake her world entirely- she is hired as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol. As Mae gets to live her best life, she must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism and determine how she can remain her own person as the tide of the sixties sweeps over her.

Random House $33.00

Bloomsbury $30.00

Romantic Comedy

Curtis Sittenfeld

Sally Miz has abandoned all hopes in the search for love. But when her friend and fellow writer begins to date a glamorous actress, he joins the growing club of interesting but average-looking men who get romantically involved with accomplished, beautiful women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch, poking fun at this ‘social rule’. The reverse never happens for a woman. Then Sally meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. But this isn’t a romantic comedy - it’s real life. Would someone like him ever date someone like her?

The Mud of a Century

Several days after a once-in-a-century flood moves through the Indian city of Chennai, choking the Adyar River with the titular mud, a Japanese woman contracted to an IT company as a language instructor finds herself caught up in a deluge of flashbacks and memories, reflecting on unspoken words and unlived lives and contemplating the muddy chaos of her own karma.

Everything Is Beautiful And Everything Hurts

Mickey’s new-found talent makes her realise she’s everything she thought she wasn’tpowerful, strong and special. But her success comes at a cost, and the relentless training and pressure to win leaves Mickey broken, her dream in tatters. Years later, when Mickey is working in a dead-end job with a drop-kick boyfriend, her mother becomes seriously ill. After nursing her, Mickey realises the only way she can overcome her grief - and find herself - is to run again.

Ada’s Realm

In a small village in West Africa, in what will one day become Ghana, Ada gives birth again, and again the baby does not live. Centuries later, Ada will become the mathematical genius Ada Lovelace; Ada, a prisoner forced into prostitution in a Nazi concentration camp; and Ada, a young, pregnant Ghanaian woman with a new British passport who arrives in Berlin in 2019 for a fresh start. Ada is not one woman, but many, and she is all women. A spellbinding novel.

What I’d Rather Not Think About

The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult liveshow her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely. Full of gentle melancholy and surprising humour, this novel explores the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.

Greek Lessons

The islands of Prospera lie in a vast ocean: in splendid isolation from the rest of humanity, or whatever remains of it. Citizens of the main island enjoy privileged lives, attended to by the support staff who live on a cramped neighbouring island, where whispers begin to grow into cries for revolution. Meanwhile, life for Prosperans is perfection - and when it’s not, their bodies are sent to the mysterious third island. Proctor Bennett is a Ferryman, who shepherds the soon-to-be retired into the unknown. He never questioned his work until the day he is delivered a cryptic message that unravels something he has secretly suspected. Something that could change the fate of humanity itself.

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight. Soon they discover a deeper pain binds them together. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity - their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to expression.

To Battersea Park

Written in four parts, To Battersea Park explores the strata and sediment of a single place and time. It shows what brings us together, through love, through the clashes of what we want to do and what the world wants to do with us. Set in a large crowded city where we are forbidden to approach strangers, this is about what we share: humanity, imagination, and the love that emerges from many acts of telling.

Sharon Dodua Otoo

Hachette $33.00

Jente Posthuma

Scribe Pub $28.00

Han Kang

Penguin $35.00 HC

Random House $33.00

Yuka Ishii

Gazebo $25.00

Philip Hensher

HarperCollins $30.00

Josie Shapiro

Allen & Unwin $35.00

Justin Cronin

Random House $33.00

The Ferryman

The Flying Nurse

Prudence Wheelwright

Nurse and midwife Prue Wheelwright has worked in the most remote parts of Australia and around the world. In isolated, far-flung locations and on dangerous front lines, this passionate and dedicated nurse has put her heart, and often her safety, on the line, day after day, year after year. Prue shares all the challenges, the joys and the heartbreaks in her life. Prue will inspire you and move you with her tales of life at its most raw and real.

I Had a Father in Karratha

What happens when your father dies and you fly 4500 kms across to lay him at rest and find his estate is a spectacular mess of hoarded junk, bank debts, lost paperwork and rundown properties in a mining town gone bust? Annette Trevitt tracks her twoand-a-half-year epic undertaking of cleaning up her father’s mess in Karratha, Western Australia. A fly-in fly-out marathon as she holds together her life with her teenage son in Melbourne. This is a story of commitment, responsibility, doggedness and love.

Running Strong

Candice Warner knows all about the damaging consequences of living life in front of the cameras and has learned a lot about how to insulate from the worst of public life - for herself, as a wife and as a mother. But she has never been stronger or more determined to forge the space she and her family need to be safe, and to live a life filled with love, purpose, ambition and optimism. Candid, raw and uplifting, Candice tells it straight about all of the ups and downs and the regenerative power of running.

The Stable Boy of Auschwitz

Of the 2,011 Jews who were rounded up by the Gestapo and deported from Cologne, Henry Oster was one of only 19 Germanspeaking Jewish boys to emerge alive from the concentration camps after the war. Torn from their home, Henry and his family were deported to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. Then, one terrifying night, Henry found himself herded onto a stifling, filth-ridden cattle car, on a ride to a place whose name has come to symbolise the worst of humanity: Auschwitz. From risking his life hiding scraps of food in the stables to sustain himself, to escaping selections for the gas chambers, Henry somehow found the strength to keep going. This is his story.

Releasing This May

Fat Girl Dancing

Fat child, self-denying adolescent, hungry young woman; a body now burgeoning uncontrolled into middle age. Kris Kneen has borne the usual indignities- the confrontations with clothes that won’t fasten, with mirrors that defame, with strangers whose gaze judges and dismisses. This is the story of how Kris learned to look unblinkingly at their recalcitrant body, and ultimately found the courage to carry it to freedom.

The thousands of academic refugees Esther Simpson helped rescue are well remembered. But who was she and why has history forgotten her? For a woman who kept regular correspondence with her refugee ‘children’ and who could count among her pen pals Albert Einstein and Ludwig Wittgenstein, surprisingly little is known of her private life. This is the story of Esther Simpson, a remarkable woman whose selfless actions left an indelible mark on the cultural and intellectual landscape of the modern world.

Still Standing

Chrissie Foster is the mother who brought the rich and powerful Catholic Church to its knees over its global abuse of children, including two of her daughters, Emma and Katie. But nobody could’ve seen what came next. Grieving the death of Emma and the catastrophic accident that left Katie largely using a wheelchair and unable to care for herself, and bullied by the Catholic Church, Chrissie Foster somehow found the strength to win and bring about changes in child safety that she hopes will last forever.

Mary Rodgers was the daughter of Richard Rodgers, who, with Oscar Hammerstein, wrote some of the biggest musicals of the 20th century. Shy is the story of how Mary went from angry child, constrained by a self-absorbed mother and her father’s overwhelming gift, to finally living life on her own terms-falling in love, often unwisely, marrying twice, having six children, and forging a career of her own.

Hachette $35.00

Kris Kneen

Text Pub $35.00

Henry Oster & Dexter Ford

Octopus $30.00

John Eidinow

Little Brown $35.00

Esther Simpson

Chrissie Foster with Paul Kennedy Penguin $35.00

Mary Rodgers & Jesse Green Penguin $55.00 HC

Shy

Annette Trevitt Black Inc $30.00

Candice Warner HarperCollins $40.00 HC

From the Heathens

Greetings from the top of the mountain! Thanks to all of our lovely and incredibly discerning customers for all of your support, brilliant conversation and passion for great books.

We also wanted to give a shoutout to the organisers of The Blackheath History Forum, who have put together such a wonderful program for 2023. Blue Mountains author Peter Doyle was recently in conversation with Nancy Cushing about his fascinating book Suburban Noir: Crime and Mishap in 1950s and 1960s Sydney. On 13th May, Wendy Whiteley and Ashleigh Wilson are talking about all things art, life, gardening and Ashleigh’s book A Year with Wendy Whiteley. See the complete program and book tickets online at: blackheathhistoryforum.org.au

Victoria is currently raving about Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry and has declared it her favourite book of the year! A bit early? It will be hard to beat, she reckons. We are back in Ireland with this latest book with the story of a retired policeman, Tom Kettle, who is settling into his new life when two former colleagues turn up with questions about an old case that drags him back to his past. Sebastian Barry is a master at storytelling and seems to be able to wrap sadness up in so much compassion and empathy that somehow makes it easier to read—a sad, beautiful, and memorable book.

