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

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.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Penguin

$37.00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.