gleebooks
Issue 2 Volume 29 April/May 2022
gleaner
Clear Your Calendars
The Road to the Festival
Events you just cannot miss | p. 23
Gleebooks recommends the SWF | p. 24
From David’s Desk Welcome, everybody, to the first Gleaner from our new editor, Akshaya Parthasarathy. We’re pleased that she’s joined us, and hope you like the fresh new design that she has brought to our much-loved newsletter. Feedback is always welcome, let us know what you’d like to see more of/less of, how reviews and articles are presented, layout and design, anything that takes your fancy to share with us, we’re happy to hear about. The April/May edition of the Gleaner always highlights the fabulous Sydney Writers’ Festival. There was, of course, the massive disappointment of COVID cancellation of the 2020 SWF. But we were delighted that, notwithstanding the absence of international writers (other than virtually) from the 2021 lineup, the Festival produced an outstanding program. One that highlighted and showcased the breadth, the depth, the sheer quality of Australian writing, to produce a program of ambitious range and variety. This year’s, likewise, is, as the program says, a cavalcade of brilliant, curious and incisive writers and thinkers. A sprinkling of international writers join a host of “locals” in a celebration of writing, debate, and conversation, around the theme “Change My Mind”. Be there if you can. If not, join the ABC’s live broadcasts, and keep up with the Festival’s own website, for many excellent podcast episodes. Pre and post Festival, of course, we’ll continue to bring you our own extensive events program. Make sure you subscribe to our indispensable books and events email update, the gleemail. There are some big things happening around our Glebe store, this year and next, and we’re keen to keep you up-to-date with it all. The new owner of our Glebe premises is undertaking a major (and much-needed) renovation and refurbishment of the property. It’s a big job (lots of leaks, lots of cracks, and other remedial work, and what we think will be a beautiful transformation of the space. Everything we value is preserved, and much, much more. So, expect some change and movement, including our temporary relocation for quite some months. More detail to come as we nail the schedule, but don’t worry, we’ll keep you informed and we’ll keep wanting you to find us in the interim. Last, but not least, books to look forward to, I’ll mention just two- Chloe Hooper’s beautifully moving Bedtime Story, a profound, sensitive, and clear-eyed read. And, Geraldine Brooks’ Horse, as with her Pulitzer-winning March, Geraldine takes an event in American history and creates a vivid and gripping story. Until next time, David
Index Australian Literature International Literature Biography & Memoir True Crime & Crime Fiction Australian Studies Food, Health & Garden Science & Economics History & Politics Self-help & Psychology Philosophy & Culture Studies
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Kids
p. 16
Teen Fiction & YA
p. 18
Performing Arts Art & Photography Events Gleebooks x SWF
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Releasing this May Australian Literature
Losing Face
p. 3
George Haddad
Penguin
$29.99
A stunning, thought-provoking story that follows Joey and his grandmother Elaine, thrown into an adverse situation, grappling with the struggles of facing up to your family, while uncovering long-buried secrets. This gripping and hard-hitting novel reveals the richness and complexity of contemporary Australian life and tests the idea that facing consequences will make us better people.
Red
A Caravan Like a Canary
Bloomsbury $29.99
Sasha Wasley The novel follows Tara and Zac, siblings squished together in a bright yellow caravan upon the recommendation of their mother. On the road, Tara is forced to confront her troubled family’s past and must find the courage to let go, in order to finally discover her dreams. A spring clean for the soul, this story is one you don’t want to miss.
Felicity McLean
HarperCollins
$32.99
Part True Grit, part Blue Murder, this stunning retelling of the Ned Kelly story is sharp, provocative, and savagely funny. Complete with police prosecution, dodgy deals, dodgier cars and a family history that refuses to stay in the past. Ruby ‘Red’ McCoy is a force to reckoned with and you do not want to miss her side of the story.
Sunbathing
A Solitary Walk on the Moon
Hachette $32.99
Hilde Hinton For Evelyn, mornings pass as mornings always do with her laundromat job. Evelyn knows what is going on in her community because she pays attention and she is going to make a difference, whether the people like it or not. With a joyous and unique touch, this novel gives us an insight into the extraordinary lives of people we pass on the street.
Isobel Beech
Allen & Unwin
$29.99
After weeks of grieving, a woman books a plane ticket and signs up for an adventure in an old villa in Italy. She spends a summer living in the birthing room, while also living in the past, trying to make sense of her grief and wondering how to go on, if she can. A powerful debut that explores life, death and the restorative power of friendship.
Fresh off the print
An Olive Grove in Ends
Hachette $32.99
The Lessons
The Burnished Sun Mirandi Riwoe
Uni of Queensland Press
$30.00
From the award-winning author of Stone Sky Gold Mountain come these superbly crafted stories that explore the inner lives of those who are often ignored or misunderstood. This stunning story collection includes two prize-winning novellas along with an impressive range of historical and contemporary stories, all written by characters who yearn to belong and find acceptance.
