A deeply powerful, poetic and compelling book on the challenges facing our world, from one of Australia's most experienced journalists and international commentators, Stan Grant.
History is turning.
In only a few short decades, we have come a long way from Francis Fukuyama's declaration of the 'end of history' and the triumph of liberal democracy in 1989. Now, with the inexorable rise and rise of China, the ascendancy of authoritarianism and the retreat of democracy, the world stands at a moment of crisis. This is a time of momentous upheaval and enormous geopolitical shifts, compounded by global pandemics, looming world depression, Islamist and far right terror, and a resurgent white supremacy. The world is in lockdown and the showdown with China is accelerated - and while the West has been at the forefront of history for 200 years, it must now adapt to a world it no longer dominates. At this moment, we stand on a precipice - what will become of us?
Stan Grant is one of our foremost observers and chroniclers of the world in crisis. Weaving his personal experiences of reporting from the front lines of the world's flashpoints, together with his deep understanding of politics, history and philosophy, he explores what is driving the world to crisis and how it might be averted. From China to North Korea and Northern Ireland to South Africa and the Middle East - Stan captures this moment of democracy in retreat and authoritarianism on the march. He fears for the worst, but begins to chart the way forward. There is bitterness, anger and history here, but there is also the capacity for negotiation, forgiveness and hope.
Imprint: Harper Collins
RRP: $34.99
From the bestselling and Booker Prize winning author of Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel - his first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature - that asks, what does it mean to love?
This is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
A thrilling feat of world-building, a novel of exquisite tenderness and impeccable restraint, Klara and the Sun is a magnificent achievement, and an international literary event.
Imprint: Faber and Faber
RRP: $32.99
'Two deep, bright, razor-sharp women at opposite ends of the earth tearing the band-aids off their souls, exposing truths and lies buried beneath marriage, motherhood and the sacrificial siege of mid-to-late-life maintenance. This is Susan Johnson at her most original, daring, bone-deep and deliciously raw. I fell, too, with aching heart and tickled rib, under the spell of this extraordinary book.' TRENT DALTON
'In a strikingly original reimagining of an epistolary novel, Susan Johnson creates two voices that echo and reverberate long after the final, heart-wrenching pages. Her best yet.' GERALDINE BROOKS
An anguished email from Pamela Robinson in Australia to her ex-husband in Paris accidentally ends up in the inbox of New York State teacher Chrisanthi Woods. Chrisanthi is sympathetic to Pamela's struggles and the women begin to tell each other the stories and secrets of their lives.
Pamela, responsible for raising her three sons, must re-invent the meaning of home following her divorce, and Chrisanthi, her dreams long dampened, must find home by leaving it. Temperamental opposites, their emails turn into an exhilarating and provocative exchange of love, loss and fresh beginnings, by turns amusing, frank and confronting.
'Witty, warm, heartbreaking and honest - an audacious masterpiece from one of Australia's best writers.' NIKKI GEMMELL
'Few novelists working today can match Susan Johnson's uncanny ability to map both the joys and horrors of the human heart and to wrestle the ebb and flow of life to the page. From Where I Fell teems with regret, eruptions of joy, the complexities of motherhood, the power of memory, the pain of divorce and dashed and gained dreams.' MATTHEW CONDON
Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $32.99
The sunniest places hold the darkest secrets.
Yesterday, I kissed my husband for the last time . . .
It's the summer of 1959, and the well-trimmed lawns of Sunnylakes, California, wilt under the sun. At some point during the long, long afternoon, Joyce Haney, wife, mother, vanishes from her home, leaving behind two terrified toddlers and a bloodstain on the kitchen floor . . .
A beguiling, deeply atmospheric debut novel from the cracked heart of the American Dream, The Long, Long Afternoon is at once a page-turning mystery and an intoxicating vision of the ways in which women everywhere are diminished, silenced and ultimately under-estimated.
Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $29.99
'Marvellous... One of the best pieces of Native American history I have read.' - S.C. Gwynne, bestselling author of Empire of the Summer Moon
Shawnee chief Tecumseh was a man destined for greatness - the son of a prominent war leader, he was supposedly born under a lucky shooting star. Charismatic, intelligent, handsome, he was both a fierce warrior and a savvy politician. In the first biography of Tecumseh in more than twenty years, Peter Cozzens thoroughly revises our understanding of this great leader and his movement, arguing that his overlooked younger brother Tenskwatwa, the 'Shawnee Prophet', was a crucial partner in Tecumseh's success.
Until Tecumseh's death in 1813, he was, alongside Tenskwatawa, the co-architect of the greatest pan-Indian confederation in history. Over time, Tenskwatawa has been relegated to the shadows, described as a talentless charlatan and a drunk. But Cozzens argues that while Tecumseh was the forward-facing diplomat, appealing even to the white settlers attempting to steal Shawnee land, behind the scenes, Tenskwatwa unified their people with his deep understanding of Shawnee religion and culture. No other Native American leaders enjoyed such popularity, and none would ever pose a graver threat to colonial expansion than Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa.
Bringing to life an often-overlooked episode in America's past, Cozzens paints in vivid detail the violent, lawless world of the Old Northwest, when settlers spilled over the Appalachians to bloody effect in their haste to exploit lands won from the War of Independence. The Warrior and the Prophet tells the untold story of the Shawnee brothers who retaliated against this threat - becoming allies with the British army in the process - and reveals how they were the last hope for Native Americans to preserve ways of life they had known for centuries.
Imprint: Atlantic Books
RRP: $49.99
When seventeen-year-old Emma leaves her best friend Abi at a party in the woods, she believes, like most girls her age, that their lives are just beginning. Many things will happen that night, but Emma will never see her friend again.Abi's disappearance cracks open the fa ade of the small town of Whistling Ridge, its intimate history of long-held grudges and resentment. Even within Abi's family, there are questions to be asked - of Noah, the older brother whom Abi betrayed, of Jude, the shining younger sibling who hides his battle scars, of Dolly, her mother and Samuel, her father - both in thrall to the fire and brimstone preacher who holds the entire town in his grasp. Then there is Rat, the outsider, whose presence in the town both unsettles and excites those around him.Anything could happen in Whistling Ridge, this tinder box of small-town rage, and all it will take is just one spark - the truth of what really happened that night out at the Tall Bones...
Imprint: Random House Publishing
RRP: $32.99
The story of Raymundo Mata, a visually impaired member of a 19th century anti-Spanish Philippine revolutionary society, is a polyphonic whirlwind of voices and histories. Told in the form of a memoir, the novel traces Mata's childhood, his education in Manila, his love affairs, and his discovery of the writer and revolutionary, Jose Rizal. Mata's autobiography, however, is de-centered by present-day foreword(s), afterword(s), and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices- a nationalist editor, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic, and a translator, Mimi C. Magsalin (who also appeared as a character in Apostol's novel Insurrecto).
In telling the contested and fragmentary story of Mata, Apostol finds new ways to depict the violence of the Spanish colonial era, and to reimagine the nation's great writer, Jose Rizal, who is considered by many to be the father of Philippine independence and was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities.
The publication of The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata for the first time outside of the Philippines is a literary event. Brilliantly revised and expanded by the author for this edition-an act of re-creation in perfect keeping with the book's own textual preoccupations-this novel offers an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction, uncovering lost histories while building dazzling, riotous modes of narrative.
Imprint: Random House Publishing
RRP: $24.99
A mindbending new collection of short stories from the beloved, internationally acclaimed, Haruki Murakami.The eight masterly stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator. From nostalgic memories of youth, meditations on music, and an ardent love of baseball to dreamlike scenarios and invented jazz albums, together these stories challenge the boundaries between our minds and the exterior world. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Murakami himself is present. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides.
Imprint: Harvill Secker
RRP: $39.99
In Venice you'll often hear the phrase Andiamo per un ombra? ('Shall we go for a drink?'). And it's this 'ombra', the Venetian name for a small tumbler of wine, that inspired Carlo Grossi's restaurant - a modern take on an authentic Italian salumi bar right in the bustling heart of Melbourne.