Tiff has just finished Return to Valetto by Dominic Smith, where you’ll be transported to an almost abandoned, crumbling village in Umbria, and you won’t want to leave! A son, (Hugh) returns to his mother’s childhood home to take up residence in a small cottage she has bequeathed to him. He arrives to find that a stranger has taken up residence, claiming that Hugh’s long-missing grandfather had left it to her (Elisa) family on his deathbed, and she has absolutely no intention of leaving. So begins the discovery and unravelling of a buried family secret. Atmospheric, propulsive, compassionate and utterly enthralling. This is pure, unadulterated reading pleasure and Dominic Smith at his finest. Tiff also loved Weasels in the Attic, a delightful novella by Japanese author Hiroko Oyamada. Strange and wonderfully enigmatic, it explores friendship, fatherhood and yes -- weasels!

Ava read Little Plum by Laura McPhee-Brown. The book is a gritty paean to the lives of young people living in Sydney today: terrace houses, bad hookups, cheap meals with work colleagues. “Plum” hooked Ava immediately with its poetic approach to the grimier elements of the city, but somewhere about thirty per cent in, Ava found herself wishing the book had a bit more backbone. Still -- beautiful language that will appeal to anyone who loved Cold Enough for Snow.

Ava is also halfway through Southland by Nina Revoyr. It perfectly encapsulates the lives of immigrants in Los Angeles and those who attempt to lead normal lives in a city that constantly suppresses people of colour. Stunning descriptions of lesser-known Los Angeles history and family conflicts make this book a real page-turner.

And from our newest recruit at the Blackheath store - Jane - has just finished If in A Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. Italian Postmodernism at its very finest, and one of her most beloved books of all time. This is about the process of reading itself, and every chapter throws you into a brand new scenario without ever quite being able to locate yourself, while you, the reader, are the hero. How meta is that?! This is a book that explores the relationship between author and reader; all wrapped up in a beautiful, romantic, whimsical riddle.

See you in the mountains, The Blackheath Team

BOOKS THAT MAKE YOU THINK.

‘What you hold in your hands is a great Australian story.’

PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE

‘Political history at its best.’

JENNY HOCKING

Dying to Know

Twelve years ago budding journalist Geneva Leighton received a phone call that stopped her life in its tracks. Her terrified sister, Amber, was locked in the boot of a moving car and begging Geneva for help. Amber was never heard from again. But when Sergeant Jesse Johns turns up with shocking new evidence about Amber, Geneva’s world is thrown into chaos again. As she edges closer and closer to the truth, she uncovers dangerous secrets that have the power to destroy everyone she loves.

The Tea Ladies

Sydney, 1965- After a chance encounter with a stranger, tea ladies Hazel, Betty and Irene become accidental sleuths, stumbling into a world of ruthless crooks and racketeers in search of a young woman believed to be in danger. When there is a murder in the building, the tea ladies draw on their wider network and put themselves in danger as they piece together clues that connect the murder to a nearby arson and a kidnapping. But if there’s one thing the tea ladies can handle, it’s hot water.

Releasing This May

The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for - restructuring. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder. And it’s not as though he know these people. Until his next ‘customer’ turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about. For the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him?

You Will Never Be Found

When a dead man is found locked in the basement of an abandoned house, the police find no evidence of what happened beyond his name scratched into the wall. They can’t find any information about who he is or who knew him. But no-one knows the locals like Detective Eira Sjoden. When her expert knowledge of her home town is again called in, she knows one of them must have seen something. Before she can uncover the truth, someone shockingly close to her disappears.

The Messenger

Wealthy and privileged, Alex has an easy path to success in the Parisian elite his father mingles with. But the two have never seen eye to eye. Alex’s desperation to seek freedom lands him amidst chaos when his father is found dead and he is sent to jail. Seven years later Alex is released from prison with a single purpose: to discover who really killed his father. But as he searches for answers, Alex uncovers a disturbing truth with far-reaching consequences.

1950s Dublin, in a lock-up garage in the city the body of a young woman is discovered, an apparent suicide. But pathologist Dr Quirke and Detective Inspector Strafford soon suspect foul play. As they explore her links to a wealthy German family in County Wicklow, and to investigative work she may have been doing in Israel, they are confronted with an ever-deepening mystery. With relations between the two men increasingly strained, they begin to question if they can ever find the pieces of a hidden puzzle.

Bernie Moon has given her life to other people. At nineteen she was full of dreams and ambitions; now almost fifty, and going through the menopause, she’s fading, fast. But when a young woman is murdered in a local park, it sparks a series of childhood memories in Bernie and with them, a talent that has lain dormant most of her adult life. When she was a teenager, it almost destroyed her. But now she’s older, could it be the power she’s been missing?

Death of a Bookseller

Roach - bookseller, loner and true crime obsessive - is not interested in making friends. She has all the company she needs in her serial killer books, murder podcasts and her pet snail, Bleep. That is, until Laura joins the bookshop, soon becoming everyone’s favourite bookseller. But beneath the shiny veneer, Roach senses a darkness within Laura, the same darkness Roach possesses. As Roach’s curiosity blooms into morbid obsession, it becomes clear that she is prepared to infiltrate Laura’s life at any cost.

Rae Cairns

HarperCollins $33.00

Tove Asterdal Faber $33.00

Amanda Hampson Penguin $33.00

Megan Davis

Allen & Unwin $33.00

Im Seong-sun

Bloomsbury $30.00

The Consultant

Joanna Harris

Orion $33.00

Broken Light

Alice Slater

Hodder & Stoughton $33.00

John Banville Faber $33.00

The Lock-Up

Mum wants a book for Mother’s Day (trust us)

The Call of the Tribe

Marlo Vargas Llosa

Faber, $40.00

Llosa surveys the readings that have shaped the way he thinks and has viewed the world over the past fifty years. The Nobel Laureate maps out the liberal thinkers who helped him develop a new body of ideas after the great ideological traumas of his disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution and departure from the ideas of Jean-Paul Sartre, the author who most inspired Vargas Llosa in his youth.

Strong Female Character

Hanna Flint

Bonnier, $33.00

A staunch feminist of mixed-race heritage, Hanna has succeeded in an industry not designed for people like her. Interweaving anecdotes from familial and personal experiences, she offers a critical eye on the screen’s representation of women and ethnic minorities, their impact on her life, body image and ambitions, with the humour and eloquence that has made her a leading film critic of her generation.

Queer

Frank Wynne

Apollo, $40.00

Since the dawn of literature, queer people have turned to writing to document their existence. No longer. Alive in these pages, Frank Wynne allows their voices to ring out, unashamed and unabashed, in eighty pieces that straddle the spectrum of queer existence- short stories, poems, essays, from countries the world over, from ancient times to yesterday.

It’s OK to be Angry About Capitalism

Bernie Sanders

Penguin, $35.00

Bernie Sanders takes on the 1% and speaks blunt truths about a system that is fuelled by uncontrolled greed, and rigged against ordinary people. His work presents a vision of what would be possible if the political revolution took place. If we would finally recognise that economic rights are human rights, and work to create a society that provides them. This isn’t some utopian fantasy; this is democracy as we should know it. Is it really too much to ask?

A heartbreaking and hopeful First Nations memoir that tells of the shattering experience of being stolen. TheLastDaughter offers a path forward for all Australians. ‘Powerful.’ Taryn Brumfitt, Australian of the Year

A raw, powerful examination of fatness, beauty and self-knowledge through the lens of art and burlesque. ‘A prism of a book, relighting the world around us, page by page.’ Chloe Hooper

You can run, but you can never escape your family. The Double Bind is the enthralling sequel to the award-winning Australian debut The Second Son ‘An urban noir masterpiece.’ Candice Fox

A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from one of America’s most inventive, provocative and genre-defying writers. ‘A master artist.’ OprahDaily

A gorgeous collection of essays that break down the old, rigid definitions of family and instead celebrate belonging and family in all the wonderful forms they may take.

A sexy, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy about a single mum reclaiming her life. ‘A love letter to what can happen when we take agency of our lives, and to the freedom and joy that waits for us on the other side of fear.’ Holly Ringland

The Remarkable Mrs Reibey

In 1791, teenage runaway and sometime horse thief Mary Reibey narrowly escaped the English gallows with transportation to the brutal new penal colony at Sydney Cove. Mary went on to develop a family business which grew to include a fleet of merchant vessels. Widowed at just 33, Mary would oversee the growth of that business to an international trading empire and go on to expand what is now Sydney’s thriving business district while helping to bankroll many of the colony’s first public services. This is the extraordinary story of Australia’s first female entrepreneur.

