Darren Rix and Craig Cormick travelled the east coast of Australia to listen to First Nation stories. These stories have been woven together with the European accounts to bring greater context and understanding: the places Cook named had names; the places he ‘discovered’ were rich with peoples and stories; and although Cook sailed on, the British Empire would impact the lives of First Nations Peoples immeasurably.
Melbourne Ghost Signs
Sean Reynolds
HB - $59.99
Reynolds, a transplanted American, first became fascinated by ghost signs while walking in Footscray and Yarraville. He loved the hand-painted letters, the intricate glasswork, and the old factory marketing brands he’d not heard of, whether it was Four’n Twenty Pies or the St Kilda Coffee Palace. The photographic collection and accompanying stories reveal hidden histories of Melbourne one ghost sign at a time.
Dhoombak Goobgoowana
Ross L Jones, James Waghorne and Marcia Langton (eds.)
PB - $39.99
This first volume investigating the relationship between Indigenous Australians and the University of Melbourne acknowledges and publicly addresses a long, complex and troubled past. This is a book about race and how it has been constructed and used as a means of power by academics. It is also about knowledge, especially the Indigenous knowledges that silently contributed to many early research projects.
Näku Dhäruk The Bark Petitions
Clare Wright
PB - $45
In 1975, Gough Whitlam poured a handful of sand into the palm of Gurindji Elder Vincent Lingiari to symbolise the granting of deeds to his ancestral country. That journey towards legal recognition started with the Yolngu clans working with white allies towards presenting four Bark Petitions, the Näku Dhäruk, to parliament. This is the story of a founding democratic document and the people who made it.
Colonial Adventure
Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver
PB - $29.99
Adventure was one of the grand narratives of colonisation, which saw European powers sending agents off to distant worlds. Some adventurers to Australia were shipwrecked or lost, while bushrangers antagonised authorities. But when serving the interests of colonisation or following their own ambition, they could be brutal, killing and dispossessing Aboriginal people and claiming their lands.
Broken Heart
Shireen Morris
PB - $36.99
Morris unpacks the complex history behind the referendum for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament that Australia rejected in 2023. With the insider perspective of a constitutional lawyer who worked with Noel Pearson on the Voice, she illuminates how an alliance between advocates and conservatives gave way to partisanship, and analyses the mistakes of the ‘Yes’ campaign along with the right’s intransigence.
Entitlement
Rumaan Alam
PB - $32.99
Brooke – single and adrift at 33 – finds meaning in her work for the Asher and Carol Jaffee Foundation, where she’s helping an octogenarian give away his fortune. When Asher takes a special interest in Brooke, it’s hard for her not to fall under his spell. She’s drawn to his power and money – and his apparent willingness to share both with her. But how far is each prepared to go to get what they think they deserve?
Playground
Richard Powers
PB - $34.99
Rafi and Todd are two opposites at an elite school, bonding over a 3000year-old board game that will direct Rafi into a life of literature and Todd towards a startling AI breakthrough. Elsewhere, Evie sinks to the bottom of a pool strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. The three will be drawn together by humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating cities into the open sea.
Intermezzo
Sally Rooney
PB - $34.99
Brothers Peter and Ivan have little in common. Peter is a brash lawyer in his 30s who, in the wake of their father’s death, is self-medicating and seeing two different women: his first love and a deeply unserious college student. Ivan is an awkward but steady 22-year-old competitive chess player intertwined with an older woman. For the two grieving brothers, this is a period of desire, despair and possibility.
Gabriel’s Moon
William Boyd
PB - $34.99
Gabriel is a young man haunted by memories of his childhood home in flames. An acclaimed travel writer, his days are spent capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals, and ultimately into the hands of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler.
Creation
Lake
Rachel Kushner
PB - $34.99
Sadie Smith, a ruthless 34-year-old American agent, is sent by her mysterious employers to a remote corner of France to infiltrate a commune of eco-activists led by Bruno Lacombe, an enigmatic elder who believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. Sadie finds Bruno’s idealism laughable, but soon he’s seducing her with ingenious counterhistories and his own tragic story.
The Empusium
Olga Tokarczuk
PB - $34.99
In September 1913, a student suffering from TB arrives at a health resort in western Poland. Daily, residents imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur and debate the likelihood of war, devils, and the inherent inferiority of women. But someone or something seems to be infiltrating their world. As the student attempts to decipher the sinister forces, little does he realise they have already chosen their next target.
The Mighty Red
Louise Erdrich
PB - $34.99
In Argus, North Dakota, a fraught wedding is taking place. Gary is desperate to marry Kismet. But now Kismet’s friend, confidante and occasional lover, Hugo, is determined to get her back. Meanwhile Kismet’s mother hauls sugar beets for Gary’s family, and on her nightly truck drives along the highway, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future of her daughter and herself.
Our Evenings
Alan Hollinghurst
PB - $34.99
Dave is 13 when he goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school where he’ll encounter heady new possibilities. He’ll also be exposed to the envy and violence of his sponsor’s son, Giles. As their lives unfold over the next half century, Dave, a gifted actor, will struggle with convention and discrimination, and Giles will become an increasingly dangerous politician.
A Sunny Place for Shady People
Mariana Enriquez
PB - $32.99
A neighbourhood is plagued by ghosts. The faces of a family melt away. A faded hotel is haunted by a girl who had dissolved in the rooftop water tank. A riverbank is populated by birds that used to be women. In these and other tales, Enriquez dwells in the grim shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.
Annihilation
Michel Houellebecq
PB - $34.99
2027 France. Amid a contentious presidential race, and unsettling cyberattacks on the government, overworked advisor Paul Raison faces separation from his wife. When his father has a stroke, Paul leaves Paris for his provincial hometown. There, he and his siblings must repair their strained relationships with the patriarch as they attempt to free him from a decaying public nursing home.
Gliff
Ali Smith
HB - $39.99
Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling their house. What does it mean? In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take? And what’s a horse got to do with any of this?
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Haruki Murakami
HB - $49.99
A young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, and he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a mysterious library. When he finally finds his beloved, she is working in a dream library and has no memory of their life together in the other world. As the lines between reality and fantasy blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.
Time of the Child
Niall Williams
PB - $32.99
Dr Jack Troy was born and raised in the little town of Faha, but as a visit from the doctor is always a bad sign, he’s an outsider in his own community. His daughter Ronnie, forever living in his shadow, has passed up her one invitation to marry, from an unsuitable man. But as the town readies itself for the Christmas of 1962, the lives of Jack and Ronnie are turned upside down by a baby left in their care.
She’s Always Hungry
Eliza Clark
PB - $32.99
A teenager longs for perfect skin. A scientist looks after fragile alien flora. A young man takes the night into his own hands. Across these stories, characters are desperate with insatiable desire. Laced with dark humour, Clark’s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of a most basic human feeling: hunger.
The Proof of My Innocence
Jonathan Coe
PB - $34.99
Chris has been pursuing the truth behind a think-tank, founded in the 80s, that’s been scheming to push the British government towards extremism. As Britain finds itself with a new PM whose tenure will be shortlived, Chris’ pursuit leads him to a conference deep in the Cotswolds, where a murder enquiry will soon be in progress. A 40-year-old literary enigma may just provide the solution Chris is looking for.
The Coin
Yasmin Zaher
PB - $24.99
A wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style has relocated to New York. But with her homeland only a memory, her inheritance is inaccessible. She begins teaching at a school for underprivileged boys, where her methods cross boundaries. With America stifling her sexuality and principles, she becomes preoccupied with purity, cleanliness and self-image, drawing her students into her obsessions.
The Party
Tessa Hadley
HB - $29.99
Post-war Bristol. Sisters Moira and Evelyn, on the cusp of adulthood, go to an art students’ party where they meet two men, Paul and Sinden, whose air of worldliness and sophistication is as intoxicating as it is repellent. The four meet on another night at Paul’s grand suburban mansion. As the night unfolds, what the sisters learn about themselves and each other will shock and spur them into a new phase of their lives.
Liars
Sarah Manguso
HB - $39.99
When Jane, an aspiring writer, marries filmmaker John Bridges, she believes she has found everything she was looking for, including – a few years later – all the joys and labours of motherhood. But as her career flourishes, she runs headlong into John’s ambitions, whims and ego, as well as his unwillingness or inability to parent. Jane tries to hold their family together – that is, until John leaves her.
