Estore 25

ISBN: 9781529033113
Title: WRITERS AND LOVERS
Author: KING LILY
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Exuberant and affirming, it's funny and immensely clever, emotionally rare and strong. I feel bereft now I've finished' Tessa Hadley

Casey has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way - it’s strange, not be the youngest kind of adult anymore.

And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at the point of a love triangle, stuck between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures.

Lily King's <i>Writers & Lovers</i> follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when everything - her family, her work, her relationships - comes to a crisis. Hugely moving and impossibly funny, it is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another. It is a novel about love and creativity, and ultimately it captures the moment when a woman becomes an artist.

Imprint: Picador
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781922268662
Title: EXPLODED VIEW - Miles Franklin Shortlist 2020
Author: TIFFANY CARRIE
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Must a girl always be a part?

How can she become a whole?

In the late 1970s, in the forgotten outer suburbs, a girl has her hands in the engine of a Holden. A sinister new man has joined the family. He works as a mechanic and operates an unlicensed repair shop at the back of their block.

The family is under threat. The girl reads the Holden workshop manual for guidance. She resists the man with silence, then with sabotage. She fights him at the place where she believes his heart lives - in the engine of the car.

Spare, poetic and intensely visual, Exploded View is the powerful new novel from the author of Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living and Mateship with Birds - one of Australia's most celebrated writers and winner of the inaugural Stella Prize.

Imprint: Text Publishing
RRP: $22.99

ISBN: 9781912891191
Title: HAPPY HEALTHY MINDS : A Childrens Guide to Emotional Wellbeing
Author: THE SCHOOL OF LIFE
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Our minds are beautifully complicated and brilliant machines. For much of our lives, these machines run hugely efficiently with minimal maintenance. However, just like our other organs, they do require some proper attention and thought every now and then and recognising this at an early age can only help as children progress into adulthood.

We explore a range of common scenarios encountered by young children and talk about some of the very best ideas to help deal with them. By offering a sympathetic and supportive framework, HAPPY, HEALTHY MINDS encourages children to open up, explore their own feelings and face the dilemmas of growing up armed with emotional intelligence.

Imprint: School of Life Press
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781760529673
Title: DADDY COOL : Finding my father, the singer who swapped Hollywood fame for home in Australia
Author: BUNGEY DARLEEN
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A captivating, generous and exquisitely written memoir of family and a daughter discovering her father's multi-layered life

Who can ever truly know their parents?

He was a glamorous heart-throb, a famous American singer performing in front of Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable and other stars at the Academy Awards. In the 1930s, his recording of 'Hawaiian Paradise' outsold those of Bing Crosby and Guy Lombardo.

So how did he become an Australian infantryman, fighting alongside and performing for his fellow Diggers in Palestine, Beirut, Egypt and New Guinea? Why did he leave Hollywood and the ritziest hotels in America for a modest Californian bungalow in suburban Sydney? And what caused him to cease his endless drifting from one woman to another, one marriage to another, and settle with the love of his life?

She was a strong Aussie woman, a talented radio broadcaster and publicity agent. Why did she take a chance on this reckless vagabond and notorious womaniser?

Seeking answers, Darleen Bungey turns her biographical skills on her own family, exploring her father's multi-layered and at times tempestuous life with a truthful eye and loving heart.

Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9781760877989
Title: FAIR WARNING
Author: CONNELLY MICHAEL
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

The hero of The Poet and The Scarecrow is back in the new thriller from #1 bestselling author Michael Connelly. Jack McEvoy, the journalist who never backs down, tracks a serial killer who has been operating completely under the radar--until now.

Jack McEvoy has taken down killers before, but when a woman he had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, he realises he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he's ever encountered. Jack investigates against the warnings of the police and his own editor, walking a thin line between investigation and obsession, and makes a shocking discovery, connecting the crime to other mysterious deaths across the country. But then he himself becomes a suspect, and as he races to clear his name, Jack's findings point to a serial killer who uses personal data shared by the victims themselves to select and hunt his targets.

Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9780571350858
Title: INDIAN SUN : The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar
Author: CRASKE OLIVER
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Over eight decades, Ravi Shankar was India's greatest cultural ambassador who took Indian classical music to the world's leading concert halls and festivals, charting the map for those who followed. Renowned for his association with The Beatles - teaching George Harrison sitar - Shankar turning the Sixties generation on to Indian music, astonishing the crowds at Woodstock, Monterey Pop and the Concert for Bangladesh with his virtuosity. He radically reshaped jazz and Western classical music as well as writing film scores, including Pather Panchali and Gandhi, and transformed awareness of Indian culture in the process.

Indian Sun is the first biography of Ravi Shankar. Benefitting from unprecedented access to family archives, Oliver Craske paints a vivid picture of a captivating, restless workaholic, who lived a passionate and extraordinary life - from his childhood in his brother's dance troupe, through intensive study of the sitar, to his revival of the national music scene; and from the 1950s, a pioneering international career that ultimately made his name synonymous with India.

Imprint: Faber and Faber
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781787332201
Title: DEATH IN HER HANDS
Author: MOSHFEGH OTTESSA
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense

While on her daily walk with her dog in the nearby woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body.

Shaky even on her best days, she is also alone, and new to this area, having moved here from her long-time home after the death of her husband, and now deeply alarmed. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession, as she explores multiple theories about who Magda was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But is there either a more innocent explanation for all this, or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home?

In this triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, we must decide whether the stories we tell ourselves guide us closer to the truth or keep us further from it.

Imprint: Jonathan Cape Publishers
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781743836811
Title: BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES : A Hunger Games Novel
Author: COLLINS SUZANNE
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will revisit the world of Panem sixty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, starting on the morning of the reaping of the Tenth Hunger Games. On returning to the world of The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins said, "With this book, I wanted to explore the state of nature, who we are, and what we perceive is required for our survival. The reconstruction period ten years after the war, commonly referred to as the Dark Days-as the country of Panem struggles back to its feet-provides fertile ground for characters to grapple with these questions and thereby define their views of humanity."

Imprint: SCHOLASTIC
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781760506803
Title: YOUR PLANET NEEDS YOU!
Author: BUNTING PHILIP
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Nobody really likes to think about rubbish (pee-ew!). But whether you know it or not, waste is part of everyone’s lives. Each year, a single person can create up to a tonne of waste. That’s the equivalent weight of a small hippo!

Where does waste come from? Where does it end up? And what can we do to help our planet? Renowned picture book creator Philip Bunting answers all these questions and more in this entertaining and enlightening look at how to wallop waste and reduce rubbish.

Your Planet Needs You! is packed with simple and entertaining ways that kids and their families can reduce, re-use, recycle, renew and REALLY GET INVOLVED in cleaning up our planet.

Learn how to start a compost bin, or how to use and old egg carton to sprout your very own seedlings. Get tips on cool things you can do with empty tin cans or an old pair of socks, and discover how long different things take to decompose – from an apple core to a gumboot to a plastic bag.

With a positive outlook and a generous dollop of humour, Your Planet Needs You! shows that taking care of our environment can be both fun and rewarding.

You can be the change! Your planet needs you!

Imprint: Little Hare Books
RRP: $24.99

ISBN: 9781925849769
Title: RISE AND SHINE
Author: ALLINGTON PATRICK
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Each morning, the last humans start their day with graphic footage from the front. This is what sustains them - literally.

In a world where eight billion souls have perished, the survivors huddle together apart, perpetually at war, in the city-states of Rise and Shine. Yet this war, far from representing their doom, is their means of survival. For their leaders have found the key to life when crops, livestock, and the very future have been blighted - a key that turns on each citizen being moved by human suffering. The question is, with memories still bright of all the friends they've lost, all the experience they'll never know, will compassion be enough? Or must they succumb to, or even embrace, darker desires?