Law

Law is culture, and culture is law. Given by the ancestors and cultivated over millennia, Indigenous law defines what it is to be human. Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn show how Indigenous law has enabled people to survive and thrive in Australia for more than 2000 generations. But law is not a thing of the past. These living, sophisticated systems are as powerful now as they have ever been, if not more so. This book challenges readers to consider how Indigenous law can inspire new ways forward for us all in the face of global crises.

Life’s So Full of Promise

Ross McMullin’s second multi-biography is collection of inter-woven stories about Australia’s lost generation of World War I. The rich cast includes a talented barrister who enabled a momentous victory in France; an eminent newspaper editor who kept his community informed about the war while his sons were in the trenches; and a Scandinavian blonde who disrupted one of Sydney’s best-known families. Illuminating and profoundly moving.

She and Her Pretty Friend

Danielle Scrimshaw

Throughout history, women’s relationships have been downgraded and diminished. Instead of lovers, they are documented as particularly close friends; Danielle Scrimshaw explores how colonisation altered ideas of sexuality, how the suffrage movement in Australia created opportunities for queer women, and details her own part in creating queer history. Scrimshaw encourages readers to open themselves to the idea that perhaps some people were more to each other than just ‘roommates’.

The Last Daughter

When Brenda Matthews was two years old, she and her siblings were taken from their parents. For the next five years she was a much-loved daughter in a white family, unaware of the existence of her Aboriginal family or how hard her parents were fighting for her return-unaware of her Aboriginal identity. Then, she was suddenly returned to her Aboriginal family, the last daughter to come home. Decades later as she searches for her foster family she uncovers longburies secrets and government bungling, as well as a deep connection to family and culture.

Seafaring

A story told to his uncle by an Indigenous Hawaiian elder would change the shape of Gumbaynggirr/Gamilaroi man Victor Briggs’ life, and send him on a search for answers to the question: were Indigenous Australians master navigators of one of the world’s largest oceans, the South Pacific? Is this yet another example of suppression of the past in colonial history? Bringing voice to his ancestors and the power of oral storytelling, Victor shares his compelling journey into the past through research, stories and visions.

Women

The Whitlam government of 1972–75 appointed a women’s advisor to national government and reopened the equal pay case. It extended the minimum wage for women, introduced the single mother’s benefit and paid maternity leave in the public service, ensured accessible contraception, funded women’s refuges and women’s health centres, and much more. This account brings three generations of women to revisit the Whitlam revolution and to build on it for the future.

The Queen Is Dead

Stan Grant

What comes next after the death of the queen? Taking us on a journey through the world’s fault lines, from the war in Ukraine, the rise of China, the resurgence of white supremacy, and the demand that Black Lives Matter, this searing and powerful account is a full-throated, impassioned argument on the necessity for an end to monarchy in Australia, the need for a Republic, and what needs to be done to address and redress the pain and sorrow and humiliations of the past.

Ultimo Press $36.00

HarperCollins $35.00

Grantlee Kieza

HarperCollins $35.00

Brenda Matthews

Text Pub $35.00

Marcia Langton & Aaron Corn

Thames & Hudson $25.00

Victor Briggs

Magabala Books $35.00

Ross McMullin

Ultimo Press $50.00

Michelle Arrow

NewSouth $35.00

and Whitlam

Penguin

$37.00

Why Politics Fails

Ben Ansell

Why do the revolving doors of power always leave us disappointed? Drawing on examples from Ancient Greece through Brexit and using his own counterintuitive and pathbreaking research - on why democracy thrives under high inequality, and how increased political and social equality can lead to greater class inequality - Ben Ansell vividly illustrates how we can escape the political traps of our imperfect world. He shows that politics won’t end, but that it doesn’t have to fail.

The Shortest History of the Crown

Stephen Bates

Black Inc.

$28.00

Although there are other monarchies, Britain’s Crown stands out due to the continuity of its traditions, and its ability to adapt. In this sprightly commentary Stephen Bates provides a dazzling insight into royal custom and ritual, whilst depicting the individuals behind the myth with compassion and wit. Delving equally into personality and policy, this book reveals the historical power struggles and concessions that have shaped the monarchy today.

How Did We Get Into This Mess?

George Monbiot

Verso

$23.00

George Monbiot is one of the most vocal, and eloquent, critics of the current consensus. In this account, he assesses the state we are now in- the devastation of the natural world, the crisis of inequality, the corporate takeover of nature, our obsessions with growth and profit and the decline of the political debate over what to do. While his diagnosis of the problems in front of us is clear-sighted and reasonable, he also develops solutions to challenge the politics of fear.

The Red Hotel

Headline $35.00

Alan Philps sets out the way Stalin created his own reality by constraining and muzzling the British and American reporters covering the Eastern front during the war and forcing them to reproduce Kremlin propaganda. With a riveting narrative this revelatory story will finally lift the lid on Stalin’s operation to muzzle and control what the western allies’ writers and foreign correspondents knew of his regime’s policies to prosecute the war against Hitler’s rampaging armies from June 1941 onwards.

Pavel Filatyev was a paratrooper in the Russian army that invaded Ukraine in February 2022. After being injured and evacuated from the conflict, he posted a shocking expose of what he had witnessed on social media. A day-by-day account of how the Russian army crossed into Ukraine and captured the city of Kherson in the face of heavy resistance, ZOV is both a testimony to the horrific destruction of war and a damning indictment of Vladimir Putin and the corruption that controls the Russian people.

Pathogenesis

This humbling and revelatory book shows how infectious disease has shaped humanity at every stage, from the first success of Homo sapiens over the equally intelligent Neanderthals to the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam. By confronting our ongoing battle with infectious diseases globally, Dr Jonathan Kennedy shows how germs have been responsible for some of the seismic revolutions in human history, and how the crises they precipitate offer vital opportunities to change course.

The Queen of Codes

When the history of British codebreaking is told, the story is often a men-only preserve. That perception completely ignores the fact that the vast majority of codebreakers were in fact women. And foremost among them was one who is largely unknown to the public, and whose activities were a secret even to her closest contacts - Emily Anderson. Now, this startling new narrative of her life, will place Emily Anderson at the forefront of great British codebreakers.

Dispatch from Berlin - 1943

In December 1943, five courageous correspondents join a British air raid on Berlin. Each is assigned to one of the 400 Lancaster bombers that fly into the hazardous skies over Germany on a single night. Of the five, only two land back at base to file their stories. In this work, Anthony Cooper and Thorsten Perl uncover this incredible true story of life on both sides of the war.

Alan Philps

Pavel Filatyev

Profile Books $33.00

ZOV

Jonathan Kennedy

Random House $35.00

Jackie Ui Chionna

Hachette $35.00

Anthony Cooper & Thorsten Perl

NewSouth $35.00

Quantum Supremacy

Quantum computers could allow us to finally create nuclear fusion reactors that produce clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of meltdown. They could help us crack the biological processes that generate natural, cheap fertilizer and enable us to feed the world’s growing populations. Told with Kaku’s signature clarity and enthusiasm, this is the story of this exciting frontier and the race to claim humanity’s future.

Size

Explaining the key processes shaping size in nature, society and technology, Smil busts myths around proportions - from bodies to paintings and the so-called golden ratiotells us what Jonathan Swift got wrong in Gulliver’s Travels and dives headfirst into the most contentious issue in ergonomics - the size of aeroplane seats. This fascinating and wide-ranging tour de force will change the way you look at absolutely everything.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Neom

Lavie Tidhar

Tachyon Pub

$28.00

The city known as Neom is many things to many beings, human or otherwise. Neom is a tech wonderland for the rich and beautiful; an urban sprawl along the Red Sea; and a port of call between Earth and the stars. In the desert, young orphan Elias has joined a caravan, hoping to earn his passage off-world from Central Station. But the desert is full of mechanical artefacts, some unexplained and some unexploded. Just one robot can change a city’s destiny with a single rose — especially when that robot is in search of lost love.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Castenada. But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom soon finds himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor’s extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl. Spellbinding and dark.

We Are Electric

Sally Adee

Sally Adee explores the history of bioelectricity: from Galvani’s epic eighteenth-century battle with the inventor of the battery, Alessandro Volta, to the medical charlatans claiming to use electricity to cure pretty much anything. She journeys into the future of the discipline, through today’s laboratories where we are starting to see real-world medical applications being developed. The bioelectric revolution starts here.

