Reference

ISBN: 9781486311934
Title: AUSTRALIAN BIRD GUIDE - Revised Edition
Author: MENKHORST PETER
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Winner of the 2018 ABIA Small Publisher's Adult Book of the Year Winner of the 2017 Whitley Medal Australia’s avifauna is large, diverse and spectacular, reflecting the continent’s impressive range of habitats and evolutionary history. With specially commissioned paintings of over 900 species, The Australian Bird Guide is the most comprehensive field guide to Australian birds ever seen. This Revised Edition includes updated maps, artwork and species accounts, reflecting current knowledge of the biology and distribution of Australia’s birds. It features around 4700 specially commissioned colour illustrations of over 900 species, with particular emphasis on providing the fine detail required to identify difficult groups and distinctive plumages. Comprehensive species accounts have been written by a dedicated team of ornithologists to ensure identification details, distribution and status are current and accurate. A new easier-to-use index is also included. The Australian Bird Guide sets a new standard in field guides, providing an indispensable reference for all birders and naturalists looking to explore Australia’s magnificent and unique birdlife.

Imprint: CSIRO PUBLICATIONS
RRP: $49.99

ISBN: 9781529112825
Title: BECAUSE INTERNET : Understanding how language is changing
Author: MCCULLOCH GRETCHEN
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

THE ACCLAIMED NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER.

Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.

Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time.

Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it. Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer 'LOL' or 'lol', why -sparkly tildes- succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.

'McCulloch is such a disarming writer - lucid, friendly, unequivocally excited about her subject - that I began to marvel at the flexibility of the online language she describes, with its numerous shades of subtlety.' New York Times

Imprint: Vintage
RRP: $19.99

ISBN: 9781742236995
Title: BEYOND THE HEROS JOURNEY : A screenwriting guide for when you’ve got a different story to tell
Author: MULLINS ANTHONY
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Telling a story is simple, right? You take a ‘hero’ and send them on a ‘journey’. There’s a beginning, middle and an end. But what if your story doesn’t fit into that basic structure?

In Beyond the Hero’s Journey, BAFTA award–winning screenwriter Anthony Mullins presents an accessible, versatile and highly visual alternative to writing that dramatically expands the range of narratives open to writers, both emerging and experienced.

Fun and easy-to-use, this book looks at much-loved films from around the world, including Moonlight, Lady Bird, The Social Network, The Godfather, A Fantastic Woman, Mulholland Drive, Shoplifters, Amour, Inside Llewyn Davis and Call Me By Your Name, to teach you the ins and outs of writing for the screen through identifying and taking control of character arcs.

Beyond the Hero’s Journey is for every writer who has felt frustrated by the neat confines of writing guides. It will teach you to explore and excel in telling more complex, intricate and authentic stories — and show you how to share your own distinctive, original voice with the world.

Imprint: Newsouth Books
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9780525657262
Title: BRIGHT BOOK OF LIFE
Author: BLOOM HAROLD
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: PUBLICATION DELAYED

In his first book devoted exclusively to narrative fiction, America's most original and controversial literary critic and legendary Yale professor writes trenchantly about fifty-two masterworks spanning the Western tradition.

Perhaps no other literary critic but Harold Bloom could--or would--undertake a project of this immensity. And certainly no other critic could bring to it the extraordinary knowledge, understanding, and insight that are the hallmark of Bloom's every book. Ranging across centuries and continents, this final book of his career, gives us the inimitable critic on Don Quixote and Book of Numbers; Wuthering Heights and Absalom, Absalom; Les Miserables and Blood Meridian; Vanity Fair and Invisible Man; The Captain's Daughter and The Reef. He writes about works by Austen, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, James, Conrad, Lawrence, Wolff, Le Guin, Sebald, and many more. Whether you have already read these books, or intend to, or simply care about the importance and power of fiction, Harold Bloom serves as an unparalleled guide through the pages of these 52 masterpieces of the genre.

Imprint: Doubleday Publishers
RRP: $62.99

ISBN: 9781576879535
Title: COVER
Author: MENDELSUND PETER
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Peter Mendelsund has enjoyed years as a much-sought-after book cover designer and art director. Among the many recognizable jackets he has created are those for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; collections of the works of Joyce, Kafka, Dostoevsky, de Beauvoir, and Foucault; the contemporary works of Martin Amis, Tom McCarthy, Ben Marcus, Jo Nesbø, and James Gleick; and many more. All have greatly benefitted from the care and touch Mendelsund gave them.