Rise and Shine is a tale that speaks to our troubled times, a Kafkaesque fable of hope from the imagination of Miles Franklin nominee Patrick Allington.



Praise for Figurehead-
'Brilliant ... With its Kundera touch, suave style and assured scepticism, Figurehead fascinates, appalls, and introduces an impressive talent.'
-The Age

Praise for Figurehead-
'Original in conception and dauntless in execution.'
-The Australian

Praise for Figurehead-
'Risky, bold, and evocative.'
-The Advertiser

Praise for Figurehead-
'The boundary between truth and history has always been elastic but novelist Patrick Allington uses the middle ground as a trampoline, gleefully leaping between what is plausibly known and what is demonstrably invented.'
-Sydney Morning Herald

Imprint: Scribe Publications
RRP: $27.99

ISBN: 9780349701455
Title: VANISHING HALF
Author: BENNETT BRIT
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, THE VANISHING HALF considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

Praise for Brit Bennett:

'A writer to watch' Washington Post

'Bennett allows her characters to follow their worst impulses, and she handles provocative issues with intelligence, empathy and dark humour' New York Times

'A beautifully written, sad and lingering book' Guardian on THE MOTHERS

Imprint: Hachette Publishers
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9780708899427
Title: NICKEL BOYS - Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2020
Author: WHITEHEAD COLSON
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2020
Author of THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, Colson Whitehead, brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida.

Praise for Pulitzer Prize-winning THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD:

'My book of the year by some distance . . . luminous, furious, wildly inventive' Observer

'An engrossing and harrowing novel' Sunday Times

'Tells one of the most compelling stories I have ever read' Guardian

Whitehead is a superb storyteller . . . [he] brilliantly intertwines his allegory with history . . . writing at the peak of his game' Telegraph

________________________________________________________________________

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clearsighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, THE NICKEL BOYS is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.

Imprint: Hachette Publishers
RRP: $22.99

ISBN: 9781925972634
Title: APPLICATION OF PRESSURE
Author: MEAD RACHAEL
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Tash and Joel are career paramedics, coming to the rescue of Adelaide residents of every class, culture and age. In a job where every day can bring death and violence, they maintain their sanity through a friendship built on black humour. But as the daily exposure to trauma begins to take its toll, both, in different ways, must fight to preserve their mental health and relationships - even with one another. How much pressure can Tash and Joel handle, and what happens when they finally crack?

With each chapter revolving around an emergency - some frightening, some moving, some simply funny - THE APPLICATION OF PRESSURE is as tense as it is engaging. Digging beneath the shocking surface of gore and grit, Rachael Mead lays bare the humanity of emergency services personnel and their patients.

Masterfully written, THE APPLICATION OF PRESSURE is a breathtaking and deeply human debut novel that reveals not only the trauma of a life lived on the frontline of medicine, but also the essential, binding friendships that make such a life possible.

Imprint: Affirm Press
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781922330024
Title: ROOM MADE OF LEAVES
Author: GRENVILLE KATE
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Do not believe too quickly...

What if Elizabeth Macarthur-wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in early Sydney-had written a shockingly frank secret memoir?

In her introduction Kate Grenville tells, tongue firmly in cheek, of discovering a long-hidden box containing that memoir. What follows is a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented.

Grenville's Elizabeth Macarthur is a passionate woman managing her complicated life-marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her own heart, the search for power in a society that gave her none-with spirit, cunning and sly wit.

Her memoir reveals the dark underbelly of the polite world of Jane Austen. It explodes the stereotype of the women of the past- devoted and docile, accepting of their narrow choices. That was their public face-here's what one of them really thought.

At the heart of this book is one of the most toxic issues of our times- the seductive appeal of false stories. Beneath the surface of Elizabeth Macarthur's life and the violent colonial world she navigated are secrets and lies with the dangerous power to shape reality.