Eating to Extinction

Dan Saladino

From a tiny crimson pear in the west of England to an exploding corn in Mexico, there are thousands of foods that are at risk of being lost for ever. Dan Saladino spans the globe to uncover their stories, meeting the pioneering farmers, scientists, cooks, food producers and indigenous communities who are defending food traditions and fighting for change. He delves into the crisis facing our planet today, and why reclaiming a diverse food culture is vital for our future.

In Ascension

Martin MacInnes

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth’s first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.

The Sisterhood

In Oceania, whoever you are, Big Brother is always watching you and trust is a luxury that no one has. Julia is the seemingly perfect example of what women in Oceania should be: dutiful, useful, subservient, meek. But Julia hides a secret. A secret that would lead to her death if it is discovered. For Julia is part of the underground movement called The Sisterhood, whose main goal is to find members of The Brotherhood, the anti-Party vigilante group, and help them to overthrow Big Brother. Only then can everyone be truly free.

Vaclav Smil Penguin $35.00

Allen & Unwin $35.00

Michio Kaku Penguin $35.00

Random House $25.00

Roshani Chokshi

Hodder & Stoughton $33.00

Atlantic $33.00

Katherine Bradley Simon & Schuster $33.00

Highly Recommended

Andaza

Sumayya Usmani

Murdoch

$45.00 HC

Sumayya spent the first eight years of her life at sea, with a father who captained merchant ships and a mother who preferred to cook for the family herself on a tiny electric stove. When they moved to Karachi, Sumayya grew up torn between societal exceptions and the inspiration of seeing the women in her family in the kitchen. As she embarks on her journey of food, the meaning of ‘andaza’ comes to her: that the flavour and meaning of a recipe is not a list of measured ingredients, but a feeling in your hands, as you let the elements of a meal come together through instinct and experience.

Pasta Veloce

Frances Mayes & Susan Wyler

Built to Move

Juliet

Starrett & Kelly Starrett

After decades spent working with proathletes and Olympians, mobility pioneers Kelly and Juliet Starrett began thinking about the physical wellbeing of the rest of us. What makes a durable human? How do we continue to feel great and function well as we age? The answers lie in a simple formula for basic mobility maintenance: 10 tests + 10 physical practices = 10 ways to make your body work better.

The Glucose Goddess Method

Abrams

$50.00 HC

HarperCollins

$45.00 HC

Frances Mayes is known for transporting readers to the charming Italian countryside in her bestselling books. In this book, Mayes brings that irresistible Italian flavour right to your home with 100 of her favourite pasta recipes. These well-loved recipes blend traditional Italian technique with magic from Mayes’s home kitchen where experiments are always in progress.

Gennaro’s Cucina

Gennaro Contaldo

In this inspirational cookbook, Gennaro takes you on a culinary journey of regional basic Italian staples and turns them into beautiful meals. With tips and ideas of what to do with leftovers, Gennaro helps home cooks squeeze maximum use from the ‘cucina povera’ ethos, turning humble ingredients into nourishing feasts without taste sacrifice. In an era of excessive convenience and disposable food waste, Gennaro’s Cucina could not come at a better time.

Japan: The Vegetarian Cookbook

Nancy Singleton Hachisu

Phaidon

$75.00 HC

In this collection of new recipes, Nancy Singleton Hachisu, the most authoritative voice in Japanese home cooking today, showcases Japanese vegetarian dishes, bringing the exquisite flavors of the nation’s elegant cuisine to those who follow a plantbased diet or want to lower the amount of fish and meat they eat. Packed with recipes alongside which Hachisu shares her expert knowledge of the ingredients, culture, and traditions of this unique culinary style.

Jessie Inchauspe offers a four-week, stepby-step plan to integrate simple, scienceproven strategies for steadying your blood sugar into your everyday life. It comes complete with 100+ delicious, easy recipes, an interactive workbook and lots of tips and advice from the Glucose Goddess community on how to stay on track. The best part? You won’t be counting calories and you’ll eat everything you love.

Gorwing Grapes Might Be Fun

When Deirdre and her husband Roger decide to turn a sheep paddock into a vineyard, they are following the centuriesold tradition of family winemaking. Slowly they start to read the landscape, appreciate the talents of locals and learn what to do when a snake passes by. This is a humorous memoir with larger-than-life characters, hard slog and sweet triumph. It is also a story of a deepening awareness of our connection with the land and the rhythms of farming life.

Japanese by birth, but transplanted to Europe in adulthood, Miki Sakamoto has spent a lifetime tending her garden and reflecting on its mysteries. In her work, Sakamoto shares observations from a life spent in contemplation - and cultivation - of nature. She shows us that you can create Zen in your life, wherever you live and whatever form your outdoor space takes. A delightful read.

Orion $35.00

Jessie Inchauspe

Penguin $35.00

Deirdre Macken

Allen & Unwin $35.00

Miki Sakamoto & Catherine Venner

Scribe Pub $30.00

Zen in the Garden

Gleebooks recommends the SWF

Australian Literature

Andy on Limberlost: I was blindsided by how profoundly moving this book is - Arnott’s previous novels have assuredly used magical realism, but I fancy this ‘straight’ historical novel will mark his arrival as one of a handful of Australia’s very best novelists.

Cultural Studies & Criticism

Anna on All That’s Left Unsaid: A moving tale of love, loss and the complicated struggle of first generation offsprings of refugees.

Biography & Memoir

International Literature

Jack on Small Things Like These: Oh my…what a beautiful book. A gentle Irish tale of a man and his family living a simple but happy life when an incident at the nearby convent sends the man back into his past. You will hang off every word and not want it to finish.

History & Politics

Poetry

Self-Help

First Nations

The Wilder Aisles

This month, I picked up a book very different from my usual reads.

I picked it up, thinking it might while away a few hours, but I ended up really liking it. The title is The House in the Pines, by Ana Reyes.

I found it quite strange, yet intriguing and a little bit scary. In fact, thinking about it now, I don’t really know what to say. The story does indeed feature a house in the woods, but what kind of house is it?

Most people will see an old house that has fallen down, and mostly looks like a pile of rubble, but is it always like this?

Maya has just moved in with Dan. It is the first time she has been home since she was seventeen the day her best friend Aubrey died, and Maya’s world was shattered. Maya is recovering from a traumatic experience she had when she was last home, and now another woman has died in a similar, strange way.

The story revolves around Maya and the charismatic Frank, who bewitched both Maya and Aubrey. Tall, good-looking with long hair, much-travelled Frank, is unlike anyone the women of the small town where Maya lived have ever seen.

The arrival of Frank into their lives starts a rivalry between former best friends, Maya and Aubry. Maya is having problems in her relationship with Dan, and she is drinking too much and taking a sedative drug, which she is not aware of at the time.

A visit to Dan’s parents for Maya to meet them, is disastrous, as Maya has been drinking and taking the sedative. After the other woman dies, Maya knows she is the only who can uncover the truth and stop others from the same fate.

But to do this, Maya has to put herself and her relationship with Dan at risk. Deep down, she knows she must go back to the house in the pines, where all the answers are hidden.

I was surprised by how much I loved this book. I know it may not be to everyone’s taste, but it was good for me. Apart from the crime aspect, I found bits of this quite funny, in a strange dark way.

See you in the store, Janice

$50.00

HC

A rogue accountant breaks ranks to share his journey from clueless naif to skilled tax consultant -and in doing so blows the lid on the murky world of making the tax burdens of the ultra-wealthy disappear. Written with sharp wit and over-brimming with inside secrets, the anonymous author shows us that not only does the global tax system encourage dubious practice which favours the rich, but that it was specifically founded with that in mind. If you suspect that tax is a rigged game, a con, designed to fleece the little guy, you are about to find out just how shockingly true that really is.

How To Think Like A Philosopher

Drawing on decades of work in philosophy including a huge range of interviews with contemporary philosophers, Julian Baggini sets out how philosophical thought can promote incisive thinking. Introducing everyday examples and contemporary political concerns - from climate change to implicit bias this is a revelatory exploration of the techniques, methods and principles that guide philosophy, and how they can be applied to our own lives.

I, Human

It’s no secret that AI is changing the way we live, work, love, and entertain ourselves. In his book, psychologist Tomas ChamorroPremuzic takes readers on an enthralling and eye-opening journey across the AI landscape. Though AI has the potential to change our lives for the better, he argues, AI is also worsening our bad tendencies, making us more distracted, selfish, biased, narcissistic, entitled, predictable, and impatient. Some of these changes will enhance our species. Others may dehumanise us and make us more machinelike in our interactions with people. It’s up to us to adapt and determine how we want to live and work.

