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Vol. 28 No. 2 April/May 2021
Illustrator Gus Gordon
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Australian Literature The Truth About Her by Jacqueline Maley ($33, PB)
Journalist & single mother Suzy Hamilton gets a phone call one summer morning, and finds out that the subject of one of her investigative exposés, 25-year-old wellness blogger Tracey Doran, has killed herself overnight. Suzy is horrified by this news but copes in the only way she knows how—through work, mothering, and carrying on with her ill-advised, tandem affairs. The consequences of her actions catch up with Suzy over the course of a sticky Sydney summer when she starts receiving anonymous vindictive letters & is pursued by Tracey’s mother wanting her, as a kind of rough justice, to tell Tracey’s story, but this time, the right way.
Like Mother by Cassandra Austin ($33, PB)
It’s 1969 & mankind might have made it to the moon, but a young mother in small-town Australia can’t get past the kitchen door. Louise Ashland is exhausted—her husband, Steven, is away on the road & her mother, Gladys, won’t leave her alone. At least her baby, Dolores, has finally stopped screaming & is sweetly sleeping in her cot. Right where Louise left her. Or is she? As the day unravels, Louise will unearth secrets her mother—and perhaps her own mind—have worked hard to keep buried. But what piece of family lore is so terrible that it has been kept hidden all this time? And what will exposing it reveal about mother & daughter?
The Emporium of Imagination by Tabitha Bird
Welcome to The Emporium of Imagination, a most unusual shop that travels the world offering vintage gifts to repair broken dreams & extraordinary phones to contact lost loved ones. But, on arrival in the tiny township of Boonah, the store’s long-time custodian, Earlatidge Hubert Umbray, makes a shocking realisation. He is dying. The clock is now ticking to find his replacement, because the people of Boonah are clearly in need of some restorative magic. Like Enoch Rayne—a heartbroken ten-year-old boy mourning the loss of his father, or Ann Harlow, who has come to the town to be close to her dying grandmother. Even Earlatidge will have the chance to face up to his own tragedy in his final days. ($33, PB)
A Million Things by Emily Spurr ($33, PB) Now in B Format: The Yield by Tara June Winch, $20 Smokehouse by Melissa Manning ($30, PB)
Set in southern Tasmania, the linked stories in Smokehouse bring into focus a small community to capture those moments when life turns and one person becomes another. A mother whose fresh start leads to a fractured future, a stonemason seeking connection, a woman grieving her adopted mother, a couple torn apart by their daughter’s drug addiction—learn how their lives intersect, in various ways, across time and place.
Lovebirds by Amanda Hampson ($33, PB)
In their youth, lovebirds Elizabeth & Ray had to fight to be together—but a twist of fate changed their lives forever. Now in her 60s, Elizabeth is desperately lonely. She rarely sees her two adult sons & her closest friend is a talkative budgie. But when her grandson, Zach, gets into trouble with the police, she decides to take him on a road trip to find his grandfather, her lost love Ray, in the hope of mending their broken family. Two less compatible travelling companions would be hard to find, as they set off on an unlikely adventure into the wilds of the northern NSW hinterland. What they discover along the way, about Ray & each other, has the power to transform them all. In trying to save Zach, Elizabeth might just save herself.
Sincerely, Ethel Malley by Stephen Orr
In the darkest days of WWII, Ethel Malley lives a quiet life on Dalmar Street, Croydon. One day she finds a collection of poems written by her late (and secretive) brother, Ern. She sends them to Max Harris, co-editor of modernist magazine Angry Penguins. He reads them & declares Ern an undiscovered genius. Determined to help publish the poems, Ethel moves in with Max & soon becomes a presence he can’t understand, or control. Then two poets come forward claiming they wrote Ern’s poems. What follows is a dark mystery as surreal as any of Ern’s poems. Max wants to believe in Ern, but to do this he has to believe in Ethel, and attempt to understand her increasingly unpredictable behaviour. Then he’s charged with publishing Ern’s ‘pornographic’ poems. Based on Australia’s greatest literary hoax, Stephen Orr’s new novel explores the nature of creativity & human frailty. ($34.95, PB)
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Rae is ten years old, and she’s tough. Life with her mother has taught her the world is not her friend. Now suddenly her mum is gone and Rae is alone, except for her dog Splinter. She’s able to take care of herself & Splints, stay under the radar at school & keep the front yard neat enough that the neighbours won’t get curious. But she is haunted by the shadow of a terrible secret. Lettie, who lives next door, might know more about Rae than she lets on. But she has her own reasons for keeping the world at arm’s length. When Rae finds out what they are, it seems like she & Lettie could help each other.
Where the Line Breaks by Michael Burrows ($33, PB)
The Unknown Digger is Australia’s most famous WWI poet. But for decades, his identity has remained a mystery. Enter Matthew Denton—a PhD student at University College, London—who believes the unknown digger to be fact one of Australia’s greatest war heroesLieutenant Alan Lewis VC of the 10th Light Horse. As the story of Lieutenant Lewis, fighting his way across Sinai, Palestine, Jordan & Syria unfolds, the question of what makes him a poet, a lover & a hero becomes a troubled one. Meanwhile, in the footnotes, scholar Matt Denton is fighting his own battles with romance & with academia as he attempts to rewrite literary history.
Love Objects by Emily Maguire ($33, PB)
Nic is a 45-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist & fairy godmother to the neighbourhood’s stray cats. She’s also the owner of a decade’s worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes & shoes to fill Big W 3 times over & a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice. The person she’s closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up. When Lena travels to her aunt’s house to see if Nic’s all right, she gets the shock of her life, and sets in train a series of events that will prove cataclysmic for them both..
The Beautiful Fall by Hugh Breakey ($33, PB)
Every 179 days Robbie forgets everything. He knows this because last time it happened he wrote himself a letter explaining it. The disorientation. The fear. The bizarre circumstances imposed by the rare neurological condition he lives with. To cope with his recurring loss of identity Robbie leads a solitary, regimented life. And then, with 12 days left before his next forgetting, Julie invades his life. Young, beautiful—the only woman he can ever remember meeting. As the hour draws near, Robbie is forced to confront the fact that his past is very different from how he had imagined it. And when Julie reveals her own terrible secret, he must find a way to come to terms with the truth about himself..
New this month: Forget baby love, this is The Chaser Guide to Bad Parenting Chaser Quarterly 20 ($32.95, PB)
Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray: River of Dreams by Anita Heiss ($33, PB)
Gundagai, 1852. The powerful Murrumbidgee River surges through town leaving death & destruction in its wake. It is a stark reminder that while the river can give life, it can just as easily take it away. Wagadhaany is one of the lucky ones. She survives. But is her life now better than the fate she escaped? Forced to move away from her miyagan, she walks through each day with no trace of dance in her step, her broken heart forever calling her back home to Gundagai. When she meets Wiradyuri stockman Yindyamarra, Wagadhaany’s heart slowly begins to heal. But still, she dreams of a better life, away from the degradation of being owned. She longs to set out along the river of her ancestors, in search of lost family & country. Can she find the courage to defy the White man’s law? And if she does, will it bring hope—or heartache?
The Little Boat on Trusting Lane by Mel Hall
Richard runs his alternative healing centre from an old houseboat in a scrapyard on Trusting Lane. The Little Mother Earth Ship provides spiritual sustenance at regular meetings of The Circle of IWEA. While Richard plies his new age wisdom, disciples Finn and August keep the whole enterprise afloat. But warning letters from the council are piling up down the side of the fridge and the arrival of a new mystic Celestiaa Davinaa is about to rock their world. How many alternative healers can one small boat hold before the enterprise capsizes? ($33, PB)
The Ripping Tree by Nikki Gemmell ($33, PB) Early 1800s. Thomasina Trelora is on her way to the colonies. She is to be married to a clergyman she’s never met. As the Australian coastline comes into view a storm wrecks the ship & leaves her lying on the rocks, near death. She’s saved by an Aboriginal man who carries her to the door of a grand European house, Willowbrae. Tom is now free to be whoever she wants to be & a whole new life opens up to her. But as she’s drawn deeper into the intriguing life of this grand estate, she discovers that things aren’t quite as they seem. She stumbles across a horrifying secret at the heart of this world of colonial decorum—and realises she may have exchanged one kind of prison for another. Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz
When she arrived in New York on her 18th birthday carrying nothing but $600 cash & a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Just one month later, she is the city’s latest Jane Doe, an unidentified murder victim. Ruby Jones is also trying to start over; she travelled halfway around the world only to find herself lonelier than ever. Until she finds Alice’s body by the Hudson River. From this first, devastating encounter, the two women form an unbreakable bond. Alice is sure that Ruby is the key to solving the mystery of her life—and death. And Ruby finds herself unable to let Alice go. Not until she is given the ending she deserves. ($30, PB)
Tussaud by Belinda Lyons-Lee ($33, PB) Paris, 1810. Haunted by the French Revolution, Marie Tussaud has locked herself away with the death masks she was forced to make to avoid the guillotine. Philidor, a famous magician, offers her the chance to accompany him to London to assist in creating a wax automaton that will bring them both money & success. Following a disastrous performance on their opening night in which the wax melts, the eccentric Duke, William Cavendish, invites them to his rambling estate, Welbeck, where he suggests they use his underground ballroom for a new show & in return create a private commission for him: a wax automaton in the likeness of Elanor, a beautiful girl who mysteriously disappeared from the estate when he was a child. In this delicious novel of twists & turns, Welbeck, with its locked doors & rooms, is full of secrets & no-one is who they seem. The Dressmakers of Yarrandarrah Prison by Meredith Jaffe ($33, PB)
Derek’s daughter Debbie is getting married—but he’s banged up in Yarrandarrah Correctional Centre for embezzling funds from the golf club, and, thanks to his ex-wife, Lorraine, he hasn’t spoken to Debbie in years. He wants to show her how much he loves her. But how? Inspiration strikes while he’s embroidering a cushion at his weekly prison sewing circle—he’ll make her a wedding dress. His fellow stitchers rally around & soon this motley gang of crims is immersed in a whirl of silks, satins & covered buttons. But as time runs out & tensions rise both inside & outside the prison, the wedding dress project takes on greater significance.
Flock: First Nations Stories Then and Now by Ellen van Neerven ($30, PB)
This wide-ranging anthology showcases the power of First Nations writing—roaming the landscape of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander storytelling, bringing together voices from across the generations. Featuring established authors such as Tony Birch & Melissa Lucashenko, and rising stars such as Adam Thompson & Mykaela Saunders.
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Last month I promised to write about Jacqueline Maley’s debut novel, The Truth About Her. Maley will be known to many as a journalist and columnist—as is her protagonist, Suzy Hamilton, in this very topical story about journalistic ethics, media manipulation and who owns the story. Suzy has outed a fake wellness blogger (think Belle Gibson) who has suicided after Suzy’s article appears. Plagued by guilt and questioning her choices in other areas of her life, Suzy, a single mother, capitulates when the blogger’s mother confronts her, asking her to write ‘the truth’ about her daughter. So while the novel delves into ideas about truth and storytelling, it is also a very moving book about motherhood. We can feel Suzy’s love for her own daughter viscerally, and understand the agony of the blogger’s mother who can’t accept that her daughter may have done wrong. The relationship between Suzy and her own mother, also beautifully handled, adds yet another layer. Indeed, there are as many layers in The Truth About Her as there are in any unravelling of truth and lies. Maley’s Glebe and inner-west setting will be comfortingly familiar to many, and her terrific characterisation and sure control of the narrative ensure she will be a novelist to watch. This is a satisfying, intelligent book (with a spicy romance) which is very easy to love. Jacqueline will be signing copies on Saturday morning May 8th 10.30 to 11.10am, the day before Mother’s Day. Sometimes I like to pick up a book at random and this month it was the Italian bestseller Fidelity by Marco Missiroli. Published to great acclaim, Fidelity was shortlisted for the Premio Strega (the Italian Booker) and is currently being made into a Netflix series (can’t wait). In it, Missiroli ploughs the depths of a marriage where both partners (in their 30s) are unfaithful to varying degrees. I was bracing myself for the book to become some macho, Mediterranean justification of why men stray, but Missiroli pulls back at just the right moment. Fidelity is a fascinating, insightful study of a modern marriage. It’s brilliantly written, very European, and quite enchanting. Infinite Country is a beautiful and heartbreaking novel by Columbian-American writer Patricia Engel, which follows a Columbian couple who go to America ‘to make a better life’. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out that way, and we follow the consequences of this decision on the family, both in Columbia and America. The characters are wonderfully drawn and the writing superb. One of the best novels I’ve read about the migration experience. As many who read this column will have noted, I rarely, if ever, read nonfiction. (I avidly follow politics, so I like to live the rest of the time in a world of make-believe). I am so glad I made an exception for Mark McKenna’s astounding book Return to Uluru. McKenna traces the story of an Aboriginal man who was murdered by a white policeman n 1934. I thought I knew a bit about Indigenous history, but I never knew Aboriginal prisoners were decapitated, before their heads and other body parts were sent far, far away from their people and their country. This is just one shockingly hideous story among many in our shameful history, but McKenna brings an historian’s skill as well as a human’s compassion and respect for his subject. We all, and I for one, have so much more to learn. See you on D’Hill, Morgan
Unsheltered by Clare Moleta ($30, PB)
Li never wanted to bring a child into a world like this but now that 8-year-old Matti is missing, she will stop at nothing to find her. As she crosses the great barren country alone & on foot, living on what she can find & fuelled by visions of her daughter just out of sight ahead, Li will have every instinct tested. She knows the odds against her: an uncompromising landscape, an uncaring system, time running out, and the risks of any encounters on the road. But her own failings & uncertainty might be the greatest obstacle of all. Because even if she finds her, how can she hope to shield Matti from the future.
Night Blue by Angela O’Keeffe ($28, PB)
A truly original and absorbing approach to revisiting Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner as artists and people, as well as a realigning our ideas around the cultural legacy of Whitlam’s purchase of Blue Poles in 1973. It is also the story of Alyssa, and a contemporary relationship, in which Angela O’Keeffe immerses us in the essential power of art to change our personal lives and, by turns, a nation. Moving between New York and Australia with fluid ease.—Favel Parrett
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Civilisations by Laurent Binet ($33, PB)
Freydis is a woman warrior & leader of a band of Viking explorers setting out southwards. They meet local tribes, exchange skills, are taken prisoner, and get as far as Panama. Fast forward 500 years to 1492 & the journals of Christopher Columbus, mid-Atlantic on his own famous voyage of exploration to The Americas, dreaming of gold and conquest. But he and his men are taken captive by Incas. Even as their sufferings increase his faith in his superiority, and in his mission, is unshaken. 30 years later, Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, arrives in Europe in the ships stolen from Columbus. He finds a continent divided by religious & dynastic quarrels, endless warmongering between the ruling monarchies—and downtrodden populations ready for revolution. Fortunately, he has a recent bestseller as a guidebook to acquiring power—Machiavelli’s The Prince. A strangely believable counter-factual history of the modern world, fizzing with ideas about colonisation, empire-building and the eternal human quest for domination.
Why I Don’t Write: And Other Stories by Susan Minot ($55, HB)
A writer dryly catalogues the myriad reasons she cannot write; an artist bicycles through a protest encampment in lower Manhattan & ruminates on an elusive lover; an old woman on her deathbed calls out for a man other than her husband; a hapless 15-year-old boy finds himself in sexual peril; two young people in the 1990s fall helplessly in love, then bicker just as helplessly, tortured by jealousy & mistrust. Susan Minot’s first collection in 30 years explores the difficult geometry of human relations, the lure of love & physical desire, and the lifelong quest for meaning & connection.
Lost Property by Helen Paris ($33, PB)
Twelve years ago Dot’s life veered off course, and the guilt over what happened still haunts her. Before then she was living in Paris, forging an exciting career; now her time is spent visiting her mother’s care home, fielding interfering calls from her sister and working at the London Transport Lost Property office, diligently cataloguing items as misplaced as herself. But when elderly Mr Appleby arrives in search of his late wife’s purse, his grief stirs something in Dot. Determined to help, she sets off on a mission—one that could start to heal her own loss and let her find where she belongs once more.
Male Tears by Benjamin Myers ($30, PB)
International Inte rnational Literature
First Person Singular: Stories by Haruki Murakami
The 8 stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music & an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios, an encounter with a talking monkey & invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds & the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? You choose. ($39.99, HB)
Gleebooks’ special price $32.95 Incomparable World by S. I. Martin ($20, PB)
In the years just after the American revolution, London was the unlikely refuge for thousands of black Americans who fought for liberty on the side of the British. Buckram, Georgie & William have earned their freedom & escaped their American oppressors, but on the streets of London, poverty awaits with equal cruelty. Ruthless, chaotic & endlessly evolving, London forces them into a life of crime, and a life on the margins. Their only hope for a better future is to concoct a scheme so daring, it will be a miracle if it pays off.
Also in Black Britain: Writing Back series:
The Fat Lady Sings by Jacqueline Roy; The Dancing Face by Mike Phillips Without Prejudice by Nicola Williams; Minty Alley by CLR James All $20 Bernard and the Cloth Monkey by Judith Bryan ($23)
Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal ($33, PB)
Behind the ornate doors of 30, rue du Metal in Brussels, 20 students begin their apprenticeship in the art of decorative painting—an art of tricksters & counterfeiters, where each knot in a plank of wood hides a secret & every vein in a slab of marble tells a story. Among these students are Kate, Jonas & Paula Karst—during a relentless year of study—the long hours in the studio will cement friendships that last long after their formal studies end. For Paula, her initiation into the art of trompe l’oeil will take her back through time, from her own childhood memories, to the ancient formations of the materials whose depiction she strives to master. And from the institute in Brussels where her studies begin, to her work on the film sets of Cinecitta, and finally the caves of Lascaux, her experiences will transcend art, gradually revealing something of her own inner world, and the secret, unspoken, unreachable desires of her heart.
This debut collection of stories that brings together over 15 years of work, Benjamin Myers lays bare the male psyche in all its fragility, complexity and failure, its hubris and forbidden tenderness. Farmers, fairground workers and wandering pilgrims, gruesome gamekeepers, bare-knuckle boxers and ex-cons with secret passions, the men that populate these unsettling, wild and wistful stories form a multi-faceted, era-spanning portrait of just what it means to be a man.
The Mysterious Correspondent by Marcel Proust
An immeasurably influential female voice in post-war Japanese literature, Taeko Kono’s tales are marked by disquieting scenes, her characters all teetering on the brink of self-destruction. In the famous title story, the protagonist loathes young girls but compulsively buys expensive clothes for little boys so that she can watch them dress & undress. Kono’s detached gaze at these events is transfixing: What are we hunting for? And why? Kono rarely gives the reader straightforward answers, rather reflecting, subverting & examining their expectations, both of what women are capable of, and of the narrative form itself.
Second Place by Rachel Cusk ($28, PB)
Toddler Hunting and Other Stories by Taeko Kono ($23, PB)
Granta 154: I’ve Been Away for a While (ed) Sigrid Rausing ($25, PB)
2021 winter issue features Rory Gleeson on an Italian doctor who was at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak; Lindsey Hilsum on cholera in Hutu refugee camps; Ian Jack on the toxic slag heaps of Glasgow & the aristocratic lives built on them; Vidyan Ravinthiran on the civil war in Sri Lanka; an excerpt from Eva Baltasar’s Permafrost; a new story by Paul Dalla Rosa; an extract from the new novel by Gwendoline Riley; fiction by Diaa Jubaili; a photoessay by Fergus Thomas of bareback horse racing in the Colville Reservation and much more.
Under the Wave at Waimea by Paul Theroux
Now in his 60s, big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey has passed his prime. The younger surfers around the breaks on the north shore of Oahu still call him the Shark, but his sponsors are looking elsewhere. When Joe accidentally hits & kills a man near Waimea while driving home from a bar after a night of drinking, it seems he’ll never rebound. Under the direction of his devoted girlfriend Olive, he throws himself into uncovering his victim’s story. But what they find in Max Mulgrave is anything but expected—a shared history, and refuge in the waves. ($33, PB)
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Throughout Proust’s life, 9 of his short stories remained unseen— Proust never spoke of them. Why did he choose not to publish them along with the others? One possible answer is that he was developing his themes in preparation for his masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time; another is that the stories were too audacious—too near to life—for the censorious society of the time. In these stories, published here for the first time, we find an intimate picture of a young author full of darkness and melancholy, longing to reveal his true self to the world. ($35, PB) A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life & landscape. Over the course of one hot summer, his provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate & male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally between our internal & external worlds.
The Republic of False Truths by Alaa Al Aswany
General Alwany is a pious man who loves his family. He also tortures & kills enemies of the state. Under the regime of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt is gripped by cronyism, religious hypocrisy & the oppressive military. Now, however, the regime faces its greatest crisis. The idealistic young from different backgrounds—engineers, teachers, medical students—among them the general’s daughter— have come together to challenge the status quo. Euphoria mounts as Mubarak is toppled & love blossoms across class divides, but the general & his friends mount a devastating counter-attack. ($30, PB)
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
Parents send their daughters to Our Lady of the Nile to be molded into respectable citizens, and to escape the dangers of the outside world. In the elite school run by white nuns, the young ladies learn, eat, sleep and gossip together. 15 years prior to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the girls try on their parents’ preconceptions & attitudes, transforming the lycée into a microcosm of the country’s mounting racial tensions & violence. In the midst of the interminable rainy season, everything unfolds behind the closed doors of the school: friendship, curiosity, fear, deceit & persecution. With masterful prose that is at once playful & penetrating, Mukasonga captures a society hurtling toward horror. ($20, PB)
Now in B Format: Summer by Ali Smith, $20
The Field by Robert Seethaler ($33, PB)
From their graves in the field, the oldest part of Paulstadt’s cemetery, the town’s late inhabitants tell stories from their lives. Some recall just a moment, perhaps the one in which they left this world, perhaps the one that they now realize shaped their life forever. Some remember all the people they’ve been with, or the only person they ever loved. These voices together—young, old, rich, poor—build a picture of a community, as viewed from below ground instead of from above. The streets of the small, sleepy provincial town of Paulstadt are given shape & meaning by those who lived, loved, worked, mourned & died there.
Great Stories Uncovered
Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor ($30, PB)
When an Antarctic research expedition goes wrong, the consequences are far-reaching—for the men involved and for their families back home. Robert ‘Doc’ Wright, a veteran of Antarctic field work, holds the clues to what happened, but he is no longer able to communicate them. While Anna, his wife, navigates the sharp contours of her new life as a carer, Robert is forced to learn a whole new way to be in the world. Author of Reservoir 13, Jon McGregor, returns with a novel that tenderly unpicks the notion of heroism & explores the indomitable human impulse to tell our stories—even when words fail us.