Moses McKenzie Sayon Hughes, a young Black man from Bristol, dreams of a world far removed from the one in which he was raised. He finds respite in his cousin and his girl, and in return Sayon wants to the give them the world. But after an altercation in which a boy is killed, Sayon finds his loyalties torn and his dream of a better life in peril.
HarperCollins $32.99
John Purcell When teens Daisy and Harry meet in 1960, it feels so right they promise to love each other forever, but the odds just don’t seem to be in their favour. In 1983, Jane Curtis, now a famous novelist, is at a prestigious book event being interviewed about her life and work, including a novel about the traumatic coming of age of a young woman. A novel about the painful lessons life has to teach us about love, honesty, and morality.
p. 4 5
International Literature Sea of Tranquility
The No-Show
Emily St. John Mandel
Beth O’Leary
Hachette
$32.99
Three women. Thee dates. One missing man. A brilliantly funny, heart-breaking and joyful new novel from Beth O’Leary about dating, and waiting, and the ways love can find us. Siobhan, Miranda, and Jane are found waiting for one man, who doesn’t seem to turn up. What comes next is an extraordinary tearjerker adventure.
Pan Mac
$32.99
Dinner with the Schnabels
Elizabeth Finch
Toni Jordan
Hachette
$32.99
The award-winning author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel returns with a novel of art, time, love and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony of the moon three hundred years later. This time bending piece of work precisely captures the reality of our current moment while unfurling a story of humanity.
Life hasn’t been great for Simon Larsen lately, he adores his wife and children, but since his business failed he can’t seem to get his in-laws off his back. An unexpected house-guest and a huge secret kept by his wife, derails his course. Life with the Schnabels is messy, chaotic and joyful. You can marry into them, but Random House can you ever really be one of them?
$35.00
Julian Barnes We’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. Her ideas are not to everyone’s taste, but she will change the way you see the world. A wise, heartfelt and powerful new novel from Julian Barnes - a book that is a balm for our times with an extraordinary woman at its heart.
Sedating Elaine Dawn Winter
Hachette
$29.99
An exuberant black comedy about love, grief, sex, guilt, and one woman’s harebrained scheme to tranquilize her voraciously amorous girlfriend for a few days so that she might pay off her drug dealer, make soup, and finally get some peace and quiet. Complete with a roster of unforgettable characters and an indelible, wildly exciting new voice in fiction.
People Person Candice Carty-Williams
Orion
$32.99
If you could choose your family, you wouldn’t choose the Penningtons. Five people who don’t have anything in common except for faint memories of being driven through Brixton in their dad’s gold jeep, and some pretty complex abandonment issues. But when they’re forced to reconnect with their absent father, things get even more complicated.
Releasing this May Here Goes Nothing Steve Toltz
Penguin
$32.99
The virtuoso new novel from the author of the Booker-shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole, narrated with the ironic hindsight afforded by life beyond the mortal plane. A razor-sharp, hilariously entertaining, insightful story on our 21st-century world, and the intricate relationship between love and death.
Lucy Caldwell
$29.99
Following the lives of sisters Emma and Audrey - one engaged to be married, the other in a secret relationship with another woman - as they try to survive the horrors of the four nights of bombing which were the Belfast Blitz. A timeless and heart-breaking novel about living under duress, about family, and about how we try to stay true to ourselves.
The Schoolhouse Sophie Ward
Little Brown
$32.99
Isobel lives an isolated life in North London, working at a nearby library. She feels safe if she keeps to her routines But a newspaper photograph of a missing local schoolgirl and a letter from her old teacher are all it takes for her ordinary, careful armour to become overwhelmed and the trauma of what happened when she was a pupil at The Schoolhouse to return.
Time Shelter
Georgi Gospodinov
Orion
$32.99
An enigmatic flaneur named Gaustine opens a ‘clinic for the past’ that offers a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s sufferers: each floor reproduces a decade in minute detail, transporting patients back in time. As the rooms become more convincing, an increasing number of healthy people seek out the clinic as a ‘time shelter’, hoping to escape from the horrors of our present.
You Have A Friend In 10A Maggie Shipstead
Random House
$32.99
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gleebooks favourites Young Mungo Douglas Stuart
Pan Macmillan, $32.99
These Days
Faber
International Literature Literature
A collection of sparkling award-winning stories from Shipstead, epic storyteller and astonishing chronicler of the daring and the damaged. Diving into eclectic and vivid settings, from an Olympic village to a deathbed in Paris, illuminating a cast of unforgettable characters. These stories traverse the ordinary and extraordinary.
An extraordinary, page-turning second novel that takes us back to the 80s Glasgow, a vivid portrayal of working-class life. A spectacular first love story, about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
The Candy House Jennifer Egan
Little Brown, $32.99 From one of the most dazzling and iconic writers of our time comes an electrifying, deeply moving novel about the quest for authenticity, privacy, and meaning in a world where our memories are no longer our own—featuring characters from A Visit from the Goon Squad.
Portrait of a Thief Grace D. Li
Hachette, $32.99 What happens if you take Fast & Furious and mash it with the Oceans’ series? Grace D. Li’s novel might just be the answer to that. Five Chinese American students set out with one common goal—To return ancient Chinese artefacts back to their home country by robbing highly secured museums. What have they got to lose? Everything.
