Books to Challenge, Inspire, Nourish and Soothe

Copy On Connection

by Kae Tempest Publisher Faber & Faber 17 Nov 2020

Beneath the surface we are all connected . . .

‘An authentically soothing, powerful, thought provoker.’ Matt Haig “On Connection is soul work ... The truth-speaker Kae Tempest takes to non-fiction with grace, musicality and innate essayistic skill. The book glows with their trademark honesty and questing integrity. On Connection is medicine for these wounded times.” Max Porter

“On Connection came to me when I needed it most, and reminded me that the links we have to places, people, words, ourselves, are what keep us alive” Candice Carty-Williams Drawing on twenty years’ experience as a writer and performer, award-winning poet, rapper and storyteller Kae Tempest explores how and why creativity - however we choose to practise it - can cultivate greater selfawareness and help us establish a deeper relationship to ourselves and the world.

Personal, hopeful and written with piercing clarity, On Connection is a meditation on creative connection and call to arms that speaks to a universal yet intimate truth “A precious small book with a huge punch right at the heart of the problems of today.” Cosey Fanni Tutti Kae Tempest is an award-winning, Sunday Timesbestselling author, poet and recording artist. Tempest won the 2013 Ted Hughes Award, was nominated for a Costa Book Award and a BRIT Award, has been shortlisted for the Mercury Prize twice and was nominated for two Ivor Novello Awards. They were also named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society, a decennial accolade. They released their fourth studio album, The Book of Traps and Lessons, in 2019, produced by Rick Rubin. Tempest grew up in South-East London, where they still live today. @kaetempest

If Women Rose Rooted

A life-changing journey to authenticity and belonging by Sharon Blackie A life-changing journey from the wasteland of modern society to a place of nourishment and connection. If Women Rose Rooted has been described as both transformative and essential. Sharon Blackie leads the reader on a quest to find their place in the world, drawing inspiration from the wise and powerful females in native mythology, and guidance from contemporary women who have re-rooted themselves in land and community and taken responsibility for shaping the future. Beautifully written, honest and moving, If Women Rose Rooted is a passionate song to a different kind of femininity, a rallying cry for women to reawaken their natural power - not just for the sake of their own wellbeing, but for love of this threatened earth. Industry Reviews ‘Mind-blowing. An anthem for all we could be . . . I sincerely hope every woman who can read has the time and space to read it.’ Manda Scott | ‘Powerful and inspiring.’ Melissa Harrison | ‘A beautiful, intelligent and unusual book... I’m hoping this book will become the anthem of our generation.’ Kate Forsyth | ‘It is heartening to read a progressive view of the women’s movement and one that links with care for the Earth and all living beings. This book is very well recommended.’ GreenSpirit

Phosphorescence

On Awe, Wonder And Things That Sustain You When The World Goes Dark

by Julia Baird Phosphorescence, by the always wonderful Julia Baird, is a masterful mix of science and psychology journalism, personal development book and memoir. Although I’ve found it difficult to describe to friends at times, it is not at all a difficult read.

The book takes as its jumping off point the idea that the very human experience of awe and wonder is good for you – good for your health, general wellbeing, ethics, and your spirit too. I’m not usually one for anything even mildly woo woo so I was grateful for the practical, no-nonsense diversions into solid pop science territory, where Dr Baird meanders delightfully through study after study backing up her points. This isn’t to say that the writing is in any way workmanlike or sterile. The prose can even be quite lyrical, not shying away from describing anything from the beauty of a sunrise (“In Australia, the dawn is an arsonist who pours petrol along the horizon, throws a match on it and watches it burn”) to medical trauma (“those millions of us with cracked hearts, battered bodies, blackened brains”). The book is, in some ways, a reaction to Dr Baird’s own medical ordeal. After being diagnosed with cancer several years ago, she has gone through a number of extremely traumatic surgeries to remove a tumour that ended up being the size of a basketball lodged in her abdomen. One gets the impression that this experience turned the author into a philosopher – and not in a bad way. At times the book seems to be trying desperately to communicate greater wisdom to the next generation (two chapters are addressed directly to her two children). It wasn’t a surprise to learn that she wrote parts of the book between surgeries and while recovering from her last, without knowing for sure whether she would recover. Phosphorescence is a surprise and a delight wrapped in a frankly gorgeous cover, and I’d have no hesitation in recommending it to virtually anyone. However, if you liked First, We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson or Any Ordinary Day by Leigh Sales then this book will find a special place on your bookshelf (and in your mind) for years to come.