Blue Flowers by Carola Saavedra ($26, PB)
Marcos has just been through a divorce and moved into a new apartment. He feels alienated from his ex-wife, from his daughter, from society; everything feels flat and fake to him. He begins to receive letters at his new address from an anonymous troubled woman who signs off as A. and who clearly believes she is writing to the former tenant, her ex-lover, in the aftermath of a violent heartbreak. Marcos falls under the spell of the manic, hypnotic missives and for the first time in years, something moves him. Alternati between the letters detailing the dissolution of A.’s relationship, and Marcos’ growing fixation with this damaged person, Blue Flowers is a dark portrait of desire, love & sex, violence & fear, men & women.
Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley ($33, PB)
Pungent, steamy, insatiable Soho; the only part of London that truly never sleeps. On a corner, sits a large townhouse, the same as all its neighbours. But this building hosts a teeming throng of rich & poor, full from the basement right up to the roof terrace. Precious & Tabitha call the top floors their home but it’s under threat; its billionaire-owner Agatha wants to kick the women out to build expensive restaurants & luxury flats. Men like Robert, who visit the brothel, will have to go elsewhere. Those like Cheryl, who sleep in the basement, will have to find somewhere else to hide after dark. But the women won’t go quietly. Soho is their turf & they are ready for a fight.
Higher Ground by Anke Stelling ($30, PB)
Resi is a writer in her mid-forties, married to Sven, a painter. They live, with their 4 children, in an apartment building in Berlin, where their lease is controlled by some of their closest friends. Those same friends live communally nearby, in a house they co-own & have built together. Only Resi & Sven, the token artists of their social circle, are renting. As the years have passed, Resi has watched her once-dear friends become more & more ensconced in the comforts & compromises of money, success, and the nuclear family. After Resi’s latest book openly criticises stereotypical family life and values, she receives a letter of eviction. Incensed, Resi sets out to describe the world as it really is for her fourteen-year-old daughter, Bea. As Berlin, that creative mecca, crumbles under the inexorable march of privatisation & commodification, taking relationships with it, Resi is determined to warn Bea about the lures, traps, and ugly truths that await her. A ferocious and funny account of motherhood, parenthood, family, and friendship thrust into battle.
The Uncollected Stories of Allan Gurganus ($57, HB)
Offering characters antic & tragic, Alan Gurganus offers 9 stories never before collected, in which ‘Once upon a time’ collides with the everyday. Meet a mortician whose dedication to his departed clients exceeds all legal limits; a seaside couple fighting to save their family dog from Maine’s fierce undertow; a virginal seventy-eight-year-old grammar school librarian having her sole erotic experience with a polyamorous snake farmer; twin boys sent aloft in a vicious tornado, leaving only one of them alive. And, in an eerily prescient story, cholera strikes a rural village in 1849 and citizens come to blame their doomed young doctor who saved hundreds.
The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
As an adjunct professor of English in New York City with no hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy feels ‘like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had nowhere else to be but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise.’ No one but her boyfriend knows that she’s just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists—Dorothy has two of them. Nor can she bring herself to tell the other women in her life: her friends, her doctor, her mentor, her mother. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure? ($59, HB)
The world will never be the same
A sparkling new fantasy adventure from multi-awardwinning Emily Rodda
The new book from the authors of Thinking, Fast and Slow and Nudge
Out now from Now in B Format: The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams, $20 Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, $20 Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura ($33, PB)
In a tranquil neighbourhood of Tokyo, seven teenagers wake to find their bedroom mirrors are shining. At a single touch, they are pulled from their lonely lives to a wondrous castle filled with winding stairways, watchful portraits and twinkling chandeliers. In this new sanctuary, they are confronted with a set of clues leading to a hidden room where one of them will be granted a wish. But there’s a catch—if they don’t leave the castle by five o’clock, they will be punished. As time passes, a devastating truth emerges—only those brave enough to share their stories will be saved.
China Room by Sunjeev Sahota ($33, PB)
Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. She & her sisters-inlaw, married to 3 brothers in a single ceremony, spend their days hard at work in the family’s ‘china room’, sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a theory as to which of them is hers, a passion is ignited that will put more than one life at risk. Spiralling around Mehar’s story is that of a young man who in 1999 travels from England to the now-deserted farm, its ‘china room’ locked & barred. In enforced flight from the traumas of his adolescence—his experiences of addiction, racism, and estrangement from the culture of his birth—he spends a summer in painful contemplation & recovery, before finally finding the strength to return ‘home’.
Temporary by Hilary Leichter ($28, PB)
18 boyfriends. 23 jobs. One ghost who occasionally pops in to give advice. Welcome to the world of the Temporary. ‘There is nothing more personal than doing your job’. So goes the motto of the Temporary, as she takes job after job, in search of steadiness, belonging & something to call her own. Aided by her bespoke agency & a cast of boyfriends— each allotted their own task (the handy boyfriend, the culinary boyfriend, the real estate boyfriend)—she is happy to fill in for any of us: for the Chairman of the Board, a ghost, a murderer, a mother. Even for you, and for me.
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Thinking of crime? Writing it? Reading it? Having a yarn about it? Think Sisters in Crime! The Sisters have been inspiring women crime writers, readers and those curious about the workings of the genre for 30 years now. The big events are the Davitt Awards (for published full length works) and the Scarlet Stiletto short story award – both annual and highly valued. NSW is (again) getting in-person (as well as fabulous on-line) Sisters’ events. So, sisters, friends, supporters, crime addicts and those who just want a more than engaging night out, be there! The impossibly entertaining Candice Fox, speaking with the impossibly well-informed Sue Turnbull will launch Sisters in Crime NSW, and Candice’s new book, The Chase, at Gleebooks on Wednesday April 21st, usual times and prices. More info and to join Sisters in Crime—sistersincrime.org.au To contact Sisters in Crime NSW: contextcpm@bigpond.com, or annpenhall@gmail.com
True Crime
The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing by Sonia Faleiro ($30, PB)
Katra Sadatganj. A tiny village in western Uttar Pradesh. A community bounded by tradition & custom; where young women are watched closely, and know what is expected of them. It was an ordinary night when 2 girls, Padma & Lalli, went missing. The next day, their bodies were found hanging in the orchard, their clothes muddied. In the ensuing months, the investigation into their deaths would implode everything that their small community held to be true, and instigated a national conversation about sex, honour & violence. Sonia Faleiro returns to the scene of Padma & Lalli’s short lives, asking what is the human cost of shame?
The Winter Road: A Story of Legacy, Land & a Killing at Croppa Creek by Kate Holden
July 2014, a lonely road at twilight outside Croppa Creek, NSW: 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull takes out a .22 & shoots environmental officer Glen Turner in the back. On one side, a farmer hoping to secure his family’s wealth on the richest agricultural soil in the country. On the other, his obsession: the government man trying to apply environmental laws. The brutal killing of Glen Turner splits open the story of our place on this land. Is our time on this soil a tale of tragedy or triumph—are we reaping what we’ve sown? Do we owe protection to the land, or does it owe us a living? And what happens when, in pursuit of a legacy, a man creates terrible consequences? ($33, PB)
special price $27.99
In Control by Jane Monckton-Smith ($30, PB)
Domestic homicide is a pandemic so pervasive that the soaring figures cause weary resignation rather than alarm. A former police officer & professor of public protection, Jane Monckton Smith lectures on sexualised & fatal violence; works with families bereaved through homicide—and trains police & other professionals on how to best handle cases involving coercive control, domestic abuse & stalking. Her ground-breaking research led to the creation of the 8-stage homicide timeline, laying out identifiable stages in which coercive relationships can escalate to murder—revolutionising our understanding of them. In this book she shares a glimpse into a world of toxic masculinity & coercive control, one in which the tools are shame & fear, helped along by a media & justice system who are far from shedding sexist notions of men & women’s roles in society.
Court Number One by Thomas Grant
Number One of the Old Bailey is the most famous court room in the world, and the venue of some of the most sensational human dramas ever to be played out in a criminal trial. The principal criminal court of England, historically reserved for the more serious and high-profile trials, Court Number One opened its doors in 1907 after the building of the ‘new’ Old Bailey. In the decades that followed it witnessed the trials of the most famous and infamous. Thomas Grant offers detailed accounts of eleven cases, with protagonists ranging from the diabolical to the pathetic. He is a master at conveying the cut-and-thrust of cross-examination, managing to maintain a sense of speed while making sure you don’t miss the cultural or legal context. Drily witty—just when you start to think he is a bit too detached from what are, after all, matters of life and death, he soars into a rhetorical flight. ($25, PB)
6
Crime Fiction
The Cook of the Halcyon by Andrea Camilleri ($33, PB)
Two deaths—the suicide of a recently fired worker & the murder of an unscrupulous businessman—lead Inspector Montalbano to the Halcyon, a mysterious ship that visits Vigàta’s port each day. With very few crewmen, no passengers & a stern large enough to land a helicopter, it piques the Inspector’s interest straightaway. And whilst all this is going on, a rare trip to Genoa to visit Livia ends with the Vigàta police department in disarray, and Inspector Montalbano’s position as the head of the commisariat in jeopardy.
The Chase by Candice Fox ($33, PB)
When more than 600 of the world’s most violent human beings pour out from Pronghorn Correctional Facility into the Nevada Desert, the biggest manhunt in US history begins. But for John Kradle, this is his one chance to prove his innocence, 5 years after the murder of his wife & child. He just needs to stay one step ahead of the teams of law enforcement officers he knows will be chasing down the escapees. Death row supervisor turned fugitive-hunter Celine Osbourne is single-minded in her mission to catch Kradle. She has very personal reasons for hating him—and she knows exactly where he’s heading.
The Lady with the Gun Asks the Questions by Kerry Greenwood ($30, PB)
The Honourable Phryne Fisher—she of the Lulu bob, Cupid’s bow lips, diamante garters and pearl-handled pistol—is the 1920s’ most elegant & irrepressible sleuth. In this collection of stories she is up to her stunning green eyes in intriguing crime—accompanied by the ever-loyal Dot, the ingenious Mr Butler and all of Phryne’s friends and household, the action is as fast as Phryne’s wit and logic.
Judas Horse by Lynda La Plante ($33, PB)
When Detective Jack Warr identifies an informer, the terrified man begins to give details of a massive robbery planned by a team of unscrupulous and dangerous men. These men have already orchestrated many audacious robberies—and they have already killed to get what they want. Warr and his team must use their informant as a ‘Judas Horse’ to draw in the unsuspecting robbers, so that they go ahead with the planned robbery. However, one false move, and more blood will be spilled.
The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jonasson ($33, PB)
Una is devastated after the suicide of her father. So when she sees an advert seeking a teacher for two girls in Skalar on the storm-battered north coast of the island, she sees it as a chance to escape. But once she arrives, Una quickly realises nothing in city life has prepared her for this. The villagers are unfriendly. The weather is bleak. And, from the creaky attic bedroom in the old house she’s living, she’s convinced she hears the ghostly sound of singing. Una worries that she’s losing her mind. And then, just before Christmas, there’s a murder.
The Missing by Dirk Kurbjuweit ($33, PB)
Hanover, 1923. Boys are vanishing, one after another, without a trace. At first police suspect political motivations-perhaps the missing boys are communists, defecting to the newly formed USSR, or victims of the rising Nazi Party. Soon, however, Inspector Robert Lahnstein begins to believe even more sinister forces are at play—is a killer at work? Can Lahnstein track down the murderer before he takes another victim? Based on the true crimes of Fritz Haarmann, the fabled Butcher of Hanover
Girl, 11 by Amy Suiter Clarke ($33, PB)
Former social worker Elle Castillo is the host of a popular true-crime podcast that tackles cold cases of missing children in her hometown. After 4 seasons of successful investigations, Elle decides to tackle her white whale—the Countdown Killer, or TCK. 20 years ago, TCK established a pattern of taking & ritualistically murdering girls, each a year younger than the last. Weeks into her new season, Elle sets out to interview a listener promising a tip, only to discover his dead body. When a child is abducted days later, in a pattern that looks very familiar, Elle is convinced TCK is back. Will she be able to get law enforcement on her side and stop TCK before it’s too late?
Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us: A Novel by Joseph Andras ($20, PB)
A young revolutionary plants a bomb in a factory on the outskirts of Algiers during the Algerian War. The bomb is timed to explode after work hours, so no one will be hurt. But the authorities have been watching. He is caught, the bomb is defused, and he is tortured, tried in a day and sentenced to death by guillotine. A routine event, perhaps, in a brutal conflict that ended the lives of more than a million Muslim Algerians. But what if the militant is a pied-noir? What if his lover is a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust? What happens to a ‘European’ who chooses the side of anti-colonialism?
Now in B Format The Thur sday Murder Club by Richard Osman, $20 The Nancys by R.W.R. McDonald, $17
Transient Desires by Donna Leon ($33, PB)
2 young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with 2 young Italians. Brunetti’s curiosity is aroused by the behaviour of the young men, who abandon the victims after taking them to the hospital—if this was just an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it? Brunetti & his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, discover that one of the young men works for a man rumoured to be involved in more sinister night-time activities in the Laguna. Brunetti needs to enlist the help of both the Carabinieri & the Guardia di Costiera—adding to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime.
The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn ($30, PB)
Blackout by Simon Scarrow ($33, PB)
The Night Gate by Peter May ($33, PB)
Berlin, December 1939 As Germany goes to war, paranoia in the capital is intensified by a rigidly enforced blackout. When a young woman is found brutally murdered, Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke is under immense pressure to solve the case, swiftly. Treated with suspicion by his superiors for his failure to join the Nazi Party, Schenke walks a perilous line. The discovery of a second victim confirms Schenke’s worst fears. As the investigation takes him closer to the sinister heart of the regime, Schenke realises the warring factions of the Reich can be as deadly as a killer stalking the streets.
Two Storm Wood by Philip Gray ($33, PB)
In 1919, on the desolate battlefields of northern France, thousands of soldiers undertook the immense & dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial. Two Storm Wood follows the stories of 3 Brits whose lives have been affected by war in very different ways: a young woman who boldly sets out to find out what happened to her fiancé, who went missing in action; a soldier tasked with co-ordinating the retrieval of the dead; and a detective sent to investigate what appears to be a series of murders in the empty, devastated landscape.
The Khan by Saima Mir ($30, PB)
A successful lawyer, Jia Khan’s London life is a long way from the grubby Northern streets she knew as a child, where her father headed up the Pakistani community & ran the local organised crime syndicate. His Jirga rule was violent & bloody, but it was justice of a kind. However, now her father, Akbar Khan, has been murdered & Jia must return to take his place. In the past, the police relied on him to maintain the fragile order of the streets—now a power struggle has broken out amongst the various communities and now, nobody is safe.
Triflers Need Not Apply by Camilla Bruce ($33, PB)
Anton Sorenson had a $2,000 life-insurance policy set to expire & took out a new policy for $3,000. For just one day—July 30, 1900— both policies were in effect. According to his wife, Belle Gunness, he had come home from work with a terrible headache—she gave him quinine powder, and when she checked on him after preparing dinner he was dead. Belle remarries—8 months later her new husband is also dead. In 1906, a series of personal ads begin to appear in a local Midwest newspaper. Belle is looking for investors for her farm. None of the men who answer her ad are ever seen again. A chilling reimagining of the life of Belle Gunness, the original black widow.
Near the Bone by Christina Henry ($20, PB)
Mattie can’t remember a time before she and William lived alone on a mountain together. She must never make him upset. But when Mattie discovers the mutilated body of a fox in the woods, she realises that they’re not alone after all. There’s something in the woods that wasn’t there before, something that makes strange cries in the night, something with sharp teeth and claws. When three strangers appear on the mountaintop looking for the creature in the woods, Mattie knows their presence will anger William. Terrible things happen when William is angry.
Who is Vera Kelly by Rosalie Knecht ($23, PB)
NYC, 1962. Vera Kelly is struggling to make rent & blend into the underground gay scene in Greenwich Village. She’s working night shifts at a radio station when her quick wits, sharp tongue & technical skills get her noticed by a recruiter for the CIA. Next thing she knows she’s in Argentina, tasked with wiretapping a congressman & infiltrating a group of student activists in Buenos Aires. As she becomes enmeshed with the young radicals, the fragile local government begins to split at the seams. When a betrayal leaves her stranded in the wake of a coup, Vera learns war makes for strange & unexpected bedfellows, and she’s forced to take extreme measures to save herself.
You Need to Know by Nicola Moriarty ($33, PB)
Jill, her three sons, their wives and children are driving in convoy on Christmas Eve. But something sinister is simmering behind their happy smiles. Mimi is struggling with her new twins, but at least a glass of wine smooths out life’s jagged edges. Andrea’s starting to wonder if her marriage is as happy as she’d thought. Darren is reeling from a surprise request and teenager Callie has become increasingly withdrawn. On the way to their holiday house, a terrifying car accident devastates them all. But someone unexpected was in one of the cars. No one is searching for them. And their time is running out.
When Ambrosia first arrives at prestigious college Wesleyan she struggles to navigate the rules of this strange, elite world, filled with privileged ‘nice’ young women—until she meets the charismatic but troubled Sully, with whom she forms an obsessive friendship. Determined to impress her, Amb finds herself drawn deep into her new best friend’s dangerous manipulations—with no idea just how devastating the consequences will be In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree. A week later a famous art critic is viciously murdered in a nearby house. The deaths occurred more than 70 years apart. Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo Macleod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter. Two extraordinary narratives are set in train—one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of Occupied France; the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown.
One Way Street by Trevor Wood ($33, PB)
A series of bizarre drug-related deaths among runaway teenagers has set the North East’s homeless community on edge. The word on the street is that a rogue batch of Spice—the zombie drug sweeping the inner cities—is to blame, but when one of Jimmy Mullen’s few close friends is caught up in the carnage, loyalty compels him to find out what’s really going on. As his probation officer constantly reminds the homeless, PTSD-suffering, veteran: all he needs to do is keep out of trouble. Sadly for Jimmy, trouble seems to have a habit of tracking him down.
The Bounty by Janet Evanovich ($33, PB)
Special agent Kate O’Hare & international con man Nick Fox face a shadowy international organization known only as the Brotherhood. Directly descended from the Vatican Bank priests who served Hitler during WWII, the Brotherhood is on a frantic search for a lost train loaded with $30 billion in Nazi gold, untouched for over 75 years somewhere in the mountains of Eastern Europe.
A Gambling Man by David Baldacci ($33, PB)
It is nearly 1950 & Aloysius Archer is on his way to Bay Town, California to take up a post with renowned gumshoe, Willie Dash. Making an overnight stop in Reno he gets lucky at the casino, meets an actor named Liberty Callahan with her sights set on Hollywood & helps out a man threatened by mobsters for a bad debt. With a magnificent Delahaye motor as his repayment, Archer goes west with Liberty to seek work, fame & fortune. In Bay Town, as Archer & Dash dig deep into local politics & 2 seemingly unrelated murders, they discover a town full of secrets & strange events.
Tall Bones by Anna Bailey ($33, PB)
17-year-old Emma leaves her best friend Abi at a party in the woods—and she will never see her friend again. Abi’s disappearance cracks open the facade of the small town of Whistling Ridge—its history of long-held grudges & resentment. Within Abi’s family, there’s Noah, the older brother whom Abi betrayed, Jude, the shining younger sibling who hides his battle scars, her mother & father—both in thrall to the fire & brimstone preacher who holds the entire town in his grasp. Then there is Rat, the outsider, whose presence in the town both unsettles and excites those around him.
Every Vow You Break by Peter Swanson
After a whirlwind, fairytale romance, Abigail Baskin marries freshly-minted Silicon Valley millionaire Bruce Lamb. For their honeymoon, he whisks her away to an exclusive retreat at a friend’s resort off the Maine coast on Heart Pond Island. But once there, Abigail’s perfect new life threatens to crash down around her as she recognises one of their fellow guests as the good looking, charismatic stranger who weeks earlier had seduced her at her own Bachelorette party. ($30, PB)
The Paris Collaborator by A.W. Hammond
August, 1944. In German-occupied Paris, former schoolteacher Auguste Duchene has stumbled upon an unusual way to survive: he finds missing people. When he’s approached by the French Resistance to locate a missing priest—and a cache of stolen weapons—Duchene initially refuses. But the Resistance offer him no choice. Within hours, he’s also blackmailed by a powerful Nazi into searching for a German soldier who’s suspected of deserting. ($30, PB)
7
THE WILDER AISLES
In Elly Griffiths’ new novel The Night Hawk a group of metal detectorists, the eponymous Night Hawks, on a night search for buried treasure on a north Norfolk beach, instead find a dead body. DCI Harry Nelson first thinks it might be an asylum seeker, but it turns out to be a local boy, who has just been released from prison. When the tide starts to come in, the Night Hawks move the body further up the beach, much to DCI Nelson annoyance. Given this hunt for treasure, he calls in forensic archeologist Dr Ruth Galloway. Ruth, now newly promoted to head of department, is very much more interested in a hoard of Bronze age weapons, than the dead young man. A second murder occurs, suggesting to Nelson, that the first death was not an accident, and then a couple are found dead in what seems to be a murder/suicide at Black Dog Farm. Rumours abound about Black Dog Farm, especially around the ‘Black Shuck’—a ghostly dog, that appears to people before they die. Found at the scene of the crime is a note that includes the line ‘he is buried in the garden’, so Ruth is called in to excavate. And then there’s the odd ‘hospital’ room with white covered bed and medical equipment. Eventually, all the case strands come together—all pointing to this spooky farm in the middle of nowhere. Not a place to find yourself alone when the Black Shuck is nearby, as Ruth discovers. I’m always happy when another story featuring DCI Harry Nelson and Doctor Ruth Galloway appears. I love their complicated relationship—Nelson is the father of Ruth’s child, but is also married to Michelle with children of their own. And I forgot to mention Cathbad—sometime wizard, natural healer, and man of the woods and fields. He is married to Judy, one of Nelson’s team. A great character. And, by the way, the Black Shuck is a true legend, I looked it up. I’ve not been well recently, and David brought me an armful of proofs to aid in my recovery—so, from that pile, here are some suggestions for autumn and winter reading: Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny (due in April): Now Jane has a boyfriend she wants to appear grown-up and sophisticated, wearing lounging pyjamas and serving cocktails and canapés. What she didn’t factor into the equation, was what would happen at the end of the end of the night. Wise and funny—this is a story of an unconventional family. Still Life by Sarah Winman (due in June): The author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Sarah Winman’s new novel tells of a meeting in a ruined wine cellar in a Tuscan villa. It is 1944, Ulysses Temper is a young English soldier, and Evelyn Skinner is an art historian in her sixties. Evelyn (who is possibly a spy) is there trying to recreate the time she met E. M. Forster. This unlikely couple share a night together that changes Ulysses’s future in a most unlikely way. A beautiful novel of time and place and love. A Paper Inheritance by Dymphna Stella Rees (due in June). When Dymphna Rees finds bundles of love letters between her parents, Leslie Rees and Coralie Clarke Rees, she becomes intrigued. Leslie Rees and Coralie Clarke Rees were a power couple in the Australian literary scene in the thirties. They took their dream of being writers in London to Fleet Street, where they interviewed some of the century’s literary greats—including James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw and A A Milne. Returning to Sydney in 1930, they quickly became part of the vibrant arts scene and established prolific careers. Leslie became an award-winning children’s book author and the ABC’s national drama editor, while Coralie was one of the country’s first female broadcasters. They influenced the development of an authentically Australian arts culture and included among their friends Mary Gilmore, Ruth Park, D’Arcy Niland, Mary Durack and Vance and Nettie Palmer. I love reading about the thirties. What an era for writing, art, music and theatre. This book added to my knowledge of this time—a most interesting read. Janice Wilder
Turns Out, I’m Fine by Judith Lucy ($33, PB)
A broken heart becomes the catalyst for a complete existential melt down. Judith Lucy was nearly 50, suddenly alone & unsure about every aspect of her life. How had this happened? Should she blame one of her 4 parents? What part had the comedy world played & was her disastrous history with men about more than just bad taste? She tries everything from dating a tree to getting a portrait of her vulva done to swimming with a whale shark—and finds that despite death, heartache & a dry vagina it turns out … she’s fine.