Lessons in Chemistry Bonnie Garmus
Random House, $32.99 Chemist Elizabeth Zott, your not-so-average woman, went from being on the Hastings Research team to the star of America’s beloved cooking show. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, she isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.
Glory
NoViolet Bulawayo
Random House, $32.99 An effervescent, punchy, piercingly funny novel exploring the fall of Robert Mugabe. It is an energy burst, an exhilarating ride. A bold, vivid chorus of animal voices calls out the dangerous absurdity of contemporary global politics, and helps us see our human world more clearly.
On D’ Hill Good news for lovers of Pip Williams’s Dictionary of Lost Words. Its publisher, the amazing Affirm Press have hit the jackpot again (or so say I) with the powerful new novel, The Natural History of Love by Caroline Petit. Set in the 2nd half of the 19thC, its heroine is Carolina, an intelligent Portugese beauty living on a plantation in Brazil, who falls in love with François, a French naturalist. But François is married (though separated) and when he cannot get an annulment they must resort to a huge lie to save Carolina’s reputation and the legitimacy of their sons. It is this that creates the backbone of the novel as Nathan Smithson, the solicitor dealing with an ugly inheritance dispute, discovers the couple’s separate diaries. We follow their lives from Brazil to Paris, and then Melbourne as François is made French consul to Australia. Their happiness is challenged when their eldest son goes off the rails and the younger son develops a mental illness. This is an engrossing love story told mainly through the diaries of both Carolina and François with intercepts from Smithson.
AUSTRALIAN WOMEN IN NON-FICTION
‘She writes like a dream.’ Jane Caro
‘A must-read.’ Larissa Behrendt
Its the perfect lying-in-bed-on-a-rainy day book. Wonderfully evocative of it’s time, beautifully written, exhaustively researched and ultimately satisfying! Michelle Cahill’s stunning Daisy and Woolf brings to centre stage, Daisy Simmons, a minor character from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. It too uses the diaries and letters of this character to reveal the complex situation of a Eurasian women in love with an Englishman in early 20thC England - a woman given no agency, if you like, by Woolf. Cahill alternates between Daisy’s story and the story’s writer, Mina, as she struggles with her novel, analyses Woolf’s work and grapples with the role of race, gender and class in Western literature. Daisy and WOOLF is a ferociously gorgeous book full of ideas and wisdom. Michelle Cahill is a well-regarded poet and is now also, an accomplished novelist.
‘Riveting.’ Grace Karskens
‘Pure alchemy.’ Eileen Chong
On a lighter note, Dervla McTiernan’s new standalone crime novel, The Murder Rule, is a corker as is the debut rural-noir, Wake, by newcomer Shelley Burr. Loved them both. Oops...I’ve written all about women writers again. No apologies!
See you on D’Hill, Morgan
‘An intellectual tour de force.’ Mark Roeder
GB ial ec Sp rice P
Allen & Unwin
$39.99
Ten Steps to Nanette Hannah Gadsby Multi-awardwinning Hannah Gadsby takes us through the defining moments in her life that led to the creation of her hit show, Nanette and her powerful decision to tell the truth-no matter the cost. Equal parts harrowing and hilarious, Hannah’s memoir continues her tradition of confounding expectations and norms, and introduces us to one of the most explosive voices of our time.
The Bookseller at the End of the World Ruth Shaw
Allen & Unwin
$32.99
A rich, immersive, funny and heartbreaking memoir of the charming bookseller who runs two tiny bookshops in the remote village of Manapouri in Fiordland, in the deep south of New Zealand. Ruth Shaw gifts us with stories of the characters who visit her bookshops, musings about favourite books, and bittersweet stories from her full and varied life.
In Love
Amy Bloom
Allen & Unwin
$29.99
Written with piercing insight and wit, In Love is Bloom’s intimate, authentic and startling account of losing her husband Brian, first slowly to the disease of Alzheimer’s, and then on becoming a widow. A poignant love letter to Bloom’s husband and a passionate outpouring of grief, this memoir reaffirms the power and value of human relationships.
The Space Between The Stars Indira Naidoo
Allen & Unwin
$32.99
After her younger sister died suddenly, broadcaster Indira Naidoo’s world was shattered. Turning to her urban landscape for solace, Indira found herself drawn to a fig tree overlooking Sydney harbour. A connection began to build between the two - one with a fractured heart, the other a centurion offering quiet companionship while asking nothing in return. This memoir is an uplifting tribute to love and our innate need to connect to the natural world.
The Jane Austen Remedy Ruth Wilson
Allen & Unwin
$32.99
At the age of 89, Ruth Wilson re-reads Austen’s six novels in a sunshine-yellow cottage in the Southern Highlands. As she rediscovered the heroines who had inspired her, she reclaimed her voice. The Jane Austen Remedy is a beautiful, life-affirming memoir of love, self-acceptance and the curative power of reading.