Bruny

2020 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year

by Heather Rose The brilliant and explosive new novel from the author of the award-winning The Museum of Modern Love.

How far would your government go? A right-wing US president has withdrawn America from the Middle East and the UN. Daesh has a thoroughfare to the sea and China is Australia’s newest ally. When a bomb goes off in remote Tasmania, Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go. Bruny is a searing, subversive, brilliant novel about family, love, loyalty and the new world order. About the Author

Heather Rose is the Australian author of eight novels. Her seventh novel The Museum of Modern Love won the 2017 Stella Prize. It also won the 2017 Christina Stead Prize and the 2017 Margaret Scott Prize. It has been published internationally and translated into numerous languages. Both The Museum of Modern Love and The Butterfly Man were longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. The Butterfly Man won the Davitt Award in 2006, and in 2007 The River Wife won the international Varuna Eleanor Dark Fellowship. Heather writes with Danielle Wood under the pen-name Angelica Banks and their Tuesday McGillycuddy children’s series has twice been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for best children’s fantasy. Angelica Banks is also published internationally. Heather lives by the sea in Tasmania.

This One Wild And Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward In A Fractured World

by Sarah Wilson Will you sleep through the revolution? Or do you want to wake up and reclaim your one wild and precious life? We live in truly overwhelming times. The climate crisis, political polarisation, racial injustice and coronavirus have left many of us in a state of spiritual PTSD. We have retreated, morally and psychologically; we are experiencing a crisis of disconnection - from one another, from our true values, from joy, and from life as we feel we are meant to be living it. Sarah Wilson argues that this sense of despair and disconnection is ironically what unites us - that deep down, we are all feeling that same itch for a new way of living. this one wild and precious life opens our eyes to how we got here and offers a radically hopeful path forward. Drawing on science, literature, philosophy, the wisdom of some of the world’s leading experts, and her personal journey, Wilson weaves a one-of-a-kind narrative that lights the way back to the life we love. En route, she leads us through a series of ‘wildly awake’ and joyful practices for reconnecting again that include: - Go to your edge. Do what scares you and embrace discomfort daily. Use it to grow into your Big Life. - #buylesslivemore. Break the cycle of mindless consumption and get light with your life. - Become a soul nerd. Embrace poetry, deep reading, art, and classical music to light up your intellect. - Get ‘full-fat spiritual’. How to have an active practice - beyond the ‘lite’ ‘rainbows and unicorns’ - and use it to change the world. - Hike. Just hike. Walking in nature reconnects us with ourselves, and with our true purpose. - Practise wild activism. If you can get 3.5 per cent of a population to participate in sustained, non-violent protest, change happens. We create our better world. The time has come to boldly, wildly, imagine better. We are being called upon, individually and as a society, to forge a new path and to find a new way of living. Will you join the journey? Author information

by Sharon Blackie A book for all the wild women ... Foxfire, Wolfskin is simply the most perfect thing. I love each and every placement of each word. Love the wildness, the shapeshifting, the fearsomeness of it.’ Jackie Morris, co-author of The Lost Words ‘She lived fully, my fox, and I envied her with all my heart. I wanted to dance with her, sister or lover, across the snow-clad vastness of this land. Together, we’d create the Northern Lights. For that is what foxes do – racing over the fells, whipping up the snow with their tails, the friction of it sending up sparks into the midnight sky. This is what makes the aurora’s glow. Revontulet, we call it: foxfire.’ Charged with drama and beauty, this memorable collection by a master storyteller weaves a magical world of possibility and power from female myths of physical renewal, creation and change. It is an extraordinary immersion into the Sarah Wilson is the author of the New York Times bestsellers first, we make the beast beautiful: a new story about anxiety, which Mark Manson described as ‘the best book on living with anxiety that I’ve ever read’, and I Quit Sugar, along with eleven cookbooks that have been published in fiftytwo countries.