Australian Fiction
The First Friend
Malcolm Knox
PB - $34.99
The Soviet Union, 1938. Lavrentiy Beria, ‘The Boss’ of the Georgian republic, nervously prepares a Black Sea resort for a visit from ‘The Boss of Bosses’, Stalin. Under escalating pressure from enemies and allies alike, Beria descends into murderous paranoia, while a childhood friend must play his own game of survival. The tension ramps up as Stalin’s visit and the inevitable bloodbath approaches.
Juice
Tim Winton
HB - $49.99
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. It’s a forsaken place, with middens of twisted iron, rusted wire and sunbaked trash, but they’re desperate now and this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The problem is, they’re not alone. For them, this is about more than survival; amongst the barbarism, they must stay human.
The Degenerates
Raeden Richardson
PB - $34.99
Grounded in Melbourne’s laneways and shopping centres, this tribute to existence in the margins follows the interwoven stories of four characters across India, Australia and the United States. Through the lives of Twitch, Ginny, Somnath, and Maha, we encounter the realities of modern loneliness, as well as all forms of departure – from home, from family, and from life itself.
The
Belburd
Nardi Simpson
PB - $32.99
Ginny Dilboong is a fierce and deadly young poet grappling with love, family and the spaces in which to create her art. Though she is a daughter of Country, the place that shapes her is not her own. Ginny seeks to protect the truths of others while learning her own. And, all the while, others are watching. They are the sound of the belburd as it echoes through the world – everything, including Ginny, is because of them.
The Temperature
Katerina Gibson
PB - $32.99
Fiona is a millennial media writer; Sidney a failed poet; Tomas a 30something factory worker and father; Lexi a fading activist icon; Govita a non-binary visual artist; and Henry a Vietnam veteran ageing out in rural isolation. They have seemingly nothing in common – but a viral tweet will bring their lives into collision, upending their assumptions about one another, and their pasts and futures.
Dusk
Robbie Arnott
PB - $34.99
In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there’s far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. As they close in on their prey, they’re forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.
Rapture
Emily Maguire
PB - $32.99
Ninth-century Mainz, Germany. Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At 18, in order to devote her life to the study she’s denied as a woman, she disguises herself as a man. So begins the life of John: a matchless scholar, scribe, and celebrated teacher in Rome. When the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, Agnes will risk everything to once again feel known and loved.
The Burrow
Melanie Cheng
PB - $32.99
Amy, Jin and Lucie live in isolation in their partially renovated, inner city home. They are not happy, but they are also terrified of change. When they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie, and then Amy’s mother, Pauline, comes to stay, the family is forced to confront long-buried secrets. Will opening their hearts to the rabbit help them heal, or only invite further tragedy?
The Deal
Alex Miller
PB - $32.99
It’s 1975, and at the threshold of his writing career, Andy McPherson is forced to take a part-time teaching job, where he meets Lang Tzu. When Lang asks him to prove his friendship by brokering a risky deal for a muchdesired piece of art, Andy consents despite protests from his partner. In the process, Andy confronts the conflict between his artistic ideals and the market.
The Thinning
Inga Simpson
PB - $32.99
Fin and her mother, along with a band of outliers, live deep off the grid, always on amber alert and ready to run. In the outside world, the environment is increasingly under threat. With a new disaster looming, Fin will need to work with Terry, one of a new breed of evolved humans called the Incompletes, during a dangerous journey to restore the natural world and humankind.
Theory & Practice
Michelle de Kretser
PB - $32.99
1986. Beautiful, radical ideas are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda she meets artists, activists, students –and Kit. He claims to be in a ‘deconstructed’ relationship; they become lovers. Meanwhile, an entry in Woolf’s diary upends what the narrator knows about her literary idol, throwing her own work into disarray.
Diving, Falling
Kylie Mirmohamadi
PB - $32.99
For years, Leila has smoothed the ruffled feathers between her sons, and endured the volatile moods of their father, the acclaimed Australian artist Ken Black. She’s even tolerated his many affairs. All for the quiet hum of creative freedom. But when Ken dies, leaving his artist’s estate to their sons and the pointed amount of $69,000 to his muse, Leila decides it’s time to seek her own peace and pleasure.
Australian Crime
The Ledge
Christian White
PB - $34.99
When human remains are discovered in a forest, police are baffled, the locals are shocked, and a group of old friends panic. Their long-held secret, which began in 1999 when 16-yearold Aaron ran away from home, is about to be uncovered. As past and present run breathlessly parallel, the friends are caught up in an unforeseeable chain of events from which no one can escape unscathed.
Opal
Patricia Wolf
PB - $32.99
Off duty, Lucas Walker drives with his half-sister 400km to remote Kanpara to pick up his cousin Blair, who’s been digging for opals. Soon after they find themselves trapped by flood, they learn that a man and woman have been brutally murdered in the town. When police take Blair in for questioning, Walker must race to uncover the killer before the waters recede and escape becomes possible.
Shadow City
Natalie Conyer
PB - $32.99
In Sydney’s Chinatown, a young woman’s battered body is found bearing a sun tattoo. Before Sergeant Rose can investigate, she is ordered to hand over the case to the AFP. Meanwhile, veteran Detective Lourens, recently suspended from duty in Cape Town, decides to search for a missing South African student while visiting his daughter in Sydney. Rose and Lourens join forces, exposing a trail of corruption.
The Close-up
Pip Drysdale
PB - $34.99
Once a young novelist full of promise, Zoe Ann Weiss now has a failed debut and an agent who’s about to drop her if she doesn’t write something brilliant soon. The cure to her prevailing writer’s block appears in the form of her old flame, Zach. It’s like no time has passed at all. The problem is Zach, now a movie star, has a stalker who’s reenacting violent plot twists from Zoe’s first novel –except now, she’s the victim.
The Valley
Chris Hammer
PB - $34.99
After a controversial entrepreneur is murdered in a remote valley, Detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan are soon contending with cowboy lawyers, conmen, bullion thieves and graverobbers. When Nell discovers the victim is a close blood relative, the past takes on a looming significance. But why does the police hierarchy insist that Nell and Ivan stay on the case despite a conflict of interest?
The Death of Dora Black
Lainie Anderson
PB - $32.99
Adelaide, 1917. Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but her tough antics have made her a household name. When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and her junior constable are told to leave the investigation to the men. But then Dora’s workmate goes missing, and Miss Cocks resolves to take matters into her own hands.
We Solve Murders
Richard Osman
PB - $34.99
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retirement. He does the odd bit of investigative work but prefers the local pub quiz. Adrenaline is his daughter-in-law Amy’s business now. As a private security officer, she’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. It seems like an easy job, until a dead body and a bag of money has Amy sending an SOS to the only person she trusts: Steve.
Leave the Girls Behind
Jacqueline Bublitz
PB - $34.99
Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Ann's childhood friend was murdered by suspected serial killer Ethan Oswald. Still tormented by the case, Ruth can’t help but think of the long-dead Oswald when another young girl goes missing from the same town. And when she uncovers startling new evidence that suggests Oswald did not act alone, she’s determined to find his deadly partner in crime.
International Crime
The Blue Hour
Paula Hawkins
PB - $34.99
Eris is an island with only one house, one inhabitant, and one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for 12 hours each day, it was home to famous artist Vanessa, whose unfaithful husband disappeared 20 years ago. Now it is home to Grace, a solitary creature of the tides. Yet when a shocking discovery is made in a London gallery, a visitor comes calling and Eris’ secrets threaten to emerge.
Ink Ribbon Red
Alex Pavesi
PB - $34.99
Six friends gathering at a country house for a birthday weekend play a game. They each choose two of their names from a hat, and then write a story with one of them as killer, the other as victim. When they read the stories to each other, real life secrets, grudges and affairs are exposed. With each new revelation and fictional murder, there are yet more reasons to kill and be killed.
The Drowned
John Banville
PB - $32.99
In 1950s rural Ireland, a loner comes across an empty car in a field. Against his better judgment, he approaches and becomes embroiled in the case of a missing woman, whose husband claims she may have thrown herself into the sea. Detective Inspector Strafford, called in from Dublin to investigate, is joined by his longtime ally. As the case unfolds, past events resurface with life-altering ramifications for all involved.