On Being Unreasonable

Today’s world is built from structures of standards and reason, but it is imperative to ask who constructed these norms, and why. Kirsty Sedgman mounts a vital and spirited defence of why and how being unreasonable can help improve the world. It examines and parses the pros and cons of our rules around reason, but leaves us with the rousing question: What if behaving unreasonably at times might be the best way to bring about meaningful change that is long overdue?

Philosophy

Personal Score

Award-winning writer Ellen van Neerven plays football from a young age, learning early on that sport can be a painful and exclusive world. With emotional honesty and searing insight, van Neerven shines a light on sport on this continent from a queer First Nations perspective, revealing how some athletes have long challenged mainstream views and used their roles to effect change not only in their own realm, but in society more broadly.

A passionate, provocative and blisteringly smart interrogation of how we experience art in the age of #MeToo, and whether we can separate an artist’s work from their biography. Claire Dederer explores our relationships with the artists whose behaviour disrupts our ability to apprehend the work on its own terms. She interrogates her own responses and her own behaviour, and she pushes the fan, and the reader, to do the same. Morally wise, deeply considered and sharply written, Monsters gets to the heart of one of our most pressing conversations.

Today, it can be difficult to fully comprehend the staggering influence of Aristotle’s lessons. Aristotle’s observations about the world around him and his reflections on the nature of knowledge laid the foundations for all empirical science. Now, John Sellars takes us on a journey through Aristotle’s thought, vividly bringing to life the key ideas, and demonstrating that the famous philosopher’s capacity for curiosity continues to offer us all a vision of more fulfilled lives. Aristotle has lessons still to teach.

In the autumn of 2019 Xiaolu travelled to New York to take up her position as a visiting professor for a year, leaving her child and partner behind in London. The encounter with American culture and people threatens her sense of identity and throws her into a crisis - of meaning, desire, obligation and selfhood. This is a memoir about separation - by continents, by language, and from people. It’s about being an outsider and the desperate longing to connect.

Octopus $35.00

Ellen Van Neerven U.Q.P $35.00

Claire Dederer

Hodder & Stoughton $33.00

Monsters

John Sellars Penguin $27.00 HC

Aristotle

Julian Baggini

Granta $30.00

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Harvard Business Review

Kristy Sedgman Faber $33.00

Xiaolu Guo

Random House $33.00

Radical

Out in May!

Friendly Bee and Friends

Meet Friendly Bee: he’s a bee who puts himself out there, a bee who sees the best in other beings. Sometimes, Friendly Bee’s cheerful attitude gets him into trouble - he just wants to be friends with every bug they meet, whether they like it or not.

Etta and the Octopus

It all began when Etta decided to take a bath and realised she wasn’t alone. In the bath sat Oswald the Octopus. At first, Etta thinks it might be fun to have Oswald around. But she soon learns that is not the case. Just as Etta has almost had enough, someone comes to claim Oswald, but does she want to send him away?

Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!

Sandra Boynton

Boynton Bookworks, $15.00

Dinosaurs BIG and dinosaurs TINY, dinosaurs SMOOTH and dinosaurs SPINY. Some outside and some indoors—OH MY OH MY OH DINOSAURS! Sunbathing dinosaurs and artistic dinosaurs, dancing dinosaurs and volleyball-playing dinosaurs make learning opposites fun!

Jazzy in the Jungle

Lucy Cousins

Walker, $20.00

Little readers will love playing hide-andseek in the jungle with Jazzy the lemur and Mama JoJo! Full of vivid colours and exotic animals, with liftable flaps and die-cut windows to explore on every page! Now available as a board book for the first time.

Our Birds

Dr. Bronwyn Bancroft

Early Readers Board Books

Hardie Grant, $18.00

This book celebrates the beauty found within the Australian landscape. Written and illustrated by Australia’s foremost Indigenous illustrator, Dr Bronwyn Bancroft captures the essence of nature in this stunning board book.

Calling all of our bookworms to share their favourite reads! We want to feature more of our wonderful book clubbers in our Gleaner magazine, so if you’ve got a book you’d love to review or if you want to write about an author visit, send us an email on rachel@gleebooks.com.au! We have exciting giveaways waiting for you!

A Friend For George

Gabriel Evans

Puffin, $25.00

George likes living by the sea, but he often feels lonely. He’d like to have a friend. When he meets Claude the fish, George finally discovers the joys of having a special friend, as well as learning what it means to be a good friend to someone. For if you are, the rewards are bountiful!

My Little Barlaagany (Sunshine)

Melissa Greenwood

HarperCollins, $25.00

From Gumbaynggirr artist Melissa Greenwood, this is a gentle bedtime story follows the journey a mother and child take across a day and into the Dreamtime - finding special places to visit, creatures to meet and new things to discover.

Sean Avery Walker, $16.00

Zana Fraillon & Andrew Joyner(ill) Lothian, $15.00

Ages 2 - 5

The Kindest Red

When Faizah’s teacher asks her class to imagine what kind of world they want to live in Faizah imagines a world where everyone is kind to one another, and tries to create that world in the school playground. But what Faizah wants most is be like her big sister, Asiya. Will Faizah’s classmates repay her kindness and find a way for her to match Asiya in time for school photo day?

Pasta!

Spaghettini, Ditalini, Manicotti, Agnolotti, that’s a lot-ti! Pasta tastes delicious, but do you know that pasta names are also fun to say? Grab your fork and spoon and get stuck into this rhyming feast. It’s enough to make anyone hungry for PASTA!

When I’m Big

Karen Blair Penguin,

$20.00

A completely new and fun take on becoming a brother or sister. Filled with humour and imagination, This is a delightful, warm-hearted celebration of becoming a sibling. From awardwinning picture-book creator Karen Blair comes the perfect gift for every family welcoming a new baby.

Big Cat

Jess Racklyeft A&U, $25.00

Big Cat is mysterious. Big Cat is chaotic. Big Cat is lawless.Catherine is not. She likes things to be neat, tidy and orderly. But when the two meet, they discover they have more in common than they think and that sometimes the best adventures can be found in your own backyard.

Our Mob

Jacinta Daniher & Taylor Hampton & Seantelle Walsh (ill) Ford Steer Pub, $27.00

Join our yarning circle and listen to our stories. Our Mob proudly celebrates our Aboriginal culture and how it is practised within families today through the perspective of a preschool child.

The Tree and the River

Aaron Becker Walker Books, $25.00

Aaron Becker tracks the evolution of our species – and its toll on the Earth – through the fates of a lone tree and an enduring river. River and tree bear silent witness over time as people arrive to harness water, wind, and animals; devise technology and transportation; redirect rivers; and reshape the land. Timely and ultimately hopeful, this wordless epic invites readers to pore over spreads densely packed with visual drama.

Quiet Time with My Seeya

Whether they are playing dress-ups, going on adventures, making pittu, or reading to each other, any time shared between Sona and her seeya - her Sinhalese grandfather - is full of delight and bursting with love. This book is a heart-warming meditation on the immutable bond between grandparent and grandchild, brimming with sweet mischief and tender insight.

The Tiny Tailors

Join the Tiny Tailors in the garden as they stitch, weave and piece together their costumes for the upcoming Spring Parade. The berries have been threaded into sleeves and the daisies arranged into a fan ... but it looks like something might be missing? Will the Tiny Tailors be able to find what they need in time for the parade? Explorers big and small are encouraged to use their imagination and discover new natural artefacts in their own garden.

My Dad Is a Tree

Jon Agee Scallywag, $25.00

Do you want to be a tree? It’s easy! Pretend your arms are branches, your body is a trunk, and your legs are roots. Then stand in one place and see what happens! If your parent is as patient as the dad in this story, you might get to stay outside all...day... long! Follow the amusing drama ends with the feel good exuberance of the little girl who gets her Dad to play with her all day, and loves being outside.

Ibtihaj Muhammad & Hatem Aly (ill) Walker Books, $30.00

Felice Arena & Beatrice Cerocchi (ill) Affirm, $20.00

Dinalie Dabarera A&U, $25.00

Kat Macleod Thames & Hudson, $26.00

Ages 8 - 12

Huda Was Here

When her dad loses his job as a security officer and has to work interstate, Huda convinces her brother Akeal to sneak out at night to make mischief, hoping to force their dad’s bosses to hire him back. As their misdeeds escalate, will the daring duo be able to outsmart the authorities? - and what else might they uncover along the way?