A Room Made of Leaves is the internationally acclaimed author Kate Grenville's first novel in almost a decade. It is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand that gives the past the piercing immediacy of the present.

Imprint: Text Publishing
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781471190278
Title: BURNING
Author: MAJUMDAR MEGHA
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A girl walks through the slums of Kolkata holding an armful of books. She returns home smelling of smoke, and checks her most prized possession: a brand-new smartphone, purchased in instalments. On Facebook, there is only one conversation.

#KolabaganTrainAttack

On the small, glowing screen, she types a dangerous thing...

'If the police didn't help ordinary people like you and me, if the police watched them die, doesn't that mean that the government is also a terrorist?'

Set in contemporary India, A Burning is the story of three unforgettable characters, all dreaming of a better future, whose lives are changed for ever when they become caught up in the devastating aftermath of a terrorist attack.

Jivan - a poor, young, Muslim girl, who dreams of going to college - faces a possible death sentence after being accused of collaborating with the terrorists.

Lovely - an exuberant hijra who longs to be a Bollywood star - holds the alibi that can set Jivan free, but telling the truth will cost her everything she holds dear.

PT Sir - an opportunistic gym teacher who once taught Jivan - becomes involved with Hindu nationalist politics and his own ascent is soon inextricably linked to Jivan's fall.

Taut, propulsive and electrifying, from its opening lines to its astonishing finale, A Burning confronts issues of class, fate, prejudice and corruption with a Dickensian sense of injustice, and asks us to consider what it means to nurture big ambitions in a country hurtling towards political extremism.

A Burning is a novel for our times and for all time.

Imprint: SCRIBNER
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781922268778
Title: RAIN HERON
Author: ARNOTT ROBBIE
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading-and forgetting.

But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a local myth, Ren is inexorably drawn into her impossible mission. As their lives entwine, unravel and erupt-as myths merge with reality-both Ren and the soldier are forced to confront what they regret, what they love, and what they fear.

The Rain Heron is the dizzying, dazzling new novel from the author of Flames.

Imprint: Text Publishing
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781787332287
Title: LOVE
Author: DOYLE RODDY
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

One summer's evening, two men meet up in a Dublin restaurant.

Old friends, now married and with grown-up children, their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he has to tell Davy, and Davy, a grief he wants to keep from Joe. Both are not the men they used to be.

Neither Davy nor Joe know what the night has in store, but as two pints turns to three, then five, and the men set out to revisit the haunts of their youth, the ghosts of Dublin entwine around them. Their first buoyant forays into adulthood, the pubs, the parties, broken hearts and bungled affairs, as well as the memories of what eventually drove them apart.

As the two friends try to reconcile their versions of the past over the course of one night, Love offers up a delightfully comic, yet moving portrait of what love, in its many forms, can take throughout our lives.

Imprint: Jonathan Cape Publishers
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781408898949
Title: HUMANKIND : A Hopeful History
Author: BREGMAN RUTGER
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A Guardian Book to Look Out For in 2020

'Humankind challenged me and made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari

From 'the folk hero of Davos', Fox News antagonist and author of the international bestseller Utopia for Realists comes a radical history of our innate capacity for kindness.

It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest.
Providing a new historical perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history, Humankind makes a new argument- that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. When we think the worst of others, it brings out the worst in our politics and economics too.
In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think o and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society.
It is time for a new view of human nature.

Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9781526620033
Title: SORRY FOR YOUR TROUBLE : Stories
Author: FORD RICHARD
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A woman and man, parted a quarter of a century, reunite in a bar in New Orleans as the St Patrick's Day parade goes by. A divorced suburban dad helps his daughter pick out a card for her friend who's moving away. A group of friends in late middle age, all once promising, reunite for dinner when one of their number loses her husband, but the gathering splinters when bitter revelations about their shared past emerge. Two teenage boys sit in a drive-in, the air thick with the scent of gin and popcorn and longing.