Any time is a good time for a drink at Ombra, and when you step in the door at 76 Bourke Street you'll always find a warm and hospitable welcome (and something delicious to eat). It's an intimate, energetic place where all walks of life can drop by and come together over plates of finely cured meats and cheese, bringing with them a great sense of community - a community that thrives at the bar; that argues, loves and lives between slurps of white wine and Aperol.
The Ombra cookbook brings together the very best of Carlo's food and hospitality, from lovingly aged meats and homemade sausages to mouth-watering pizzas, all sorts of irresistible bar snacks (cicchetti), hearty evening meals, fermented and pickled vegetables and fruits, and delectable desserts to finish off the evening. With family heirloom recipes and dishes inspired by Carlo's travels all over Italy, the Italian ideals of preservation and quality produce are on proud display in this collection of familiar and tasty food that's made for sharing over a lively conversation.
So pull up a seat - it's time for un ombra!
Imprint: LANTERN BOOKS
RRP: $39.99
Factory you shall never have my soul
I am here
And I count for so much more than you
And I count so much more because of you
Thanks to you
Unable to find work in his field, Joseph Ponthus enlists with a temp agency and starts to pick up casual shifts in the fish processing plants and abattoirs of Brittany. Day after day he records with infinite precision the nature of work on the production line- the noise, the weariness, the dreams stolen by the repetitive nature of exhausting rituals and physical suffering. But he finds solace in a life previously lived. Shelling prawns, he dreams of
Alexandre Dumas. Pushing cattle carcasses, he recalls Apollinaire. And, in the grace of the blank spaces created by his insistent return to a new line of text - mirroring his continued return to the production line - we discover the woman he loves, the happiness of a Sunday, Pok Pok the dog, the smell of the sea.
In this celebrated French bestseller, translated by Stephanie Smee, Ponthus captures the mundane, the beautiful and the strange, writing with an elegance and humour that sit in poignant contrast with the blood and sweat of the factory floor. On the Line ( la ligne) is a poet's ode to manual labour, and to the human spirit that makes it bearable.
Imprint: Black Inc.
RRP: $27.99
It's 1969 and mankind has leapt up to the moon, but a young mother in small-town Australia can't get past the kitchen door. Louise Ashland -is exhausted - her husband, Steven, is away on the road and her mother, Gladys, won't leave her alone. At least her baby, Dolores, has finally stopped screaming and is sweetly sleeping in her cot. Right where Louise left her. Or is she?
As the day unravels, Louise will unearth secrets her mother - and perhaps her own mind - have worked hard to keep buried. But what piece of family lore is so terrible that it has been kept hidden all this time? And what will exposing it reveal about mother and daughter?
Like Mother explores what is handed down from generation to generation, and asks us whether a woman's home is her castle or her cage.
Imprint: Penguin Books
RRP: $32.99
Lech Blaine was just seventeen when he was in a crash that killed his best friends and changed his life.
On an evening in 2009, seven teenage boys piled into a car to go to a party. They never arrived. The driver - who was not drunk or high - made a routine error and then overcorrected. The vehicle flew off the road. One passenger died on impact. Others were flung from the car. Lech walked away uninjured. In the aftermath, two more died in hospital and one was left disabled, in an incident that convulsed their rural community.
Crippled by guilt, Lech turned to social media, cultivating a persona as the ultimate 'grateful survivor'. Over time, he spiralled into risk-taking and depression. His public bravado fell away as he tried to accept how an accident - one wretched error of youth and inexperience - had changed the trajectory of so many lives.
How do we grieve in an age of social media? How does tragedy shape a community? And how does a boy on the cusp of manhood develop a sense of self when his world has exploded?
This stunning memoir pulls no punches. It marks Lech Blaine as a writer to watch.
Imprint: Text Publishing
RRP: $32.99
In Sex, Lies and Question Time, former MP Kate Ellis explores the good, the bad and the ugly of life as a woman in Australian politics.
Seventy-seven years after the first woman entered Australian parliament, female politicians are still the minority. They cop scrutiny over their appearance, their sex lives, their parenting and their portfolios in a way few of their male colleagues do. It’s time to call bullshit on the toxic Canberra culture.
