Better Read's Guide to the Easter Long Weekend

Easter Long Weekend The Midnight Watch | David Dyer | $32.99 | Penguin As the Titanic was sinking, distress rockets were fired.

Yet the Californian, a ship just on the horizon, never came to its rescue. Journalist John Steadman wants to know why. Based on true events, this debut is at once a heart-stopping mystery and a deeply perceptive novel.

FICTION

BETTER READ THAN DEAD’S Guide to the The High Places | Fiona McFarlane | $32.99 | Penguin This is a dazzling short story collection about confronting the strangeness of life. With settings ranging from outback Australia to the tourist haunts of Greece, these stories are written with extraordinary invention, great emotional insight and wry humour.

The High Mountains of Portugal | Yann Martel | $29.99 | Text Publishing Martel is a master of philosophical storytelling. His new allegorical novel returns to themes set out in The Life of Pi. Three narratives intersect and take us on an extraordinary journey through the last century in Lisbon, Portugal & Canada. Quietly powerful, mesmerising; this original tale will delight fans.

The Butcher’s Hook | Janet Ellis | $29.99 | Two Roads At nineteen, Anne Jaccob is awakened when she meets Fub, the butcher’s apprentice, and begins to imagine a life of passion with him. A vivid and surprising tale, The Butcher’s Hook brims with the colour and atmosphere of Georgian London, as seen through the eyes of a strange and memorable young woman.

How to Set a Fire and Why | Jesse Ball | $29.99 | Text Publishing This is Ball’s most accessible novel and is an exciting and subversive family chronicle. 14-year-old Lucia is angry with everyone, especially people who tell her what to do. When she discovers a secret Arson Club, she will do anything to be a part of it. Already equipped with her father’s Zippo, Lucia’s independent spirit will set a blaze to your heart.

Green Island | Shawna Yang Ryan | $34.99 | Alfred A Knopf Green Island sweeps across decades and continents and the life of the narrator shadows the course of Taiwan’s history. But, above all, this novel is a lush and lyrical story of a family and a nation grappling with the nuances of complicity and survival, raising the question: how far would you be willing to go for the ones you love?

Under the Udala Trees | Chinelo Okparanta | $27.99 | Granta One day in 1968, at the height of the Biafran civil war, Ijeoma’s father is killed and her world is transformed forever. Separated from her grief-stricken mother, she meets another young lost girl, Amina, and the two become inseparable. In this masterful novel of faith, love and redemption, Okparanta takes us from Ijeoma’s childhood in war-torn Biafra, through the perils and pleasures of her blossoming sexuality, her wrong turns, and into the everyday sorrows and joys of marriage and motherhood. A triumphant love story written with beauty and delicacy, Under the Udala Trees is a hymn to those who’ve lost and a prayer for a more compassionate world. It is a work of extraordinary beauty that will enrich your heart.

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CRIME FICTION / FANTASY

Girl Waits with Gun | Amy Stewart | $32.99 | Penguin Constance Kopp towers over most men, has no interest in marriage and has a knack for solving crimes.

Through Stewart’s exuberant storytelling, Constance Kopp, one of the US’s first female deputy sheriffs, catapults from a forgotten historical anecdote to an unforgettable historical-fiction heroine.

Maestra l L. S. Hilton | $29.99 | Allen & Unwin Maestra is a fast-paced thriller that is as scandalous as it is mysterious.

It follows the not-so-innocent Judith Rashleigh as she navigates through the intrigues of murder, sexuality and corruption in the international art world. This femme fatale heroine is truly controversial - we witness her downward moral spiral riddled with crime as she battles upwardly to a life of wealth, fine art and travel.

The Widow | Fiona Barton | $32.99 | Penguin Random House We’ve all seen him: the man staring from the front page accused of a terrible crime. But what about the woman who grips his arm on the courtroom stairs?

Jean Taylor’s life was blissfully ordinary. Until her husband became that man accused.Jean was married to a man everyone thought capable of unimaginable evil. But now Glen is dead and she’s alone for the first time, free to tell her story on her own terms.

A Murder Without Motive | Martin Mckenzie-Murray | $27.99 | Scribe A Murder Without Motive is a police procedural, a meditation on suffering, and an exploration of how the different parts of the justice system make sense of the senseless. It is also a unique memoir: a mapping of the suburbs that the author grew up in, and a revelation of the dangerous underbelly of adolescent ennui.

Beloved Poison | E. S. Thomson | $29.99 | Hachette Ramshackle and crumbling, trapped in the past and resisting the future, St Saviour’s Infirmary awaits demolition. And then six tiny coffins are uncovered, inside each a handful of dried flowers and mouldering rags, leading to an investigation into a long forgotten past.

The Maker of Swans | Paraic O’Donnell | $29.99 | Hachette Amid the fading grandeur of a country estate, Clara lives in the care of the magical Mr Crowe. With the Gothic and engaging magic of The Night Circus, this is lavishly crafted and whimsical debut about a girl who must harness her gifts in the face of danger.

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Six Four | Hideo Yokoyama | $29.99 | Quercus For five days in 1989, the parents of a 7 year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter’s kidnapper. They would never learn his identity and never see their daughter again. In late 2002, an anomaly was discovered in the case, and people wished it had never been reopened.