Biography & Memoir p. 7
Highly Recommended Bedtime Story Chloe Hooper
Simon & Schuster, $34.99
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When Chloe Hooper’s partner is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive illness, she has to find a way to tell their two young sons. She then crafts a bedtime story, filled with evil adults, magic, invisible forces, monsters, and animals. A story so perfect and powerful that it can teach kids about grief and resilience in real life.
When The Dust Settles Lucy Easthope
Hachette, $32.99 Lucy Easthope lives with disaster every day. When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, she’s the one they call. In every catastrophe, she is there to pick up the pieces and prepare for the next one. A stunning book that lifts us up by showing that humanity, hope and humour can - and must - be found on the darkest days.
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire Alice Walker
Hachette, $34.99 A passionate, intimate record of Alice Walker’s intellectual, artistic and political development. It intimately explores - in real time - her thoughts and feelings as a woman, a writer, an African American, a wife, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a sister, a friend, a citizen of the world.
Unknown: A Refugee’s Story Akuch Kuol Anyieth
Penguin, $34.99
g sin lea ‘22 e R ay M
A moving, confronting and ultimately uplifting story about a young girl’s escape, with her family, from war-torn South Sudan to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, and then to Australia. Akuch Kuol Anyieth’s Unkown is a remarkable image to the strength of her mother in protecting her family against all odds, a story of sadness, humour, determination, survival, and love.
Fever
Jonathan Bazzi (transl. Alice Whitmore)
Scribe, $29.99
g sin lea ‘22 e R ay M
Jonathan is 31 years old, living in Milan with his boyfriend of three years and their two Devon Rex cats when, on a day like any other, he gets a fever. it’s constant, low-level, and exhausting. A series of tests later, he realised he is HIV-positive. As he comes to terms with his diagnosis, he takes the reader to his past, his suburbs, and his origins.
p. 8 5
Allen & Unwin
$32.99
Faber
$32.99
HarperCollins
$29.99
Crime Fiction & True Crime Daughters of Eve
Vanished
Nina D. Campbell
Lynda La Plante
A stunning debut by Nina D. Campbell who introduces us to Emilia Hart, a gutsy detective racing to put an end to the unexplained murders in the city. Suspensefilled, wild, and fast-paced, it’s the perfect recipe for a thriller that is simply unputdownable from the very first page.
From the brilliant mind behind the successful TV series Widows, and Prime Suspect, comes an up-all-night thriller, following the hunt for a killer that could possibly end up as a cold case. Lynda La Plante gives us the ever resilient Detective Jack Warr who battles the line of the law, in order to provide justice for a widow that nobody believed.
Bonnier
$32.99
Nine Lives
The Devil’s Bargain
Peter Swanson
Stella Rimington
From the author of “The Girl With a Clock for a Heart”, comes a gripping mystery that’ll keep you guessing till the very end. Nine strangers connected by the one piece of post that they receive, containing a list of their names. Little do they know that it might just be the last letter they’ve ever received.
One lie put the nation at risk. Another might save it. A policeman who made a grave mistake, a politician with a secret, and a CIA analyst with an agenda, must face off in this contemporary spy novel. This new spy thriller from the former head of MI5 is one you don’t want to miss.
Bloomsbury
$29.99
Insomnia
Very Bad People
Sarah Pinborough
Patrick Alley
Emma can’t sleep. She’s approaching the big 4-0, and she thinks of her mother who stopped sleeping just before her 40th birthday. Emma feels like she’s going mad, why can’t she sleep? Dark, tense, and intense, it’s a page turner that will without doubt, keep you up all night.
Part true crime tale, part investigative procedural, this is the account of the ingenious and necessary superheroes of Global Witness, whose superpower is the truth. A brilliant, authoritative and fearless investigation into the darkest workings of our world - and an inspiration to all of us who want to fight back.
Octopus
$32.99
Coming this May The Murder Rule
The Old Woman With The Knife
Dervla McTiernan
Gu Byeong-mo
HarperCollins, $32.99
Allen & Unwin, $29.99
For fans of the compulsive psychological suspense of Ruth Ware and Tana French, a mother daughter story— one running from a horrible truth, and the other fighting to reveal it—that twists and turns in shocking ways.
Just as a sixty-five-year-old contract killer is considering retirement, an unexpected sequence of events brings her past well and truly into the present. Threatened with sabotage by a young male upstart, Hornclaw strives to prove that no matter their age, the female of the species is always more deadly than the male.
Australia’s Great Depression
Australian Studies
Joan Beaumont
Allen & Unwin
$49.99
In this wide-ranging account of the Great Depression in Australia, Joan Beaumont shows how high levels of debt and the collapse of wool and wheat prices left Australia particularly exposed in the world’s worst depression. While many endured great hardship, some found something positive in the memory of this personal and communal struggle.
p. 9 Keeping Them Honest Stephen Charles & Catherine Williams
Who Needs The ABC?
Scribe
Patrick Mullins & Matthew Ricketson
Ultimo Press
$29.99
For the past nine years, the ABC has been besieged. Its funding has been slated, staffing levels have been cut. It has been assailed by complaints from ministers and prime ministers. Its boars has been stacked with a succession of political appointees. Relentlessly attacked, it has suffered crisis after crisis. But who needs the ABC? We do.