Blood Ties
Jo Nesbo
PB - $34.99
Brothers Carl and Roy Opgard have succeeded in life, so far as is possible in a small town like Os, where they’ve killed their way to the top. They’re good at covering their tracks and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. But Sheriff Kurt Olsen wants to bring them down and believes he has new evidence against them. The body count of Os is about to get even higher.
Biography
My Roman Year
Andre Aciman
PB - $34.99
As teenage Andre stands on the dock, his mother fusses over the 32 suitcases, trunks, and tea chests that contain their world. They’ve left Alexandria, where his father has remained, for 1960s Rome. Andre is now head of the family, with a younger brother to keep in line and a mute but trenchantly communicative mother to translate for. This comingof-age memoir shares the luminous truth of life for a family forever in exile.
The Season
Helen Garner
PB - $34.99
It’s footy season in Melbourne, and Garner is following her grandson’s suburban team. She turns up not only at every game but at every training session, shivering on the sidelines in the dark, fascinated by the spectacle. But this is something more than that. It’s a chance to connect with her youngest grandchild, to witness his triumphs and defeats, to gasp and cheer for the team as it fights its way towards the finals.
Three Wild Dogs and the Truth
Markus Zusak
HB - $36.99
What happens when the Zusaks open their family home to three big, wild, pound-hardened dogs? The answer can only be chaos: there’s public shaming, street fights, a stomach pumping, endless comedy, shocking tragedy, and unbelievable carnage. There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most importantly of all, an explosion of love and the joy and recognition of family.
Didion & Babitz
Lili Anolik
PB - $34.99
A run-down Hollywood rental, hotbed for movie stars and musicians, lies at the foundation of two great American authors. Didion was a stylish enigma with an enduring, intellectually dynamic marriage. Babitz was the goddaughter of Stravinsky, nude of Duchamp, and consort of Jim Morrison. Anolik uses Babitz’s diarylike letters as the key to unlocking the pair and their fractious alliance.
Australian Gospel
Lech Blaine
PB - $36.99
Michael and Mary Shelley are Christian fanatics who loathe their fellow Australians. Lenore and Tom Blaine are working-class Queensland publicans raising a large family in a raucous, loving, sports-obsessed home. There’s just one problem. The Blaines are foster parents to three of the Shelleys’ children, who were removed from them as infants. And the Shelleys are prepared to do anything to get them back.
Lifeform
Jenny Slate
PB - $32.99
Herein lies an account of Jenny’s journey into new love and motherhood, told in five phases: Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing. Through unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, obituaries, graduation speeches, and more, Slate explores every aspect of being a new mother.
Shattered
Hanif Kureishi
HB - $36.99
On Boxing Day 2022, in Rome, Kureishi had a fall. When he came to in a pool of blood, he was horrified to realise he had lost the use of his limbs. While confined to a series of hospital wards, he felt compelled to write. Unable to type or hold a pen, he began to dictate to family members the words that formed in his head. The result was a series of dispatches from his hospital bed – a diary of a life in pieces.
Sonny Boy
Al Pacino
HB - $55
Pacino seemed to explode onto the scene, starring in four films in the 70s that would become landmarks in cinematic history. But by then he was in his 30s and had long been a fixture of avant-garde theatre in New York. He was raised by his fiercely loving but mentally unwell mother and her parents, but also by the South Bronx and his troop of friends. His first memoir captures all his major creative and personal relationships.
Max Dupain
Helen Ennis
HB - $55
Photographer Max Dupain was a major cultural figure in Australia, at the forefront of the visual arts in a career spanning more than 50 years. Examining the sources of his creativity – literature, art, music – alongside his approaches to masculinity, love, the body, war, and nature, Ennis reveals a portrait of a painfully driven and contradictory artist who never wanted to be ordinary.
Kingmaker
Sonia Purnell
PB - $34.99
The obituaries following Pamela Churchill Harriman’s death in 1997 were scathing. Her social life and erotic adventures overshadowed what she’d achieved behind the scenes on both sides of the Atlantic, from being sent by her father-in-law, Churchill, to seduce Americans in the cause against Hitler, to bringing Clinton together with his runningmate, Gore, and influencing the likes of Capote and the Kennedys.
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood
Gail Crowther
HB - $52.99
Crowther uncovers the glamourous extravagances and devastating lows of Dorothy Parker’s time in Hollywood. Moving from New York City, Parker worked on numerous classic screenplays, such as the 1937 A Star is Born, and suffered the devastation of alcoholism, a miscarriage, and her husband’s suicide as well as her own blacklisting due to her work with anti-fascist and anti-racist groups.
Men Have Called Her Crazy
Anna Marie Tendler
PB - $34.99
In early 2021, Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression, and self-harm. She recounts her hospital experience and pivotal moments from her life, along with her battle through the all-too-common experience of being made to question her own sanity and doubt her worth, all while confronting the narratives that had been foisted on her since girlhood.
History
The Golden Road
William Dalrymple
PB - $39.99
For over a millennia, Indian artistic culture, technology, astronomy, mathematics, and mythology blazed a trail along a ‘Golden Road’ that stretched from the Red Sea to the Pacific. Dalrymple draws from a lifetime of scholarship to highlight India’s oft-forgotten position as the heart of ancient Eurasia. From trade that helped fund the Roman Empire to the creation of the numerals we use today, India transformed the world.
Italy Reborn
Mark Gilbert
HB - $75
After the moral, political, and military devastation of WWII, Italy experienced one of the most impressive transformations in modern European history. Gilbert charts the country’s descent into Fascism, along with the disasters of wartime, the Italian Resistance, the establishment of the Republic in 1946, and the first few bitterly contested but free postwar elections.
Henry V
Dan Jones
PB - $34.99
Despite only reigning for nine years, Henry V was a model for his successors. Churchill called him a ‘gleam of splendour in the dark, troubled story of medieval England’. For Jones, Henry V is intriguingly elusive: a hardened warrior with a bookish temperament, and a leader who made grave mistakes, yet triumphed when it mattered, but whose conquests sowed the seeds for generations of calamity.
The Siege
Ben Macintyre
PB - $36.99
In April 1980, gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy in London and took 26 hostages. Millions across Britian would watch the tense ensuing sixday siege. While negotiators sought a bloodless end, the SAS – hitherto an organisation shrouded in secrecy –laid plans for a rescue mission. Macintyre takes readers from the years and weeks of build-up to the minute-by-minute account of the siege and rescue.
Autocracy, Inc.
Anne Applebaum
HB - $45
Autocracies are no longer run by a single bad individual, but by sophisticated international networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services, and professional propagandists. Applebaum argues that this group doesn’t operate like a bloc, as per earlier alliances, but more like an agglomeration of companies, allowing them to shift across ideological lines.
Why War?
Richard Overy
HB - $45
Repeatedly humans have foresworn war and have wished to create more pacific, productive societies. Yet circumstances continuously emerge under which war once more seems inevitable, even desirable. Studying everything from biology to belief, psychology to security, Overy allows us to understand the many contradictory or self-reinforcing ways in which warfare can suddenly appear a legitimate option.
This Earthly Globe
Andrea di Robilant
PB - $34.99
In 1550, the first of a trilogy of anonymous volumes was published, containing a wealth of geographical information new to Europeans. Giovambattista Ramusio, a littleknown Venetian public servant, was their editor. Di Robilant brings to life this man who used all his political skill to democratise knowledge and show how the world was much larger than anyone previously imagined.
Hitler’s People
Richard J. Evans
HB - $75
Using a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich, Evans presents a more realistic albeit chilling view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings. This work allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich, and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared.
Odyssey
Stephen Fry
PB - $36.99
Troy has fallen. After 10 years of war, the Greeks make their way back home – but what awaits them?
Agamemnon’s wife, Clytemnestra, has been nursing her rage since he sacrificed their daughter to the gods. Odysseus, having angered Poseidon, is cursed to wander the seas, facing furious monsters and possessive demi-gods as he attempts to return to Ithaca, where Penelope, his patient and clever wife, awaits.
The Revelation of Ireland
Diarmaid Ferriter
HB - $55
Ferriter shows how broad economic, social, and cultural changes, including the secular debate around abortion and same-sex marriage, underline Ireland’s dramatic transformation in recent years. The weakened credibility of the Catholic Church and the new diversity of the population along with the literary and musical prowess reveal a country experiencing rapid alteration.