Nic Blake and the Remarkables

All Nic Blake wants is to be a powerful Manifestor like her dad. But before she has a chance to convince him to teach her the gift, a series of shocking revelations and terrifying events launch Nic and two friends on a hunt for a powerful magic tool she’s never heard of...to save her father from imprisonment for a crime she refuses to believe he committed.

The Sun and the Star

Children’s Non-Fiction

Ages 8 - 12

Twenty Questions

Not all questions have answers. Some have more than one answer. And others have endless answers, unfolding out to the edges of the world. In this spare yet expansive narrative, Mac Barnett poses twenty questions both playful and profound. Some make us giggle. Others challenge our assumptions.

A Home for Every Plant

Journey across 40 incredible habitats around the world to discover the biggest, boldest, and stinkiest plants Without plants there would be no life on Earth, but most people are blind to their impact. This stylish and informative introduction to plants sets out to cure ‘plant blindness’ by introducing children to 66 amazing plants from the six major climactic zones around the world.

Wonderfully Wired Brains

Nico di Angelo been through so much, but there is a ray of sunshine in his life-literally- his boyfriend, Will Solace, the son of Apollo. However, now Nico is being plagued by a reformed Titan named Bob from Tartarus, and his dreams are telling him that Bob may be in trouble. Nico has to go on this quest, and of course Will insists on coming with. But can a being made of light survive in the darkest part of the world?

Our brains are unique in the way they function, work, and think. Neurodiversity is still a relatively ‘new’ concept that can be tricky to understand, but this book is here to help! Whether your child is neurodiverse or not, this book will inspire inquisitive young readers and show them that no two brains function in the same way and that everyone’s differences should be celebrated. There really is no other book like it.

Democracy!

A mysterious voice has been speaking to Louise in her dreams. She and her brother Merwin are Sycamore seeds, who hope to one day set down roots and become big trees. But when a fire forces them to leave their mama tree prematurely, they find themselves catapulted into the unknown, far from home. Alone they must use their wits and imagination to navigate a dangerous worldand the fear of never finding a safe place to grow up.

What you say (and how you say it) has the power to change the world. Democracy gives you that power. Democracy is people power. But does democracy really matter? How does it work? And what exactly is democracy, anyway?! Get set to speak up and learn how you can create positive change in your corner of the world. This fantastic book provides young readers with information about the importance of their voice.

H. Hayes A&U, $16.00

Angie Thomas Walker, $18.00

Rick Riordon & Mark Oshiro Penguin, $25.00

Brian Selznick Scholastic, $40.00

Big Tree

Mac Barnett & Christian Robinson (ill) Walker, $26.00

Matthew Biggs & Lucila Perini Phaidon, $40.00

Louise Gooding & Ruth Burrows Dorling Kindersley, $28.00

Philip Bunting Hardie Grant, $25.00

SWF SWF ALL ABOUT ALL ABOUT

We're so excited about the SWF coming up at the end of May. There are so many great authors and illustrators involved!

Camera. Drama!

ALL DAY ALL DAY ALL DAY YA YA Lights.

Nina Kenwood (whose novel Unnecessary Drama was one of our top books for 2022 Full of joy & fab characters- it made our faces ache from smiling!) will be discussing love stories with Leanne Yong, Jenn Guillaume & Alice Boyle.

F A M I L Y D A Y

Katrina Nannestad will be chatting about writing history with Amelia Mellor. Katrina's book We Are Wolves was a top ten in 2020 for our booksellers and book clubbers. Set during WWII, it's a harrowing story but still so full of hope.

For some science-based excitement, the explosive Cristy Burne will be talking about volcanoes!

And James Foley will be chatting about junior fiction with Jasmin McGaughey and Adrian Beck. James' Secret Agent Mole is hugely funny and super silly. We loved it!

Saturday, 27th of May, sees some very exciting panels, including some of our faves!

Lili Wilkinson will be discussing fantasy and world-building with Lynette Noni & Amie Kaufman. Lili wrote one of our faves (& bestsellers), The Erasure Initiative, a few years back and her new book, A Hunger of Thorns, an exciting, rich fantasy adventure, will come out midApril The world-building panel was so popular that it has been extended to another session! Gary Lonesborough (who wrote another of our faves in 2021, The Boy from the Mish) will be talking about writing authentic YA experiences and the unique challenges facing youth today. (With Will Kostakis, Felicity Castagna, Shirley Le & Tegan Bennett Daylight.)

We'll have a special separate family day stall at the Blacksmith's workshop on Sunday, so come along, grab a book and have a chat with us about all the great stuff you ' ve seen and learnt. See you there!

Tully can’t believe her luck. Dene is famous. Everyone loves her. Being best friends with Dene Walker is a dream come true. Tully is soon hardly aware that her long-time bestie, Kira, exists, as she shapes her own interests and cares to be the person worthy of Dene’s attention. And she’s not prepared for the heartache and confusion when Dene’s friendship is not all she imagined it to be. (12+)

Lose You to Find Me

Tommy Dees is in the weeds - restaurant speak for beyond overwhelmed. He’s been working at Sunset Estates Retirement Community to get the experience and he also needs a letter of recommendation from his sadistic manager. In exchange for the letter, Tommy has to meet three conditions. One of which includes training his old crush from summer camp. Can Tommy keep it all together or is it a recipe for disaster? (12+)

The Isles of the Gods

Selly has saltwater in her veins. So when her father leaves her high and dry in the port of Kirkpool, she has no intention of riding out the winter at home while he sails to adventure in the north seas. But any plans to follow him are dashed when a handsome stranger with telltale magician’s marks on his arms commandeers her ship under cover of darkness. Selly has no desire to escort a spoiled prince anywhere, but the journey ahead might just bring two strangers together, closer than ever. (14+)

The Impossible Story of Hannah Kemp

Hannah Kemp is dealing with a traumatic accident for which she was responsible. Struggling to come to terms with her guilt, she is ostracized in a community that condemns her. She deals with this by rebelling and pushing away anyone that offers kindness. She comes across a mobile library bus where every book is the true story of someone’s life, and realizes that judgement of others is almost always shallow and uninformed. When she finds her own book, she also finds that her past can reshape her present. (14+)

Swim Team Graphic Novels

Bree can’t wait for her first day at her new middle school, Enith Brigitha, home to the Mighty Manatees—until she’s stuck with the only elective that fits her schedule, the dreaded Swim 101. Luckily Etta, an elderly occupant of her apartment building and former swim team captain, is willing to help. Can Bree defy the odds and guide her team to a state championship, or have the Manatees swum their last lap—for good? (8-12)

The Girl That Can’t Get a Girlfriend

Mieri is an awkward, nerdy college student with no dating experience, and her previous crushes on fellow butch women have all ended in disaster. That all changes when she meets Ash and has her feelings returned for the first time. But when first love turns to first heartbreak, Mieri will do everything possible to win Ash back. (14+)

Belle of the Ball

High-school senior and notorious wallflower Hawkins finally works up the courage to remove her mascot mask and ask out her longtime crush: Regina Moreno, head cheerleader and allaround popular girl. There’s only one teensy little problem: Regina is already dating Chloe Kitagawa, athletic all-star. Regina sees a perfectly self-serving opportunity here, and asks the smitten Hawkins to tutor Chloe free of charge, knowing Hawkins will do anything to get closer to her. Before long, romance does start to blossom…but not between who you might expect. (Ages 8-12)

This is a powerful, hopeful and timely story about the real effects of climate change: two young people, Yuki and Sami, on different continents whose lives are catastrophically changed by global warming. Beautifully realised and punchily told. (10+)

Allayne L Webster

Selfie

Johnnie Christmas

Scholastic $20.00

Erik J. Brown

Hachette $20.00

Amie Kaufman

Allen & Unwin $25.00

Amie Kaufman

Allen & Unwin $25.00

Mieri Hiranishi

Scholastic $25.00

Mari Costa

St Martins Press $30.00

Eoin Colfer & Andrew Donkin & Giovanni Rigano (ill)

Hachette $33.00

Global

Reid All About It

A further selection of Folio Society treasures from our collection:

George Orwell – A Life in Letters and Diaries. $150.00.