Previously, she was editor of Cosmopolitan Australia, host of MasterChef Australia and founder of iquitsugar.com, an 8-week program that has seen millions worldwide break their sugar addiction. In May 2018, Sarah committed to giving all proceeds from the business to charity. She now builds and enables charity projects that engage humans with one another, and campaigns on mental health, consumerism, racial injustice, and climate issues. Sarah lives in Sydney, is an obsessive hiker and spent eight years travelling the world with one bag.

bodies and voices, mindscapes and landscapes, of the shapeshifting women of our native folklore. Drawing on myth and fairy tales found across Europe from Croatia to Sweden, Ireland to Russia, these stories are about coming to terms with our animal natures, exploring the ways in which we might renegotiate our fractured relationship with the natural world, and uncovering the wildness and wilderness within.

Beautifully illustrated by Helen Nicholson, Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women is Blackie’s first collection of short stories.

‘Sharon Blackie has wrought a new-old magic for our times: glorious, beautiful, passionate myths. They show who we could have been, and they give us a glimpse of a world-thatcould-be.’ Manda Scott, author of A Treachery of Spies and Boudica ‘A deeply evocative and haunting collection... Part rally cry, part warning, part manifesto and all parts enchanting, Sharon Blackie’s Foxfire, Wolfskin is a deeply evocative and haunting collection. I want to press this powerful book into the hands of everyone I know and say listen.’ Holly Ringland, author of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Where the Crawdads Sing

By: Delia Owens When I bought this book, I had no idea how much it would transport me to the marsh of North Carolina. Kya’s interaction with nature and the story of her life unfold with intricate beauty, brokenness, survival, and empathy. Kya’s interactions and appreciation with mother earth made me miss home (being a American). While traveling into the city by train, I was transported to a different place. Kya is a complex, beautiful, clever, and endearing character that I found myself wanting to invest time in, and wanting her to have a happy ending. No spoilers here, but the book keeps you guessing and leaves you with the benefit of giving others a chance. Review submitted by Heidi Hulme For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens. Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Celeste Ng, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps. About the Author

The Living Mountain

A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland

by Nan Shepherd Celebrating some of the most original works in recent years, The Canons are titles of enduring quality and importance that will challenge, inspire and be enjoyed by readers in generations to come. In this masterpiece of nature writing, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape. Shepherd spent a lifetime in search of the ‘essential nature’ of the Cairngorms; her quest led her to write this classic meditation on the magnificence of mountains, and on our imaginative relationship with the wild world around us. Composed during the Second World War, the manuscript of The Living Mountain lay untouched for more than thirty before it was finally published. About the Author

Delia Owens is the co-author of three internationally bestselling nonfiction books about her life as a wildlife scientist in Africa including Cry of the Kalahari. She has won the John Burroughs Award for Nature Writing and has been published in Nature, The African Journal of Ecology, and many others. She currently lives in Idaho. Where the Crawdads Sing is her first novel.

Anna (Nan) Shepherd was born in 1893 and died in 1981. Closely attached to Aberdeen and her native Deeside, she graduated from her home university in 1951 and for the next forty-one years worked as a lecturer in English. An enthusiastic gardener and hill-walker, she made many visits to the Cairngorms with students and friends. Industry Reviews * The finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain Guardian * Most works of mountain literature are written by men, and most of them focus on the goal of the summit. Nan Shepherd’s aimless, sensual exploration of the Cairngorms is bracingly different -- Robert Macfarlane

Active Hope

By Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

Active Hope is about finding, and offering, our best response to the crisis of sustainability unfolding in our world. It offers tools that help us face the mess we’re in, as well as find and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, to a life-sustaining society. “Books about social and ecological change too often leave out a vital component: how do we change ourselves so that we are strong enough to fully contribute to this great shift? Active Hope fills this gap beautifully, guiding readers on a journey of gratitude, grief, interconnection and, ultimately, transformation.” Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine.

At the heart of this book is the idea that Active Hope is something we do rather than have. It involves being clear what we hope for and then playing our role in the process of bringing that about. The journey of finding, and offering, our unique contribution to the Great Turning helps us to discover new strengths, open to a wider network of allies and experience a deepening of our aliveness. When our responses are guided by the intention to act for the healing of our world, the mess we’re in not only becomes easier to face, our lives also become more meaningful and satisfying. The book guides the reader through a transformational process informed by mythic journeys, modern psychology, spirituality and holistic science. This process equips us with tools to face the mess we’re in and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, towards a lifesustaining society.