8
Biography
The Chief Witness by Sayragul Sauytbay ($35, PB)
Born in China’s north-western province, Sayragul Sauytbay trained as a doctor before being appointed a senior civil servant. But her life was upended when the Chinese authorities incarcerated her. Her crime- being Kazakh, one of China’s ethnic minorities. In prison, Sauytbay was put to work teaching Chinese language, culture, and politics, in the course of which she gained access to secret information that revealed Beijing’s long-term plans to undermine not only its minorities, but democracies around the world. Upon her escape to Europe she was reunited with her family, but still lives under constant threat of reprisal.
Letters to Camondo by Edmund de Waal ($33, PB)
Count Moise de Camondo lived a few doors away from Edmund de Waal’s forebears, the Ephrussi. Like the Ephrussi, the Camondos were part of belle époque high society. They were also targets of anti-semitism. Camondo created a spectacular house & filled it with the greatest private collection of French 18th century art for his son to inherit. But when Nissim was killed in the WW1, it became a memorial and, on the Count’s death, was bequeathed to France. The Musée Nissim de Camondo has remained unchanged since 1936. Edmund de Waal explores the lavish rooms & detailed archives & uncovers new layers to the family story. In a haunting series of letters addressed to the Count, he tells us what happened next.
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1) 1918–38 by Chips Channon ($75, HB)
Born in Chicago in 1897, ‘Chips’ Channon settled in England after WW1, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family & served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy & bitchy by turns, they are the observations of a man who went everywhere & who knew everybody. Whether describing the antics of London society in the interwar years, or the growing scandal surrounding his close friends Edward VIII & Wallis Simpson during the abdication crisis, or the mood in the House of Commons in the lead up to the Munich crisis, his sense of drama & his eye for the telling detail are unmatched. Unabridged & uncensored for the first time.
Churchill & Son by Josh Ireland ($35, PB)
Few fathers & sons can ever have been so close as Winston Churchill & his only son Randolph. Both showed flamboyant impatience, reckless bravery, and generosity of spirit. But while Randolph inherited many of his fathers’ talents, he also inherited all of his flaws. Instead of the glory he believed was his birthright, Randolph died young, his body rotted by resentment & drink, before he could complete his father’s biography. This intimate story reveals the lesser-seen Winston Churchill: reading Peter Rabbit books to his children, admonishing Eton schoolmasters & using decanters & wine glasses to re-fight the Battle of Jutland at the table. Amid a cast of personalities who defined an era—PG Wodehouse, Nancy Astor, The Mitfords, the Duke & Duchess of Windsor, Lord Beaverbrook, William Randolph Hearst, Oswald Mosley, Graham Greene, Duff & Diana Cooper, the Kennedys, Charlie Chaplin, & Lloyd George—this is the lost story of a timeless father-son relationship.
Invisible Walls: A Journalist in Search of Her Life by Hella Pick ($35, PB)
A trailblazer for women in journalism, Hella Pick arrived in Britain in 1939 as a child refugee from Austria. Over nearly 4 decades she covered the volatile global scene, first in West Africa, followed by America & long periods in Europe. In her 35 years with the Guardian she reported on the end of Empire in West Africa, the assassination of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King’s march from Selma to Montgomery, the Vietnam peace negotiation in Paris, the 1968 student revolt in France, the birth of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the closing stages of the Cold War. A request for coffee on board a Soviet ship anchored in Malta led to a chat with Mikhail Gorbachev. A request for an interview with Willy Brandt led to a personal friendship that enabled her to come to terms with Germany’s Nazi past. Her memoir is also a clarion call for preserving professionalism in journalism at a time when social media muddy the waters between fact & fiction, between reporting & commentary.
Parenthesis by Elodie Durand ($33, PB)
Julie is barely out of her teens when a tumour begins pressing on her brain, ushering in a new world of seizures, memory gaps, and loss of self. Suddenly, the sentence of her normal life has been interrupted by the opening of a parenthesis that may never close. Based on the real experiences of cartoonist Elodie Durand, Parenthesis is a gripping testament of struggle, fragility, acceptance, and transformation—awarded the Revelation Prize of the Angoulame International Comics Festival.
Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith by Richard Bradford ($40, HB)
Patricia Highsmith was openly homosexual & wrote the seminal lesbian love story, Carol—however, her status as an LGBT icon is undermined by the fact that she was excessively cruel & exploitative of her friends & lovers. In this new biography, Richard Bradford considers Highsmith’s bestsellers in the context of her troubled personal life; her alcoholism, licentious sex life, racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny & abundant selfloathing.
The Shape of Sound by Fiona Murphy ($35, PB)
Fiona Murphy kept her deafness a secret for over 25 years. But then, desperate to hold onto a career she’d worked hard to pursue, she tried hearing aids. Shocked by how the world sounded, she vowed never to wear them again. After an accident to her hand, she discovered that sign language could change her life, and that Deaf culture could be part of her identity. Just as Fiona thought she was beginning to truly accept her body, she was diagnosed with a rare condition that causes the bones of the ears to harden. She was steadily losing her residual hearing. The news left her reeling. Blending memoir with observations on the healthcare industry, this is a story about the corrosive power of secrets, stigma & shame, and how deaf experiences & disability are shaped by economics, social policy, medicine & societal expectations.
Plunder by Menachem Kaiser ($33, PB)
Menachem Kaiser takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather’s former battle to reclaim the family’s apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland—and soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as ‘The Killer’. A surprise discovery—that his grandfather’s cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave labourer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex—leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder.
Two-Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning by Fiona Sampson ($40, HB)
‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’ Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic heroine. But behind the melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure, whose extraordinary life is a study in self-invention. Born into an age when women could neither vote nor own property once married, Barrett Browning seized control of her private income, overcame long term illness & disability, eloped to revolutionary Italy with Robert Browning—and achieved lasting fame as a poet. Feminist icon & political activist, she inspired writers as diverse as Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde & Virginia Woolf. This book holds up a mirror to the woman, her art, and the art of biography itself.
Stranger Care: A Memoir of Loving What Isn’t Ours by Sarah Sentilles ($35, PB)
After deciding not to have a biological child, Sarah Sentilles & her husband, Eric, try to adopt a baby through foster care. Knowing that the system aims for reunification with the birth family, they open their home to a flurry of social workers who question, evaluate & prepare them to welcome a child into their lives—even if it most likely means giving that child up. After years of starts & stops, the phone call finally comes: a three-day-old baby girl, Coco, in urgent need of a foster family. Sarah and Eric bring this newborn stranger home. A love letter to Coco & to the countless others like her, Stranger Care shares Sarah’s discovery of what it means to mother: in this case, not just a vulnerable infant, but also the birth mother who loves the child too. Coco’s story is a reminder that we depend on family, and that family can take many different forms..
As Beautiful As Any Other: A memoir of my body by Kaya Wilson ($35, PB)
When Kaya Wilson came out to his parents as transgender, a year after a near-death surfing accident and just weeks before his father’s death, he was met with a startling family history of concealed queerness and shame. This is a trans story. As Beautiful As Any Other weaves this legacy together with intimate examinations of the forces that have shaped Wilson’s life, and his body: vulnerability and power, grief and trauma, science and narrative. ‘Wilson fuses the personal with universal, the scientific with the emotional, without losing the impact of either. Instead, they are enhanced. An intimate portrait of family, transition and trauma, with fascinating digressions to marine science and climate change, crossing continents and themes with ease.’ Fiona McGregor
Fury by Kathryn Heyman ($30, PB)
At the age of 20, after a traumatic sexual assault trial, Kathryn Heyman ran away from her life & became a deckhand on a fishing trawler in the Timor Sea. Coming from a family of poverty and violence, she had no real role models, no example of how to create or live a decent life, how to have hope or expectations. After one wild season on board the Ocean Thief, the only girl among tough working men, facing storms, treachery & harder physical labour than she had ever known, Heyman was transformed. Finally, she could name the abuses she thought had broken her, could see ‘all that she had been blind to, simply to survive’—and she was able to return to the world determined to remake the role she’d been born into. A reflection on the wider stories of class, and of growing up female with all its risks & rewards, this is a memoir of fighting back & finding joy.
Letters of Note — $15 each: Space; Dogs; New York; Sex; Grief; Fathers
A compulsive collection of the world’s most entertaining, inspiring and powerful letters with fathers, dogs,New York, Sex, Grief or Space at their heart, curated by Sean Usher, the founder of the global phenomenon lettersofnote.com
9
Travel Writing
My Forests: Travels with Trees by Janine Burke
‘A mesmerising kaleidoscope of unforgettable characters doing brave things.’ – Anne Summers
Spine width 18.5 mm
‘At a time when many women are fighting to have their voices heard in Australian politics, this is a timely and important read.’
CMYK
C format 153 x 234mm
At a time when many women are fighting to have their voices heard in Australian politics, this is a timely and important read.
Gender is a powerful force that shapes Australia’s political leadership.
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG This book exposes age-old obstacles and propels us to fast-track change.
Gender impacts the politics, government and policies of our nation.
NATASHA STOTT DESPOJA AO
It influences the public lives of all political leaders. It affects how they
interact with political institutions and cultures, with each other and how they are treated by the media. It can also shape who we see as strong and capable leaders.
Yet, there is a lack of diversity in leadership positions across the political
are rife. So what impact does this have upon how Australia is governed and what might be done about it?
From the debates on gender quotas to the ‘bonk ban’, from Julie Bishop’s failed leadership bid to Scott Morrison’s cultivated ‘daggy dad’ persona,
from the treatment and legacy of Australia’s first female prime minister to
the machinations of our political parties and parliament, this book explores the subtle and overt operation of gender politics in Australia.
Gender Politics is a provocative and urgent collection that re-examines the way we navigate power and leadership in Australian politics.
– Sarah Hanson-Young 9 781742
EDITED BY ZAREH GHAZARIAN & KATRINA LEE-KOO
system, and accusations of bullying and a toxic culture in our political parties
Navigating Political Leadership in Australia
A UNSW COMPANY
‘Fantastic: funny, informative and very, very timely.’ K AT E D E V L I N
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‘In this fascinating exploration of the past, present and future of sexuality, Rob Brooks shows how new technologies can expose ancient features of human nature.’ S T E V E N P I N K E R
SOCIETY & CULTURE / TECHNOLOGY
UNSW COMPANY
‘A communal praise song to Australian literature in its many guises. I’ll be returning to these pages repeatedly.’ K ATHRYN HE YMAN
All writers begin as readers.
This is an ode, a love letter, to the magic of reading. To the spark that’s set off when the reader thinks ... I can do this too. Some of
Australia’s top writers take us through these moments of revelation through the dog-eared pages of their favourite Australian books.
Ellen van Neerven finds kin on the page with Miles Franklin-winner Tara June Winch. A.S. Patrić discovers a dark mirror for our times
in David Malouf’s retelling of an episode from The Iliad. Ashley Hay pens letters of appreciation and friendship to Charlotte Wood.
These and many more writers come together to draw knowledge
from the distinctive personal and sensory stories of this country: its thefts and losses, and its imagined futures. Australian fiction shows
us what it is possible to say and, perhaps, what still needs to be said. Reading like an Australian writer is an inspirational and heartfelt collection of essays that will enrich your reading of Australian stories and guide you in your own writing.
Also featuring Julienne van Loon, Tegan Bennett Daylight,
Ryan O’Neill, Rose Michael, Jane Rawson, Anna Spargo-Ryan, Felicity Castagna, Nigel Featherstone, Cate Kennedy, Angela Meyer, Fiona McFarlane, Hoa Pham, Maria Takolander, Debra
Reading like an Australian writer
Featuring Ellen van Neerven, A.S. Patrić, Peter Polites, Ashley Hay, Roanna Gonsalves, Nicholas Jose and more. Adelaide, Emily Maguire, Belinda Castles, Irini Savvides, Stephanie Bishop, Beth Yahp and Mykaela Saunders.
9 781742
236704
AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE / WRITING / REFERENCE
A UNSW COMPANY
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Reading like an Australian writer
Featuring contributions by Ellen van Neerven,
A.S. Patrić, Peter Polites,
Ashley Hay, Roanna Gonsalves, Nicholas Jose and more.
Edited by
Belinda Castles
The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen: Travels with My Grandmother’s Ashes by Krissy Kneen ($35, PB)
In her 2010 memoir, Affection, Krissy Kneen introduced readers to her unique family and the towering matriarchal figure of her grandmother, Lotty Kneen—who was always tight-lipped about her early life & family history. When Lotty died recently, Krissy finally felt at liberty to explore the questions that had nagged at her for so long, and set out with a box containing her grandmother’s ashes, intending to trace the old woman’s early life in Slovenia & Egypt, and perhaps locate some remnants of family. Along the way she uncovers the extraordinary story of the colony of Slovene women who became the nannies of choice for the wealthy Italians of pre-war Alexandria—and identifies as best she can the places where Lotty’s restless, demanding spirit will be at peace.
The Goddess and the City: Kali and Kolkata by Tess Rice (fwd) Tony Wheeler ($65, HB)
Kolkata was the capital of British India from 1722 until the Raj relocated to Delhi in 1911. The architectural wealth bedazzles but no more so than the people who live within its torn & much-loved fabric. Despite its myriad forms of transport including trams, Hooghly ferries, Ambassador taxis & a super-efficient metro, one can never travel quickly in Kolkata; every person has a story to tell, food to offer, or something to show. Photographer Tess Rice captures with perfect tone & resonance a city & its people.
The Third Pole by Mark Synnott ($33, PB)
EDITED BY ZAREH GHAZARIAN & KATRINA LEE-KOO
236933
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS / GENDER STUDIES
Travel the ancient Incense Road with the Biblical Magi. Enjoy the dancing Olive groves of Tuscany & read of ‘sleeping’ Silver Birches. Witness the spectacular tree houses of the Korowai of West Papua. Visit tree sitter Miranda Gibson, whose 449-day protest against clearfelling in Tasmania’s Tyenna Valley led to a World Heritage listing. Janine Burke invites you to accompany her through forests, art & writing, cities & parks, deserts & gardens, rainforests & wetlands, exploring the connections between trees & civilisations, past & present. ($40, HB)
Edited by
Belinda Castles
On June 8, 1924, George Mallory & ‘Sandy’ Irvine set out to stand on the roof of the world—they were last seen 800 feet shy of Everest’s summit. A century later, we still don’t know whether they achieved their goal. Irvine carried a Kodak camera with him to record their attempt, but it, along with his body, had never been found. Captured by this mystery veteran climber Mark Synnott made his own ascent up the infamous North Face along with a filmmaker using drone technology in an attempt to find Irvine’s body & the camera that might have held a summit photo. Synnott’s quest led him from oxygen-deprivation training to archives & museums in England, to Kathmandu, the Tibetan High Plateau, and up the North Face into a storm during a season described as the one that broke Everest. An awful traffic jam of climbers at the very summit resulted in tragic deaths. Sherpas revolted. Chinese government agents turned adversarial. Synnott himself went off the safety rope—if he had slipped, no one would have been able to save him—desperate to solve the mystery.
Revolutions: How Women Changed the World on Two Wheels by Hannah Ross ($33, PB)
Simone de Beauvoir borrowed her lover’s bike to cycle around Paris in the 1940s, instantly falling in love with the freedom it gave her (even when an accident caused her to lose a tooth). Alice Hawkins, a factory worker from Leicester, pedal-powered her fight for universal suffrage as the bicycle became a cornerstone of her work to recruit women to the cause. Zahra Naarin Hussano challenged religious & cultural taboos in Afghanistan to ride a bike and teach others to do the same. As a 24-yearold Latvian immigrant living in Boston, in 1894 Annie ‘Londonderry’ Kopchovsky became the first woman to cycle around the world. She took up the challenge, despite never having ridden a bike before, after two men bet a woman couldn’t do it. Hannah Ross introduces the women who are part of the rich & varied history of cycling. Ride: Cycle the World ($40, HB) Power up mountain passes in Italy’s Dolomites, tackle Bolivia’s infamous Death Road or go island-hopping in Japan- Ride takes you around the world in search of adventure on two wheels. Covering 100 incredible cycling routes, this inspirational book will make you reach for your handlebars, whether you’re an experienced, ascent-loving road cyclist or are planning your first bikepacking trip.
World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain ($30, PB)
Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris & Shanghai to the stunning desert solitude of Oman’s Empty Quarter & many places beyond. This life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun & frank travel guide that gives readers an introduction to some of his favourite places in his own words. Featuring essential advice on how to get there, what to eat, where to stay and, in some cases, what to avoid. Supplementing Bourdain’s words are essays by friends, colleagues, and family that tell even deeper stories about a place, including sardonic accounts of travelling with Bourdain by his brother, Chris; a guide to Chicago’s best cheap eats by legendary music producer Steve Albini, & more.
Fake Medicine by Bradley McKay
Food, Health & Garden
We all want to live healthier, happier & longer lives, but too many of us are charmed by charlatans, misled by marketing or scammed by sciencey-sounding salespeople. Dr Brad McKay has seen the rise of misinformation permeate our lives & watched as many of us have turned away from health experts. Too often, we place our trust in online influencers, celebrities & Dr Google when it comes to making important health decisions. Fake Medicine explores the potential dangers of wellness warriors, anti-vaxxers, fad diets, dodgy supplements, alternative practitioners & conspiracy theories. ($33, PB)
Who Poisoned Your Bacon Sandwich? byGuillaume Coudray ($30, PB)
The result of more than 5 years of detailed research, documentary filmmaker Guillaume Coudray’s book shows why many in the media are now comparing the processed meat industry with Big Tobacco. First he explores why nitro-additives came to be used systematically in meat processing, and then why, since the 1950s, meat-packing companies across the West have, it is alleged, repeatedly denied the links between the chemicals used in making bacon and ham, and the onset of bowel cancer - among many other health problems. ‘Reads like a crime novel, in which the processed meat industry is the perpetrator and ordinary consumers are the victims.’—Bee Wilson, Guardian
Breathless: Why Air Pollution Matters—and How it Affects You by Chris Woodford ($30, PB) In Delhi, the toxic smog is as bad for you as smoking 50 cigarettes a day. Even a few days in Paris, London or Rome is equivalent to 2 or 3 cigarettes. Air pollution is implicated in 6 of the top ten causes of death worldwide, including lung cancer, heart disease& dementia. Breathless offers clear facts about air pollution in our everyday lives, showing how it affects our bodies, how much of it occurs in unexpected places (indoors, inside your car), and how you can minimise the risks. Woodford’s book is rooted in the latest science & includes real-time air-quality experiments in city streets & ordinary homes.
The Proof is in the Plants by Simon Hill ($33, PB)
Before transitioning to a plant-based diet Simon Hill held many of the common misconceptions. But instead he experienced incredible improvements in his energy levels, digestion, mental clarity & postworkout recovery after making the shift. By undertaking a master’s degree in nutrition, poring over the latest scientific papers & books, and producing hundreds of hours of his podcast Plant Proof, Hill has pursued the answers to all the questions he had about fuelling our bodies with more plants. This book brings it all together into one inspiring & practical guide.
The Women’s Doc by Caroline de Costa ($33, PB)
‘We never train women in Sydney,’ Caroline de Costa was told in 1974 when she applied to become a junior registrar in obstetrics and gynaecology. When da Costa first started in medicine, being an unmarried mother was frowned on, cane toads were used for pregnancy tests, and giving birth was much riskier than it is today. Her funny & poignant stories of bringing babies into the world show that, while much has changed, women still work hard & it remains a bloody business. A birth plan is no guarantee of a normal birth (whatever that is). Men have always wanted to control women’s bodies, and Caroline has been instrumental in giving Australian women of all backgrounds the opportunity to resist, and to choose when & how they have babies. Her behind-the-scenes stories reveal it’s often the little things that win a campaign.
The Urban Vegetable Patch by Grace Paul
This is an eco-friendly guide to growing green, no matter your space. Starting with how to set-up your own vegetable patch up—be it on a windowsill, a balcony or even an allotment—you will learn how to make the most of your space, whatever the size. From how to grow vegetables organically—be it from seed or even food scraps—to making your own fertiliser, as well as practical tips on how to cook, store & share your haul, reduce your use of plastics & water, and even how to plant for wildlife, this book will inspire you to grow your way to greener way of living—so dig in! ($25, HB) Ripe Figs by Yasmin Khan ($45, HB) Yasmin Khan travels by boat & land through Greece, Turkey & Cyprus tracing recipes that have spread from the time of Ottoman rule, to the influence of recent refugee communities. Featuring more than 80 recipes that put vegetables centre stage & unite around thickets of dill & bunches of oregano, zesty citrus & sour pomegranates, sweet dates & soothing tahini—including dishes such as tomato & za’atar salad, courgette & feta fritters, pumpkin & cardamom soup, pomegranate & sumac chicken.
Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human by Rob Dunn and Monica Sanchez ($30, PB)
What exactly are flavours? Why are some so pleasing while others are not? This book considers the role that flavour may have played in the invention of the first tools, the extinction of giant mammals, the evolution of the world’s most delicious & fatty fruits, the creation of beer & our own sociality.
In Good Company by Sophie Hansen
Whether it’s a last-minute dinner with neighbours, a family feast or a casual summer picnic, Sophie Hansen has done the thinking for you and designed menus featuring 120 recipes that are simple, tasty and perfect for sharing. She also includes ideas for creating a memorable atmosphere for any gathering, large or small, plus advice on how to embrace shortcuts to take the pressure off, so you can focus on enjoying the good times rather than stressing in the kitchen. ($40, HB) From Our Kitchen to Yours ($37, HB)
Country Women’s Association of Victoria Inc.
The 185 recipes in this book have been shared countless times between friends & published as community cookbooks to raise funds for cash-strapped good causes. Tex Mex Fish with Crispy Potato Slices to feed a hungry family, Lamb, Lentil & Rosemary Soup or Orange Poppyseed & Cardamon Biscuits. There are recipes for breakfasts, morning teas, soups, salads, vegetarian dishes, main meals, jams, chutneys & preserves, updated with additional tips & hints to ensure success for the most inexperienced modern cook.
The Preserving Answer Book by Sherrie Brooks Vinton ($25, PB)
In this comprehensive guide, expert author Sherri Brooks Vinton answers the most commonly asked questions about every aspect of food preservation, from refrigeration and freezing to canning, drying, and fermenting all kinds of fruits and vegetables. She also offers tips and techniques for setting up the kitchen, choosing the preserving process that best suits readers’ needs, making equipment and ingredient substitutions, and much more.
Slow Rise: A Bread-Making Adventure by Robert Penn ($40, HB)
Over the course of a year, Robert Penn learns how to plant, harvest, thresh & mill his own wheat, in order to bake bread for his family. In returning to this pre-industrial practice, he tells the fascinating story of our relationship with bread—from the domestication of wheat in the Fertile Crescent at the dawn of civilization, to the rise of mass-produced loaves & the resurgence in homebaking today. Gathering knowledge from experts around the world—farmers on the banks of the Nile, harvesters in the American Midwest & Parisian boulangers—Penn reconnects the joy of making & eating bread with a deep appreciation for the skill & patience required to cultivate its key ingredient.
My Darling Lemon Thyme: Everyday by Emma Galloway ($50, HB)
Vegetarian, flavour-packed and gluten free—everyday food should be quick & easy, using readily available ingredients & simple techniques. Over 100 vegetarian recipes: Spiced pumpkin snacking cake, Pea, mint + halloumi fritters, Mushroom + lentil lasagne & Roasted strawberry + ginger ‘ice cream’ are among the beautiful, nourishing, simple-to-make & absolutely delicious recipes in Emma Galloway’s 3rd book.
Ombra: Recipes from the Salumi Bar by Carlo Grossi ($40, PB)
In Venice you’ll often hear the phrase Andiamo per un ombra? (‘Shall we go for a drink?’). And it’s this ‘ombra’, the Venetian name for a small tumbler of wine, that inspired Carlo Grossi’s restaurant—a modern take on an authentic Italian salumi bar right in the heart of Melbourne. This cookbook brings together the very best of Carlo’s food and hospitality, from lovingly aged meats & homemade sausages to mouth-watering pizzas, all sorts of bar snacks (cicchetti), hearty evening meals, fermented & pickled vegetables & fruits, and delectable desserts to finish off the evening.
BakeClass Step by Step by Anneka Manning
Whether you’re a beginner or already baking with confidence, Anneka will guide you through a unique step-by-step lesson sequence to help you master the 10 fundamental mixing methods that provide the foundation for all baking recipes. This must-have reference features over 90 sweet and savoury failsafe recipes that will build your know-how and confidence in a progressive and practical way. ($30, PB)
Fermented Foods by Christine Baumgarthuber
This book serves up the history & science behind some of the world’s most enduring food & drink. Beginning with wine, beer & other heady brews it then explores the often whimsical histories of fermented breads, dairy, vegetables & meat, and to speculate on fermented fare’s possible future. It also makes several detours into lesser-known territory—African beers, the formidable cured meats of subarctic latitudes, & the piquant, sometimes deadly products of Southeast Asia. ($35, HB)
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books for kids to young adults Don’t Forget by Jane Godwin & Anna Walker An uplifting picture book for 5+, reflecting on what’s important for each of us to remember, from award winning author Jane Godwin & award winning illustrator Anna Walker of All Through the Year and Today We Have No Plans. Don’t forget to make your bed, and wear socks that fit your feet... Don’t forget to care, to play, To run, to laugh... Sometimes, we need to remember all the things we can do to be part of the world. Small things, like offering a smile. And bigger things, like hoping, dreaming, imagining ($20, HB)
The Katha Chest by Radhiah Chowdhury (ill) Lavanya Naidu ($25, HB)
Six-year-old Asiya loves to go to Nanu’s house. Best among all of Nanu’s treasures is the big old chest filled with quilts that tell the stories of the women in Asyia’s family. With gorgeous, fresh and beautifully colourful illustrations inspired by Bangladeshi katha quilts and traditional West Bengali pattachitra panel illustrations, The Katha Chest is a beautifully woven tale about the bonds of love, culture and memory.
Masters of Disguise by Marc Martin
Now you see them, now you don’t! Cloaked in a riot of colour, pattern and texture are a dozen animals—from chameleons and polar bears to Gaboon vipers and mimic octopuses—that have mastered the art of fading into the background. Melbourne-based illustrator Marc Martin offers fact-packed pages that segue into clever & beautifully illustrated seek-and-find spreads that put readers’ newfound knowledge of each creature & its ecosystem to the test. ($27, HB)
The Gentle Genius of Trees by Philip Bunting
There are around 3.4 trillion trees on our planet. That’s around 400 trees for every human—but at our current rate of deforestation, we’re losing almost 1.5 trees per person, per year. Limit the things you buy, plant a native tree if you can, and spend more time in the woods. What could we clever humans ever learn from trees? Take an unashamedly anthropomorphic wander through the woods with Philip Bunting to learn a few life lessons from our foliaged friends. ($20, HB)
Super Geeks 1: Fish and Chips by James Hart ($15, PB)
fiction under 8’s
Best friends Zeek and Arnie love solving problems, inventing, playing video games, coding, reading comics, cooking (mostly Arnie) and planning WORLD DOMINATION (mostly Zeek). But when Zeek puts a microchip in Arnie’s pet fish, Eleanor, things go horribly wrong. A super-intelligent Eleanor decides she’s going to become the supreme ruler of the world. Illustrator James Hart’s new graphic novel series is oerfect for fans of Real Pigeons, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dog Man.
The Secret Explorers & the Smoking Volcano by S. J. King ($10, PB)
Meet the Secret Explorers—a band of brainiac kids from all around the world. This outing rainforest expert Ollie is joined by engineering expert Kiki on an mission to rescue a lost baby orangutan in the steamy rainforest of Borneo. Along the way, they encounter greedy plantation owners who are plotting to destroy the forest to expand a palm oil plantation. ‘Ollie’s Mission (end) Notes’ summarise of all the scientific facts and discoveries made throughout the story.
What Zola Did on Friday by Melina Marchetta (ill) Deb Hudson ($13, PB)
Zola loves living on Boomerang Street with her mum and her nonna. Every day of the week is an adventure. But Zola has a problem. No matter how much she tries, she can’t keep out of trouble. Like on Friday, when she and Alessandro decide to paint Nonno Nino’s little yellow boat. There are 7 stories in this series by Looking for Alibrandi author Marchetta—Saturday & Sunday out in June & August.
Dog Man #10: Mothering Heights by Dav Pilkey
Dog Man & Petey face their biggest challenges yet in adventure number 10. Dog Man is down on his luck, Petey confronts his not so purr-fect past, and Grampa is up to no good. The world is spinning out of control as new villains spill into town. Everything seems dark and full of despair. But hope is not lost. Can the incredible power of love save the day? Dav Pilkey’s wildly popular Dog Man series explores universally positive themes, including love, empathy, kindness, persistence, and the importance of doing good. ($18, HB)
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Chosen by Rachel Robson
picture books
Move that Mountain by Jol & Kate Temple
There are 2 sides to every story. A whale has become stranded on the beach, but the tiny puffins are far, far too small to help. When this book is read in reverse, the puffins realise they are not too little to help—together they can fix the problem. A heart-warming and inspirational story about how even the smallest voice can make a big difference. Illustrated by Terri Rose Baynton ($25, HB)
While You’re Sleeping by Mick Jackson
Have you ever wondered what’s happening in the world while you’re asleep in your bed? From bakers preparing bread and cakes for your table and firefighters waiting patiently for a call, to hospitals helping people have babies and caring for those who are ill. There’s foxes foraging, bats flying, and owls hunting for prey. And around the world other children play, learn, eat & read while you’re tucked up fast asleep. Illustrations by John Broadley packed with detail—this is the perfect book for bedtime. ($25, HB)
non fiction
Pranklab by Chris Ferrie Byrne Laginestra & Wade D. Fairclough
What’s more fun than a practical joke? A scientific practical joke! Using everyday household items, kids can exploit the laws of physics, biology, and chemistry through entertaining (and perfectly safe) activities. Each prank includes easy-to-understand instructions, step-by-step diagrams, and diary-style illustrations. Additional notes in each prank explain the science behind the fun. Pranks include: Fountain Dew; Natural Selection Candy; Disappearing Ink Stain; Ghost toothpick and more! ($25, PB)
Dorling Kindersley: Life Skills ($20, HB)
Life Skills includes practical advice & real-life examples that teach problem solving, how to make good decisions, and excellent communication skills. Kids will learn how to better understand themselves and others, as well as create coping strategies for difficult situations. The book has activities like making your own mind maps, thinking about body language, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes—developing life skills not just for better prospects at school & career, but it also for more confidence to aim for a bright, secure & happy future.
What’s new with Blue
Where’s Bluey? A Search-and-Find Book ($15, BD)
Have you seen Bluey and Bingo? There are lots of other hidden items too, so join the fun in this search-and-find book! Bingo ($15, BD) With Bluey away for the day, can Bingo find a way to play by herself? A board book with a special puzzle surprise. Mum School ($17, HB) Bluey wants to play Mum School instead of having her bath. But will the kids listen to her? My Mum is the Best ($17, HB) Bluey and Bingo love their mum and she loves them! Discover all of Chilli’s special mum skills in this touching and humorous book.
graphic novels
Animorphs 1: The Invasion by K. A. Applegate (ill) Chris Grine ($17, PB)
Jake could tell you about the night he and his friends saw a strange light in the sky that seemed to be heading right for them. That was the night five normal kids learned that humanity is under a silent attack—and were given the power to fight back. Now Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias & Marco can transform into some of the most dangerous creatures on Earth. And they must use that power to outsmart an evil greater than anything the world has ever seen.
Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken ($20, PB)
Extraordinary things don’t happen to 14-year-old Sydelle Mirabil, a talented weaver who dreams about life outside of her tiny village—until a mysterious young wizard named Wayland North appears needing her help to stop a war between kingdoms. Battling sudden earthquakes, freak snowstorms & a dark wizard, Sydelle discovers more about North’s past & her own strange abilities—and realises that the fate of the kingdom may rest in her fingertips.
Holocaust by Hugh Dolan (ill) Adrian Barbu ($15, PB) An outing for cheesecake becomes living history when David, the baker, relates his experiences of Nazi occupied Warsaw Ghetto—tracing the story of the rise of Nazism and Hitler’s persecution of the Jews, merging historical imagery and documents with the haunting tale of David and his family. A story of fear, resilience and compassion, and a legacy of love and hope.
bookclub & kids events with Rachel Robson
In May
Gus Gordon is our Illustrator in Residence for April—he is the author of Finding Francois and Herman and Rosie, and illustrator for Lisa Shanahan’s Big Pet Day, Jill Esbaum’s I Am Cow Hear Me Moo and Yvonne Morrison’s My Aussie Dad. Ronojoy Ghosh will be our Illustrator in Residence for May celebrating Winner Winner Bin Chicken Dinner (Kate Temple will be here for Storytime on Friday May 7th). If you want to keep up to date with everything Gleebooks childrens sign up to our instagram page madhatters_gleeparty which lists and updates all of our events and book club books for kids. Also, Corinne Fenton came in the other day and signed some copies of her book To the Bridge—To The Bridge, beautifully illustrated by Andrew McLean, tells the story of Lennie Gwyther and Ginger Mick, a boy and his pony who crossed Sydney’s Harbour Bridge on 19th of March, 1932—and marched into history. It came out last year but there’s nothing like a signed copy of a great book.
Plum and Woo #1: The Puzzling Pearls by Lisa Siberry ($17, PB)
Hannah Plum loves fashion, fun & junk food. Patti Woo is obsessed with detective novels, lives in leggings, and is definitely not Hannah’s friend. But the 2 girls are stuck at the beachside Heartbreak Hotel together while Hannah’s dad & Patti’s mum are out birdwatching and—yuck!—falling in love. When a hotel guest’s beautiful pink wedding dress is stolen, Hannah is determined to get to the bottom of it. With a reluctant Patti in tow, the two girls are launched into an ever-deepening mystery. Every episode in this series will see Hannah & Patti investigating a surprising & sinister fashion mystery while also navigating their newly blending family.
The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni ($17, PB)
teen fiction
17-year-old Kiva Meridan has spent the last 10 years fighting for survival in the notorious death prison, Zalindov, working as the prison healer. When the Rebel Queen is captured, Kiva is charged with keeping the terminally ill woman alive long enough for her to undergo the Trial by Ordeal—a series of elemental challenges against the torments of air, fire, water and earth, assigned to only the most dangerous of criminals. Then a coded message from Kiva’s family arrives, containing a single order—Don’t let her die. We are coming. Aware that the Trials will kill the sickly queen, Kiva risks her own life to volunteer in her place. If she succeeds, both she & the queen will be granted their freedom. But no one has ever survived.
Huda and Me by H. Hayek ($15, PB)
fiction 8 to 12
When their parents have to travel to Beirut unexpectedly, 12year-old Akeal & his 6 siblings are horrified to be left behind in Melbourne with the dreaded Aunt Amel as their babysitter. Things do not go well, and Akeal’s naughty little sister, Huda, hatches a bold plan to escape. After stealing Aunt Amel’s credit card to buy plane tickets to Lebanon, Huda persuades her reluctant favourite brother to come with her. So begins Huda & Akeal’s hair-raising & action-packed journey to reunite with their parents half a world away, in a city they’ve grown up dreaming about but have never seen. 9+
Heroes of the Secret Underground by Susanne Gervay ($17, PB)
Louie lives with her brothers, Bert & Teddy, in a hotel run by their grandparents. It is one of Sydney’s grand old buildings, rich in history—and in secrets. When a rose-gold locket, once thought lost, is uncovered, it sends Louie & her brothers spinning back in time. Back to a world at war: Budapest in the winter of 1944, where their grandparents are hiding secrets of their own. From bestselling author Susanne Gervay comes a heart-racing timeslip story inspired by her own family’s escape from Budapest during the Holocaust.
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland ($20, PB)
Iris Hollow & her 2 older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And—their dark hair turned white, their blue eyes slowly turned black. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful and inexplicably dangerous. 10 years later, 17-year-old Iris Hollow is doing all she can to fit in & graduate high school—something her two famously glamorous globe-trotting older sisters, Grey & Vivi, never managed to do. But when Grey goes missing, leaving behind only bizarre clues, Iris and Vivi are left to trace her last few days. As they brush against the supernatural, they realise that the story they’ve been told about their past is unravelling and the world that returned them seemingly unharmed ten years ago, might just be calling them home.
Being Black ‘n Chicken, and Chips by Matt Okine
Mike Amon just wants to fit in. He wants to be a star athlete. He wants his dad to stop embarrassing him. He wants his first kiss. He also wants his mum to survive. When his mum is diagnosed with advanced cancer, Mike figures if he gets his own life right and makes his mum proud, maybe it’ll be enough to help her get better. But this might be harder than it looks. First, he has to move in with his African dad whose skills in the kitchen don’t extend beyond heating up frozen chicken nuggets. Then he has to contend with the school bully who has it in for him, and all while navigating puberty as a late bloomer and trying to face a serious phobia of jellyfish. As if that wasn’t enough, the girl he has a crush on has her own heartbreak to deal with, and after a dramatic encounter down at the Jetty, Mike finds himself being rushed to hospital nursing the worst injury imaginable. If he can’t even sort out his own problems, how can he possibly save his mum? ($20, PB)
Find My Favourite Things
($15, BD) A perfect interactive book to share with pre-reading toddlers or older children just beginning to read—with characters, objects, colours to follow & find from page to page.
LEGO Life Hacks
Bookclub (so far) Saturdays, 3.30pm May 8 Years 3/4 Lisa Siberry Plum & Woo May15 years 5/6 Belinda Murrell The Golden Tower May 22 years 7/8 Matt Okine Being Black ‘n Chicken & Chips May 29 Years 9/10 yet to be decided Rhymetime & Storytime 10am Mondays & Fridays Rhymetime Mondays Storytime Fridays Kate Temple will be here for Storytime on Friday May 7th.
($20, PB) LEGO-fy your life with a speaker that amplifies your phone, a weekly planner made of LEGO bricks, a catapult that flings paper into the wastepaper basket and much more.
Off the Map by Scot Gardner ($20, PB) Our home town. Sometimes it feels like the centre of the universe, sometimes it’s the bum-end of nowhere. We are her sons and daughters. These are our triumphs and our heartaches, our fears and hopes for a better life. Getting lost, falling in love, pushing boundaries, exploring the world—powerfully honest stories to make you think and feel, from the award-winning author of The Dead I Know and Changing Gear. Every Thing We Keep by Di Walker ($19, PB)
Trailing her orange suitcase, and a heart full of worry, 13-yearold Agatha is about to go home. She has been in & out of foster care for years now, but her latest new life lived with naval precision with Katherine, Lawson & their dog, Chief, has proved to be the salvation that Agatha needed. She has new friends, a sense of place, and space to breathe. But when the social worker says it’s time to return to her parents, her world comes crashing down. ‘Home’ has always made her anxious & ashamed—and she can’t understand why now she is being forced to go back. Is it possible to find a way to love her parents without having to live with them?
When We Are Invisible by Claire Zorn ($20, PB)
Instinct has kept us alive so far. It’s like a compass and I tune in to the needle often- trust/don’t trust, run/stay . . . I can’t read the needle right now. The warmth of the room is clouding my judgment. In the midst of a nuclear winter, Lucy, Fin and Max flee the chaos of Sydney with blood on their clothes, a gun and handwritten directions to safety. When they reach Wattlewood, it seems like their struggle to survive might be over. There is food, warmth and adults in charge. So why can’t Lucy shake the feeling they’re still in danger? Lucy’s survived the apocalypse, but can she escape a more insidious threat?
activities
Learn about Aboriginal culture
Topic Cards $34.95 A set of 30 double-sided Topic Cards about Aboriginal Australia that cover Kinship; Totems; Caring for Country & much more.
Science Topic Cards $34.95
25 examples of the scientific ingenuity and innovation of Aboriginal people including Boomerang and Aerodynamics, Toxic to Edible, Bush Medicine & Traditional Fire Management. Bush Foods Snap! $32.95 Classic memory game using bush foods.
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Events
No doubt by the time you read this missive we’ll be in the thick of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, so don’t forget to stop by our pop-up shop and say hi in between author talks! Our own in-shop events have been humming along nicely, and we’re on the verge of allowing full capacity crowds upstairs again (as long as there is low community transmission from the Brisbane outbreak.) If you haven’t booked in already, keep an eye out for some of the SWF-worthy authors gracing our Gleebooks stage. We have the likes of Scott Ludlam, Kate Holden, Linda Jaivin, and David Brophy joining us, so it’ll be a super interesting month. I’ll look forward to seeing you soon! James Ross
Upstairs at 49 Glebe Pt Rd
Launch: Thur May 6, 6 for 6.30 Al Clark with Launcher David Stratton Time Flies Launch: Fri Mar 7, 6 for 6.30 Angela O’Keeffe with launcher Mette Jakobsen Night Blue Launch: Sun May 9, 2.30 for 3 Peter Rodgers with launcher April Pressler Beethoven’s Tenth: And the Journey Which Saved the World Event: Mon May 10, 6 for 6.30 Scott Ludlam with Rebecca Huntley Full Circle: A search for the world that comes next Event: Tue May 11, 6 for 6.30 Kate Holden in conv with Richard Glover The Winter Road: A Killing at Croppa Creek Event: Wed May 12, 6 for 6.30 Melissa Roberts & Trevor Watson in conversation with Richard McGregor & Madeleine O’Dea The Beijing Bureau: 25 Australian Correspondents Reporting China’s Rise Event: Thur May 13, 6 for 6.30 Linda Jaivin with Benjamin Law The Shortest History of China Event: Fri May 14, 6 for 6.30 Alana Mann with Laura Dalrymple Food in a Changing Climate Event: Thur May 20, 6 for 6.30pm Sarah Dingle with Paddy Manning Brave New Humans: The Dirty Reality of Donor Conception Launch: Sun May 23, 2.30 for 3pm Anwen Crawford No Document Event: Wed May 26, 6 for 6.30pm Christine Sykes with Little Pattie Gough and Me: My Journey from Cabramatta to China and beyond Event: Thur May 27, 6 for 6.30pm David Brophy with Stephen FitzGerald China Panic: Australia’s Alternative to Paranoia and Pandering
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er! Rememb t free b and ge ps, lu c e le G ur sho Join the s held at o t n e v e o t every entry ed with u r c c a it aner 10%cred d the Gle n a , e s a h c pur oor. to your d delivered
Don’t miss out! Sign up for gle The gleeboo email! ks weekly email events update. asims@glee books.com.a u
Performing Arts
A Restless Hungry Feeling: The Double Life of Bob Dylan V1: 1941–1966 by Clinton Heylin
In 2016 it was announced that Bob Dylan had sold his personal archive to the George Kaiser Foundation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, reportedly for $22 million. The Foundation asked Clinton Heylin to assess the material they had been given—and he became convinced that a whole new biography was needed. It turns out that much of what previous biographers—Dylan himself included—have said is wrong; often as not, a case of, Print the Legend. With fresh and revealing information on every page this volume covers Dylan’s meteoric rise to fame, his elevation to spokesman of a generation, his alleged betrayal when he ‘goes electric’, the recording of his 3 undisputed electric masterpieces- Bringing it All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde—to the peak of his fame in July 1966 when he reportedly crashes his motorbike in Woodstock, upstate New York, and disappears from public view. His reemergence will be covered in Volume 2, to be published in autumn 2022. ($65, HB)
Punk Women by David Ensminger ($30, PB)
David Ensminger delves underground to explore the oft overlooked community of badass women who shaped the punk scene. There’s a common thread of women being excluded and gatekept from the hardcore music scene, but this anthology challenges that notion and shows that women have still been able to overcome, kick ass, and shred alongside the best of them. Biographies, interviews, band anecdotes, and neverbefore-published photos showcase the talent and artistry of bands like Bikini Kill, The Glittersluts, Bratmobile, Spitboy, the Germs, The Slits, and dozens more.
Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer by Florence Ostende ($95, HB)
Since emerging in the early 1980s as a prodigy at London’s Royal Ballet School, Michael Clark has remained at the forefront of innovation in dance, working in close collaboration with a broad range of pioneering artists such as Sarah Lucas, Leigh Bowery, Charles Atlas, Cerith Wyn Evans, Peter Doig, Elizabeth Peyton, Wolfgang Tillmans & musicians such as Mark E. Smith, Wire, Scritti Politti & Relaxed Muscle. As a young choreographer, Clark brought together his classical ballet training with London’s club culture, fashion & punk rock to establish himself as one of the most innovative artists working in modern dance. Loosely tracing the chronological evolution of his career, a variety of cultural figures—ranging from Jarvis Cocker to Charles Atlas—write about the countercultural undercurrents with which Clark’s work connects.
The Nightingale by Sam Lee ($35, HB)
Throughout history, the nightingale’s sweet song has inspired musicians, writers & artists around the world. Passionate conservationist, musician & folk expert Sam Lee tells the story of the nightingale. This book reveals in beautiful detail the bird’s song, habitat, characteristics and migration patterns, as well as the environmental issues that threaten its livelihood. From Greek mythology to John Keats, to Persian poetry & ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, Lee delves into the various ways we have celebrated the nightingale through traditions, folklore, music, literature, from ancient history to the present day.
Poetry
I said the sea was folded: Love Poems by Erik Jensen
Reminiscent of Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson & Seamus Heaney. The poems chart the first 3 years of Jensen’s relationship with his partner, a non-binary composer & musician. They are love poems, written against the complexity of understanding another person. Together they form a fragmentary memoir of hope, disagreement & love. ($23, PB)
The Letters of Thom Gunn ($80, HB)
‘I write about love, I write about friendship,’ remarked Thom Gunn: ‘I find that they are absolutely intertwined.’ These core values permeate his correspondence with friends, family, lovers & fellow poets. Gunn’s letters reveal the evolution of his work & illuminate the fascinating life that informed his poems: his struggle to come to terms with his mother’s suicide; his changing relationship with his life partner, Mike Kitay; the LSD trips that led to his celebrated collection Moly (1971); and the deaths of friends from AIDS that inspired the powerful, unsparing elegies of The Man with Night Sweats (1992).
EMILY MAGUIRE A clear-eyed, heart-wrenching and deeply compassionate novel about love and family, betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to fill our empty spaces, from the acclaimed author of An Isolated Incident. ‘Bold, furious, unapologetic and deeply insightful.’ SOFIE LAGUNA, author of Infinite Splendours
Homecoming by Elfie Shiosaki ($25, PB)
Homecoming pieces together fragments of stories about four generations of Noongar women and explores how they navigated the changing landscapes of colonisation, protectionism, and assimilation to hold their families together. This seminal collection of poetry, prose and historical colonial archives, tells First Nations truths of unending love for children—those that were present, those taken, those hidden and those that ultimately stood in the light.
Stasis Shuffle by Pam Brown ($25, PB)
In Stasis Shuffle Pam Brown continues to write a poetry that maps the edges of thought, to think ‘what cannot / be thought’. This collection plays with style and turns its attention to both personal friendships and formal experimentation. The poems are fragmentary and discursive, knowing and wry; bursting with jokes, wordplay, strange observation and striking thoughts that unfold with the sudden joy of discovery.
The Life and Zen Haiku Poetry of Santoka Taneda by Oyama Sumita & William Scott Wilson ($30, HB)
Zen monk Santoka Taneda (1882–1940) is one of Japan’s most beloved modern poets, famous for his ‘free-verse’ haiku, the dominant style today. This book tells the fascinating story of his life, liberally sprinkled with more than 300 of his poems and extracts from his essays and journals—compiled by his best friend and biographer Oyama Sumita and elegantly translated by William Scott Wilson.
Unanimal, Counterfeit, Scurrilous: New Poems by Mark Anthony Cayanan ($24, PB)
This collection loosely channels the dynamic of desire & inhibition in Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice. The poems follow the trajectory of the ageing Aschenbach’s pursuit of youth & beauty, transmuting his yearning & resistance into jittery flirtations with longing, decay & abandonment against a backdrop of political violence. The poems are formed by polyphonic allusions which enact the intersectionality of the speaker; by turns melodramatic, flirtatious, satirical. Like the tragic protagonist of Death in Venice, Cayanan’s collection manifests a longing for extroversion sabotaged by its own will. It is a queer performance of anxiety and abeyance, in which the poems’ speakers obsessively rehearse who they are, and what they may be if finally spoken to.
I Am the Rage by Martina McGowan ($25, PB)
An unflinching collection that explores race in America from the raw, unfiltered viewpoint of a Black woman. Dr Martina McGowan is a retired MD, a mother, and a poet. Her poetry provides insights that no think piece on racism can; putting readers in the uncomfortable position of feeling, reflecting, and facing what it means to be a Black American. This entire collection was created during 2020, many shortly after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd—to name but a few. Illustrated by Diana Ejaita.
A Thousand Crimson Blooms by Eileen Chong
Eileen Chong’s poetry examines the histories—personal, familial & cultural—that form our identities & obsessions. This volume is a deepening of her commitment to a poetics of sensuous simplicity and complex emotions, even as she confronts the challenges of infertility or fraught mother-daughter relations. Entwined throughout are questions of migration and belonging. ($25, PB)
The Open by Lucy Van ($20, PB)
The ocean passes beneath these poems and one inevitably gets wet. It’s ‘a liquidation of territory’, whether in Vietnam or in Australia, or between what’s touched and what’s yet to be touched. Site of frisson. Contention. Then insight. These prose poems start as a moment flowing in interior monologue into multiple spaces and times. Then sneakily, and bravely too, they open estranging doors, so poetry starts reading like short story becoming extemporaneous discourse, erudite and interrogative, hopscotching from Foucault to Kristeva to Malouf to Plath. Van’s quicksilver to-ing and fro-ing creates an insight-coaxing discombobulation.
A World War II story of female friendship, longing and sacrifice, bringing together the present and the past. ‘An epic novel about women, love and heartbreak. A triumph!’ SALLY HEPWORTH, author of The Good Sister
OUT NOW
Slowlier by Ella O’Keefe ($20, PB)
Ella O’Keefe writes poems with the waste products of capitalism. She uses juxtaposition so that fragments of the world float by, bumping up against each other. The poems travel, board planes, catch the bus, have a lot of walking to do. Unsurprisingly, things are often seen through a screen. Concerned with how products are created, she builds a complicated world, one that attends to the uneconomic fractions, the waste rock & turns them into the poem, or ‘crystal form data-mining in the apricot light—from the introduction by Juliana Spahr.
Language & Writing I Saw the Dog: How Language Works by Alexandra Aikhenvald ($30, PB)
Every language in the world shares a few common features: we can ask a question, say something belongs to us, and tell someone what to do. But beyond that, our languages are richly & almost infinitely varied: a French speaker can’t conceive of a world that isn’t split into un & une, male & female, while Estonians have only one word for both men & women: tema. In Dyirbal things might be masculine, feminine, neuter—or edible vegetable. From the remote swamplands of PNG to the university campuses of North America Alexandra Aikhenvald illuminates the vital importance of names, the value of being able to say exactly what you mean, what language can tell us about what it means to be human—and what we lose when they disappear forever.
The New Academic: How to write, present & profile your amazing research to the world by Simon Clews ($35, PB)
Simon Clews offers a wealth of practical advice to academics on how to write & speak in an entertaining, informative and, above all, accessible way. He will also help you to take care of the practicalities, the business if you like, of being a writer & communicator. Aimed at researchers at all levels of experience, this book will take you from the basics of writing & speaking, how to develop a public profile, gain traction online—starting with a simple letter to the editor & then moving through writing for newspapers & magazines, radio & TV interviews, as well as podcasting, and even exhibitions & documentary film.
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Granny’s Good Reads with Sonia Lee I have had great fun reading Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes about women in the Greek Classics. Natalie isn’t as laugh-out-loud funny as Stephen Fry, but I find her blend of scholarship and wry humour very appealing. She is known to English fans for her Radio 4 show Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics and in her latest book she stands up for all the classical women who get a bad rap—being scapegoated for things that men, or usually the gods, caused. For instance, Medusa is raped by Poseidon, which makes Athene angry, but instead of going after Poseidon, she blames Medusa and gives her snakes for hair and makes her a monster! Then there is Pandora. Zeus is very annoyed when Prometheus steals fire from the gods, so in reprisal Zeus asks Hephaestus to fashion the First Woman. Aphrodite gives her all the airs and graces, dresses her in a silver dress and asks Hermes to take her to Epimetheus as a kalon kakon or beautiful evil. Somehow the story gets burdened with a jar which gets tipped over, or opened, to release all the world’s ills. It was Erasmus in the 16th Century who turned the jar into a box, but Pandora, like Eve, is always blamed for every bad thing which besets humanity from painful childbirth to ingrown toenails. As for Helen, who has the ‘face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium’, Haynes blames Menelaus for going off on a business trip, leaving Helen with handsome Paris, and she either elopes or is abducted and taken to Troy, and who can blame her? Of course, Aphrodite is behind the whole thing, so why isn’t Aphrodite blamed for the Trojan War, not Helen? The story of Eurydice is poignant and touching and Haynes contrasts the ancient stories with modern versions, including a poem by Carol Ann Duffy which made me laugh. This book has stories about ten classical women, and it’s a delight. I am always pleased when a new Tana French novel comes out, and The Searcher is surely her best yet. Cal Hooper is a retired cop from Chicago, divorced and with a semi-estranged adult daughter, who buys a tumbledown cottage in the West of Ireland and sets about painting and carpentering with his favourite music blaring and no one much to object. He is observed by a moody adolescent called Trey Reddy who asks him to find out what happened to older sibling, Brendan, who has disappeared. Cal’s enjoyment of the peace of his little bit of heaven is shattered, but he finally agrees to ferret out from the locals what has happened. To tell that much of a Tana French story is sacrilege, because it is always the slow build-up of her plots which captivate me. There is a nod to the 1956 John Wayne movie The Searchers where the hero goes hunting for his lost niece who has been taken by Apaches, but, in The Searcher, Tana French weaves her own particular magic with radiant descriptions of country and characters. You just need to start at page 1 and let the magic take over. Observers look with bemusement at the United States with its toxic hatreds, racism, attempted politicisation of the Supreme Court, gun overload, and the intricacies of their electoral system. Harvard Professor Jill Lepore has written a one-volume history of the US called These Truths in which she examines how the country has tried to put in practice the noble ideals embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and how they have ended up with today’s sharp divisions and hatreds. She starts in 1492 and doesn’t flinch from describing the cruelties to native Americans, the horrible stain of slavery, and the deep divisions that led to the Civil War. The Founding Fathers counted black people as three -fifths of a person and this attitude still prevails. She includes the history of the internet in a political context, technology, and religion, which, in the US, has always been an important factor in political and civil life. Her history begins with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln: ‘We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.’ She doesn’t mention Trump, but his shadow overhangs the later chapters, indicating just how difficult the ‘disenthralling’ will prove to be. These Truths is written in an engaging style and Lepore covered an enormous amount of material without losing my interest. Definitely recommended for the general reader, and it should be in every school library. In Jack Marilynne Robinson has returned to her Gilead novels to examine Jack, Reverend Robert Boughton’s prodigal son, and his ill-starred romance with Della, the daughter of a Bishop. We know it is ill-starred because Jack isn’t reliable, but also because Della is black, and, in the 1940s, mixed-race unions were crimes punishable by imprisonment. Jack is a liar, a thief and a drunkard—but also a voracious reader, with a gentle, oddly attractive personality. The Library lady allows him slack when he steals books, and his landlady has a soft spot for him because he puts a geranium in his room and cares for a stray kitten. He and Della fall in love when they are accidentally locked inside a graveyard overnight. Della sees the good inside this sad outsider, and it seems that their union is divinely ordained. A high-school teacher, Della risks losing her job, and worse, if she continues this liaison—her best friend warns her, and her family are desperately concerned, but to Robinson, love is a gift from God. She keeps returning to her Gilead characters because she finds them so interesting and because to her, religious questions are vitally important. For readers ambivalent about Robinson’s work because of the religious element, you can put Jack into nontheological language by asking if a person can be irretrievably bad and unable to be salvaged, and if love can be redemptive. All Robinson’s novels have a deep moral seriousness, and she is vitally concerned with America’s racial trauma, so Jack is a valuable addition to her work. Above all, it is a beautiful novel. Sonia
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Australian Studies
Cop This Lot: Rewriting the myth of a classless nation by Tobias McCorkell ($30, PB)
Class intersects with almost every aspect of our lives, from where we go to school, to what we wear & eat, to how we speak, and how we make a living. Yet we almost never talk about it, and when we do, it’s often to make claims about how much Australia loves its ‘battlers’ & blue-collar underdogs. But what’s it really like to be economically disadvantaged in this country? To be denied a place in a rapidly expanding ‘middle class’ as the gulf between the ‘haves’ & the ‘havenots’ widens? And is it possible to cross class lines in a country that barely acknowledges those lines exist? In this collection diverse voices of all ages—from the well-known to the recently discovered—deliver essays that challenge Australia’s myths & truths about its national character & delve deeply into the nation’s complex relationship with social class.
Sex, Lies and Question Time by Kate Ellis ($33, PB)
77 years after the first woman entered Australian parliament, female politicians are still the minority. They cop scrutiny over their appearance, their sex lives, their parenting & their portfolios in a way few of their male colleagues do. It’s time to call bullshit on the toxic Canberra culture. Alongside her own experiences from 15 years in parliament, Kate Ellis reveals a frank & fascinating picture of women across Australian politics, including Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop, Linda Burney, Sussan Ley, Penny Wong, Sarah Hanson-Young & Pauline Hanson—exploring issues like sexism, motherhood, appearances, social media, the sisterhood and sex.
Radicals: Remembering the Sixties by Meredith Burgmann & Nadia Wheatley ($40, PB)
The Sixties—an era of protest, free love, civil disobedience, duffel coats, flower power, giant afros & desert boots—marked a turning point for change. Radicals found their voices & used them. While the initial trigger for protest was opposition to the Vietnam War, this anger quickly escalated to include Aboriginal Land Rights, Women’s Liberation, Gay Liberation, Apartheid, Student Power & ‘workers’ control’. In this collection some of the people doing the changing— including David Marr, Margret RoadKnight, Gary Foley, Jozefa Sobski & Geoffrey Robertson—reflect on how the decade changed them & Australian society forever.
Defiant Voices: How Australia’s Female Convicts Challenged Authority 1788–1853 by Babette Smith
Between 1788 & 1868, approximately 25,000 women were transported to Australia. Certainly some were desperate, but many were heroic & defiant. Babette Smith introduces women who stole, set fires, rioted, committed insurance fraud, murdered; mothers; women who refused to show deference to the Court, instead giving mock curtsies, ‘jumping and capering about’. Among the hysterical accounts of bad behaviour aboard female convict ships written by reverends, surgeons & others are scenes that show female camaraderie, fun & intrepid spirit—women helping their fellow convicts haul water; singing & dancing before bed, putting on concerts for each other, ‘dressed out in their gayest plumage’. This camaraderie continued in Australia. From factory rioters to individuals like Ann Wilson, whose response—‘That will not hurt me’—provoked a magistrate to pile punishment after punishment onto her, the women of Defiant Voices fought like tigers—driving men to breaking point with their collective voices, their lewd songs & ‘disorderly shouting’ resounding. ($40, PB)
Gender Politics: Navigating Political Leadership in Australia by Zareh Ghazarian & Katrina Lee-Koo
Gender is a powerful force that shapes Australia’s political leadership. Gender impacts the politics, government and policies of our nation. It influences the public lives of all political leaders. It affects how they interact with political institutions and cultures, with each other and how they are treated by the media. It can also shape who we see as strong and capable leaders. Yet, there is a lack of diversity in leadership positions across the political system and accusations of bullying and a toxic culture in our political parties are rife. So what impact does this have upon how Australia is governed and what might be done about it? From the debates on gender quotas to the ‘bonk ban’, from Julie Bishop’s failed leadership bid to Scott Morrison’s cultivated ‘daggy dad’ persona, from the treatment and legacy of Australia’s first female prime minister to the machinations of our political parties and parliament, this book explores the subtle and overt operation of gender politics in Australia. ($40, PB)
How Good is Scott Morrison? by Peter van Onselen & Wayne Errington ($35, PB)
Investigating Scott Morrison’s unlikely rise to the liberal leadership & his miracle electoral win, Peter van Onselen & Wayne Errington cover Morrison’s disastrous management of the catastrophic bushfire season that was highlighted by the extraordinary statement, ‘I don’t hold the hose, mate,’ and the decision to holiday while the country burned and show his resolve & the redemption the government’s response to the pandemic brought him. Right now, Scott Morrison seems unassailable & sure to win the next election, but what exactly is his vision for Australia? When the history of this period is written, he will certainly be seen as an election winner but will he be viewed as having had the courage & vision to change Australia for the better, or the worse?
Red Zone: China’s Challenge & Australia’s Future by Peter Hartcher ($33, PB)
China is a key nation for Australia’s future—for our security, economy & identity. But what are China’s intentions when it comes to Australia? And what lies behind the recent chill in relations between the two countries? Peter Hartcher shows how Australia woke up to China’s challenge & explores what comes next. Will we see a further deterioration in relations, or is there a smarter way to deal with an authoritarian superpower? Hartcher shines new light on Beijing’s overt & covert campaign for influence—over trade & defence, media & politics— and looks at the Australian response so far & assesses its effectiveness.
Full Circle: Power, hope and the return of nature by Scott Ludlam ($35, PB)
A scorched eucalyptus leaf twirls out of a clear sky, a premonition that begins a journey into a world on the edge—Scott Ludlam draws on his unique experience as senator & activist. Travelling the world, he discovers an emerging post-capitalist economics, and investigates everything from systems theory to community activism. Above all, he looks for what works—the falling grain of sand that sets off the avalanche of environmental & democratic change. This is a book about hidden connections & fresh possibilities, and what happens when we invite natural systems back into the urban world. Bringing together a wealth of new ideas, Ludlum outlines a new ecological politics.
Derrick VC in his own words (ed) Mark Johnston ($40, PB)
Tom ‘Diver’ Derrick fought in 5 campaigns in WW2, won the highest medals for bravery, and died of wounds sustained while leading his men in the war’s last stages. His career reached its climax on the jungle-clad heights of Sattelberg in New Guinea, where he won the Victoria Cross by spearheading the capture of seemingly impregnable Japanese defences. The diaries Derrick kept throughout his campaigns, from Tobruk to Tarakan & all his other known wartime correspondence & interviews are published in this volume in their entirety. ‘Diver’ had only a rudimentary education, but his intelligence, humour, ambition and fighting outlook shine through his words—providing unprecedented insights into Derrick’s mind & remarkable career.
Failures of Command: The death of Private Robert Poate by Hugh Poate ($35, PB)
On 29 August 2012 Private Robert Poate, Lance Corporal Rick Milosevic & Sapper James Martin were killed during an insider—or green on blue—attack in Afghanistan. Their killer, a supposed ally, was a Taliban sleeper in the ranks of the Afghan National Army. Information provided to the families by rank-and-file soldiers after the event shocked them. And the heavily redacted internal investigation report excluded a plethora of potentially incriminating facts. Hugh Poate’s search reveals a labyrinth of excuses, denials, half-truths, cover-ups, contrived secrecy, incompetence, negligence, orders not followed, & lessons not learnt.
Smuggled: A history of illegal journeys to Australia by Ruth Balint & Julie Kalman ($35, PB)
People smugglers have such currency in Australian politics yet they remain unknowable figures in our migration history. But beyond the rhetoric lies a rich past that reaches far from the maritime borders of our island continent—to Jews escaping the Holocaust, Eastern Europeans slipping through the Iron Curtain, ‘boat people’ fleeing the Vietnam War, and refugees escaping unthinkable violence in the Middle East and Africa. Ruth Balint & Julie Kalman offer a previously unseen glimpse into the dangerous and shadowy world of people smuggling. Using revealing personal interviews they share harrowing true stories of those fleeing persecution to seek asylum to reshape our idea of those—sometimes family, sometimes mafia—who help them find it.
The Forgotten Menzies by Stephen Chavura & Greg Melleuish
Robert Menzies’ world picture was one where Britishness was the overriding normative principle, and in which cultural puritanism & philosophical idealism were pervasive. This book argues that his greatest aspiration was to protect the ideals of cultural puritanismin Australia from both communism & the mindset encouraged by affluence & technological progress—and central to this project was the university, an institution he spent much of his career extolling and expanding. ($40, HB)
In The National Interest series: $19.95 each A Decade of Drift by Martin Parkinson
How much have the twists & turns in climate change policy over the past decade contributed to the erosion of public trust in government in Australia? As a senior public servant during 6 prime ministerships, Martin Parkinson had a front-row seat from which to watch the inability of successive governments to tackle climate change—this history is a sorry story which should leave Australians demanding more courage & commitment from their political leaders.
Leadership by Don Russell
Based on his experience working closely with a large number of ministers and their private offices, both at the federal and state level, and his time in the United States, Don Russell reflects on politicians, the political process and the role of government, and explains why our political leaders are as they are.
The Digital Revolution: A Survival Guide by Simon Wilkie
Given the scope and speed of change, Australia is now confronted by a stark choice between becoming a tech innovator, and so a producer of economic profits and highpaying jobs, or stagnating. Simon Wilkie argues that, to preserve our status as one of the most desirable economies to live in, we need a policy revolution that addresses not just universal basic income, but tax policy, lifelong education, social inclusion and the nature of work.