2017. The Folio Society, London. First Edition. Introduction by Peter Davison. Three-quarter bound in cloth with a printed cloth front board. 506 pp. Frontispiece and 16 pp. of b/w plates, 21 integrated b/w text illustrations. Printed endpapers. Ribbon marker. Blocked slipcase. As New, in publisher’s original shrink wrap.

Eric Blair [1903-1950] - who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell - never published an autobiography. This unique collection could well stand in place of one. Compiled as it is from a vast assortment of letters, personal correspondence, over two decades of diary extracts and accompanying images. It offers a unique insight into the complex life of a celebrated literary figure.

Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials Trilogy $300.00.

2008. The Folio Society, London. First Edition. Three-volume set.

The first fully illustrated edition of Pullman’s acclaimed trilogy comprises ‘Northern Lights’, ‘The Subtle Knife’ and ‘The Amber Spyglass’. Decorated boards. Comprising 1,168 pages in total. Preface by Philip Pullman. Frontispiece and ten full-page colour illustrations in each volume by Peter Bailey. Chapter opening drawings throughout by Philip Pullman. Bound in printed and blocked cloth. Printed and blocked slipcase. Fine Condition.

Boxed Set of Three Famous “Locked Room” Mysteries. $90.00. Hardcovers. Three Volumes in Slipcase. As New in Publisher’s original shrink wrap.

John Dickson Carr [1906-1977] – The Hollow Man (1935).

An American-born writer who sojourned in England for decades. This novel features Carr’s English investigator Dr Gideon Fell, who would appear in 23 novels between 1933 to 1967. The book includes the famed “Locked Room Lecture”, in which Fell explains to the reader how various “impossible” locked room crimes can be committed.

Gaston Leroux [1868-1927] – The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907).

The first appearance of journalist and amateur sleuth Joseph Rouletabille [French slang for “Globetrotter”], who investigates an attempted murder in which the criminal disappears from a you-know-what room. Detailed charts, floor plans and diagrams are helpfully provided by the author, allowing the reader to puzzle along. Leroux is most famed for his novel The Phantom of the Opera (1909), and we all know where that led.

Edgar Wallace

[1875-1932] – The Four Just Men (1905).

One of my favourites.

This novel introduces a quartet of gentleman vigilantes –among them a European prince – who mete out retribution to those wrongdoers whose power and influence place them above the law. British Foreign Secretary Sir Philip Ramon is determined to see his Aliens Extradition Bill made law. This would see a great Spanish social reformer, currently directing his followers from safety in England, sent back to Spain. To meet certain death at the hands of a corrupt government. Sir Philip is advised he will be committing a crime. He is advised to withdraw the legislation. He refuses. He receives one final warning in a greenish-grey letter:

“We shall have no other course to pursue but to fulfil our promise. You will die at Eight in the Evening – The Four Just Men’ Criminals and malefactors, beware! There is no escape from the sword of justice wielded by The Four Just Men”.

Ramon is killed at the predicted time while in a - you guessed it - surrounded by a police guard. Wallace offered a £500 prize to anyone who guessed the solution to the murder and was –temporarily - financially ruined when an embarrassingly large number of readers correctly did so. The Four (later Three) Just Men were to appear in several sequels. Author of 175 novels and 24 plays, Edgar Wallace died in Hollywood while working on a screenplay for the film, “King Kong”.

Until next time, Stephen

‘A hypnotic story of lost love … a remarkable new literary voice.’

REBECCA STARFORD

‘ This book is a joy. Everything and Nothing makes you feel life more keenly.’ ANNA FUNDER

$25.00

As good a woman as ever broke bread

This debut collection of poetry explores the threads and gaps in family and national story — both oral and archival — to connect multiple generations of migration, separation, adoption, secrecy and reunion. The poems connect seemingly distant times and places and pay homage to other poets communing with ‘archival women’, including Jeanine Leanne, Natalie Harkin, Elfie Shiosaki and M. NourbeSe Philip.

Verge 2023: Defiant

Various Authors

$30.00

Giramondo

$25.00

The thirty-one stories and poems in this collection explore our defiant acts, from the small, everyday moments of revolt to life-changing actions in possible futures and imagined pasts. Crackling with energy and originality, these pieces are united by a singular intent: to defy the expected, whether in form, subject or content. They reveal the best of Australian writing today.

The Drama Student

The poems in Autumn Royal’s collection explore theatrical responses to life. And in particular, the staging of the emotional life. Royal’s use of the elegiac form offers no answers, only the hope of tearing open conventional understandings of loss and insecurity, as it invokes a tradition of women poets and thinkers. Intense, dramatic, theatrical — an important new poetry collection which draws its strength from its confrontation with grief and mourning.

Highly Recommended

Jimmy Little: A Yorta Yorta Man

Goddess

The screen goddess is a formidable figure, renowned for her power, complexity and so often beauty. From Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to Laverne Cox and Michelle Yeoh, these women disrupted and redefined the female ideal by pushing boundaries, fighting gender stereotypes and transcending tired tropes. This lively book examines cinema history through a feminist lens, charting the evolution of women’s on-screen representation and challenging dominant narratives and misconceptions.

Non-Essential Work

In this exciting follow-up to his acclaimed collection, The Lost Arabs, award-winning poet Omar Sakr delves deep into his loves and losses to create a riveting literary experience. Asking questions of timeliness and timelessness, Non-Essential Work is a restless and relentless volume that showcases a poet unquestionably in his prime.

Everything and Nothing

Heather Mitchell

Hardie Grant

$45.00

HC

At just 16 years of age, Jimmy Little travelled to Sydney to make his radio debut on Australia’s Amateur Hour. The eldest of seven children and born on the Cummeragunja Reserve on the Murray River, Jimmy’s entry into the entertainment industry came at a time when First Nations people were not counted in the census. Weaving together stories both known and unknown to the public, this book will take you on a remarkable journey through a life of music, love and advocacy.

$35.00

Heather Mitchell is an esteemed Australian stage and screen actor, and yet behind the scenes her real life has taken many remarkable twists and turns. Training an unflinching spotlight on her most formative memories, Heather illuminates the heartbreaking secrets, sexual encounters, family dramas and creative pursuits that have shaped her life as a woman, an actor and a mother. Powerful, immersive, and extremely candid.

Enough

Stephen Hough is indisputably one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards.This memoir recounts his unconventional coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in an unmusical home in Cheshire to the main stage of Carnegie Hall in New York aged 21. We meet his supportive, if eccentric parents - his artistically frustrated father, his houseworkhating mother. We read of the teachers who encouraged and inspired, and others who hit him on the head screaming, “you’ll do nothing with your life”. This is Stephen’s story.

Alex McInnis

Puncher & Wattman

Bethan Johnson & Matt Millikan

Thames & Hudson $50.00

Monash Uni Pub

Omar Sakr U.Q.P $25.00

Autumn Royal

Allen & Unwin

Frances Little-Peters

Stephen Hough

Faber $40.00

ACC

Vermeer

Various Artists

Vermeer’s intensely quiet and enigmatic paintings invite the viewer into a private world, often prompting more questions than answers. Who is being portrayed? Are his subjects real or imagined? Bringing together diverse strands of the Dutch master’s professional and private worlds, this is the first major authoritative study of Vermeer’s life and work for many years, throwing light on all thirty-seven of his paintings.

Dot Circle and Frame

A startling, vibrant, radical new form of desert art arrived in Papunya Tula in 1971, anchored and inherited in ceremony; stimulated by the twentieth century and painting onto canvas. This lavishly illustrated book draws on social history, visual anthropology, as well as formal art analysis to identify how the key innovations that informed contemporary desert art were realised. This book leads the reader to a deeper understanding of a critical juncture, as four artists claimed a pivotal space in the history of Australian art.

Iranian Architecture

p. 27

Vitamin C+

Yuval Etgar

Collage is an artistic language comprising found images, fragmentary forms, and unexpected juxtapositions. While it first gained status as high art in the early twentieth century, the past decade has seen a fresh explosion of artists using this dynamic and experimental approach to image making. Organised in an A-Z sequence by artist, the book features both well-known collagists and a plethora of lesser-known names deserving of greater attention.

Do Ho Suh

Various Artists

Do Ho Suh is known for his large-scale sculptures and architectural installations, which consider notions of belonging, identity and home. Since the 1990s, the artist has created evocative and poignant works that situate the home at the centre of our shared physical and psychological experience. This publication surveys the artist’s practice with reproductions of iconic sculptural works and drawings.