Cover abounds with Mendelsund's completed book jackets along with ephemera from his previously unseen creative method, including jacket sketches, interior art and editorial illustrations, and scores of rejected drafts. These images are punctuated by Mendelsund's reflections on his work and his process, as well as by texts from writers with whom he has worked and designed for.

Cover is a compendium of beautiful design and a beautiful design object itself; a profile and celebration of one of the publishing world's most talented and prolific contemporary creators, and a brilliant showcase of his deft touch for balanced and innovative design.

Imprint: Simon & Schuster
RRP: $79.99

ISBN: 9781910200964
Title: DAEMON VOICES : Essays on Storytelling
Author: PULLMAN PHILIP
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A masterful collection of essays on storytelling by Philip Pullman, one of our greatest writers.

In over 30 essays written over 20 years, one of the worlds great storytellers meditates on story-telling. Warm, funny, generous, entertaining and, above all, deeply considered, they offer thoughts on a wide variety of topics, including the origin and composition of Philips own stories, the craft of writing and the storytellers who have meant the most to Philip. The art of story-telling is everywhere present in the essays themselves, in the instantly engaging tone, the vivid imagery and striking phrases, the resonant anecdotes, the humour and learnedness. Together, they are greater than the sum of their parts: a single, sustained engagement with story and story-telling.

Imprint: DAVID FICKLING BOOKS
RRP: $34.99

ISBN: 9781789548778
Title: DANTES DIVINE COMEDY
Author: THOMSON IAN
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: June 2021 New Release

A biography of the great epic poem.

A TLS Book of the Year. 'Erudite and urgent, Ian Thomson's Dante's Divine Comedy is another book that everyone ought to read' Spectator . 'Succinct but wide-ranging, Ian Thomson's richly illustrated exploration of Dante's masterpiece is ... fun ... ingenious ... fascinating' Observer . 'A book worth savouring as a chunky, chatty, richly illustrated guide that brings Dante and his world within our reach' Evening Standard . A lively and wide-ranging exploration of a literary masterwork and its influence on writers, poets, artists and film-makers up to our own time. Dante has no equal as he sings of other-worldly horror and celestial beatitude alike. Yet for all our distance from medieval theology, the Florentine poet's allegorical journey through hell, purgatory and paradise remains one of the essential works of world literature. At least fifty English language versions of the Inferno – the first part of Dante's poem – appeared in the twentieth century alone. If Dante's Divine Comedy speaks to our present condition, it is because it tells the story of Everyman who sets out in search of salvation in this world. Dante composed his great poem in the spoken Italian of his time. He wrote about suffering bodies and human weakness, and about divine ecstasy, in words that have resonated with readers and writers for the last seven hundred years.

Imprint: Harper Collins
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9780374134709
Title: DARK ARCHIVES
Author: ROSENBLOOM MEGAN
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

There are books out there, some shelved unwittingly next to ordinary texts, that are bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand? In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom, a medical librarian and a cofounder of the Death Salon, seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind this anthropodermic bibliopegy. Dozens of these books still sit on the shelves of the world’s most famous libraries and museums. What are their stories? Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, mental patients, beautiful women, and indigents whose lives are bound together in this rare, scattered, and disquieting collection. It also tells the story of the scientists, curators, and librarians like Rosenbloom—interested in the full complicated histories behind these dark artifacts of nineteenth-century medicine—are developing tests to discover these books and sorting through the ethics of custodianship. A whip-smart and witty writer, Rosenbloom has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity. Thrilling, captivating, and macabre in all the right ways, Dark Archives encourages us to take another look at the very serious ways in which the powerful have objectified people over time—perfect for fans of Mary Roach, Lindsey Fitzharris, and the art of collecting.