Land Between the Rivers
Bartle Bull
HB - $55
We begin the story in ancient Sumer, with Gilgamesh building the walls of Uruk (‘Iraq’) at around the turn of the third millennium BC. We end it in 1958, as the last royal family of Iraq is slaughtered on the steps of a small royal palace in Baghdad, the most effervescent, free, and promising capital in the Middle East. Bull reminds us how Iraq has played host to games of power and fate over the past five millennia.
The
Writers’ Castle
Uwe Neumahr
HB - $49.99
Nuremberg, 1946. As the trials of Nazi war criminals begin, some of the world’s most famous writers and reporters gather in the ruined German city. Among them are Rebecca West, John Dos Passos, Martha Gellhorn, and Erika Mann. Crammed together in the press camp, they sleep ten to a room, complain about the food, argue in the lively bar, begin affairs and try to find words for the unprecedented trial.
Science and Nature
Nexus
Yuval Noah Harari
PB - $39.99
Despite our discoveries, inventiveness, and supposed wisdom, humanity finds itself facing the existential threats posed by AI, misinformation, and ecological collapse. Taking us from the Stone Age through Biblical times, witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism to today’s resurgence of populism, Harari considers the complex relationships between information and truth, bureaucracy, and mythology, wisdom and power.
Enchantment by Birds
Russell McGregor
PB - $39.99
Taking readers into birdwatching’s past and present with a cast of avian and human characters, McGregor explores the emotional, aesthetic, and scientific impulses behind the enchanting pastime. By telling the stories of such things as the paradise parrot’s tragic extinction, the artistry of field guides, and taxonomical disputes, he demonstrates that a desire to connect with nature is at the heart of birdwatching.
The Story of Nature
Jeremy Mynott
HB - $51.95
In this illustrated book, Mynott traces the story of our relationship with nature from the dramatic depictions of animals by prehistoric cavepainters, through the romantic discovery of landscape in the 18th century, to the climate emergency of the present day. Charting how our ideas about nature emerged and changed over time, he asks what our impulse to control the environment says about our species.
Ornithography
Jessica Roux
HB - $32.99
Cultures around the world have long looked to birds as sacred messengers, and intermediaries between earth and sky. They’re central to much mythology as conduits for moral lessons and historical truths. Each of the 100 entries in this book details the historical and folkloric meaning of a single species and is accompanied by a full colour illustration.
The Place of Tides
James Rebanks
PB - $36.99
Many years ago, Rebanks met an elderly woman on a remote Norwegian island who worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down as part of a centuries-old trade. Years later, he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. This is the story of that season, of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life.
The Universal History of Us
Tim Coulson
PB - $39.99
How did everything start? And how did we come to exist? Oxford Professor Coulson sets out to explain what science tells us about the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the emergence of humans, asking whether our existence was inevitable. He provides a guide to what thousands of years of study have told us about who we are, where we came from, and what comes next.
How to Feed the World
Vaclav Smil
PB - $36.99
In this myth-busting book about how the world produces and consumes its food, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today. He interrogates why some of the world’s biggest food producing nations are also often the most undernourished, why food waste is a colossal 1000 calories per person daily, and how food could be produced and consumed less destructively.
The Genetic Book of the Dead
Richard Dawkins
HB - $49.99
Dawkins shows how the body, behaviour, and genes of every living creature can be read as the archived world of its ancestors. A zoologist of the future, he argues, presented with a hitherto-unknown animal, would be able to reconstruct the worlds that shaped its ancestors, be able to read its unique ‘book of the dead’. He shows us the many ways that natural selection has carved its way into each organism.
Science and Nature
The Burning Earth
Sunil Amrith
HB - $69.99
In this global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet and the planet has shaped human history, Amrith twins the story of the environment with that of Empire, of genocide with eco-cide, and the expansion of human freedom with its cost. To do so, he draws on a broad range of topics, from mining and oil extraction to the massive mobilisation of men and natural resources during the world wars.
The Serviceberry
Robin Wall Kimmerer
HB - $32.99
Alongside the birds, Indigenous scientist Kimmerer harvests serviceberries. By distributing an abundance of berries, the trees ensure their survival but also meet the needs of other beings. Meanwhile, we’ve surrendered to an economic system that harms what we love. She argues that the serviceberry offers another way, one based on reciprocity, where wealth is measured on the quality of our relationships.
Why Machines Learn
Anil Ananthaswamy
HB - $55
We are living through a revolution in artificial intelligence that is not slowing down. Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental maths behind AI, which suggest that the basics of natural and artificial intelligence might follow the same mathematical rules. In order to make the most of these wondrous technologies, he contends, we need to understand that their profound limitations lie in the maths that make them possible.
Raising Hare
Chloe Dalton
HB - $39.99
Dalton chronicles her loving and challenging journey of caring for a hare that she found alone and vulnerable, no bigger than her palm. As she prepares it to be rereleased into the wild, we witness this relationship between animal and human over the course of two years, and the trust that develops between them, from the initial bottle feeding to the animal drumming on her duvet at night for attention.
Critical Thinking
All Things Are Full of Gods
David Bentley Hart
HB - $51.95
Writing in the form of a Platonic dialogue, Bentley Hart systematically subjects the mechanical view of nature that has prevailed in postEnlightenment Western culture to dialectical interrogation. In favour of a classical view in which mental acts are irreducible to material causes, he argues through a discussion between Greek gods that the foundation of all reality is spiritual or psychological rather than material.
The Position of Spoons
Deborah Levy
HB - $45
From Marguerite Duras to Colette and J.G. Ballard, and from Lee Miller to Francesca Woodman, Levy traces and measures her life against the backdrop of the literary and artistic muses that have shaped her. As she takes us through her early childhood in South Africa, teenage years in Britain and her travels across the world as a young woman, she meditates on mortality, language, and the poetics of the every day.
On James Baldwin
Colm Tóibín
HB - $32.95
Tóibín initially read Baldwin after completing his first year at an Irish university. At 18, Tóibín was struggling to free himself from a religious upbringing. He’d been considering entering a seminary and was searching for literature that would offer illumination and insight. He would find it, along with a lifelong companion and exemplar, in Baldwin’s novel Go Tell It on the Mountain.
The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World
David Graeber
PB - $39.99
Graeber challenges old assumptions about political life in essays published across three decades that tackle the biggest issues of our time –inequality, technology, democracy, art, power, mutual aid, protest, and the identity of the ‘West’. A critic of the order of things and driven by a bold imagination and a passionate commitment to freedom, he offers hope that our world can be different.
Revenge of the Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell
PB - $34.99
Why in the late 80s did LA become the bank robbery capital of the world? What is the magic third and what does it have to do with racial equity? What do big cats and clusters of teen suicide have in common? In this new work, Gladwell addresses these questions and more to re-examine how ideas, viruses, and trends spread, and to show that today’s manifestations are supercharged versions of their earlier counterparts.
We’re Alone
Edwidge Danticat
PB - $34.99
Tracing a loose arc from Danticat’s childhood to the pandemic and recent events in Haiti, the essays gathered here traverse personal narrative, reportage, and tributes to mentors and heroes such as Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and James Baldwin. Collectively the pieces explore environmental catastrophe, the traumas of colonialism, motherhood, and the complexities of resilience.
Critical Thinking
The Invention of Good and Evil
Hanno Sauer
HB - $55
For millennia, humans have been inventing and reinventing the concepts of ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’, weaving them into our laws and customs. Tracing humanity’s moral transformations from our earliest ancestors through to our contentious and disagreeable present, Sauer asks what we can learn from past disagreements, and where the evolution of morality is likely to take us next.
The Message
Ta-Nehisi Coates
PB - $36.99
Journeying to three resonant sites of conflict, Coates explores how the stories we tell – and the ones we don’t – shape our realities. In Senegal, Coates feels torn between the real and mythic. In Palestine, he discovers the devastating gap between the stories we tell ourselves and the vivid reality on the ground. Finally, in South Carolina, Coates visits a school district in the process of banning one of his books.