Imprint: Hardie Grant Books
RRP: $32.99
The Honourable Phryne Fisher - she of the Lulu bob, Cupid's bow lips, diamante garters and pearl-handled pistol - is the 1920s' most elegant and irrepressible sleuth.
Miss Phryne Fisher is up to her stunning green eyes in intriguing crime in each of these entertaining, fun and compulsively readable stories. With the ever-loyal Dot, the ingenious Mr Butler and all of Phryne's friends and household, the action is as fast as Phryne's wit and logic.
'With Phryne Fisher, the indefatigable Greenwood has invented the character-you-fall-in-love-with genre.' The Australian
Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $29.99
Nic is a forty-five-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice. She'd put her theory to the test, if only the pen buckets weren't currently blocked in by the crates of Happy Meal toys and the towers of Vegemite jars, take-away containers and cat food tins.
Nic's closest relationship is with her niece Lena. The two of them meet for lunch every Sunday to gossip about the rest of the family and bitch about work (they're both checkout chicks: Lena just for now, Nic until they prise her staff discount card from her cold, dead hands).
One Sunday, Nic fails to turn up to lunch and when Lena calls she gets a disconnection message. Arriving at the house she hasn't visited in years ('Too far for you to come, hon. Let's meet in the middle.') she finds her aunt unconscious under an avalanche of stuff.
Lena is devastated that her beloved aunt has been living in such squalor all this time. While Nic is in hospital, she gets to work cleaning things up for her. Her first impulse is to call in the bulldozers and start searching Gumtree for a roomy caravan. But with the help of her reluctantly recruited brother, Will, she gets the job done.
This heroic effort is not appreciated by the plastered up, crutch-wielding Nic. She returns to an empty, alien place unrecognisable as her home and the unbearable pity of her family who have no idea what they've destroyed. How can she live in this place without safety and peace? And how can she ever forgive the niece who has betrayed her?
Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $32.99
Meet Adam. He's twenty-seven years old, articulate and attractive. He also wants to die. Should he be helped?
In The Inevitable, award-winning journalist Katie Engelhart explores one of our most abiding taboos: that of assisted suicide. From Avril, the 80-year-old British woman illegally importing pentobarbital to the Australian doctor dispensing suicide manuals online, Engelhart travels the world to hear the stories behind one of today's most hotly debated ethical dilemmas.
At once intensely troubling and profoundly moving, The Inevitable interrogates our most uncomfortable moral questions. Should a paralyzed teenager be allowed to end her life? Should we be free to die painlessly before dementia takes our mind? But the book also does something more. In examining our end, it sheds crucial light on what it means to flourish and live.
Imprint: Atlantic Books
RRP: $29.99
Her story weaves in and out of time and place. She's Frida Kahlo, Lois Mailou Jones and Amrita Sher-Gil en route to Mexico City, Paris or Bombay. She's Suzanne Valadon and Gwen John, craving city lights, the sea and solitude; she's Artemisia Gentileschi striding through the streets of Naples and Paula Modersohn-Becker in Worpswede. She's haunting museums in her paint-stained dress, scrutinising how El Greco or Titian or Van Dyck or Cezanne solved the problems that she too is facing. She's railing against her corsets, her chaperones, her husband and her brothers; she's hammering on doors, dreaming in her bedroom, working day and night in her studio. Despite the immense hurdles that have been placed in her way, she sits at her easel, picks up a mirror and paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available.
Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval. In THE MIRROR AND THE PALETTE, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, moreA celebration of Australian cuisine like never before - 350 recipes showcasing the rich diversity of its landscapes and its people.
Australia is a true melting pot of cultures and this is reflected in its cooking. As an island of indigenous peoples alongside a global panoply of immigrants with different culinary influences and traditions, its foodways are ripe for exploration. As well as the regional flora and fauna that make up bush tucker, there are dishes from all over the world that have been adopted and adapted to become Australia's own - making this recipe collection relevant to home cooks everywhere.In June 1925, twenty-three-year-old Werner Heisenberg, suffering from hay fever, retreated to a small, treeless island in the North Sea called Helgoland. It was there that he came up with one of the most transformative scientific concepts- quantum theory.