Imprint: Farrar Straus and Giiroux
RRP: $44.99

ISBN: 9781681371979
Title: DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS DEFINITIVE EDITION
Author: CIRLOT JUAN EDUARDO
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

From the Egyptians on, no form of learning was more vital to the ancient world than the knowledge of symbols, and it was no less important to the civilizations of the Orient, even into modern times. In the Occident, thinking about symbols shaped the great art of the medieval age, and, to a very large extent, the new developments of the renaissance and the baroque, before gaining a distinctly new importance with the discovery of the "unconscious" in the twentieth century. The poet and art critic Juan Eduardo Cirlot's Dictionary of Symbols first came out in 1958; soon translated into English, it has since proved an indispensable and endlessly stimulating resource for scholars and students of fields from art to literature to psychology to philosophy. Whether discussing the nature of the Mandala, the symbolic dimensions of the cow, heron, hippopotamus, or planet Saturn, Cirlot's book is an unrivaled source of information, instruction, inspiration, and simple pleasure. This new, expanded edition of the Dictionary includes new entries as well as an epilogue by Cirlot's daughter Victoria discussing her father's poetry and work as an art critic and its close connection to Surrealism.

Imprint: NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
RRP: $42.99

ISBN: 9780691218854
Title: EMIGRES : French Words That Turned English
Author: SCHOLAR RICHARD
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK

English has borrowed more words from French than from any other modern foreign language. French words and phrases-such as a la mode, ennui, naivete and caprice-lend English a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that would otherwise elude the language. Richard Scholar examines the continuing history of untranslated French words in English and asks what these words reveal about the fertile but fraught relationship that England and France have long shared and that now entangles English- and French-speaking cultures all over the world.

Emigres demonstrates that French borrowings have, over the centuries, 'turned' English in more ways than one. From the seventeenth-century polymath John Evelyn's complaint that English lacks 'words that do so fully express' the French ennui and naivete, to George W. Bush's purported claim that 'the French don't have a word for entrepreneur,' this unique history of English argues that French words have offered more than the mere seasoning of the occasional mot juste. They have established themselves as 'creolizing keywords' that both connect English speakers to-and separate them from-French. Moving from the realms of opera to ice cream, the book shows how migrant French words are never the same again for having ventured abroad, and how they complete English by reminding us that it is fundamentally incomplete. At a moment of resurgent nationalism in the English-speaking world, Emigres invites native Anglophone readers to consider how much we owe the French language and why so many of us remain ambivalent about the migrants in our midst.

Imprint: REAKTION BOOKS
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9780008421953
Title: EX LIBRIS : 100+ Books to Read and Reread
Author: KAKUTANI MICHIKO
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

From 'the most powerful book critic in the English-speaking world' (Vanity Fair) comes an inspiring and beautifully illustrated selection of the life-changing books that none of us should miss

'Why do we love books so much?'

For legendary literary critic Michiko Kakutani, books have always been an escape and a sanctuary, the characters of some novels feeling so real to her childhood self that she worried they might leap out of the pages at night if she left the book cover open. In Ex Libris, she offers a personal selection of over 100 works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, with passionate essays on why each has had a profound effect on her life.

From Homer's The Odyssey to The Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale to Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, Ex Libris covers a rich and vast range of classics, old and new, that will help build a well-rounded reader and citizen of the world. With gorgeous illustrations by lettering artist Dana Tanamachi that evoke vintage bookplates leafed between Kakutani's inspiring essays, Ex Libris points us to our next great read - and proves an unmissable reminder of why we fell in love with reading in the first place.

Imprint: William Collins
RRP: $34.99

ISBN: 9780732291938
Title: FIELD GUIDE TO THE BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA 9TH EDITION
Author: PIZZEY GRAHAM / KNIGHT FRANK
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

The definitive and most respected guide to Australian bird identification and a must for both experts and amateurs. First published in 1980, Graham Pizzey's field guide combines a depth and breadth of knowledge with beautiful, full-colour illustrations by Frank Knight. This 9th edition is even more user-friendly than the 8th edition. The species entries are ordered as per the new taxonomic order of C&B 2008 and the guide is more suitable to be used as a quick reference due to the inclusion of associated colour-tabs. It has also been brought up-to-date with the inclusion of a number of new species, encompassing significantly more Vagrants (very occasional visitors to Australia, mostly storm assisted) which will have their own discrete Vagrants section at the back of the book. It also contains a longer Quick Reference Guide than the 8th edition, spanning over a few pages, with presenting images alongside the species group names.

Imprint: Harper Collins
RRP: $45.00