Growing Up in Country Australia Edited by Rick Morton
Black Inc.
$29.99
$32.99
A collection of forty stories of joy, adventure, nostalgia, connection to nature and freedom, but also grimmer tales - of drought, fires, mouse plagues and isolation. From the politics of the country school bus to the class divides between locals, from working on the family farm to selling up and moving to the city, the picture painted is diverse and unexpected. This is country Australia as you’ve never seen it before.
The authors point to the crucial absence of a federal integrity commission to expose corruption in government and public administration, and to hold wrongdoers to account. It explains what we need to do bring about accountability and restore trust and why we need to do it now.
The Opera House Peter FitzSimons
Hachette
$39.99 g sin lea ‘22 e R ay M
NewSouth
$34.99
On a sacred site on the land of the Gadigal people, Tubowgule, a place of gathering and storytelling for over 60,000 years, now sits the Sydney Opera House. It is a breathtaking building recognised around the world as a symbol of modern Australia. But this stunning house on what is now called Bennelong Point also holds many sorrows, secrets and scandals.
The Secret of Emu Field Elizabeth Tynan Emu Field is overshadowed by Maralinga, the larger and much more prominent British atomic test site about 193 kilometres to the south. But Emu Field has its own secrets, and the fact that it was largely forgotten makes it more intriguing. Why did the British head to the inaccessible field when they knew they wouldn’t stay? A shroud of mystery that continues to this day.
Aboriginal Studies g sin lea 22 Re ay ‘ M
Astronomy: Sky Country
Jack of Hearts QX11594
Karlie Noon & Krystal De Napoli
Jackie Huggins & Ngaire Jarro
Thames&Hudson, $24.99
Magabala Books $27.99
In Astronomy: Sky Country, Karlie Noon and Krystal De Napoli explore the connections between Aboriginal environmental and cultural practices and the behaviour of the stars, and consider what must be done to sustain our dark skies, and the information they hold, into the future.
The narrative and personal reflections give insight into love, loss and the need to understand Jackie Huggins’ journey, as seen through the eyes of his children seeking to learn more. It is an affectionate portrait and a moving account of courage in wartime which helps a reader understand the sacrifices made by our soldiers.
Food, Health & Garden
p. p.10 5
Highly Recommended
Around The Kitchen Table Sophie Hansen and Annie Herron
Tokyo Up Late
Brendan Liew
Smith Street $55.00
As the sun sets, the neon lights of Tokyo flicker to life: hidden restaurants and bars come alive. This is your ultimate food guide through the night: from noisy izakayas, ramen joints and tempura bars, to gyoza pit-stops, curry restaurants and the iconic convenience stores that stitch the city together.
Murdoch
$39.99
Ayla
Propagate
The rich and diverse flavours of Nepal have often been overshadowed by the noise of cuisines from its neighbouring countries. Popular chef and MasterChefThe Professionals finalist Santosh Shah is here to set the record straight and put Nepali cuisine firmly on the map with this cookbook.
Complete with stunning photography and clear, detailed illustrations, the book also includes historical, anecdotal and personal stories about the marvel of propagation, along with a handful of bitesize interviews with other propagators, Paul Anderton and Robin Daly show just how easy home propagation is.
Paul Anderton & Robin Daly
Santosh Shah
Penguin $39.99
Hardie Grant
$36.99
Grow Now
Cinnamon & Salt
Emily Murphy Emily Murphy provides concrete advice on how to participate in garden-based climate activism. Filled with DIY projects, easy-toimplement plans, stylish photographs, and tips on choosing plants that help a garden become a functioning part of the planet’s Timber Press larger ecological cycles, Grow Now is the must-have garden book for people $47.99 wanting a healthier planet.
Queen Menopause
Alison Daddo
A&U $32.99
An invitation to pause our busy lives even for half an hour - and cook, create or make something good every day. Written by food writer Sophie Hansen and her mum, art teacher Annie Herron, it celebrates the joy and sense of satisfaction that comes with preparing a simple meal to share, pencilling a sketch or making a jar of jam to give as a gift.
Emiko Davies
Hardie Grant
$40.00
Breadsong
g sin lea ‘22 e R ay M
Every woman will eventually go through menopause - that’s half the population of the planet! And yet it’s something that is still not fully explored. This is the book Ali wishes she’d had when she was approaching menopause - so she could have been better prepared for what was coming, embraced the process and felt supported. This is for all women.
Italy-based food writer Emiko Davies delves into the rich, multicultural story of Venice and its unique cuisine, detailing more than sixty classic and modern recipes. From fried to sweet and from small plates to drinks. Get ready to be let in on the secrets to creating your own authentic cicchetti.
Kitty & Al Tait
Bloomsbury
$39.99
This is the story of Kitty Tait who was a chatty, bouncy and full-of-life 14 year old until she was overwhelmed by an ever-thickening cloud of depression and anxiety and she withdrew from the world. One day her dad Alex, a teacher, baked a loaf of bread with her and that small moment changed everything. Including some of Kitty’s favourite recipes, this is a cookbook that highlights the redemptive power of baking.