Sorry and Beyond: Healing the Stolen Generations by Brian Butler & John Bond ($39.95, PB)
Brian Butler’s grandmother was taken from her family in 1910. She was 12 years old. 20 years later her daughter, Brian’s mother, was taken. Thousands of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander families, like Brian Butler’s, have been coping with the trauma of child removal for more than a century. This book describes the growth of the grassroots movement that exposed the truth about Australia’s shameful removal policies & worked towards justice. Born in Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander communities, the movement was joined by nearly a million non-Indigenous Australians in the 1998 Sorry Day and Journey of Healing campaigns, which paved the way for the Federal Parliament’s unanimous apology in 2008. Community initiatives have played a vital part in overcoming the immense damage done, but the journey isn’t over—this is a call to continue the work of healing this national trauma.
Save our Sons: Women, Dissent & Conscription during the Vietnam War by Carolyn Collins
In 1965, angered by the Menzies’ government’s decision to conscript young men to fight in the Vietnam War, a group of Sydney housewives issued a national ‘distress call—SOS— to mothers everywhere’. Women across Australia of varying ages, backgrounds & religious & political persuasions united under the Save Our Sons banner, determined to end the ‘lottery of death’. SOS members initially stood out as respectable voices of middle-class dissent in their sensible shoes, hats & gloves, but as the war dragged on some became more radical: staging sit-ins at government buildings, chaining themselves to Canberra’s Parliament House, wearing anti-war fashions to the Melbourne Cup, hijacking an evangelical rally & organising an ‘underground’ to hide draft resisters. In 1971, the jailing of 5 Melbourne SOS mums over Easter sparked national outrage, seen by some as a turning point in the anti-war campaign. ($34.95, PB)
The Truth about China by Bill Birtles ($33, PB)
Bill Birtles is the ABC’s China correspondent and has been based in Beijing since 2015, covering some of the biggest stories of recent years, including the rise of Xi Jinping, the USChina trade war, the Hong Kong protests and upheaval in the Australia-China relationship. He’s reported from South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and from southern China right up to the North Korean border. A thrilling and provocative account of the unfolding tension between China and the west using characters and sources and stories from his time there, but between the lines he hopes to illuminate the dark portents of repercussions yet to come. ‘At a time where detail is scarce, this book is both arresting and vivid. It’s doing what it should be doing for a reader like me, which is making me see China stories with new eyes.’—Kelly Fagan
White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of Migration to Australia by Sheila Fitzpatrick
More than 20,000 ethnic Russians migrated to Australia after WW2— some came via China, others from refugee camps in Europe. Many of these refugees preferred to keep a low profile in Australia, and some tried to ‘pass’ as Polish, West Ukrainian or Yugoslavian. To the Soviet Union, Australia’s resettling of Russians amounted to the theft of its citizens, and undercover agents were deployed to persuade them to repatriate. Australia regarded the newcomers with wary suspicion, even as it sought to build its population by opening its doors to immigrants. Making use of newly discovered Russian-language archives Sheila Fitzpatrick examines the early years of a diverse Russian-Australian community and how Australian and Soviet intelligence agencies attempted to track and influence them. ($35, PB)
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Politics
Bad People—and How to Be Rid of Them: A Plan B for Human Rights by Geoffrey Robertson
As nationalism takes hold & populist governments retreat from international courts refusing to comply with their rulings, Geoffrey Robertson argues in this book that the Magnitsky movement offers a potent solution to crimes being committed against humanity, whether in America, Russia, China or Belarus. He explains the background & potential of laws, which have been called Magnitsky Laws, after Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in a Russian jail after exposing state corruption. This Plan B for human rights looks back to national laws to name, blame & shame abusers. It strips them of their right to enter democratic nations, and of ill-gotten funds they seek to deposit in global banks; and it bars them & their families from schools & hospitals in these countries. ($33, PB)
Consequences of Capitalism by Noam Chomsky & Marv Waterstone ($33, PB)
Is there an alternative to capitalism? ‘Covid-19 has revealed glaring failures and monstrous brutalities in the current capitalist system.’ How does politics shape our world, our lives & our perceptions? How much of ‘common sense’ is actually driven by the ruling classes’ needs & interests? And how are we to challenge the capitalist structures that now threaten all life on the planet? Chomsky & Waterstone expose the deep, often unseen connections between neoliberal ‘common sense’ & structural power. In making these linkages, they show how the current hegemony keeps social justice movements divided & marginalized. And, most importantly, they show how we can fight to overcome these divisions.
Investing with Keynes by Justyn Walsh ($30, PB)
John Maynard Keynes is known as an architect of the postwar international monetary system. When he died, his net worth—almost entirely built through successful stock investments—amounted to $30 million in today’s terms, and the college endowment fund he managed had massively outperformed the market over two decades. This is an entertaining guide to Keynes’ amazing stock market success—weaving his principles of investment around key events in his rich & colourful life as a baron of the House of Lords & a member of the Bloomsbury set. Accessible & informative the book identifies what modern masters of the market have taken from Keynes & used in their own investing styles—and what you too can learn from the master economic thinker.
The Scientist & the Spy by Mara Hvistendahl
In September 2011, sheriff’s deputies in Iowa encountered 3 ethnic Chinese men near a field where a farmer was growing corn seed under contract with Monsanto. What began as a simple trespassing inquiry mushroomed into a 2-year FBI operation in which investigators bugged the men’s rental cars, used a warrant intended for foreign terrorists and spies, and flew surveillance planes over corn country—all in the name of protecting trade secrets of corporate giants Monsanto & DuPont Pioneer. In The Scientist and the Spy, Hvistendahl gives a gripping account of this unusually far-reaching investigation, which pitted a veteran FBI special agent against Florida resident Robert Mo, who after his academic career foundered took a questionable job with the Chinese agricultural company DBN—and became a pawn in a global rivalry. ($28, PB)
How Should A Government Be? The New Levers of State Power by Jaideep Prabhu ($40, HB) Organisations expert Jaideep Prabhu takes a tour of what’s possible in government. Discover amazing initiatives in unexpected places, from India’s programme to give a digital identity to a billion citizens, to a Dutch programme that lets nurses operate almost entirely without management. Or perhaps China’s ominous Social Credit system is a more accurate vision what the future has in store for us. Whether you are on the political left or right, it matters whether your government does what it does fairly and well. And the game is changing.
The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World by Kehinde Andrews
The West is rich because the Rest is poor. Capitalism is racism. The West congratulations itself on raising poverty by increments in the developing world while ignoring the fact that it created these conditions in the first place, and continues to perpetuate them. The Enlightenment, which underlies every part of our foundational philosophy today, was and is profoundly racist. This colonial logic was and is used to justify the ransacking of Black and brown bodies and their land. The fashionable solutions offered by the white Left in recent years fall far short of even beginning to tackle the West’s place at the helm of a racist global order. Offering no easy answers, The New Age of Empire is essential reading to understand our profoundly corrupt global system. It is a groundbreaking new blueprint for taking Black Radical thought into the 21st century and beyond. ($60, HB)
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D R A N D R E W B R OW N I N G From Ethiopia to Sierra Leone, Dr Andrew Browning has been helping women affected by obstetric fistulas for nearly two decades. This is the uplifting story of Andrew’s life, from the challenges faced along the way to the stories of the women whose lives he has forever changed.
K AYA W I L S O N When Kaya Wilson came out to his parents as transgender, he was met with a startling family history of concealed queerness and shame. In this powerful and lyrical memoir, Wilson makes a case for the strength we find when we confront the complexities of our identity with compassion.
JESSIE STEPHENS Based on three true stories, Heartsick is a compelling narrative non-fiction account of the many lows and occasional surprising highs of heartbreak. ‘Thought-provoking, highly original and beautifully nuanced. Jessie Stephens’ journalistic skill shines’ Jane Harper
GEORGIE CARROLL Stories full of infectious, hospital-grade humour and loads of heart, from Australia’s favourite nurse. Georgie Carroll lets you peek behind the curtains to see the inner workings of a hospital. This is a laugh-out-loud funny celebration of the bighearted, no-bullsh*t nurses who, sooner or later, play a huge role in all of our lives. Love talking about books? Find us online at Pan Macmillan Australia
Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe by Niall Ferguson ($35, PB)
Why were so many Cassandras for so long ignored? Why did only some countries learn the right lessons from SARS & MERS? Why do appeals to ‘the science’ often turn out to be mere magical thinking? Drawing from multiple disciplines, including history, economics & network science Niall Ferguson describes the pathologies that have done us so much damage—from imperial hubris to bureaucratic sclerosis & online schism. COVID-19 was a test failed by countries who must learn some serious lessons from history if they are to avoid the doom of irreversible decline.
Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World by Tim Marshall ($33, PB) Find out why the Earth’s atmosphere is the world’s next battleground; why the fight for the Pacific is just beginning; and why Europe’s next refugee crisis is closer than it thinks. In ten chapters covering Australia, The Sahel, Greece, Turkey, the UK, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Space, Tim Marshall offers a lucid and gripping exploration of the power of geography to shape humanity’s past, present—and future.
Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zarate ($23, PB)
There is a war raging in the heartlands of Peru, waged on the land by the global industries plundering the Amazon & the Andes. In Saweto, charismatic activist Edwin Chota returns to his ashaninka roots, only to find that his people can’t hunt for food because the animals have fled the rainforest to escape the chainsaw cacophony of illegal logging. Farmer Maxima Acuna is trying to grow potatoes & catch fish on the land she bought from her uncle—but she’s sitting on top of a gold mine, and the miners will do anything to prove she’s occupying her home illegally. The awajun community of the northern Amazon drink water contaminated with oil. Joseph Zarate’s book takes 3 of Peru’s most precious resources—gold, wood and oil—and exposes the tragedy, violence & corruption tangled up in their extraction.
The Day the World Stops Shopping by J. B. MacKinnon ($33, PB)
We are using up the planet at almost double the rate it can regenerate. To support our economies, we’re told we must shop now like we’ve never shopped before. But would civilisation collapse if we stopped? Visiting places where economies have experienced temporary shutdowns, artisan producers, zero-consumption societies & bringing together a host of expert views, this is both a deeply reported thoughtexperiment, a history of our relationship with consumption, and a story about the future.
History
The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King ($35, PB)
In the mid-1400s, Vespasiano da Bisticci’s bookshop in Florence was said to contain all the wisdom of the world. Vespasiano & his team of scribes & illuminators produced exquisite manuscripts for popes & princes across Europe, rediscovering & disseminating some of the most significant texts from classical antiquity. But in 1476 a new technology arrived in Florence. The convent of San Jacopo di Ripoli, a community of Dominican nuns on the other side of the city, acquired a printing press from a bankrupt German printer. Before long, with the enterprising nuns working tirelessly as typesetters, the Ripoli Press began printing a series of books and pamphlets that triggered an explosion of ideas in politics, philosophy and religion. Ross King uncovers the story of a local battle that would have far-reaching consequences.
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America 1619–2019 by Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain ($35, PB)
The story begins with the arrival of 20 Ndongo people on the shores of the first British colony in mainland America in 1619, the year before the arrival of the Mayflower. In 80 chronological chapters, each by a different author & spanning five years, this book charts the 400-year journey of African Americans to the present—a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles and stunning achievements—in a choral work of exceptional power and beauty.
The Shortest History of China by Linda Jaivin
From kung-fu to tofu, tea to trade routes, sages to silk, China has influenced cuisine, commerce, military strategy, aesthetics and philosophy across the world for thousands of years. Linda Jaivin distils a vast history into a short, readable account that tells you what you need to know about China, from its philosophical origins to its political system, to the COVID-19 pandemic and where China is likely to lead the world. ($25, PB)
Operation Pedestal: The Fleet that Battled to Malta 1942 by Max Hastings ($35, PB)
In August 1942, beleaguered Malta was within weeks of surrender to the Axis, because its 300,000 people could no longer be fed. Churchill made a decision that at all costs, the ‘island fortress’ must be saved—this was not merely a matter of strategy, but of national prestige, when Britain’s fortunes & morale had fallen to their lowest ebb. The largest fleet the Royal Navy committed to any operation of the western war was assembled to escort 14 fast merchantmen across a thousand of miles of sea defended by 600 German & Italian aircraft, together with packs of U-boats & torpedo craft. Max Hastings blends the ‘big picture’ of statesmen & admirals with human stories of German U-boat men, Italian torpedo-plane crews, Hurricane pilots, destroyer & merchant-ship captains, ordinary but extraordinary seamen to tell a tale that until the very last hours, no participant on either side could tell what the outcome would be.
Voyagers by Nicholas Thomas ($35, HB)
The first European explorers to visit Oceania, from the 16th century on, were astounded & perplexed to find populations thriving so many miles from the nearest continents. Who were these people? Where did they come from? And how were they able to reach islands dispersed over such immense tracts of ocean? From the third millennium BC, the Philippines, Indonesia, Micronesia & Melanesia were settled by Austronesian peoples of the western Pacific littoral. Later movements of Polynesian peoples took them even further afield, as far as Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Easter Island &—eventually—New Zealand, up to AD 1250. Drawing on the latest research, including insights gained from linguistics, archaeology & the re-enactment of voyages, Thomas provides a dazzling account of these long-distance migrations, the sea-going technologies that enabled them, and the societies that they left in their wake.
Aftermath by Harald Jahner ($35, PB)
1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between 2 eras that proved decisive for Germany’s future. Post-war Germany found itself occupied over 4 zones by the victorious Allied forces. More than half its population was displaced, 10 million newly released forced labourers & several million prisoners of war returned to an uncertain existence in a country that found itself politically, economically & morally bankrupt. Harald Jahner weaves a series of life stories into a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change— giving an immersive portrait of a society corrupted, demoralized & freed—all at the same time.
The Florentines by Paul Strathern ($33, PB)
Transformations of human culture throughout western history have remained indelibly stamped by their origins. The Reformation would always retain something of central and northern Germany. The Industrial Revolution soon outgrew its British origins, yet also retained something of its original template. Paul Strathern shows how Florence, between the birth of Dante in 1265 & the death of Galileo in 1642 played a similar role in the Renaissance.
Philosophy & Religion
The Frontiers of Knowledge: What We Know About Science, History and The Mind by A. C. Grayling ($35, PB)
What do we know, and how do we know it? What do we now know that we don’t know? And what have we learnt about the obstacles to knowing more? In a time of deepening battles over what knowledge & truth mean, these questions matter more than ever. A. C. Grayling seeks to answer them in 3 crucial areas at the frontiers of knowledge—science, history & psychology. In each area he illustrates how each field has advanced to where it is now, from the rise of technology to quantum theory, from the dawn of humanity to debates around national histories, from ancient ideas of the brain to modern theories of the mind.
Bullies & Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History by John Dickson
John Dickson gives an honest account of the mixed history of Christianity, the evil and the good. He concedes the Christians’ complicity for centuries of bullying but also shows the myriad ways the beautiful melody of Christ has enriched our world and the lives of countless individuals. This book asks contemporary skeptics of religion to listen again to the melody of Jesus, despite the discord produced by too many Christians through history and today. It also leads contemporary believers into sober reflection on and repentance for their own participation in the tragic inconsistencies of Christendom and seeks to inspire them to live in tune with Christ. ($30, PB)
Absentees: On Variously Missing Persons by Daniel Heller-Roazen ($60, HB)
In 13 interlocking chapters, Daniel Heller-Roazen explores the role of the missing in human communities, asking: How does a person become a nonperson, whether by disappearance, disenfranchisement, or civil, social, or biological death? Treating the variously missing persons of the subtitle in 3 parts: Vanishings, Lessenings & Survivals he challenges the categories that define nonpersons in philosophy, ethics, law & anthropology. In the archives of fiction, Heller-Roazen uncovers figurations of the missing—from Helen of Argos in Troy or Egypt to Hawthorne’s Wakefield, Swift’s Captain Gulliver, Kafka’s undead hunter Gracchus & Chamisso’s long-lived shadowless Peter Schlemihl. Readers of The Enemy of All and No One’s Ways will find In a continuation his previous books’ intense intellectual adventures Heller-Roazen’s thought & writing capture the intricacies of the all-too-human absent & absented.
Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment ($33, PB) by Benjamin Storey & Jenna Silber Storey
In the 16th century, Montaigne articulated an original vision of human life that inspired people to see themselves as individuals dedicated to seeking contentment in the here & now, but Pascal argued that we cannot find happiness through pleasant self-seeking, only anguished God-seeking. Rousseau later tried & failed to rescue Montaigne’s worldliness from Pascal’s attack. Steeped in these debates, Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831 and, observing a people ‘restless in the midst of their well-being,’ discovered what happens when an entire nation seeks worldly contentment—and finds mostly discontent. Arguing that the philosophy we have inherited, despite pretending to let us live as we please, produces remarkably homogenous & unhappy lives, Why We Are Restless makes the case that finding true contentment requires rethinking our most basic assumptions about happiness.
The Lions’ Den by Susie Linfield ($30.95, PB)
In this history of the political Left, cultural critic Susie Linfield investigates how 8 prominent 20th century intellectuals, including Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, I. F. Stone & Noam Chomsky, struggled with the philosophy of Zionism, and then with Israel & its conflicts with the Arab world. In their engagement with Zionism, these thinkers also wrestled with the 20th century’s most crucial political dilemmas: socialism, nationalism, democracy, colonialism, terrorism & antiSemitism. By examining these thinkers Linfield also seeks to understand how the contemporary Left has become focused on anti-Zionism & how Israel itself has moved rightward.
The Meaning of Thought by Markus Gabriel
If computers can do what humans can do and they can do it much faster, what’s so special about human thought? In this new book, bestselling philosopher Markus Gabriel steps back from the polemics to re-examine the very nature of human thought—and with his usual wit and intellectual verve, Gabriel combines philosophical insight with pop culture to set out a bold defence of the human and a plea for an enlightened humanism for the 21st century. ($51.95, HB)
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Beyond by Stephen Walker
Science & Nature
9.07 am, April 12, 1961. In a top-secret USSR rocket site a young Russian sits inside a tiny capsule on top of the Soviet Union’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile—originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead—and blasts in the skies. Travelling at almost 18,000 miles per hour Yuri Gagarin circles the globe in just 106 minutes. While his launch begins in total secrecy, within hours of his landing he has become a world celebrity – the first human to leave the planet. At the height of the Cold War both superpowers took enormous risks to get a man into space first—the Americans in the full glare of the media, the Soviets under deep cover. Drawing on extensive original research & the vivid testimonies of eyewitnesses, many of whom have never spoken before, Stephen Walker unpacks secrets and takes the reader into the drama of the US & the USSR’s battle for supremacy in the heavens. ($35, PB)
The Beauty of Chemistry by Philip Ball ($65, HB)
Chemistry is not just about microscopic atoms doing inscrutable things; it is the process that makes flowers & galaxies. We rely on it for bread-baking, vegetable-growing & producing the materials of daily life. Accompanied by stunning images Philip Ball captures chemistry as it unfolds. Using such techniques as microphotography, time-lapse photography, and infrared thermal imaging, the book shows how chemistry underpins the formation of snowflakes, the science of champagne, the colours of flowers, and other wonders of nature & technology. We see the marvellous configurations of chemical gardens; the amazing transformations of evaporation, distillation, and precipitation; heat made visible; and more.
The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything by Michio Kaku ($35, HB)
This is the story of a quest—to find a Theory of Everything. Einstein dedicated his life to seeking this elusive Holy Grail, a single, revolutionary ‘god equation’ which would tie all the forces in the universe together, yet never found it. Some of the greatest minds in physics took up the search, from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene. None have yet succeeded. Michio Kaku a mind-bending ride through the twists & turns of this epic journey— through the key debates in modern physics, from Newton’s law of gravity via relativity & quantum mechanics to the latest developments in string theory.
Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality by Frank Wilczek ($40, HB)
Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek offers the reader a simple yet profound exploration of reality based on the deep revelations of modern science. Synthesizing basic questions, facts, and dazzling speculations, Wilczek investigates the ideas that form our understanding of the universe- time, space, matter, energy, complexity, and complementarity. He excavates the history of fundamental science, exploring what we know and how we know it, while journeying to the horizons of the scientific world to give us a glimpse of what we may soon discover.
Weirdest Maths by Agnijo Banerjee & David Darling ($23, PB)
‘Maths is everywhere, in everything. It’s in the finest margins of modern sport. It’s in the electrical pulses of our hearts and the flight of every bird. It is our key to secret messages, lost languages and perhaps even the shape of the universe of itself.’ David Darling & Agnijo Banerjee reveal the mathematics at the farthest reaches of our world from its role in the plots of novels to how animals employ numerical skills to survive. Along the way they explore what makes a genius, why a seemingly simple problem can confound the best & brightest for decades, and what might be the great discovery of the 21st century.
Einstein’s Fridge: The Science of Fire, Ice and the Universe by Paul Sen ($33, PB)
The laws of thermodynamics govern everything from the behaviour of atoms to that of living cells, from the engines that power our world to the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Not only that, but thermodynamics explains why we must eat & breathe, how the lights come on, and ultimately how the universe will end. The people who decoded its laws came from every branch of the sciences—they were engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, cosmologists & mathematicians. Their discoveries, set over two hundred years, kick-started the industrial revolution, changed the course of world wars and informed modern understanding of black holes. tells the story of how scientists uncovered the least known and yet most consequential of all the sciences, and learned to harness the power of heat and ice.
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Now in B Format Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith, $25 The End of Everything by Katie Mack, $23
Books do Furnish a Life by Richard Dawkins ($35, PB)
This book brings together Richard Dawkins’ forewords, afterwords & introductions to works by some of the leading thinkers of our age—Carl Sagan, Lawrence Krauss, Jacob Bronowski, Lewis Wolpert—and a selection of his reviews, both admiring & critical, of a wide range of scientific & other works. Books do Furnish a Life celebrates the writers who communicate the ideas of science and the natural world in both fiction and non-fiction.
Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli ($40, HB)
In June 1925, 23-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a small, treeless island in the North Sea called Helgoland. It was there that he came up with one of the most transformative scientific concepts—quantum theory. Almost a century later, quantum physics has given us many startling ideas—ghost waves, distant objects that seem magically connected to each other, cats that are both dead and alive—and practical applications that shape our daily lives. Carlo Rovelli tells the extraordinary story of quantum physics & reveals its deep meaning—a world made of substances is replaced by a world made of relations, each particle responding to another in a never ending game of mirrors.