Chromoroma

$130.00

HC

Iran, the former Persia, lies at an interface between West-East and North-South. Several early trade routes crossed the country, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, and the cultural wealth and scenic beauty of this region has attracted travellers for over 2,000 years. This rich past makes Iran one of the most culturally interesting countries of Asia. The book allows one to experience the great diversity and fascination of Iranian architecture and is a visual treat for the reader.

The Umbrella House Project

The Umbrella House is the smallest residential home by Japanese architect and mathematician Kazuo Shinohara (19252006). Experts from Japan and Europe supervised the dismantling of the house in Tokyo and its reassembly in Weil am Rhein. The book traces the long journey of the Umbrella House in lavish illustrations including impressions from 1960s Japan, architectural designs and plans, and photographs that document its dismantling and reassembly or show the house in its new location.

Riccardo Falcinelli delves deep into the history of colour to show how it has shaped the modern gaze. With over four hundred illustrations throughout and with examples ranging widely across art and culture - from Flaubert’s novels to The Simpsons, Falcinelli traces the evolution of our long relationship with colour, and how first the industrial revolution, and then the dawn of the internet age, changed it forever. It is the story of why we now see the world the way we do.

Artists’ Lives

Michael Peppiatt’s lively, engaging writing takes us into the company of many notable art-world personalities, such as the Catalan painter Antoni Tàpies, whom he visits in his studio, and moments of disillusion, such as his meeting with the self-mythologizing artist Balthus. Remarkably varied in their scope and lucidly written for a general reader, these selected essays not only provide us with perceptive commentary and acute critical judgment, they also give a unique personal insight into some of the greatest creative minds of the modern era.

Phaidon $100.00 HC

Thames & Hudson $100.00 HC

MCAA $45.00

John Kean

Black Inc. $65.00

Riccardo Falcinelli Penguin $50.00

Michael Peppiatt

Thames & Hudson $50.00

Sohrab Sardashti

Art Books

Christian Dehli & Andrea Grolimund

Vitra Design Museum GmbH $70.00 HC

Pantera $35.00

The Uncertainty Effect

In an age of pandemic and economic precarity, how can we learn to embrace uncertainty in our workplaces, schools and businesses? And how can better understanding uncertainty help us to build resilience, foster social justice and deal with the big issues? Michelle Lazarus shows us how uncertainty tolerance can help through this smart, practical book with an affirming message: we may not be able to predict the future, but we can learn to navigate it.

Freud/Lynch: Behind the Curtain

Edited by Jamie Ruers & Stefan Marianski

Drawn from a major Freud Museum London conference, Freud/Lynch goes against the dubious cliché of finding Freudian solutions to Lynchian mysteries. Rather than presuming to fill in what Lynch leaves open by positing some forbidden psychosexual reality lurking behind his trademark red curtains, this book instead maintains a fidelity to the mysteries of his wonderful and strange filmic worlds, finding in them productive spaces where thought and imagination can be set to work.

Obsession

Nicole Madigan

Journalist Nicole Madigan was stalked for over three years. The relentless and debilitating experience wreaked havoc in her personal and professional life, leaving her trapped in a constant state of fear and anxiety. Nicole uses her own story as an entry point to examine the psychology behind stalking behaviours and their impact on victim-survivors. In this timely and compelling enquiry, Madigan explores the blurred lines between romantic interest and obsession, admiration and fixation.

Emotional Ignorance

Hanging Out

Almost every day it seems that our world becomes more fractured, more digital, and more chaotic. Sheila Liming has the answer- we need to hang out more. Starting with the assumption that play is to children as hanging out is to adults, Liming makes a brilliant case for the necessity of unstructured social time as a key element of our cultural vitality. She shows us how just getting together can be a potent act of resistance all on its own.

Life in Five Senses

In this journey of self-experimentation, Rubin explores the mysteries and joys of embracing the senses as a path to a happier, more mindful life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, philosophy, literature and her own efforts to practice what she learns, she investigates the power of tuning in. This is a story of discovery filled with profound insights and practical suggestions about how to heighten our senses and use our powers of perception to live fuller, richer lives.

Enough

Two times World Champion, four times Commonwealth Champion - in the sport of athletics, Jana Pittman shares her life with you: the good, the bad and the ugly. Her life lessons are inspirational, not because of her achievements - stellar though they are - but because of her willingness to share with readers how to stare down your own doubts and fears and believe in yourself and your dreams. This book is for anyone who has ever felt that they are not enough.

The Secret Life of You

Guardian Books

$33.00

Emotions can be a pain. If only we were more rational, life would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it? Dean Burnett certainly used to think so. And then, in April 2020, his father died of Covid-19. Suddenly, Dean was confronted with a host of powerful, unfamiliar and often unwelcome emotions. And so, he decided to put his feelings under the microscopefor science. He shares his journey of discovery into where our emotions come from, what purpose they serve, and why they make us feel the way they do.

When columnist and commentator Kerri Sackville decided to stop filling every idle moment with distraction and learn to be comfortable alone, her quality of life soared. In this book, Sackville analyses society’s attitude towards solitude, identifies the roadblocks in the way to unplugging, contemplates aloneness vs loneliness, and looks at the difference between true connection and mere connectivity. Finally, she provides practical advice on how to become comfortable in your own company, in order to enjoy and even cherish time alone.

Michelle Lazarus

Monash Uni Pub $35.00

Sheila Liming Black Inc. $30.00

Dr Dean Burnett

Gretchen Rubin

John Murray $35.00

Jana Pittman Echo $30.00

Kerri Sackville

Pantera $35.00

America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy & Foreign Polic (HC) by Robert

Specials

A Good Bake: The Art & Science of Making Perfect Pastries (HC) by Melissa Weller

Be Like the Fox: Machiavelli In His World (HC) by Erica Benner

The Beauty of Living: E. E. Cummings in the Great War (HC) by Alison Rosenblitt

Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness (HC) by Charles Foster

Bina: A Novel in Warnings –New York Review of Books Classics (PB) by Anakana Schofield

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, & the Longest Night of the Second World War (HC) by Malcolm Gladwell

The Book of Nonexistent Words (PB) by Stefano Massini

Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 (HC) by Max Hastings

The Classical School: The Turbulent Birth of Economics in Twenty Extraordinary Lives (HC) by Callum Williams

Conclusions (PB) by John Boorman

Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War (HC) by Johnathan Rosenberg

The Deep History Of Ourselves: The Four-BillionYear Story of How We Got Conscious Brains (HC) by Joseph Ledoux

A Dominant Character: The Radical Science & Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane (HC) by

B. Zoellick

Fantastic Night (PB) by Stefan Zweig

Divorcing (PB) by David Rieff

Samanth Subramanian

Specials

The

What the

Us

And How Are You,

Tragedy (HC) by Terry Eagleton

The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood (HC) by Naomi McDougall Jones

Going to Church in Medieval England (PB) by Nicholas Orme

The Parade (HC) by Dave Eggers

Twilight Struggle:

Cold War Teaches

about Great-Power Rivalry Today (HC) by Hal Brands

Domina: The Women Who Made Imperial Rome (PB) by Guy De La Bedoyere

Man Out of Time (PB) by Stephanie Bishop

Serving the Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain (HC) by Danny Goldberg

Great State: China & the World (HC) by Timothy Brook

Maoism: A Global History (HC) by Julia Lovell

Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart (HC) by Claire Harman

Figuring (HC) by Maria Popova

The Kingdom: A novel (HC) by Jo Nesbo

Me & Sister Bobbie: True Tales of the Family Band (HC) by Willie & Bobby Nelson

Elegy Landscapes: Constable & Turner and the Intimate Sublime (HC) by Stanley Plumly

Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks (HC) by Lawrence Weschler

Mother’s Day Selects

It’s no secret that sometimes the hardest person to select a gift for is also one of the most special: your mum. That’s why we’ve taken the stress off your back and handpicked a few new titles she would love and appreicate. Stories from the breathtaking islands of Greece, to twentieth century London, your mum is surely going to be lost in one of these transporting reads.

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A mother and daughter’s Greek Island adventure - $35.00

The story of two extraordinary sisters who made marrying well an art form - $60.00

Stories of the strength, heartbreak and passion of rural mothers - $35.00

Sitting around a metaphoric campfire, these resilient women share their stories - $30.00

181a Glebe Point Rd, (P.O. Box 486)

Glebe NSW 2037

Ph: (02) 9660 2333

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The gleebooks gleaner is published monthly from February to November with contributions by staff, invited readers & writers.

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