The Haunted Wood
Sam Leith
HB - $49.99
Often more vivid than those we encountered mere months ago, books written for children are a window into our deepest hopes and anxieties. Leith explores children’s literature, from Aesop to Donaldson, reflecting on how authors respond to the collective psyche, be it through the imperial fantasies of Kipling, the pastoral adventures of Beatrix Potter, or the anarchic post-war heroes of Roald Dahl.
Memories of Distant Mountains
Orhan Pamuk
PB - $39.99
For many years, Pamuk recorded his thoughts and observations on travel, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey in small notebooks, in which he also painted illustrations. Beginning with the original moments of inspiration and recognition, he teased out the characters and the plots of his works. This book combines those illustrated notebooks into one volume.
The Garden Against Time
Olivia Laing
HB - $44.99
After Laing began to restore an overgrown Eden of unusual plants in Suffolk, she was drawn into investigating paradise and its long association with gardens. Moving between the real and imagined, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to a wartime sanctuary in Italy and an aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, she interrogates the cost of making paradise, as both a place of exclusion and of utopian rebellion.
Essays That Changed Australia
Esther Anatolitis (ed.)
PB - $34.99
Since the 1940s, Meanjin essays have set the national cultural agenda. From Arthur Phillips’ idea of ‘cultural cringe’ to Chelsea Watego’s 2021 ‘Always bet on Black (power),’ this anthology brings together 20 major Meanjin essays for the first time. Editor Esther Anatolitis’ introduction offers critical context and scrutiny, illustrating how profoundly Meanjin essays have changed Australia.
Politics and Economics
Billionaire, Nerd, Saviour, King
Anupreeta Das
PB - $34.99
From Gates’ early years as a divisive figure in the burgeoning tech industry, we see the Microsoft cofounder morph into a ruthless capitalist, only for him to then fashion himself into a global do-gooder. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews and delving into Gates’ relationships with Warren Buffett and Jeffrey Epstein among others, Das shows that billionaires have secrets and philanthropy can have a dark side.
Mean Streak
Rick Morton
PB - $35.99
Robodebt was a debt creation system that illegally pursued close to half a million welfare recipients over fake debts. Morton tells us disturbing things about ourselves, our national politics, our bureaucrats (both good and bad), and the government that was. In the mode of corporate thriller, this is a cautionary tale of immorality and deceit in public life – a story bigger than robodebt, and far from over.
Character Limit
Kate Conger and Ryan Mac
PB - $36.99
In a world of viral ideas and emotion, who gets to control the narrative, who gets to be heard, and what does power really cost? This is the story of the showdown between Elon Musk and Twitter and how the richest man on earth suddenly came to control a powerful media platform.
Left Behind
Paul Collier
HB - $55
There are places that have been left behind economically across the globe, including in wealthy countries. Collier shows us why some regions and countries are falling further behind and provides a new vision for how they can catch up. He draws lessons from such seemingly disparate fields as social psychology, moral philosophy, and behavioural economics to share a vision for a more inclusive, prosperous world.
The Thinking Heart
David Grossman
HB - $26.99
Grossman has spent decades campaigning for peace in Israel and Palestine. But after October 7th, he had to ask himself how such a massacre could have happened, and how the Netanyahu government, in a tangle of scandals, failed to protect its citizens. He traces the years leading to the conflict, documenting the struggle on both sides between those committed to conflict, and the many who want peace.
Robert Manne: A Political Memoir
Robert Manne
HB - $59.99
Manne is one of Australia’s most celebrated political analysts. His memoir traces his intellectual roots, revealing how his family background and early years informed the questions he would spend his life trying to answer. It also provides a portrait of key political controversies, including the intellectual combat over communism, the Stolen Generations, the Murdoch press, Manning Clark, and much more.
Travel and Gift
Slow Trains to Istanbul
Tom Chesshyre
HB - $45
Chesshyre takes us from London to Istanbul and back, by way of Paris, Naples, Nuremberg, the Swiss Alps, Budapest, Athens, Romania and Bulgaria, and the furthest corners of Eastern Europe. Interrailing was once the province of young backpackers, but here we discover that it’s also a joyful and eco-friendly way to explore the European continent at a slow pace open to happenstance.
Literary Journeys
John McMurtrie (ed.)
HB - $36.99
From The Canterbury Tales to On the Road, and Don Quixote to The Underground Railroad, the journey has long been an archetypal story. The genre’s inherent escapism is the perfect vehicle for fuelling outlaw and romantic dreams. McMurtrie takes us through the most exciting, dangerous, tragic, and uplifting journeys from literature, tracing the chronology of the form.
Beyond the Snow Leopard
Bill Crozier
PB - $36.99
Australian-based doctor Crozier sets out in search of the snow leopard in the Himalayas, across Ladakh, Nepal, and Tibet, finding adventure, friendship and enlightenment. His guides are 20th-century travel writers and Buddhist monks from over the centuries. Travelling to the ancient land of Dolpo, as well as the birthplace of Buddha, Lumbini, Crozier captures the trials and wonders of this harsh region.
Into the Uncut Grass
Trevor Noah
HB - $39.99
In this illustrated fable, a young child journeys into the world beyond the shadow of home, an enchanted landscape where he discovers the secrets of solidarity, connection, and finding peace with the people we love. Infused with Noah’s signature wit and imagination, in collaboration with artist Sabina Hahn, it’s a tale for readers of all ages – to be read aloud or read alone.
Anima Kapka Kassabova
HB - $45
For thousands of years, humans, like grazing animals, moved with the seasons in search of pasture. On the flanks of the Pirin Mountains in Bulgaria, the last true pastoralists continue this ancient practice. Kassabova lived with one such community, where there’s profound interdependence between animal and human, experiencing the intensity, brutality, beauty, and isolation of their existence.
You Don’t Have to Have a Dream
Tim Minchin
HB - $36.99
Drawn from three of Minchin’s iconic commencement addresses, this is an illustrated assemblage of his inimitable thoughts and advice on life, art, success, kindness, love, and thriving in a meaningless universe. For the science-loving reality-romantic in all of us, this book is a rallying cry for creativity, critical thinking, and compassion in our daily lives.
Food
Kitchen Sentimental
Annie Smithers
PB - $34.99
Annie takes us on a journey through every significant kitchen in her life, both domestic and professional, candidly sharing her personal development, her surprisingly complex relationship with food, and the lessons she learned along the way to finding her culinary niche at the famed du Fermier restaurant in country Victoria.
Nights Out at Home
Jay Rayner
HB - $49.99
In this memoir-in-recipes, food writer Jay Rayner presents achievable dishes you can cook at home that are inspired by the high-end restaurant creations that have stolen his heart over the decades. Rayner’s cheat versions include the Ivy’s famed crispy duck salad, brown butter and sage flatbreads from Erst, and the cult Tayyabs tandoori lamb chops.
Ottolenghi COMFORT
Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh
HB - $65
Ottolenghi brings his flavour-forward approach to comfort cooking, delivering new classics that taste of home. A bowl of pasta becomes Caramelised Onion Orecchiette with Hazelnuts and Crispy Sage, a warming soup is Cheesy Bread Soup with Savoy Cabbage and Cavolo Nero, and a plate of mash is transformed into Garlicky Aligot Potato with Leeks and Thyme.
Salad for Days
Alice Zaslavsky
PB - $45
This seasonal reference is a guide to making every day a salad day, and every meal a moment to get your veg on. For warmer days, there are salads designed to refresh and replenish, using juicy, sun-drenched ingredients and the brightest of colours. For cooler days, there are grounding salads that will sustain and nourish, giving hearty food a counterpoint so that you finish the meal feeling better than you started.
A Thousand Feasts
Nigel Slater
HB - $39.99
For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaking wet in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei. His notes are collected here along with moments of joy, like eating a mango in the middle of a monsoon and sharing a dish of restorative macaroni cheese.
Sweet Seasons
Michael and Pippa James
HB - $50
Michael and Pippa give us handy ways to make fail-safe sweets sustainable, by embracing seasonally available ingredients as well as using alternative sugars, flours, and grains. Whether it’s classics such as custard tarts and hot cross buns or recipes for perfect pastries and creative custards, this is a book of sweets for all seasons and occasions.
Love Crumbs
Nadine Ingram
HB - $54.99
Ingram, of Sydney bakery Flour & Stone, understands how to use perfume, spice, and fruit to awaken and enliven our senses. In this book she honours the places and experiences that have formed us, with a creative and soulful collection of cakes that are steeped in nature, romance, adventure, and comfort.