Releasing this May Science & Economics
How To Prevent The Next Pandemic
p. 11
Bill Gates
Penguin
$49.99
gleebooks favourites
A clear and upbeat plan of what every country, every government leader, and every individual can do in order to help prevent another pandemic, grounded in Bill’s firsthand experience with the Gates Foundation’s commitment to fighting Covid-19. The future, of course, is now, and now is when we have to plan against a next pandemic.
I’m Not A Numbers Person Dr Selena Fisk
Major Street $32.99
A must-have practical and fascinating guide that teaches us how to make informed decisions using the numbers around us. It takes us through the ‘why’ of data, the types of data we often see and use in life and work, and the key areas of data literacy, and data visualisation.
The Matter of Everything An Ugly Truth
Suzie Sheehy
Bloomsbury
$29.99
For millennia, people have asked questions about the nature of matter. In the twentieth century, this curiosity led to an unprecedented outburst of scientific discovery that changed the course of history. Accelerator physicist Suzie Sheehy introduces us to the people who, through a combination of genius, persistence and luck, staged these ground-breaking experiments.
Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang
Hachette $24.99
The unveiling of the tech story of our times in this riveting, behind-the-scenes exposé that offers the definitive account of Facebook’s fall from grace. What was once a Silicon Valley success story now is constantly under fire for its dangerous potential. This tell-all book finally holds Zuckerberg and Sandberg accountable.
In Case You Missed It
The Hidden Spring Mark Solms
Eating to Extinction
The Premonition
Dan Saladino
Michael Lewis
$24.99
$35.00
A revolutionary new explanation for sentience from the neuroscientist who discovered how the brain dreams.
An astonishing journey through the past, present and future of food, a love letter to the diversity of global food cultures, and a work of great urgency and hope.
$22.99
From the global bestselling author of The Big Short, the gripping story of the maverick scientists who hunted down Covid-19.
Second Hand Rows
History & Politics
p. p.12 5 Persians
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Wildfire
$34.99
A definitive new history of the Persian Empire, the world’s first superpower. The Great Kings of Persia ruled over the largest Empire of antiquity, stretching from Libya to the Steppes of Asia, and from Ethiopia to Pakistan. Professor Llewellyn-Jones calls upon original Achaemenid sources to create an authentic account of Persia’s remarkable history.
The Avoidable War Kevin Rudd
Hachette
$34.99
A war between China and the US would be catastrophic, deadly, and destructive. Unfortunately, it is no longer unthinkable. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgement will determine if a war will be fought.
The Stasi Poetry Circle Philip Oltermann
A&U
$32.99
The extraordinary true story of the Stasi’s poetry club: The Lives of Others crossed with Dead Poets Society. Weaving unseen archival material with exclusive interviews from surviving members, Philip Oltermann reveals the incredible hidden story of a unique experiment: weaponising poetry for politics.
Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Bloomsbury
$39.99
For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero- a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry. Now, historian Felipe Fern indezArmesto draws on extensive and meticulous research to conduct a dazzling investigation into Magellan’s life, his character and his illfated voyage.
Horizons
James Poskett
Penguin
$32.99
We are told that modern science was invented in Europe, the product of great minds like Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein. But this is wrong. Horizons pushes the history of science beyond Europe, exploring the ways in which scientists from Africa, America, Asia, and the Pacific fit into this retelling.
Some years ago I saw a video art work tracking the journey of a collection of furniture designed by the Modernist architect Le Corbusier from a dusty government store room in India to the London headquarters of one of the world’s leading auction houses and thence to the luxury homes and offices of wealthy art collectors across the globe. What had been discarded and forgotten in India now commanded five-figure sums in the West. The video by US artist Amie Siegel neatly questioned notions of cultural patrimony and the highly speculative nature of the international art market and, in the setting in which I saw it (The Metropolitan Museum in New York), underscored the contested history of many of the world’s museum collections. I was reminded of Siegel’s video when a small collection of poetry books turned up on my desk recently. They had once belonged to Sydney poet Michael Dransfield and included several signed and inscribed first editions by fellow poets Robert Adamson, Bruce Beaver, Rodney Hall and Thomas Shapcott. The collection also included a copy of Robert Penn Warren’s Understanding Poetry which Dransfield won for placing first in ‘Senior Verse’ at school in 1963, aged fifteen. Tragically Dransfield died from a drug overdose at 24, just nine years after winning this prize. By that time he had had three books of verse published and the posthumous release of three more and a Collected Poems in 1987 cemented his reputation as a prodigious talent and added to the myth of the romantic artist who had lived life on the edge. Siegel called her video Provenance which in artworld parlance refers to the chain of ownership which proves the authenticity of a painting or object. While authenticity is not in question here, just how this collection of books made its way to Gleebooks nearly fifty years after Dransfield’s death remains a tantalizing mystery. Scott
Releasing this May History & Politics
Abolition. Feminism. Now. Various Authors
Penguin
$32.99
As a politics and as a practice, abolitionism has increasingly shaped our political moment. Abolitionism and feminism stand shoulderto-shoulder in fighting a common cause- the end of the carceral state, with its key role in perpetuating violence, both public and private, in prisons, in police forces, and in people’s homes.