How Stella Learned to Talk by Christina Hunger
When speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger first came home with her puppy, Stella, it didn’t take long for her to start drawing connections between her new pet & her job working with toddlers with significant delays in language development using Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC) devices to help them communicate. If dogs can understand words we say to them, can they use AAC to communicate with humans? Hunger started using a paw-sized button, programmed with her voice to say the word ‘outside’ when clicked, whenever she took Stella out of the house—and Stella now has a bank of more than 30 word buttons, and uses them either individually or together to create near-complete sentences. Part memoir & part how-to guide Hunger’s book chronicles the journey she & Stella have taken together from the day they met to the day Stella ‘spoke’ her first word. ($33, PB)
Life’s Edge: Searching for What it Means to be Alive by Carl Zimmer ($35, PB) Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? Literally hundreds of definitions of what life should look like now exist, but none has yet emerged as an obvious winner. Lists of what living things have in common do not add up to a theory of life. It’s never clear why some items on the list are essential & others not. Coronaviruses have altered the course of history, and yet many scientists maintain they are not alive. Chemists are creating droplets that can swarm, sense their environment, and multiply. Have they made life in the lab? Carl Zimmer if we can’t answer the question: What it means to be alive? here on earth, how will we know when & if we discover alien life on other worlds?
Off the Charts by Georgie Carroll ($35, PB)
They’re the ones in the trenches mopping up bodily fluids, holding hands, keeping things ticking—and always with a smile on their face. In Off the Charts, straight-talking nurse & comedian Georgie Carroll takes you behind the curtains to see the inner workings of a hospital. Taking us ward to ward, limb to limb, stitch to stitch, Georgie does not hold back as she shows us the human fragility & fierceness she sees every day at work. This is a laugh-out-loud funny celebration of the big-hearted, no-bullsh*t nurses who, sooner or later, play a huge role in all of our lives.
Exotic Vetting: What Treating Wild Animals Teaches You About Their Lives by Romain Pizzi
Travelling from the rainforests of Sierra Leone to the jungles of Borneo, vet, Romain Pizzi has caught, anaesthetised, diagnosed, operated on, medicated & then released some of the world’s most endangered wild animals. From disease testing Polynesian snails, keyhole surgery in Sumatran orangutans, endoscopy in sharks, the first robotic surgery in a tiger, giant panda cloning attempts to anaesthetising a bear with a bicycle pump, old plumbing tubes & a plank & operating on a vulture using an old metal spoon—Pizzi takes you on a tour of the challenges of treating the an amazing spectrum of the world’s wild animal species. ($35, PB)
The Spike by Mark Humphries ($30, PB)
We see the last cookie in the box and think, can I take that? We reach a hand out. In the 2.1 seconds that this impulse travels through our brain, billions of neurons communicate with one another, sending blips of voltage through our sensory and motor regions. Neuroscientists call these blips ‘spikes.’ Spikes enable us to do everything: talk, eat, run, see, plan, and decide. In The Spike, Mark Humphries takes readers on the epic journey of a spike through a single, brief reaction.
Psychology & Personal Development
The Sleeping Beauties and other stories of the social life of illness by Suzanne O’Sullivan ($35, PB)
In Sweden, refugee children fall asleep for months & years at a time. In upstate New York, high school students develop contagious seizures. In the US Embassy in Cuba, employees complain of headaches & memory loss after hearing strange noises in the night. What unites these disparate cases is that they are all examples of a particular type of psychosomatic illness that both doctors & scientists have struggled to explain within the boundaries of medical science and—more crucially—to treat. Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan travels the world to visit other communities who have also been subject to outbreaks of so-called ‘mystery’ illnesses. From a derelict post-Soviet mining town in Kazakhstan, to the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua via an oil town in Texas, to the heart of the Maria Mountains in Colombia, O’Sullivan hears remarkable stories from a fascinating array of people, and attempts to unravel their complex meaning while asking the question: who gets to define what is and what isn’t an illness?
It starts with science.
The Rag and Bone Shop: How We Make Memories & Memories Make Us by Veronica O’Keane ($40, HB)
A twinge of sadness, a rush of love, a knot of loss, a whiff of regret. Memories have the power to move us, often when we least expect it, a sign of the complex neural process that continues in the background of our everyday lives. A process that shapes us—filtering the world around us, informing our behaviour & feeding our imagination. How do our brains store—and then conjure up—past experiences? Psychiatrist, Veronica O’Keane has spent many years observing what happens when this process is disrupted by mental illness & the experiences of her patients have provided startling insights into how memory determines how we function in the world. Drawing on these cases and from literature & fairy tales, she uses the latest neuroscientific research to illuminate the role of psychiatry today & the extraordinary puzzle that is our human brain.
Noise by Daniel Kahneman ($35, PB)
Imagine that 2 doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients—or that two judges in the same court give different sentences to people who have committed matching crimes. Now imagine that the same doctor & the same judge make different decisions depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday, or they haven’t yet had lunch. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical. Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony & Cass R. Sunstein show how noise produces errors in many fields, including in medicine, law, public health, economic forecasting, forensic science, child protection, creative strategy, performance review & hiring. Noise explains how & why humans are so susceptible to noise & bias in decision-making. We all make bad judgments, but with a few simple remedies, this book explores what we can do to make better ones.
Hard to Break: Why Our Brains Makes Habits Stick by Russell A. Poldrack ($33, PB)
Neuroscientist Russell Poldrack provides an engaging account of the science of how habits are built in the brain, why they are so hard to break, and how evidence-based strategies may help us change unwanted behaviours. Poldrack debunks ‘easy fixes’ that aren’t backed by science, explaining how dopamine is essential for building habits & how the battle between habits & intentional goaldirected behaviours reflects a competition between different brain systems. Along the way, he shows how cues trigger habits; why we should make rules, not decisions; how the stimuli of the modern world hijack the brain’s habit machinery & lead to drug abuse and other addictions; and how neuroscience may one day enable us to hack our habits. He also discusses the massive habit changes that will be needed to address the biggest challenges of our time.
A Matter of Death and Life by Irvin D. & Marilyn Yalom ($30, PB)
Psychiatrist & author Irvin Yalom devoted his career to counselling those suffering from anxiety & grief., but had never faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In this book, they share how they took on profound new struggles—Marilyn to die a good death, Irvin to live on without her. In alternating accounts of their last months together & Irv’s first months alone, they offer a rare window into facing mortality & coping with the loss of one’s beloved. The Yaloms had numerous blessings—a loving family, a large circle of friends, avid readers around the world, and a long, fulfilling marriage—but they faced death as we all do.
The Better Brain by Rucklidge & Kaplan ($35, PB)
Kaplan & Rucklidge share their research to explain how to feed your brain to stabilise your mood, stave off depression & make yourself more resilient to daily stress. They reveal the hidden causes of the rising rates of depression, from the nutrients in our soil to our reliance on processed food, explaining why a diet rich in fresh fruits, vegetables, pulses, fish & olive oil is healthiest for your brain. Complete with a nutritional plan & 30 delicious mood-boosting recipes.
Visit the CSIRO Publishing website for more quality science books, journals and magazines
publish.csiro.au My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem ($23, PB) The consequences of racism can be found in our bodies—in skin & sinew, in bone & blood. In this ground-breaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage, the physical consequences of discrimination, from the perspective of bodycentred psychology. He argues that until we learn to heal & overcome the generational anguish of white supremacy, we will all continue to bear its scars. His book is an extraordinary call to action for all of us to recognize that racism affects not only the mind, but also the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our racial divides.
Losing Our Minds: What Mental Illness Really Is—and What It Isn’t by Lucy Foulkes ($30, PB)
Too often, psychiatric disorders are confused with the mental pain of normal human experience, and a misleading narrative has taken hold that a crisis of mental illness exists among young people—now set to get far worse. Psychologist Lucy Foulkes argues that the crisis is one of ignorance as much as illness. Have we raised a ‘snowflake’ generation? Or are today’s young people experiencing greater stress, enhanced by social media, than ever before? How do we distinguish between severe suffering & actual illness? Foulkes explains what is known about mental illness and what remains unclear—how it arises, why it appears mainly during adolescence, the various tools we have to cope with it—and presents the argument that widespread, simplistic misconceptions about the nature of mental illness might actually be contributing to its prevalence.
The Empire of Depression: A New History by Jonathan Sadowsky ($51.95, HB)
150 years ago, ‘depression’ referred to a mood, not a sickness. Does that mean people weren’t sick before, only sad? Mental illness is a complex thing, part biological, part social, its definition dependent on time & place. But in the mid-20th century, even as European empires were crumbling, new Western clinical models & treatments for mental health spread across the world. In so doing, ‘depression’ began to displace older ideas like ‘melancholia’, or the Punjabi ‘sinking heart’ syndrome. Historian Jonathan Sadowsky tells this global story, chronicling the path-breaking work of psychiatrists & pharmacists, and the intimate sufferings of patients—reaching an unflinching conclusion: the devastating effects of depression are real.
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Cultural Studies & Criticism A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
‘A must-read for cultivating a tender and loving approach to ourselves.’ Sally Gillespie
For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In this volume, he shares a version of that class—offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the 7 essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. This is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading & writing of stories make genuine connection possible. ($35, HB)
FICTION
ESSAY
FICTION
Books for Mum, books for you
‘This novel made me laugh, cry and wonder.’ Simone Lazaroo
The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000–2020 by Rachel Kushner ($33, PB)
‘An entertaining, heartwarming story that captures our love of books.’ Liz Byrski
Inga Clendinnen: Selected Writings (ed) James Boyce ($35, PB)
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This selection covers the full scope of Inga Clendinner’s writing, from Tiger’s Eye to Aztecs, from her Boyer Lectures to essays on all manner of topics. The rich array is introduced by acclaimed historian James Boyce, who traces Clendinnen’s life and evolving thought. Boyce writes that Clendinnen’s ‘ability to write serious history for a general readership was unrivalled in this country. Her writings are an enduring testament to the truth that while we might “live within the narrow moving band of time we call the present ... the secret engine of our present is our past, with its plastic memories, its malleable moralities, its wreathing dreams of desirable futures”.
No Document by Anwen Crawford ($26.95, PB)
This is an elegy for a friendship cut short prematurely by death. The memory of this friendship becoming a model for how we might relate to others in sympathy, solidarity & rebellion. At once intimate and expansive, Anwen Crawford’s book-length essay explores loss in many forms: disappeared artworks, effaced histories, abandoned futures. From the turmoil of grief and the solace of memory, her perspective embraces histories of protest and revolution, art-making and cinema, border policing, and especially our relationships with animals.
Animal Dreams by David Brooks ($40, PB)
David Brooks examines how animals have featured in Australian literature & culture, from The Man from Snowy River to Phar Lap to contemporary debates about horse-racing, live animal exports, veganism & the culling of native species such as kangaroos & sharks. He elegantly considers how private & public conversations about animals reflect older & deeper attitudes to our own & other species, and what questions we might ask to move these conversations forward. For anyone interested in animal welfare, conservation & the relationship between humans & other species, this is a richly rewarding companion.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions—Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts & the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making & marketing Oxycontin—a catalyst for the opioid crisis—an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people. Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling story of a dynasty: a parable of 21st century greed. ($35, PB)
Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Writing from the Colonial Frontier (eds) Johnston & Webby
Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796–1880) arrived in Sydney in 1838 & became almost immediately notorious for her poem The Aboriginal Mother, written in response to the infamous Myall Creek massacre. She published more poetry in colonial newspapers during her lifetime, but for the century following her death her work was largely neglected. In recent years, however, critical interest in Dunlop has increased in a range of fields, including literary studies; settler, postcolonial & imperial studies; and Indigenous studies. This collection of essays considers Dunlop’s work from a range of perspectives & includes a new selection of her poetry. ($45, PB)
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In 19 razor-sharp essays, this collection spans literary journalism, memoir, cultural criticism, and writing about art & literature, including pieces on Jeff Koons, Denis Johnson & Marguerite Duras. Rachel Kushner takes a journey through a Palestinian refugee camp, an illegal motorcycle race down the Baja Peninsula, 1970s wildcat strikes in Fiat factories, her love of classic cars, and her young life in the music scene of her hometown, San Francisco. The closing, eponymous essay is her manifesto on nostalgia, doom & writing.
Lines to the Horizon: Australian Surf Writing (fwd) Jock Serong ($33, PB)
Tim Winton says, ‘Surfing is not just a subculture, it is culture, and here’s proof’, while Jock Serong says that the collection demonstrates our horizons are unlimited. From Gold Coast surf culture to the relationships of humans to the sea and from surf travel in Mexico to Taj Burrow’s final campaign in Fiji, this collection features six authors writing about surfing, and the ocean, in six very different ways. Their stories are reverential, energetic and mystical, and between them cover thousands of kilometres of coastline, at home & abroad.
The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die by Katie Engelhart ($30, PB)
Should a paralysed teenager be allowed to end her life? Should we be free to die painlessly before dementia takes our mind? From Avril, the 80-year-old British woman illegally importing pentobarbital to the Australian doctor dispensing suicide manuals online, Katie Engelhart travels the world to hear the stories behind one of today’s most hotly debated ethical dilemmas, one of our most abiding taboos: that of assisted suicide. And in examining our end, it sheds crucial light on what it means to flourish and live.
A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in the Age of Overload by Cal Newport ($33, PB)
Constant communication has become part of the way we work as we check our emails every 5.4 minutes. But at what expense? Cal Newport argues that this steady flow of distractions disrupts us from achieving any meaningful work, causes us undue stress & is costing businesses millions in the form of untapped potential. He reveals how to reimagine & redesign work without the constant pings of email distraction. Drawing on a array of case studies & offering practical solutions, Newport shows how a world without email will liberate people to do their fulfilling & creative work—and much more of it too.
The Kindness Revolution by Hugh Mackay ($33, PB)
Following the ravages of 2020’s bushfires & pandemic on our mental & emotional health & on the economy, Hugh & reflects on the challenges we faced during that year of upheaval and the questions many of us have asked. What really matters to me? Am I living the kind of life I want? What sort of society do I want us to become? Urging us not to let those questions go, and pointing to our inspiring displays of kindness & consideration, our personal sacrifices for the common good & our heightened appreciation of the value of local neighbourhoods & communities, he asks: ‘Could we become renowned as a loving country, rather than simply a ‘lucky’ one?’
Brave New Humans: The Dirty Reality of Donor Conception by Sarah Dingle ($35, PB)
Journalist Sarah Dingle was 27 when she learnt that her identity was a lie. Over dinner one night, her mother casually mentioned Sarah had been conceived using a sperm donor. Thus began a tenyear journey to understand who she was—digging through hospital records, chasing leads and taking a DNA test—that finally led her to her biological origins. What she discovered along the way was a shocking trail of hospital records routinely destroyed, traded eggs & sperm, women dead, donors exploited, and hundreds of thousands of donor-conceived people globally who will never know who they are. But there’s one thing this industry hasn’t banked on: the children of the baby business taking on their makers.
Now in B Format Had I Known: Collected Essays by Barbara Ehrenreich, $23
Reading like an Australian writer (ed) Belinda Castles ($35, PB)
‘The best books are those you revisit over the years ... and with each visit you learn new things about yourself and about the story.’—Mykaela Saunders on Carpentaria by Alexis Wright 26 writers take us through moments of revelation through the dog-eared pages of their favourite Australian books. Among them, poet Ellen van Neerven finds kin on the page with Miles Franklin-winner Tara June Winch. AS Patrić finds a dark mirror for our times in David Malouf’s retelling of an episode from the Iliad. Ashley Hay pens letters of appreciation & friendship to Charlotte Wood, and many more.
Second City: New Essays from Western Sydney (eds) Carman & Menzies-Pike
Beginning with Felicity Castagna’s warning about the dangers of cultural labelling, this collection of essays takes resistance against conformity & uncritical consensus as one of its central themes. From Aleesha Paz’s call to recognise the revolutionary act of public knitting to Frances An’s ‘counterrevolutionary’ attack on the repressive clichés of ‘women of colour’, Sheila Pham on the importance of education in crossing social & ethnic boundaries, and May Ngo’s cosmopolitan take on the significance of the shopping mall, the collection offers complex insights into the dynamic relationships between class, culture, family & love. ($26.95, PB)
Toxic: A Guide to Rebuilding Respect and Tolerance in a Hostile Workplace by Clive Lewis
The workplace has become a hotbed of social toxicity from the #MeToo movement to WeWork, it’s clear that abusive bosses and entrenched cultures of discrimination have become more prevalent than ever. Clive Lewis draws upon his decades of experience in HR & mediation to distill the problems & underlying causes of toxic workplaces before tackling the issue head-on. He draws upon first-hand case studies from an eclectic array of workplaces (from corporate offices to hospitals) to demonstrate how toxicity can be both prevented & resolved. This is a practical guide for business leaders & HR professionals looking to preserve a peaceful workplace, while also providing tips for employees looking to remain productive & focused when working with troublesome colleagues in difficult environments. ($30, PB)
Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles by Harold Bloom ($51.95, HB)
This dazzling celebration of the power of poetry to sublimate death—completed weeks before Harold Bloom died—shows how literature renews life amid what Milton called ‘a universe of death.’ Bloom reads as a way of taking arms against the sea of life’s troubles, taking readers on a grand tour of the poetic voices that have haunted him through a lifetime of reading. ‘High literature,’ he writes, ‘is a saving lie against time, loss of individuality, premature death.’ Awake late at night, he recites lines from Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Montaigne, Blake, Wordsworth, Hart Crane, Jay Wright, and many others. He feels himself ‘edged by nothingness,’ uncomprehending, but still sustained by reading. This is among Harold Bloom’s most ambitious & most moving books.
The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism by Kyle Chayka ($54, HB)
Everywhere we hear the mantra. Marie Kondo and other decluttering gurus promise that shedding our stuff will solve our problems. After spending years covering minimalist trends for leading publications, Kyle Chayka delves beneath this lifestyle’s glossy surface, seeking better ways to claim the time & space we crave. His search leads him to the philosophical & spiritual origins of minimalism, and to the stories of artists such as Agnes Martin & Donald Judd; composers such as John Cage & Julius Eastman; architects & designers; visionaries & misfits. As Chayka looks anew at their lives & explores the places they worked—from Manhattan lofts to the Texas high desert & the back alleys of Kyoto—he reminds us that what we most require is presence, not absence. The result is an elegant new synthesis of our minimalist desires & our profound emotional needs.
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Flowers Underfoot: Indian Carpets of the Mughal Era by Daniel Walker ($50, HB)
According to ancient Buddhist texts woollen carpets in India date from 500 BC. This volume focuses on the ‘classical’ period of Indian carpet making—from 1600 to 1800—displaying a collection of pile-woven carpets of the Mughal era. Under the rule of Mughal Emperor, Akbar l (The Great) between 1556–1605 the first imperial carpet workshops were established to employ the highest standards of production in builders, painters and weavers. Consequently, the examples shown here are some of the most technically accomplished of all Oriental carpets. The text is arranged by style and pattern. It traces the chronological development of the carpet design work. This features Persian style—featuring numerous fantastic animals—the Floral style (and its numerous variations) and the later designs of Durbar and Millefleur. A sumptuous work displaying the fruits of a truly astonishing craft.
The Arts of Islam: Treasures from the Nasser D. Khalili Collection by J M Rogers ($40, PB)
A handsomely produced Exhibition Catalogue which highlights the rich & diverse Islamic artistic achievement from the 7th to the 19th centuries. An Introductory section focuses on the growth of Islam & its spread, the Prophet Muhammad & the common ground between Islam, Judaism & Christianity. Adaptation and Innovation explores the art produced between the 7th & the 10th centuries, a transitional period in which many of the foundations of Islamic art were laid. Early copies of the Qur’an are shown as well as ceramics, metalwork, glass & textiles, many of the latter reflecting earlier Byzantine and Sasanian artistic traditions. The Splendours of Baghdad covers art from the medieval period (10th to early 13th centuries), demonstrating the outstanding achievements of artists working for the Abbasid court and its contemporaries, and the technical innovations associated with this period. Phoenix Rising examines the mid-13th to the 15th centuries, illustrating the arts produced in Iran, Central Asia, the Middle East and Turkey in the wake of the Mongol invasion during the Ilkhanid, Mamluk and Timurid periods. The art of this period is very rich in intricate detail. The Age of Empires is devoted to the art of the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughlas and Qajars (16th–19th century). This period saw the development of blue-and-white and Iznik ceramics and tiles, fine carpets and textiles, richly enamelled and jewelled objects and exceptionally beautifully illuminated Qur’ans and illustrated manuscripts, best exemplified by the Qur’an and the 10 stunning folios from the Shahnameh (‘Book of Kings’) produced for the Safavid ruler Shah Tahmasp I (1514–1576). Wild Portraits: Paintings and Drawings by Raymond Harris-Ching ($50, HB) Birds of the World: John Gould’s Classic Bird Illustrations ($75, HB) I have never really understood why botanical illustrations, and for that matter drawings of birds and animals, are considered more accurate and useful than photographs in identifying species and rendering their component parts. Surely the detail provided by photography can do a better job. Whatever the thinking behind this, it is easy to appreciate on a purely aesthetic level the remarkable facility of the best illustrators of nature to bring their subjects to life on the page—and these two recent arrivals in the second hand department are spectacular examples of the illustrators’ art. New Zealand artist Harris-Ching gained international acclaim in the late 1960s with the publication of The Book of British Birds for Readers Digest and subsequent publications of his bird and animal studies secured his reputation as one of the finest wildlife illustrators of recent times. Wild Portraits includes over 200 plates of the artist’s preparatory sketches and completed paintings drawn from his extensive travels from the Arctic to Australasia. English ornithologist John Gould published a number of books on birds in the 19th century with illustrations by his wife Elizabeth and several other artists including Edward Lear and William Mathew Hart. His Book of Australian Birds and Book of Australian Mammals have made him a household name in this country and early editions of both command stratospheric prices. This handsome book, containing over 400 classic bird illustrations and short biographical sketches of the artists, includes species from around the world with accompanying quotations from the original texts and recent scientific information. Exotic toucans, trogons, hummingbirds and our own kookaburras and lyrebirds keep company with more familiar breeds in this astonishing selection of ornithological marvels. The skill and labour involved in the production of the images of birds and animals in these books is remarkable. Perhaps in recognising the artist’s hand in their creation they take on for the viewer a vitality that photography is unable to match.