Uses for Obsession
Ben Shewry
PB - $34.99
Whether it’s crispy-edged lasagne, saltwater crocodile ribs or the perfect potato, obsession is what makes Shewry tick, and it’s what propelled Attica, in Melbourne, to world renown. In this memoir meets manifesto, he applies his searing and comic eye to creative freedom, food journalism, sexism in hospitality, the fraud of farm-to-table sustainability, the cult of the chef, and the legendary Family Bolognese.
What I Ate in One Year
Stanley Tucci
HB - $45
Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life – from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between rehearsals, and home-made pizza eaten with his children. Here, he records a year of eating in restaurants, kitchens, film sets, press junkets, at home and abroad, with friends, with family, with strangers, and occasionally just by himself.
Some of My Best Friends are Cookies
Emelia Jackson
HB - $39.99
Jackson presents more than 80 recipes in this cookie compendium for all skill levels, from the seasoned baker to kids and novices. Whether it’s gluten free, something classy, something quirky, shortbreads, choc chip or sandwiched, Jackson has our cookie needs covered. Some favourites are Cashew Kourabiedes, Limoncello Spritz Bars, and her Miso Dark Chocolate Flourless Cookies.
Tony Tan’s Asian Cooking Class
Tony Tan
HB - $59.99
Tan shares for the first time more than 150 of his most cooked, beloved, and personal recipes from his vast collection. Moving seamlessly between traditionally distinct cuisines, from wok sensations to more elaborate meals, street foods, and original creations, Tan collects his most inspiring evergreen dishes from across Asia, contextualising them for the beginner and connoisseur home cook alike.
Good Cooking Every Day
Julia Busuttil Nishimura
PB - $44.99
Nishimura’s latest book is all about simple food and creating memorable meals. This collection of recipes includes a guide to creating menus for any occasion, from a celebration of summer produce to comfort food for cooler weather, and from a simple family dinner to a relaxed lunch with friends. In these recipes for every season, ingredients are paired in harmonious and delicious ways.
House and Garden
Assemblage
Shannon McGrath and Annie Reid
HB - $79.99
One of Australia’s leading interior photographers opens her archive to showcase 24 inspiring homes and the people who have made them extraordinary. In this celebration of beauty and design, the fine details of carefully selected furniture, fittings, lighting, artworks, and colour speak across generations, adding layers of richness and warmth.
Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Masterpieces
Dominic Bradbury
HB - $200
Featuring 450 of the best architectural works from the middle of last century from across the globe, this is a showcase of the icons of the era, including Le Corbusier, Eero Saarinen, Alvar Aalto, and Arne Jacobsen. We see how these designers and others harnessed the post-war boom to create forward-thinking designs on a grand scale, from embassies and office blocks to glamorous entertainment centres.
March Studio
Fleur Watson
HB - $69.99
This behind-the-scenes view of the design practices and culture of one of the most dynamic architectural firms in Australia today features documentation of prototypes and models as well as information on their fabrication processes. A supplementing reflective essay explores the themes underpinning the designs of their iconic houses and hospitality and cultural venues.
American Icons
Gestalten
HB - $135
Some of the world’s most iconic architecture sits in the foundations of American cities. Across residential homes, skyscrapers, museums, airports, and beyond, designed by the likes of Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, among others, this in a photographic and textual encounter with the most captivating buildings from across America.
Lost Gardens of the World
Sandra Lawrence
HB - $39.99
From the once-crumbling grandeur of the Villa d’Este and the magic of the Lost Gardens of Heligan, to the sculptural surrealism of Las Pozas, there are countless gardens across the world that have faded, either to be lovingly restored or to be lost to time. With illustrations of each garden by Lucille Clerc, this celebration of nature and gardening captures the romance of paradise lost.
Big Garden Design
Paul Bangay
HB - $90
From grand gardens in France to a forest grown from saplings, this tour through Bangay’s projects is complete with lakes, mountains, and walled gardens. For each, he shares his process, as well as plans and an extensive planting list. We see vast lawns edged by wild grass terraces, intimate outdoor areas that serve as vantage points, and allées of trees directing the eye to distant mountains.
Biblioflora
Jeanne Batiste
HB - $49.99
This anthology celebrates the universal language of blossoms that has inspired and captivated the human spirit throughout history. Showcasing an incredible diversity of flora, Batiste pays homage to the enduring power of the art of flora, by way of artistic and scientific visionaries, to evoke joy, contemplation, and wonder.
The Natural Gardener
Richard Unsworth
HB - $59.99
Garden designer Richard Unsworth offers advice on how to select landscape materials that fit effortlessly into a naturalistic and gently wild garden, as well as advice on planting combinations that thrive in different settings. He also sets out principles and methods for bush regeneration. Whether large or small, urban or rural, every garden and every gardener can benefit from wildening.
House and Garden
Italian Interiors
Laura May Todd
HB - $100
May Todd takes readers on a tour of inspiring domestic spaces, including residences by some of the region’s beloved architects, such as Carlo Scarpa, Alessandro Mendini, and Luca Guadagnino. With styles ranging from historic to contemporary and minimalist to maximalist, some of the interiors appear here in print for the first time. The photography of each house is accompanied by a short essay about the design.
Bellissima
Collette Dinnigan
HB - $100
This book takes you to Collette’s world of simple and beautifully sophisticated interiors, gardens, and artwork, as well as to her favoured destinations in Italy and Australia. Along with her photographer, Earl Carter, Collette travelled the length of Italy, from Naples to Turin, to capture the world that’s inspired her. She also presents her homes in Italy and Australia, along with those of her friends.
This Creative Life
Robyn Lea
HB - $79.99
Lea presents the at-home creative spaces of 20 of the world’s top fashion designers, from a 14th-century Italian palace to a 21st-century renovation in the English countryside. Ranging in size from one-bedroom apartments and compact country cottages to mansions, villas, and palazzos, the photographs of the spaces are accompanied by profiles of the designers.
Inside Paris
Ricardo Labougle
HB - $130
Labougle takes us through the most superbly decorated homes in Paris, including Jacques Grange’s contemporary apartment in a Regency palace, the innovative rustic modernism of Studio KO, and Jacopo Etro’s architecturally exquisite space. With previously unseen interiors to discover, this volume offers an insider’s view of how these creators live and work.
Art and Design
65 000 Years
Marcia Langton and Judith Ryan (eds.)
HB - $79.99
Long before 1788, First Peoples’ cultural and design traditions flourished for thousands of generations. But these thriving artistic practices were disregarded by settlers and not considered ‘fine art’ until the late 1980s. Across this publication, released in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, 25 writers urge us to reconsider Australia’s unique art history.
The Paintings of Criss Canning
Criss Canning
HB - $130
For 35 years, Canning has lived in a 1860s farmhouse with adjoining gardens at Lambley, near Ballarat. Again and again, she paints the poppies, irises, sunflowers, and banksias. She’s also a collector of glassware, vases, tea sets, and vintage kimonos. With new photography and essays by Canning and others, this book captures the house, studio, garden, and collections along with the paintings themselves.
About Face
Amber Creswell Bell
HB - $69.99
Creswell Bell examines portraits by painters from Australia and New Zealand that reflect changes in culture and artistic practice. These painters use portraiture to convey narrative, engage with societal and political issues, and grapple with human experience. Whatever the motivation, each work demonstrates that portraiture has always been a powerful means of exploration.
The 1980s
Henry Carroll
HB - $90
The 80s were a time of bold exploration, dazzling creativity, inspiring unity, and stark division. The decade saw much of life challenged and upturned: technology, media, gender roles, race, style, sexuality, geopolitics, our place in the universe. From shoulder pads to Gordon Gekko, and Basquiat to neo-noir dystopia, this visual narrative tells the story of the 80s through its motifs, trends and themes.
Gray Malin: Dogs
Gray Malin
HB - $69.99
This collection of Gray Malin’s photographs captures the adorable, the pampered, the well-dressed, and the glamorous pooches of the world. With Dalmatians sunbathing at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Bernese mountain dogs perfectly perched on Aspen chairlifts, and poodles taking a joyride in a vintage Corvette, this book is filled with joy and puppy love.