Emperor of the Eight Islands | Lian Hearn | $29.99 | Hachette Hearn weaves an intricate tapestry - seething with intrigue, adventure and love - of two rival clans struggling over who will be crowned Emperor in a medieval Japanese country inhabited by warriors, assassins, ghosts and guardian spirits.

Talking to My Country | Stan Grant | $29.99 | Harper Collins Talking to My Country is that rare book that talks to every Australian about their country - what it is, and what it could be. It is not just about race, or about indigenous people but all of us, our shared identity. Direct, honest and forthright, Stan is talking to us all. He might not have all the answers but he wants us to keep on asking the question: how can we be better?

When Breath Becomes Air | Paul Kalanithi | $32.99 | Random House At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.

One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

Moranifesto | Caitlin Moran | $35.00 | Random House This is Caitlin’s rallying call for our times, dealing with topics as pressing and diverse as 1980s swearing, benefits and boarding schools. And whilst never afraid to address the big issues of the day – such as Benedict Cumberbatch and duffel coats – Caitlin also makes a passionate effort to understand our 21st century society and presents us with her ‘Moranifesto’ for making the world a better place.

NON-FICTION / BIOGRAPHY

Yassmin’s Story | Yassmin AbdelMagied | $34.99 | Random House At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig. With her hijab quickly christened a ‘tea cosy’ there could not be a more unlikely place on earth for a young Muslim woman to want to be. Frank, fearless, funny, articulate and inspiring, this is the story of how she got there, where she is going, and how she wants the world to change.

Road Series | Hugo Race | $29.99 | New South In the spirit of Patti Smith’s M Train, Road Series is both a love story and an elegy. Renowned musician Hugo Race’s evocations of Melbourne, Sydney, the USA, Europe and Mali, and the life of a rock musician on the road are revealing, incisive and exquisitely written.

City of Thorns | Ben Rawlence | $35.00 | Allen & Unwin A fearless work of reportage that takes the reader inside Dadaab, the world’s biggest and most notorious refugee camp, through the stories of the people who live there. In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there.

Lucid, vivid and illuminating, here is an urgent human story with deep international repercussions, brought to life through the people who call Dabaab home.

THE FACE Series; Cartography of the Void, Strangers on a Pier & A Time Code | Chris Abani, Tash Aw & Ruth Ozeki | $12.99 each | Simon & Schuster

A groundbreaking new series of personal nonfiction in which a diverse group of writers takes readers on a guided tour of that most intimate terrain: their own faces.Alternately philosophical, funny, personal, political, and poetic, the short memoirs in THE FACE series offer unique perspectives on race, culture, identity, and the human experience from some of our most dynamic literary writers; Chris Abani, Tash Aw & Ruth Ozeki.

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CHILDREN’S FICTION

A Beginner’s Guide to Bear Spotting | Michelle Robinson | $22.99 | Bloomsbury Bearspotting is a dangerous business - you ought to take it seriously, you know. So here’s what you need to know for starters - black bears are dangerous and black, brown bears are dangerous and brown. Although sometimes black bears can be a little brown, and brown bears can be a little black. A Beginner’s Guide to Bearspotting is the laugh-out-loud, essential guide for all would-be bearspotters. To be studied with due care and attention.

Anna and the Swallow Man | Gavriel Savit | $19.99 | Random House When her father is sent by the Gestapo to a concentration camp, 7 year-old Anna travels the Polish countryside with the mysterious Swallow Man during WWII. Weaving elements of fairytale, folktale, historical fiction and magical realism, Anna and the Swallow Man is a book with many facets that is nevertheless rich and coherent.

Nibbles: The Book Monster | Emma Yarlett | $24.99 | Hardie Grant Nibbles is a very naughty book monster - he’s chomping, munching and nibbling his way through fairytales that don’t belong to him! Children will love to lift the flaps, peek through the peep holes, and chase Nibbles through a fantastical world of books, in this quirky story.

The Yearbook Committee | Sarah Ayoub | $19.99 | Harper Collins The school captain, the newcomer, the loner, the popular girl and the politician’s daughter. Five unlikely teammates thrust together against their will. Can they find a way to make their final year a memorable one or will their differences tear their world apart?

The Way We Roll | Scot Gardner | $19.99 | Allen & Unwin Will went to private school, and Julian went to juvie. Will is running from a family secret, and Julian is running from the goat next door. The boys meet pushing trolleys, and they find a common enemy in the Westie hoons who terrorise the carpark. From the author of the award-winning The Dead I Know comes an urban ‘bromance’ with an unexpected twist.

Better Read Than Dead 265 King Street Newtown NSW 2042 E books@betterread.com.au P (+61 2) 9557 8700 F (+61 2) 9557 8560 W betterread.com.au

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Easter Trading Hours Good Friday Easter Saturday Easter Sunday Easter Monday

CLOSED 10:00am-9pm 11:00am-7pm 11:00am-7pm

The Boy Who Sailed the Ocean in an Armchair | Lara Williamson | $14.99 | Harper Collins All Becket wants is for his family to be whole again. But his dad, his brother and him seem to have run away from home and Becket’s mum died before he got the chance to say goodbye. Arming himself with an armchair of stories, a snail named Brian and 1000 paper cranes, Beckett is determined to make his wish come true.

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