A visionary collection of luminous landscapes, of great moments in small lives, of the people we carry with us long after they are gone, Sorry for Your Trouble takes disappointment, ageing, grief, love and marriage and silhouettes them against the heady backdrop of Irish America in the past and present. Earthily humane and profoundly wise, the collection reconfirms its author as the master of contemporary American fiction.

Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781760528645
Title: CONVICT VALLEY : The Bloody Struggle on Australias Early Frontier
Author: DUNN MARK
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

In 1790, five convicts escaped Sydney by boat and were swept ashore near present day Newcastle. They were taken in by the Worimi people and given Aboriginal names, and they started families. Thus began a long and at times dramatic series of encounters between Aboriginal people and convicts in the second penal settlement in Australia.

The fertile valley of the Hunter River was the first area outside the Sydney basin explored by the British, and it became one of the largest penal settlements. Today manicured lawns and prosperous vineyards hide the struggle, violence and toil of the thousands of convicts who laid its foundations. The Convict Valley uncovers this rich colonial past, as well as the story of the original Aboriginal landholders. While there were friendships and alliances in the early years, in the later scramble for land in the 1820s - as the Valley was opened to free settlers - tensions increased and bloodshed ensued.

With fascinating stories about convicts, white settlers and the Aboriginal inhabitants that have long been forgotten, The Convict Valley is a new Australian history classic.


'Deeply researched and beautifully written.'
Grace Karskens

'Interweaving the Aboriginal, convict and mining past of the Hunter Valley, Dunn reveals the missing and misunderstood complexities of these histories as a gifted storyteller.'
Professor John Maynard, The University of Newcastle

'In this groundbreaking book, Mark Dunn shows how the Hunter Valley became the heartland of convict Australia.'
Professor Lyndall Ryan, author of Tasmanian Aborigines

Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9781786077660
Title: YOU HAVE TO MAKE YOUR OWN FUN AROUND HERE
Author: MACKEN FRANCES
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Katie has always been content to exist in the shadow of her intoxicating best friend Evelyn. In their small Irish village, Evelyn's confidence and glamour are enough to make up for her haughty, unpredictable character, and Katie never questions that their friendship will last forever.
But Katie's dreams of becoming a professional filmmaker pull her away from home to a new life in Dublin, and confront her with a choice- to hold onto a friendship that has made her who she is, or risk leaving her best friend
behind.
This mesmerising debut is a captivating story of the people who shape us and the places we struggle to leave behind. Compellingly readable and effortlessly sharp, this is an unmissable novel from a dazzling new talent.

Imprint: ONE WORLD
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781786498106
Title: AGE OF ISLANDS : In Search of New and Disappearing Islands
Author: BONNETT ALASTAIR
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

New islands are being built at an unprecedented rate whether for tourism or territorial ambition, while many islands are disappearing because of rising sea levels or fragmenting due to shrinking ice. It is a strange planetary spectacle, an ever-changing map which even Google Earth struggles to keep pace with.

But it is also, Alastair Bonnett believes, a spectacle which is imprinting itself on our hopes and anxieties. From a 'crannog', an ancient artificial island in a Scottish loch, to the militarized artificial islands China is building in the South China Sea, he sets out to explore some of the world's newest, most fragile and beautiful islands to find out why they have such a hold on our imaginations.

Imprint: Atlantic Books
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781788166096
Title: PARIS MATCH : Falling in (Love) with the French
Author: VON SOTHEN JOHN
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

In Brooklyn, John von Sothen fell in love with Anais, a French waitress. And then, one night in Paris, on the Pont Neuf, she agreed to marry him ("Bah, we can always get divorced!"). A couple of decades in, the two have become quatre, living in their beloved 10th arondissement with teenage kids who chat to their African neighbours in fluent Parisian slang, and John has even become kind of French himself. Well, he likes to think he has. The family still see him as an American innocent abroad.