Portable Magic Emma Smith
Penguin
$45.00
Most of what we say about books is really about their contents, but books are things as well as words, objects in our lives as well as worlds in our heads. And just as we crack their spines, loosen their leaves and write in their margins, so they disrupt and disorder us in turn. All books are, as Stephen King put it, ‘a uniquely portable magic’. Now we find out why.
p. 13 Liberalism and its Discontents
Francis Fukuyama Since its inception following the postReformation wars, liberalism has come under attack from conservatives and progressives alike, and today is dismissed by many as an ‘obsolete doctrine’. Pithy, to the point, and ever pertinent, this is Profile Books political dissection at its very best. $34.99
The Cost of Sexism
Indelible City Louisa Lim
Penguin
$34.99
Lim’s deeply researched and personal account of Hong Kong is startling, casting new light on key moments- the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose. Featuring guerrilla calligraphers, amateur historians and archeologists who, like Lim, aim to put Hong Kongers at the centre of their own story.
Faber $24.99
On Violence & On Violence Against Women Jacqueline Rose
The Invention of International Order Professor Glenda Sluga
Princeton Uni Press
$59.99
The story of the women, financiers, and other unsung figures who helped to shape the post-Napoleonic global order. In 1814, after decades of continental conflict, an alliance of European empires captured Paris and exiled Napoleon Bonaparte, defeating French military expansionism and establishing the Concert of Europe.
Faber $29.99
John Zubrzycki
Yascha Mounk
Penguin
$29.99
Why has violence, and especially violence against women, become so much more prominent and visible across the world? To explore this question, Rose tracks the multiple forms of today’s violence historic and intimate, public and private - as they spread throughout our social fabric, offering a new account of violence in our time.
The Shortest History of India
The Great Experiment The history of humankind is a story of us versus them, and the project of diverse democracies is a relatively new one it is, in other words, a great experiment. How do identity groups with different ideologies and beliefs live together? Is it possible to embark on a democracy with shared values if our values are at odds? Yascha Mounk offers an answer.
Linda Scott An urgent analysis of global gender inequality and a fervently argued case for change by a pioneer in the movement for women’s economic empowerment. Linda Scott outlines a revolutionary, actionable plan to remove economic barriers against women, and in the process combat humankind’s most pressing problems.
Penguin $26.99
From Buddhism to Bollywood, India has made its mark on Asia and the world. Its progress in tackling poverty and illiteracy have been impressive, but extraordinary challenges remain. An illuminating and concise telling of the 5000 years of turbulent history that led India from the ruins of ancient civilisations to an emerging global superpower.
Self-Help & Psychology
p. p.14 5
Coming Out In May
Seeking Wisdom
Bittersweet
Julia Cameron
Susan Cain
Penguin $35.00
In this inspiring masterpiece, bestselling author Susan Cain shows the power of the “bittersweet” -- the outlook that values the experiences of loss and pain, which can lead to growth and beauty. Understanding bittersweetness can change the way we work, the way we create and the way we love.
Profile Books
$34.99
The Way of Nagomi
The A to Z of Feelings
Ken Mogi
Andrew Fuller
Bad Apple Press $32.99
In perhaps his most ambitious and comprehensive work yet, Andrew Fuller takes a deep dive into the architecture of our everyday human emotions to understand why we think, act and behave the way we do. If you have ever struggled with feelings you just can’t make sense of, have trouble controlling them or feel helpless against then this is for you!
Hachette
$29.99
The Premonitions Bureau
Sam Knight
Faber $32.99
Premonitions are impossible. But they come true all the time. Most are innocent. You think of a forgotten friend. Out of the blue, they call. But what if you knew that something terrible was going to happen? An enthralling true story, of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural - a journey to the most powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind.
Ellen Vora
Hachette
When I Grow Up
Moya Sarner
Scribe $32.99
Introducing the Japanese ideology that advocates embracing everything life throws at us so we can live peacefully and harmoniously. There is no translation for the word nagomi in the English language, and yet it should be in everyone’s vocabulary. A popular and common concept in Japan, to achieve nagomi is to have peace of mind, emotional balance and wellbeing. This philosophy can be found at the very heart of Japanese culture.
The Anatomy of Anxiety
$32.99
When do you become an adult? What does it mean to grow up? And what are the experiences that propel us forward - or keep us stuck? Moya Sarner draws on case studies, as well as her training, and theories of child psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and more, to explore what it means to be a ‘grown up’ and how we can meet the challenges and opportunities of every stage of our lives.
A deeply personal account of pain, healing and growth. Using her own history of alcoholism as a springboard, Julia shows the reader how to harness prayer - in whatever form that takes for the individual - to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and forge ahead towards becoming the person they were meant to be.