Graphic Classics
Phaidon Editors
HB - $140
This deep dive into graphic design history presents the work of more than 400 designers from across 33 countries and five continents, with work dating back to the 14th century. Reimagining and expanding on Phaidon’s Graphic: 500 Designs that Matter, the collection includes everything from the Gutenberg Bible to Joy Division album art, with works by anonymous creators and industry icons.
Radiohead
Tom Sheehan
HB - $79.99
Sheehan’s photographs and memories take us deep into the eye of the Radiohead storm. From their earliest days as indie upstarts, through the wild, all-conquering years of OK Computer and into the experimental soundscapes beyond, Sheehan captures their world while Craig McLean draws on his interviews to provide further biography of the band’s journey.
How Sondheim Can Change Your Life
Richard Schoch
HB - $55
For fans of musical theatre, Stephen Sondheim is one of the true titans –the genius who brought us Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Company and West Side Story. Schoch follows the arc of Sondheim’s career and takes us through his creative process to demonstrate how Sondheim’s greatness lies in his ability to tell stories that speak to all of us.
I Hear Motion
Jane Gazzo
PB - $49.99
Back in the 80s, Australians were glued to Countdown every Sunday night to watch musicians strut their stuff. Bands became household names and were the backdrop to the colourful and creative decade. In celebration of the Australian music of the era, Gazzo has compiled interviews, never-before-seen photos and stories about the songs, the fans, and the breakups of bands the country loved most.
Cher: The Memoir, Part One
Cher
HB - $49.99
As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her despite their difficult relationship. A life too immense for one volume, part one of two follows Cher’s childhood through to marrying Sonny Bono – and reveals the relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart.
A Thousand Threads
Neneh Cherry
PB - $36.99
Top of the Pops, December 1988. The world sat up as a young woman made her debut in a gold bra and gold bomber jacket, while being gloriously seven months pregnant. This was Neneh Cherry. But navigating fame and family wasn’t always simple. Here, Cherry recalls the collaborations, the friendships and loves, along with the addictions and traumas that have shaped her as a woman and as an artist.
Cello
Kate Kennedy
HB - $54.99
Kennedy brings together the lives of four cellists, all of whom suffered forms of persecution, injury, and misfortune. They are Pál Hermann, Lise Cristiani, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, and Amedeo Baldovino. Interwoven through these stories is a series of interludes, drawing together greater historical research, personal and experiential musings, as well as interviews with contemporary cellists.
Children’s Picture Books
The Tiny Gardeners
Kat Macleod
HB - $26.99
Join the Tiny Gardeners as they grow fruit, vegetables, flowers, and herbs for the upcoming Summer Market. See the long and bumpy beans! Taste the fresh and juicy strawberries! Feel the spikey rosemary sprigs! Smell the sweetly scented honeysuckle! With a range of verbs and adjectives used to describe the processes of growing produce, a new generation will be inspired to garden and to love nature.
The Glass Horse of Venice
Arnold Zable
HB - $27.99
Each morning, Claudia passes the glassblower’s workshop and admires the animals in the window, especially the winged horses, prancing and galloping. One day the glassblower gives her a beautiful horse with broken wings. Seeing the imperfection, Claudia packs it away. But after a storm floods her family’s home and forces them to leave Venice, the horse comes alive and flies Claudia back to her beloved city.
The Dictionary Story
Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston
HB - $24.99
Dictionary wishes she could tell a story just like the other books. So, one day she decides to bring her words to life. How exciting it is, she thinks, that an adventure is finally happening on her very own pages! But what will she do when everything gets out of control, all in a jumble, and her characters collide causing the most enormous tantrum to explode?
Where to Hide a Star
Oliver Jeffers
HB - $27.99
Once there was a boy who would often play hide-and-seek with his friends the star and the penguin. The star was always easy to find, but one day it went missing. So, the boy radioed the Martian for help and soon found himself on an exciting spaceship rescue mission to the North Pole! But there, he discovered that he wasn’t the only one who had always dreamed of having a star as a friend ...
Dalmartian
Lucy Ruth Cummins
HB - $24.99
A visitor from outer space comes to Stephen’s yard one night. It may look like a Dalmatian, but it certainly doesn’t act like one. At first, Stephen and the visitor get off on the wrong paw. Is a shared love of bacon a strong enough foundation for this ordinary earth boy and extraordinary out-of-this-world canine to learn to live in harmony?
Bear’s Lost Glasses
Leo Timmers
HB - $27.99
Bear can’t find his glasses. He must have left them at Giraffe’s house. On the way over, Bear sees all kinds of animals he didn’t notice last time: an elephant, a crocodile, a flamingo, a deer. And who’s this long spotty snake lying on Giraffe’s deckchair? The patient Giraffe finds Bear’s glasses and then Bear takes Giraffe to meet these wondrous animals that he found on the way.
The Cheeky Toddler Alphabet
Davina Bell
HB - $24.99
A is for aeroplane, all-gone and ant. And the apple you bit and then dropped in a plant. B is for bubbles and bee-buzz in blossoms. For bruises and bottles and bare bathtime bottoms. An A-to-Z celebration of the chaos and tenderness of the toddler years – that bittersweet window of domestic life when each day is a magical bunfight, and both love and mayhem reign supreme.
When You Find the Right Rock
Mary Lyn Ray
HB - $29.99
Somewhere, a rock is waiting for you. One just the right colour for your windowsill, or just the right shape for drawing a face. Maybe it is a rock from the heart of a mountain that will remind you of how big you are inside, too. Maybe it is a rock washed by the sea that knows all about the backs and forths of things. Maybe it is a small rock, just the right size to close your hand around, and it is just right.
Children’s Picture Books
Hot Dog
Doug Salati
HB - $24.99
It’s summer in the city, and this hot dog has had enough! Enough of sizzling sidewalks, enough of wailing sirens, enough of people’s feet right in his face. When he plops down in the middle of a crosswalk, his owner endeavours to get him the breath of fresh air he needs. She hails a taxi, hops on a train, and ferries out to the beach. Here, a pup can run!
Giselle
Charlotte Gastaut
HB - $39.99
Gastaut retells the story of Giselle, one of the world’s most famous and haunting ballets, using die-cut paper and transparent book leaves. Giselle is a ghost-filled ballet that tells the story of a beautiful peasant named Giselle who falls in love with disguised nobleman Albrecht. When his identity is revealed, she goes mad and dies of heartbreak, only to transform into a ghostly apparition.
Afloat
Kirli Saunders
HB - $24.99
Roam the water with me. We are here to learn. Here to spin wisdom, to grow ... This is an uplifting and inspiring picture book that uses the practice of weaving as a powerful metaphor for the honouring and teaching of First Nations wisdom, and the coming together of all people to survive, thrive, and create a more hopeful future.
Are You Big?
Mo Willems
HB - $24.99
Are YOU big? A simple question sends readers to the far reaches of the universe. From an average-size kid to a hot air balloon to a storm cloud to the M100 Galaxy, size is a matter of perspective. Bold text, expressive art, and real-world science come together in this original STEAM-based, earlylearning concept book.
Children’s Fiction
Six Summers of Tash and Leopold
Danielle Binks
PB - $17.99
Tash and Leo are neighbours who are no longer best friends for reasons Leo can’t entirely understand. But now it’s the last week of Year Six and Tash is standing in Leo’s front yard with a misdelivered letter and a favour to ask. There’s a mystery to solve and a reclusive neighbour with a tragic past to help. In the process, they’ll discover how friendship can change and grow.
Summer of Shipwrecks
Shivaun Plozza
PB - $16.99
Sid sets off on her annual summer holiday to the Shipwreck Coast. Two weeks with her best friend, Lou, is exactly what she needs. They can continue their search for the riches that disappeared in a tragic shipwreck over 100 years ago. But Lou has brought along her popular new school friend, Hailey, leaving Sid wondering when everything changed. Can Sid protect her heart from getting shipwrecked, too?
Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody
Patrick Ness
PB - $16.99
Zeke and Daniel have been made hall monitors by Principal Wombat. This has nothing to do with the fact that they are monitor lizards, even though the only other monitor lizard in the school is also a hall monitor. The three of them must impose order on a range of eccentric creatures, worst of all Pelicarnassus, son of a supervillain. Can they protect their school from all manner of outlandish threats?