Almost a century later, quantum physics has given us many startling ideas - ghost waves, distant objects that seem magically connected to each other, cats that are both dead and alive. At the same time, countless experiments have led to practical applications that shape our daily lives. Today our understanding of the world around us is based on this theory. And yet it is still profoundly mysterious.
In this enchanting book, Carlo Rovelli, one of our most celebrated scientists, tells the extraordinary story of quantum physics and reveals its deep meaning- a world made of substances is replaced by a world made of relations, each particle responding to another in a never ending game of mirrors.
Shifting our perspective once again, Rovelli takes us on a riveting journey through the universe so we can better understand our place in it.
Imprint: Allen Lane
RRP: $39.99
In his many years as a Commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native Venice to discover the person responsible. Now, in the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon's masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough- two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti's curiosity is aroused by the behaviour of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it?
As Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, investigate the incident, they discover that one of the young men works for a man rumoured to be involved in more sinister night-time activities in the Laguna. To get to the bottom of what proves to be a gut-wrenching case, Brunetti needs to enlist the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organised.
Donna Leon's thirtieth Brunetti novel is as powerful as any she has written, testing Brunetti to his limits, forcing him to listen very carefully for the truth.
Imprint: William Heineman
RRP: $32.99
The boys had been friends for as long as they could remember and a little while before that. They were like brothers. Follow the adventures of four boys as they grow up, forming bonds of friendship to last a lifetime – even if they are occasionally put to the test…
From the creators of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize winner, The Girls.
Imprint: Little Tiger Press
RRP: $24.99
'Architectural photography plays an important role as a visual record of our constantly evolving built environment. For architects it is one of the final parts of the process: the expression of our design work through someone else's creative viewpoint. Architectural photographers each bring their own sense of "self" to their work. Peter Barnes' photographs have a visual strength and an energy that is characteristically his own. The sense of detail and care within his photography evokes for me the same considered approach we architects take in realising our built outcomes. Seeing our work through his lens is a delight.' - Wayne Grivell, Director, Swanbury Penglase
'Some projects in this book are quiet contributors to the urban realm. Others make a statement. Some will be familiar. Others will be newly discovered treasures. I hope that this beautiful celebration of key architecture in this state stimulates you to look afresh at the spaces you occupy and to better value the good design around us. You will gain a new appreciation of the great places and buildings in South Australia.' - Nicolette Di Lernia, Australian Institute of Architects
Imprint: WAKEFIELD
RRP: $49.95
First published in 1814 and expanded in 1821 - long before the era of colour photography or print - Syme's edition of Werner's Nomenclature of Colours attempted to establish a universal colour reference system to help identify, classify and represent species from the natural world. Werner's set of 54 colour standards was enhanced by Patrick Syme with the addition of colour swatches and further references from nature, taking the total number of hues classified to 110. The resulting resource proved invaluable not only to artists but also to zoologists, botanists, mineralogists and anatomists.
In Nature's Palette this technicolour trove has, for the first time, been enhanced with the addition of illustrations of the animals, vegetables and minerals Werner referenced alongside each colour swatch and accompanied by expert text explaining the uses and development of colour standards in relation to zoology, botany, minerology and anatomy. This fully realized colour catalogue includes elegant contemporary illustrations of every animal, plant or mineral that Syme cited. Readers can see for themselves Tile Red in the Cock Bullfinch's breast, Shrubby Pimpernel and Porcelain Jasper; or admire the Berlin Blue that Syme identified on the wing feathers of a Jay, in the Hepatica flower and in Blue Sapphire. Displays of contemporary collector's cabinets of birds, butterflies, eggs, flowers and minerals are interspersed at intervals throughout the compendium, with individual specimens colour matched to colour swatches. Still a much-loved reference among artists, naturalists and everyone fascinated by colour today, Werner's Nomenclature of Colours finds its fullest expression in this beautiful and comprehensive colour reference system.
Imprint: Thames & Hudson Publishing
RRP: $70.00
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