Paris Match is one of those rare books that makes you laugh out loud, as von Sothen attempts to understand what makes the French tick. Why do they take such long holidays with friends who ration snacks and mock you for sleeping in; why do French men turn to him (an American!) for fashion tips; what really is the correct way to cut brie, and how do you tell if you're being invited to a super-exclusive secret society of intellectuals or a weird sex club? John von Sothen has found most of the answers and in this delightful, witty book shares his experience, insights and humour into the fine art of becoming everyday French.

Imprint: Profile Books
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781788735506
Title: ROMANCE OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM
Author: GORNICK VIVIAN
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

"Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class." So begins Vivian Gornick's exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project.
Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin's crimes became public.

From the immigrant Jewish enclaves of the Bronx and Brooklyn and the docks of Puget Sound to the mining towns of Kentucky and the suburbs of Cleveland, over a million Americans found a sense of belonging and an expanded sense of self through collective struggle. They also found social isolation, blacklisting, imprisonment, and shattered hopes. This is their story--an indisputably American story.

Imprint: VERSO
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781760525361
Title: HOW TO TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE IN A WAY THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Author: HUNTLEY REBECCA
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

'The antidote to climate anxiety is action. Make your first action reading this book.' OSHER GUNSBERG

Why is it so hard to talk about climate change?

While scientists double down on the shocking figures, we still find ourselves unable to discuss climate change meaningfully among friends and neighbours - or even to grapple with it ourselves.

The key to progress on climate change is in the psychology of human attitudes and our ability to change. Whether you're already alarmed and engaged with the issue, concerned but disengaged, a passive skeptic or an active denier, understanding our emotional reactions to climate change - why it makes us anxious, fearful, angry or detached - is critical to coping on an individual level and convincing each other to act.

This book is about understanding why people who aren't like you feel the way they do and learning to talk to them effectively. What we need are thousands - millions - of everyday conversations about the climate to enlarge the ranks of the concerned, engage the disengaged and persuade the cautious of the need for action.

Imprint: Murdoch Books
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9781760877194
Title: LONELY GIRL IS A DANGEROUS THING
Author: TU JESSIE
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Jena Chung plays the violin. She was once a child prodigy and is now addicted to sex. She's struggling a little. Her professional life comprises rehearsals, concerts, auditions and relentless practice; her personal life is spent managing family demands, those of her creative friends, and lots of sex. Jena is selfish, impulsive and often behaves badly, though mostly only to her own detriment. And then she meets Mark - much older and worldly-wise - who bewitches her. Could this be love?

When Jena wins an internship with the New York Philharmonic, she thinks the life she has dreamed of is about to begin. But when Trump is elected, New York changes irrevocably and Jena along with it. Is the dream over? With echoes of Frances Ha, Jena's favourite film, truths are gradually revealed to her. Jena comes to learn that there are many different ways to live and love and that no one has the how-to guide for any of it - not even her indomitable mother.

A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing unflinchingly explores the confusion of having expectations upturned, and the awkwardness and pain of being human in our increasingly dislocated world - and how, in spite of all this, we still try to become the person we want to be. It is a dazzling, original and astounding debut from a young writer with a fierce, intelligent and fearless new voice.

Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781760878047
Title: ISLANDS - Miles Franklin Shortlist 2020
Author: FREW PEGGY
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: July 2020 New Release

There was a house on a hill in the city and it was full of us, our family, but then it began to empty. We fell out. We made a mess. We draped ourselves in blame and disappointment and lurched around, bumping into each other. Some of us wailed and shouted; some of us barely made a sound. None of us was listening, or paying attention. And in the middle of it all you, very quietly, were gone.

Helen and John are too preoccupied with making a mess of their marriage to notice the quiet ways in which their daughters are suffering. Junie grows up brittle and defensive, Anna difficult and rebellious.

When fifteen-year-old Anna fails to come home one night, her mother's not too worried; Anna's taken off before but always returned. Helen waits three days to report her disappearance.

But this time Anna doesn't come back ...