The Graveyard Gift
Fern Forgettable
PB - $16.99
Rosemary Thorpe has the uncanny and unfortunate ability to foresee people’s deaths, which tends to land her in hot water. Her gift takes her to a place between worlds called Fern’s School for Wayward Fae, where Rosemary meets other students who are part fae. But just as she settles in a student vanishes into thin air. It’s up to all the kids to use their curious gifts to find their missing friend.
Small Acts
Kate Gordon and Kate Foster
PB - $16.99
There are people everywhere who seem okay on the outside but aren’t on the inside. Josh wants a friend, but he doesn’t know how to find somewhere to belong. Ollie wants to express herself but doesn’t want to be noticed. These are two kids with great hearts who know that helping others can start with one small act of kindness. What they don’t know yet is that they need each other to make their plans work.
The Hotel Balzaar
Kate DiCamillo
HB - $24.99
At the Hotel Balzaar, Marta’s mother instructs her to roam as she will but quietly, invisibly. While her mother cleans rooms, Marta meanders around the hotel, dreaming of the return of her missing soldier father. One day, a mysterious countess checks in, promising a series of stories. As the stories unfold, Marta begins to wonder if the secret to her father’s disappearance could lie in the countess’ tales.
Children’s Fiction
The Midwatch
Judith Rossell
HB - $24.99
Banished to the Midwatch Institute for Orphans, Runaways, and Unwanted Girls, Maggie Fishbone is sure she’s in for a life of drudgery. But she quickly discovers there’s more to the Midwatch than meets the eye. The city shimmers with jewels and secrets, and soon Maggie is thrust into an adventure that takes her deep underground, high above the clouds and face-to-face with danger itself.
Thunderhead
Sophie Beer
PB - $17.99
Meet Thunderhead: awkward, musicobsessed and a magnet for bad luck. Their favourite things in life are listening to records and hanging out with their best (and only) friend, Moonflower. But Thunderhead has a big secret. And when Moonflower moves schools, they’re faced with the reality of surviving the wilderness of high school alone.
Stella & Marigold
Annie Barrows
HB - $24.99
Stella, who’s seven, is kind, a good storyteller, and ponders big questions like, what do animals think of people? Marigold, at four, tells imaginative stories (her mother calls them fibs) and likes to wear her favourite Halloween costume year-round. Stella and Marigold do all the regular things – like going to school, playing, and visiting the zoo – but even the most regular things have a secret side.
The 113th Assistant Librarian
Stuart Wilson
HB - $19.99
Oliver Wormwood is sure his new job in the library will be boring. But by the end of his first day, Oliver has witnessed a death, been frozen by a book, met a perplexing number of cats, and fought off a horde of terrifying creatures. With only a mysterious girl called Agatha to show him the ropes, Oliver needs to learn fast ... if he wants to live longer than the 112 assistant librarians before him.
We Do Not Welcome Our TenYear-Old Overlord
Garth Nix
PB - $17.99
All Kim wants to do is play Dungeons & Dragons and ride his bike around the lake. He’s always lived in the shadow of his younger sister, Eila. Everyone talks about how smart she is, though in Kim’s eyes, she has no common sense. When Eila finds an enigmatic globe that gives her astonishing powers, Kim not only has to save his sister from herself, but he might also have to save the world from his sister!
All the Beautiful Things
Katrina Nannestad
HB - $22.99
The Nazis want everyone to be the same. Being different is dangerous. Anna’s little sister, Eva, is frail and needs time to learn new things. She has a huge heart and a gift for loving, but Hitler doesn’t value such riches. So Eva’s hidden away. Anna does her best to bring joy and light to Eva’s life, but soon more children need hiding. Risks are taken until Anna wonders if any of them will make it through the war.
Children’s Reference
The History of Information
Chris Haughton
HB - $42.99
Travel through time from the earliest cave drawings and first written words to the invention of the printing press, the rise of newspapers, and the digital revolution. Explore pivotal moments that reveal how the exchange of information has driven human progress, such as the creation of the first writing systems in Sumer and the dramatic rise of literacy in Europe after the invention of the printing press.
Insectarium
Dave Goulson
HB - $49.99
Insects are essential for life as we know it. There are at least one million species of them, together making up over 80 percent of all living species on Earth. How did they evolve into what they are today? How do they work together and how do they defend themselves? Learn why these small creatures have such a huge impact on the world around us, and why we should protect them.
An Anthology of Exquisite Birds
Ben Hoare
HB - $42.99
Soar through the sky and discover more than 90 of the most exquisite birds on our planet, from the miniature bee hummingbird that flaps its wings 200 times a second to the oilbird that navigates pitch-black caves using echolocation. Features on key topics explore the enormous variety of avian adaptations and a visual index is packed with reference information, including the size and range of each species.
A Really Short History of Words
Bill Bryson
HB - $45
Every day, you do something incredible, and I bet you barely ever think about it: you speak. In this illustrated journey through word and rhyme, learn how the English language came to be (clue: lots of invasions) and what makes it a rich and beautiful thing (lots of Shakespeare). Get ready ... because the story of the English language is an extraordinary one.
The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Extinct Animals
Sami Bayly
HB - $32.99
Discover some of the most fascinating extinct and critically endangered animals and how they fit into the history of the animal kingdom and why they became extinct or under threat. This book features facts and illustrations of 60 animals, including the western black rhino, the thylacine, and the dodo, as well as megafauna such as the giant wombat-like Diprotodon and the crocodile-like Quinkana.
Off to the Nursery
Alice Oehr
HB - $24.99
Spring is here, and it’s time to plant the garden. We’re planning to grow tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs – and maybe even add some worms! What else should we plant? Which flowers are best for attracting bees? And how do we care for everything? Learn all about gardens and gardening in this tour through a plant nursery that’s packed with illustrations, personalities, and practical ideas.
Last Seen Online
Lauren James
PB - $19.99
When Delilah meets Sawyer Saffitz (son of Anya Saffitz, aka Hollywood royalty), she becomes hooked on a decade-old scandal. In her quest for the truth, Delilah uncovers blogposts written by the mysterious ‘ottiewrites’ and is soon caught up in a world of greed, fandom conspiracy theories … and murder. The deeper she digs, the more dangerous it becomes. Someone is willing to kill to hide the truth.
When The World Tips Over
Jandy Nelson
PB - $22.99
Paradise Springs, Northern California is a half-magical, wine-country town where there are so many grapes fermenting you get drunk from breathing the air, and where the devil winds can whip your senses away. When an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, the lives of siblings Wynton, Miles, and Dizzy become a tumult of road trips, rivalries, family curses, and love stories within love stories.
I’m Not Really Here
Gary Lonesborough
PB - $19.99
When 17-year-old Jonah arrives in Patience with his dad and brothers, the town feels like a foreign place. Making new friends isn’t easy while wrestling with body image and memories of his dead mother. Joining the footy team to get closer to his crush, Jonah feels like he’s finally moving away from grief towards a new life – but that doesn’t mean he’s ready.
White Noise
Raelke Grimmer
PB - $26.99
On Friday evenings in Darwin, 15year-old Emma and her dad go running to escape many things: her autism diagnosis, his work as an emergency room doctor, their grief over the death of Emma’s mum. Summer, Emma’s best friend, has kept her going since her mum’s death, but when Summer moves to the other side of town their friendship starts changing rapidly – and change isn’t something Emma can outrun.
Young Adult
My Family and Other Suspects
Kate Emery
PB - $19.99
Ruth is not thrilled to be spending the weekend at the family farm visiting GG, her ancient step-grandmother. With no internet or phone, Ruth occupies herself by re-reading Agatha Christie, eavesdropping on the adults, and not daydreaming about her sortof-cousin Dylan. But when GG dies under odd circumstances, Ruth's dull weekend turns into an enforcedfamily-holiday-slash-possible-murderinvestigation.
Comes the Night
Isobelle Carmody
PB - $24.99
Will Helloran is 16, and lives in the Canberra dome complex that protects its inhabitants from the corrosive atmosphere outside. While investigating his beloved uncle’s death, Will’s best friend’s twin sister goes missing and he’s drawn into a web bigger than he can imagine. If he and his friends are to survive, Will must navigate his way out of the treacherous dreamscape while staying safe in the waking world.