What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She by Dennis Baron ($27.95, PB)
For anyone interested in the conversation swirling around gender-neutral & nonbinary pronouns, Dennis Baron provides much-needed historical context & analysis to the debate around what we call ourselves, bringing new insight to a centuries-old topic & illuminating ho, and why, these pronouns are sparking confusion & prompting new policies in schools, workplaces & even statehouses. Enlightening and affirming, Baron introduces a new way of thinking about language, gender & how they intersect.
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Some Winter reading
‘Have you read all the books in this shop?’; ‘Read all these books yet?’; ‘I’ll bet you’ve read every book here!’. Some of the comments that a (surprisingly) large number of customers often make upon entering our shop. My reply—depending on my mood—is usually, ‘Well…not quite yet…’ Accompanied by a slightly regretful smile. However, since the time is approaching when I shall become a recluse, inhabiting—’an old garden and a room, there to doze and dream over his books’—I feel an obligation to make inroads into the seemingly never lessening tower of books that at present surround me. Gilgi, One of Us; The Artificial Silk Girl; After Midnight; Ferdinand: The Man with the Kind Heart (due 6.21) all by Irmgard Keun, all $20 Irmgard Keun’s (pron. coin) life would make an exciting film. Born in Berlin in 1905, actress and later novelist, Keun’s novels have been reissued in handsome Penguin Modern classic editions. Gilgi (1931) & The Artificial Silk Girl (1932) gave realistic, gritty depictions of young, middle-class women in metropolitan Weimar Germany & were wildly successful. In Gilgi we see a determined, ambitious young woman trying to establish her independence—until she falls for Martin, a handsome drifter. This book was revolutionary at the time for its treatment of sexual harassment, abortion & single motherhood. The Artificial Silk Girl portrays Doris, an aspiring cabaret artist & film star, who travels to Berlin to realise her dream but eventually resorts to theft & prostitution to survive. After 1934, the Nazis, declaring Keun an ‘anti-German’ writer, banned & burnt her books for their ‘immoral’ depictions of young German women. She wrote under various pseudonyms till leaving for exile in France & the Netherlands in 1936. After Midnight, published the following year, has been described as a ‘forgotten pearl’ of German literature. It surveys the Third Reich at everyday level, through the eyes of 19-year-old Sanna Moder. Sanna finds that enjoying a day’s drinking with her friends in Cologne is almost impossible when Hitler comes to town: ‘Shouts arose in the distance. Heil Hitler! The roar of the crowd came surging up, closer and closer up to our balcony—widespread, hoarse, a little weary. And a car slowly drove past with the Führer standing in it, like Prince Carnival in the carnival parade. But he wasn’t as funny and cheerful as Prince Carnival and he wasn’t throwing sweets and nosegays, just raising an empty hand.’ Sanna casts an ironic, sometimes savage and often humourous eye over the whole proceedings as well as its aftermath and impact upon her friends and family in daily life. Sharp vignettes portray the hysteria, enthusiasm as well as the growing sense of uncertainty and fear that enveloped many in a nation descending into the nightmare of Nazism.
In this entertaining, meticulously researched account, historian Grace Hale makes use of early band footage, newspaper reportage & interviews as well as her personal reminiscences of ‘the scene’—both as a former band member of Cordy Lon (1986–91) and an underground club owner—and seeks to provide the answers. Hale reveals the importance of key individuals of the Athens gay/queer community—among them, four of the five members of The B-52s, as well as Michael Stipe of R.E.M—and their interaction & creative frisson with a sizeable bohemian student sub-culture, which all combined to help nurture a rebellious, alternate music scene. College radio & the proliferation of local record stores also allowed for widespread distribution of a band’s cherished first single. Indeed, The B-52s first version of Rock Lobster—backed with 52 Girls—was released by Athens record store owner Danny Beard on his DB Records label in 1978. Kate Pierson recalled: ‘We were driving around Athens one night when we first heard our single on the radio… and we all just screamed!’ That indie 45 ended up selling over 20,000 copies. Both songs were re-recorded for their first album issued by Warner Bros. in 1979. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s: ‘...the Athens scene produced amazingly good music…but the scene also transformed the punk idea that anyone could start a band into the even more radical idea that people in unlikely places could make a new culture and imagine new ways of thinking about the meaning of the good life and the ties that bind humans to each other.’ A musical Mecca for those young people who felt that they could do something creative & interesting wherever they lived. As Fred Schneider recalled Athens: “It’s a great place to wind up in if you’re a little bit eccentric”. And as The B-52s sang: ‘If you’re in outer space/ Don’t feel out of place/ ‘cause there are thousands of others like you.’ Stephen Reid
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In 1940, following reports of her supposed suicide in Holland by the English press two years earlier, Keun—astonishingly—returned to Nazi Germany under a false identity, Charlotte Tralow—using her middle name and the surname of her proNazi, ex-husband! In a 2016 interview, her daughter, Martina Keun-Geburtig recalled: ‘She ran around Cologne, very cheerful & cheeky & had no fear. She often visited friends who knew her identity and wouldn’t turn her in. I think they were more afraid for her than she was herself.’ Her final novel, Ferdinand: The Man with the Kind Heart (1950) relates the post war experiences of a former soldier returning from a prisoner of war camp to a ruined Cologne. Gentle Ferdinand drifts through the bombed-out city where the black market is flourishing & De-Nazification parties are all the rage. After the war, Irmgard Keun lived in obscurity until her books were rediscovered in the 1970s by a new generation of readers wanting to examine their parent’s role in the Nazi past. Those same elders ignored her prewar novels during the 1950s: ‘because too many people saw themselves in them.’
The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA & History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures Christine Kenneally, HB
Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture by Grace Hale ($44, PB) Summer 1979-80. Coogee Beach. My new Sanyo portable radio (Christmas present) was perched on a sand pile next to my ear as I half listened, drifting in and out of a sun induced semi-coma. Then I heard this: ‘We were at a party/ His earlobe fell in the deep/ Someone reached in and grabbed it/ It was a rock lobster!/ Rock Lobster!’ The first single from the self-titled debut album from the B-52s. Well…That began a fandom that lasts to this day. By 1980–81, the group was a worldwide music sensation—and no more so than in Australia. A fact acknowledged by band members to this day. Formed on a whim in Athens, Georgia in 1976—the band blended kitsch, surf guitar, dance pop with the highpitched harmonies of Kate and Cindy along with the nervous, flamboyant, spoken vocalising of Fred. R.E.M. were another product of this unique campus town, along with Oh-OK, Gang of Four, Pylon & Vic Chesnutt, to name but a few. So how did a ‘sleepy little college town’—in the words of B-52s drummer/guitarist Keith Strickland—become a ‘cornucopia of bohemian lifestyle’ and famed indie music scene, in the middle of a conservative, southern state, in Reagan’s America?
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Notes on a Nervous Planet Matt Haig, PB
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Eats More, Shoots & Leaves: Why, All Punctuation Marks Matter! Lynne Truss, PB
Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 Ryan H. Walsh, PB
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Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word Matthew Battles, HB
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Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time Hilary Spurling, HB
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Transcription Kate Atkinson, HB
Home Fire Kamila Shamsie, HB
Into the Water Paula Hawkins, HB
Macbeth Jo Nesbo, HB
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Greeks Bearing Gifts Philip Kerr, HB
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Aphrodite & the Rabbis: How the Jews Adapted Roman Culture to Create Judaism As We Know It Burton L. Visotzky, HB
Days of Awe : Stories A M Homes, PB
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The Middle English Bible: A Reassessment Henry Ansgar Kelly, HB
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Sicilian Splendors: Discovering the Secret Places Landscapes of the Islamic World: Archaeology, History & Ethnography That Speak to the Heart (eds) McPhillips & Wordsworth, HB John Keahey, HB Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats & Joyce Colm Toibin, HB
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Room to Dream: A Life in Art David Lynch & Kristine McKenna, HB
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Now $23.95 The Plantpower Way: Italia Delicious Vegan Recipes from the Italian Countryside Julie Piatt & Rich Roll, HB
Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon Peter Ames Carlin, PB
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The Temptations of Trade: Britain, Spain, and the Struggle for Empire A Short History of Drunkenness Adrian Finucane, HB by Mark Forsyth, HB
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The Book of Veganish: With 70 Easy Recipes Freston & Cohn, PB
Cleopatra: I Am Fire & Air Harold Bloom, HB
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Indian Family Kitchen Anjali Pathak, HB
French Cooking at Home Marianne Magnier Moreno, HB
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The Arts
The Botanical Art of William T. Cooper by Wendy Cooper ($65, HB)
William T. Cooper was one of the world’s most esteemed bird painters. In his paintings, birds nibble at plump red berries, they rest on twisted vines and branches covered with lichen, and they clutch forest fruits and leaves in their claws. These botanical details, the backdrops to his bird portraits, are the subject of this lavishly illustrated book written by his botanist wife, Wendy Cooper.
Historical Grammar of the Visual Arts by Alois Riegl ($50, PB)
The most important member of the so-called Vienna School, art historian Alois Riegl (1858–1905) developed a highly refined technique of visual or formal analysis, as opposed to the iconological method championed by Erwin Panofsky with its emphasis on decoding motifs through recourse to texts. Riegl pioneered new understandings of the changing role of the viewer, the significance of non-high art objects such as ornament & textiles, and theories of art & art history, including his much-debated neologism Kunstwollen (the will of art). This is the first English translation—by Jacqueline E. Jung.
The Invisible Painting: My Memoir of Leonora Carrington by Gabriel Weisz Carrington
Since her death in 2011, the legendary Surrealist Leonora Carrington has been reconstructed & reinvented many times over. In this book, her son draws on remembered conversations & events to demythologise his mother, revealing the woman and the artist behind the iconic persona. He travels between Leonora’s native England & adopted homeland of Mexico, making stops in New York & Paris & meeting some of the remarkable figures she associated with, from Max Ernst & Andre Bréton to Remedios Varo & Alejandro Jodorowsky. A textured portrait emerges from these conversations, memories, stories & Leonora’s engagement with books. Using the act of writing to process & understand the death of his mother, Carrington has produced a moving & fascinating account of life, art, love & loss. ($40, HB)
The Mirror & the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits by Jennifer Higgie ($40, HB) Until the 20th century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have—and, of course, continue to do so—often against tremendous odds, from laws & religion to the pressures of family & public disapproval. Frida Kahlo, Lois Mailou Jones & Amrita Sher-Gil en route to Mexico City, Paris or Bombay; Suzanne Valadon & Gwen John, craving city lights, the sea & solitude; Artemisia Gentileschi striding through the streets of Naples & Paula Modersohn-Becker in Worpswede—Jennifer Higgie introduces a cross-section of women artists who turned their back on convention.
Bruegel & Contemporaries: Art as a Covert Resistance by Dorien Tamis ($80, HB)
In this critical commentary on power structures in the days of Pieter Bruegel the Younger & his contemporaries Dorien Tamis looks at what appear to be paintings with a purely religious subject, to show that they have been approached in such a way as to hide a critical commentary on the power structures & religious reality of the Flanders as Pieter Bruegel II knew it. Around 175 colour illustrations
Irma Stern: African in Europe—European in Africa by Sean O’Toole ($53, HB)
The expressionist paintings of Irma Stern were a key factor in the modernisation of early 20th-century South African art. A master of colour & composition, Stern is best known for the portraits & still lifes that reflected her passion for travel & devotion to home. Drawing from letters, journals, the artist’s own illustrated travelogues Sean O’Toole traces Stern’s artistic life in Africa & Germany, focussing on the political & cultural forces that shaped her work—including the interplay between indigenous & colonial art in the African continent, & Stern’s continued influence on contemporary South African artists.
Still Life Drawing by Alice Oehr ($25, PB)
Alice Oehr teachers you to: Use uncomplicated techniques to represent objects on paper; Experiment with pattern & colour; Create texture with different mediums: collage, paint or even pixels; Take the time to appreciate the small things, build creativity into your routines; And of course use artistic license & find your own style.
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Frances Burke: Designer of modern textiles by Nanette Carter & Robyn Oswald-Jacobs
From the late 1930s to 1970, Frances Burke’s designs achieved a prominence unparalleled in Australia before or since. Displaying imagery & colours from native flora, marine objects, Indigenous artefacts & designs of pure abstraction, Burke’s innovative fabrics remain fresh & appealing, distinctive & evocative of Australia. In New Design, her fabric showroom and interior design consultancy, Burke presented modern furniture by emerging local designers of the postwar period. Drawing on regular visits to the US, UK, Europe, Japan and Taiwan she became an authoritative advocate for modern design. Burke also collaborated with leading architects and interior designers, including Robin Boyd, her fabrics making arresting contributions to influential modern buildings. Nanette Carter & Robyn Oswald-Jacobs have located & unpacked the different components of a body of work never presented as art or intended simply for display, but which contributed so much to the felt experience of Australian life in the middle decades of the 20th century. ($70, HB)
Container & Prefab Housing: Sustainable and Affordable Architecture by Anna Minguet ($55, HB)
The making of architectural projects made partly or totally from recycled freight containers is getting more & more common, and added to this, the need for a more sustainable construction is also becoming increasingly necessary. Lots of architects & designers have reinvented the prefabricated house with new materials & construction techniques, which are easy to transport, some even able to be built in a single day in surprising locations. This book includes 16 selected projects, all developed with graphics, exterior & interior images, plans, elevations, sections, construction details & other useful specifications.
Edward Hopper: The Story of His Life by Sergio Rossi ($53, HB)
While many of Edward Hopper’s most acclaimed works have been embraced by American culture, the artist himself rejected much of the lyricism & romance that his audience imposed on his paintings. Using Hopper’s own words as a jumping off point, this graphic biography traces his roots as an art student & commercial illustrator; his life-changing time in Europe; his rocky relationship with his wife Jo, and his incredible success later in life—showing how, as he became increasingly famous, he grew more taciturn & resolute in his disparagement of American society & the labels thrust on him.
Circles and Squares: The Lives & Art of the Hampstead Modernists by Caroline Maclean ($23, PB)
Hampstead in the 1930s. In this peaceful, verdant London suburb, Barbara Hepworth & Ben Nicholson have embarked on a love affair a passion that will launch an era-defining art movement. In her chronicle of the exhilarating rise & fall of British Modernism, Caroline Maclean captures the dazzling circle drawn into Hepworth & Nicholson’s wake—among them Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Herbert Read & famed emigrés Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus & Piet Mondrian, blown in on the winds of change sweeping across Europe. Drawing on previously unpublished archive material, Caroline Maclean’s book brings the work, loves & rivalries of the Hampstead Modernists to life as never before, capturing a brief moment in time when a new way of living seemed possible.
The Ten: How and why we wear the fashion classics by Lauren Cochrane ($30, HB)
From the evolution of the white T-shirt from army staple to symbol of achingly cool simplicity, the hoodie’s birth in the monasteries of Rome to its domination of streetwear, and the transition of the stiletto from the feet of 15th century Iranian equestrians to those of New York businesswomen, Lauren Cochrane takes a deep dive into 10 fashion classics’ history—how they gained their reputation, and what they mean today, accompanied by stylish photography & illustrations.
Stitch in Bloom by Lora Avedian ($30, PB)
Artist & mixed-media textile designer, Lora Avedian demonstrates the versatility of the art of couching, an embellishment technique used to adorn fabrics. She uses different materials to produce a range of finishes before showcasing 15 stunning projects to try yourself. Featuring ways you can enhance pre-owned garments and accessories, to creating statement pieces for the home, and with each design giving a nod to nature.
Amazing Japanese Crochet Stitches by Keiko Okamoto ($30, HB)
From elegant to funky, Keiko Okamoto presents a wide selection of crochet stitches in this valuable reference—whether you want to recreate an Irish lace in creamy neutrals or play with stitches that stand out for their unusual shape & dimension, Designs for unusual yarns, unique stitch patterns & some amazing edgings, plus 7 practice projects including: 2 elegant, lacy shawls, 2 fun flowery necklaces, a bohemian vest in neutral tones, a wildly embellished rainbow scarf & the most one-of-a-kind bag you’ll ever see.
what we're reading
Jack: ‘Passive in the morning, rebellious in the afternoon, she was made and unmade daily. She fastened hungrily on the only substance available to her, became affectionate toward her own animation, then felt like a collaborator. How could she not be devoted to a life of such intense division? And how could I not be devoted to her devotion?’ Published in 1987, and recently voted the best memoir of the last fifty years by the New York Times, Vivian Gornick’s memoir Fierce Attachments explores the eponymous fierce attachments to the women that raised her: ‘I absorbed them as I would chloroform on a cloth laid against my face.’ How could I not be hopelessly devoted to your book, Vivian? Brilliant. I loved it. Andrew: The front cover of My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend is a great ‘rock chick’ photograph of Lindy Morrison that Tracey Thorn has taken in a grungy dressing room somewhere in the 1980s. It has all of the allure, and the immediacy of a Nan Goldin photograph—but that very intimacy between subject and artist also has a real edge, reminding the viewer of how presumptuous we are to attempt to share in it or deign to understand it. My Rock ‘n’Roll Friend, however, proves itself a subtler, less intimidating, and more generous a piece of writing. It is a really engaging and lovely memoir of Thorn’s friendship with Morrison, the drummer from Australian band The Go-Betweens. Thorn is absolutely perfect for this task—as well as having one of the loveliest and most distinctive voices of her generation, in recent years she has pivoted from a certain degree of rock ‘fame’ to a charming and perspicacious journalism—and as such has about as clear-eyed and intelligent take on music, fame, and women as one could hope for. Sure, if you like the idea of a fly on the wall biog of a stroppy, outspoken, charismatic drummer living the rock dream, there is heaps to enjoy and you will tear through this in a couple of hours, but there is a far lovelier and subtler, examination of women in rock, celebrity, female friendship, career success and failure, the mutability of relationships, and much more in play. It is a really touching and revealing piece of writing.
Victoria: We Were Not Men by Campbell Mattinson—This is a moving and quite powerful story about twin brothers who had to grow up fast after a tragic accident. It is a story about swimming, competing and love, and boys becoming men. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to recommending it. A terrific debut novel. (Due June 21) A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez— Another winner from this great author. Nunez is a master at writing about relationships and this time it is between a woman and her immigrant parents—a Chinese father and German mother and growing up in a project home in America. The last part of the book is about her and her choices in life which are influenced by her upbringing. Fabulous.
Viki: I picked up Allan Gurganus’ new collection of short stories from this month’s literature pages, and now have everything he’s ever written on order. His style of writing reminds me why I love reading. Here’s an expample from the first story in the collection, The Wish for a Good Young Country Doctor: ‘Until moving there on a scholarship, I had not known the Middle West. New Englanders are sometimes called emotionally frozen. Southerners, considered armed traditionalist hotheads. I soon learned Midwesterners have flukes, too. They’re simply better at hiding. Everything. They practice Nordic shunning. They know you can kill your neighbor’s soul simply by ignoring it.’ As with my other favourite American short story writer, Jim Shepard, I’ve consumed these tales in one gulp, and am immediately returning for a re-read. Can’t wait for his prize-winning novel, Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, to arrive.
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Bestsellers—Non-Fiction 1. Emotional Female
Yumiko Kadota
2. Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future
Danielle Celermajer
3. How to Fake Being Tidy & other things my mother
never taught me
4. Return to Uluru
Fenella Souter Mark McKenna
5. Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty & the Uluru Statement
Henry Reynolds
6. Killing Sydney
Elizabeth Farrelly
7. My Year of Living Vulnerably
Rick Morton
8. With the Falling of the Dusk: A Chronicle of the
World in Crisis
Stan Grant
9. White Russians, Red Peril: A Cold War History of
Migration to Australia
Sheila Fitzgerald
10. Sex, Lies & Question Time: Why the successes &
struggles of women in Australia’s parliament
matter to us all
Kate Ellis
Bestsellers—Fiction 1. Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart
3. Love Objects
Emily Maguire
4. The Family Doctor
Debra Oswald
5. Friends and Dark Shapes
Kavita Bedford
6. The Performance
Claire Thomas
7. Transient Desires
Donna Leon
8. The Information Editor 9. The Committed 10. The Truth About Her
28
Miles Hunt Viet Thanh Nguyen Jacqueline Maley
and another thing.....
By the time you read this the Sydney Writers’ Festival will be either just about to open or is already in full swing. Held at Carriageworks with a few events at other venues from April 26 to May 2, with lots of Australian authors in the mix, it looks like audiences starved for live events are already booking early and quite a few events are sold out. Despite international freight delays David is working hard to get as many books as possible to stock the festival shop. It’s great to see things relaxing a little (although I am hoping masks and distance maintenance procedures continue)—and likewise our events programme at the shop is carefully starting up again with bigger audiences. Meredith Burgmann and Nadia Wheatley will be entertaining a crowd of 86 (and counting) this Thursday with a talk about the radical 60s, and their new book Radicals. But slowly, slowly—we don’t want Gleebooks to become one of those ‘Have you been to ... in the last week’-s hot spots. The childrens’ events programme is also going gangbusters—with regular pram-jams in the aisles on Mondays and Fridays for Rhymetime and Storytime with Rachel, and lots of visiting authors and illustrators (illustrator Gus Gordon gracing the front cover this month) at these and the Saturday kids’ book clubs. Speaking of book clubs, rumour has it there may be an adults’ book club starting up at Gleebooks Glebe this year, watch this space. This month I’ve been reading Kate Ellis’ Sex, Lies and Question Time—an even-handed (considering) discussion of the treatment of women in Australian politics, and something that would fit well into any ‘empathy training’ curriculum. Australian girls should definitely be encouraged to read it, especially if, as Ellis reports, after the euphoria of having a woman PM 2010 to 2013 when all girls could see themselves in the role, in a 2017 Plan International Australia survey showed that zero per cent of the young women aged eighteen to twenty-five surveyed would consider entering politics as a future career. Zero. Maybe they’re all planning revolution. Viki
For more April/May new releases go to:
Main shop—49 Glebe Pt Rd; Ph: (02) 9660 2333, Fax: (02) 9660 3597. Open 7 days, 9am to 9m Thur–Sat; 9am to 7pm Sun–Wed Sydney Theatre Shop—22 Hickson Rd Walsh Bay; Open two hours before and until after every performance Blackheath—Shop 1 Collier’s Arcade, Govetts Leap Rd; Ph: (02) 4787 6340. Open 7 days, 9am to 6pm Blackheath Oldbooks—Collier’s Arcade, Govetts Leap Rd: Open 7 days 10am to 5pm Dulwich Hill—536 Marrickville Rd Dulwich Hill; Ph: (02) 9560 0660. Open 7 days, Tue–Sat 9am to 7pm; Sun–Mon 9 to 5 www.gleebooks.com.au. Email: books@gleebooks.com.au; oldbooks@gleebooks.com.au