A spellbinding novel in the tradition of Helen Garner, Charlotte Wood and Georgia Blain, Islands is a riveting and brilliant portrait of a family in crisis by the breathtakingly talented author of House of Sticks and Hope Farm.

'Peggy Frew is an amazing writer...Elegant, tender and very wise.' Chris Womersley, author of Bereft on Hope Farm

'Peggy Frew's novel, Hope Farm, tells an original tale, drawing into the body of Australian literary fiction, a world between the cracks. Peggy's voice is contemporary, her observations sharp and sensitive. Hope Farm describes the cycle of loss and damage when there are no boundaries to protect us.' Sofie Laguna, author of The Eye of the Sheep, 2015 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner

'Brilliant. Peggy Frew is a superb writer, and this is a remarkably confident debut.' Clare Bowditch on House of Sticks

Imprint: Allen and Unwin Publishers
RRP: $19.99

ISBN: 9781786580405
Title: PHONE BOX AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Author: MESSINA LAURA IMAI
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

When you have lost everything, what will you find?

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she wonders how she will ever carry on. Yet, in the face of this unthinkable loss, life must somehow continue.

Then one day she hears about a widower who has an old disused telephone box in his garden. There the old man finds the strength to speak to his late wife and begin to come to terms with his grief. As news of the phone box spreads, people from miles around will travel there to connect with their own lost loved ones.

Soon Yui will make a pilgrimage to the phone box, too. But once there she cannot bring herself to speak into the receiver. Then she finds Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss.

What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking . . .

Imprint: BONNIER
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781419735325
Title: ONE LAST LUNCH : A Final Meal with Those Who Meant So Much to Us
Author: HELLER ERICA (ED)
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A few years ago, Erica Heller, daughter of novelist Joseph Heller, realized how universal the longing is for one more moment with a lost loved one. It could be a parent, a sibling, a mentor, or a friend, but who wouldn't love the opportunity to sit down, break bread, and just talk? Who wouldn't jump at the chance to ask those enduring questions, or share those unvoiced feelings?

In Table for Two, Heller, an acclaimed memoirist herself, has asked friends and family of authors, artists, musicians, comedians, actors, and others, to recount one such fantastic repast. Muffie Meyer and her documentary subject Little Edie Beale go to a deli in Montreal. Kirk Douglas asks his father what he thought of him becoming an actor. Sara Moulton dines with her friend Julia Child. The Anglican priest George Pitcher has lunch with Jesus. These richly imagined stories are endlessly revealing, about the subject, the writer, the passage of time, regret, gratitude, and the power of enduring love.

Imprint: ABRAMS
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781925780666
Title: PUNCHER AND WATTMANN ANTHOLOGY OF AUSTRALIAN POETRY
Author: LEONARD JOHN (ED)
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

This anthology realigns Australian poetry from a 21st century perspective, with a selection from a wide range of living poets as well as familiar voices from the past. There is an emphasis on social observation and personal experience of Australia’s changing history that gives new context to poetry by previous generations from Wright and Hope through Lawson and Paterson to Harpur, Kendall and the poets of early settlement.

Imprint: Puncher and Wattmann
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781922351043
Title: NELSON MANDELA (I Know This To Be True) : Guiding Principles
Author: MANDELA NELSON
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

Created in collaboration with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, I Know This to Be True is an uplifting new series inspired by his legacy. Extraordinary figures from diverse backgrounds answer the same questions, sharing their compelling stories, guiding ideals, and insightful wisdom. The result is a collection brimming with messages of leadership, courage, compassion, and hope. Delivered in lovely, giftable hardcovers with vivid photographic portraits throughout, these books offer encouragement and guidance to graduates, future leaders, and anyone hoping to make a positive impact on the world.

Revolutionary anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela devoted his life to ensuring liberation, equality, and justice for the people of South Africa. Incarcerated for 27 years, his enduring faith and rise to leadership remains an inspiration to all. Here, two of his colleagues, Sello Hatang and Verne Harris, share stories from his life as they explore the challenges he faced, and the qualities, routines, and disciplines that enabled him to help lead a country away from violence to peace and democracy. With excerpts from Mandela's own speeches and writing, this book is a moving reminder of Mandela's legacy and encourages every reader to find and nurture the leader within.

Royalties from sales of I Know This To Be True will support language translation and free access to the films, books and educational programmes in all countries with developing economies, or economies in transition, as defined by United Nations annual classifications.

Imprint: Murdoch Books
RRP: $17.99

ISBN: 9781408712887
Title: DEAR LIFE : A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss
Author: CLARKE RACHEL
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A brilliant combination of lyrical memoir and guide to living and dying, comparable to Kathryn Mannix's With the End in Mind and Julia Samuel's Grief Works, from the author of Your Life in My Hands.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Your Life in My Hands comes this vibrant, tender and deeply personal memoir that finds light and love in the darkest of places.

As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate. Every day she tries to bring care and comfort to those reaching the end of their lives and to help make dying more bearable.

Rachel's training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing - even the best palliative care - can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love.

And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life - more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion - than you could ever imagine. For if there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world.

Dear Life is a book about the vital importance of human connection, by the doctor we would all want by our sides at a time of crisis. It is a love letter - to a father, to a profession, to life itself.

Imprint: Little Brown
RRP: $32.99

ISBN: 9781786499882
Title: CAT AND THE CITY
Author: BRADLEY NICK
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

In Tokyo - one of the world's largest megacities - a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways.

But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers - from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo's denizens, drawing them ever closer.

In a series of spellbinding, interlocking narratives - with styles ranging from manga to footnotes - Nick Bradley has hewn a novel of interplay and estrangement; of survival and self-destruction; of the desire to belong and the need to escape. Formally inventive and slyly political, The Cat and The City is a lithe thrill-ride through the less-glimpsed streets of Tokyo.

Imprint: Atlantic Books
RRP: $27.99

ISBN: 9781529405095
Title: ME AND WHITE SUPREMACY : How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World
Author: SAAD LAYLA
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

'White supremacy is a violent system of oppression that harms Black, Indigenous and People of Colour.


And if you are a person who holds white privilege, then you are complicit in upholding that harm, whether you realise it or not. This is not my opinion. This is fact. And if you are person who holds white privilege, the question you should be asking isn't whether or not this is true, but rather, what are you going to do about it?'

Between June and July 2018, Layla Saad ran a 28-day Instagram challenge under the hashtag #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, for people with white privilege to unflinchingly examine the ways that they are complicit in upholding the oppressive system of white supremacy.

The challenge quickly went viral, with thousands of people from all over the world (including USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Qatar, among others) diving deep for 28 consecutive days to examine and take responsibility for the ways in which they uphold white supremacy. The challenge catalyzed a worldwide awakening for thousands of white-privileged people to begin to take ownership of their personal anti-racism work.

This workbook was born out of that challenge.

Imprint: QUERCUS
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9781847925992
Title: HOW TO BE AN ANTIRACIST
Author: KENDI IBRAM X
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

We all occasionally think or do things that are racist.

No one considers themselves to be a racist. Yet the divisions and inequalities of racism are all around us. In this game-changing, empowering book, Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Antiracism Research and Policy Center, shows that racism is so engrained in our world and yet so taboo that we often fail to recognise it, especially in ourselves. But until we do so, we can only perpetuate the problem.

Using his extraordinary gifts as a teacher and story-teller, Kendi helps us break the cycle by leading us with moving humility through his own journey from racism to antiracism. He provides a comprehensive account of the misconceptions that so often cloud our understanding, from arguments about what race is and whether racial differences exist to the complications that arise when race intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality.

In the process he demolishes the myth of the post-racial society and builds from the ground up a vital new understanding of racism - what it is, where it is hidden, how to identify it and what to do about it.

Imprint: Bodley Head
RRP: $35.00