A fresh, much needed look at mental health, offering actionable strategies for managing our moods. Anxiety. It’s all in your head, right? Wrong. Dr Vora talks about the forms of anxiety, that when listened to and honoured instead of suppressed, can be seen as a course correction to help nudge us back to a more balanced life.
A Delicate Game Hana Walker-Brown
Hachette
$32.99
This is a story of power, of science and sport, and of the bodies that society deems worth sacrificing. A story that explores the passion and fury of sport, truth and justice, violence against women, privilege, love, greed, hope and redemption. It’s going to change the way you think about sport forever.
Releasing this May
Philosophy & Culture Studies
A History of Masculinity
Ivan Jablonka
Penguin $55.00
Woke Racism
John McWhorter
Swift Press $32.99
p. 15
What does it mean to be a good man? Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy and its impact on men. Arguing that it is high time for men to be as involved in gender justice as women, he shows that in order to build a more equal and respectful society, we must we must gain a deeper understanding of the structure of patriarchy - and reframe the conversation so that men define themselves by the rights of women.
McWhorter reveals the workings of this new religion, “Antiracism,” from the original sin of “white privilege” and the weaponization of cancel culture to ban heretics, to the evangelical fervor of the “woke mob.” The new religion features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past. Fortunately for all of us, it’s not too late to push back against woke racism.
Highly Recommended Out of The Sun
Esi Edugyan
A&U $34.99
The Most Important Job In The World Gina Rushton
Machines Behaving Badly
Toby Walsh
Penguin $32.99
A thought-provoking look at the increasing human reliance on robotics and the decisions that need to be made now to ensure the future of AI is as a force for good, not evil. Toby Walsh explores the ethical consequences AI poses - Is Alexa racist? What happens if a self-driving car kills someone? What limitations should we put on the use of facial recognition?
The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is Justin E. H. Smith
This account of essays demonstrate Esi Edugyan’s commitment to seeking out the stories of Black lives that history has failed to record. Written with the death of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the background, Edugyan delves into the history of Western Art and the truths about Black lives that it fails to reveal, and the ways contemporary Black artists are reclaiming those lives.
PanMac $34.99
Drawing on the depth of knowledge afforded by her body of work as an award-winning journalist, Gina Rushton wrote the book that she needed, and others need, to stop a panicked internal monologue and start a genuine dialogue about what we want from our lives and why. A powerful, compelling and forensic analysis of the role of motherhood in society today, and the competing forces that draw us towards and away from it.
NEW HISTORICAL FICTION
An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it — and explains why they have died today. It cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted Princeton Uni picture of what the internet is, where it Press came from, and where it might be taking $34.99 us in the coming decades. ‘Beautifully and powerfully wrought from convict history and a lyrical writerly imagination.’ Amanda Curtin
‘Whish-Wilson is a storyteller, there is no greater praise.’ Bruce Pascoe
Kids
p. 16
Let’s Build a Backyard
Big and Small and In-Between
This wide, wonderful world contains many things. Some things are as big as a family of bears; some are as small as a reflection in a puddle. Some things are felt rather than Carter Higgins seen. In between it all is . . . Chronicle Books, you. What kinds of things will $34.99 you collect?
Mike Lucas
Lothian, $24.99
April 9th @ 3:30: Dear Greta with Yvette Poshoglian (Year 5/6) April 30th @ 3:30: Anything But Fine with Tobias Madden (Year 7/8)
Board Books
A fun look at creating a backyard from scratch; from moving the mud and building the fence through to planting a vegie garden and adding in the compost. Slip on your overalls, pop on your hardhat and jump in the digger - let’s build a backyard!
Kids’ Non Fiction
Join Nat Amoore on May 7th at 1PM for the launch celebration of We Run Tomorrow. The launch features loads of drop-in activities with a big reveal at the end. Nat always brings huge crowds, so we are making it a marathon book launch so you can come at any point during the afternoon. May 14th @ 3:30 PM: Heroes Of the Secret Underground with Susanne Gervay (Year 5/6)
Everything You Want To See Kyle Hughes-Odgers
Fremantle Press, $14.99 From a tiger in a car to an electric guitar, from a horse to a monster (of course!) this dynamic board book shows a whole range of fun things that kids love to look at and talk about.
All events are free but bookings are mandatory. To book a spot or for more details, contact rachel@gleebooks.com.au
Graphic Novels
Lightfall: Shadow of the Bird
Rainbow the Koala & Star the Elephant
Remy Lai
A&U, $14.99
Rainbow & Star need your help! An inspiring graphic novel series for young readers, the perfect introduction to the wonders and perils of the natural world - and how we can all do our part to protect it.
Tim Probert
HarperCollins, $19.99
In the second installment of the awardwinning, critically acclaimed Lightfall series, Bea and Cad continue their quest to stop Kest, the mythic bird who stole the sun. This is another breathtaking journey into the magical world of Irpa, where epic battles and powerful creatures abound.
Middle Grade
Picture Books Amma’s Sari
Sandhya Parappukkaran, Michelle Pereira (ill)
Hardie Grant, $24.99
A powerful reflection on connection with family, the acceptance of difference, and the celebration of cultural heritage. Follow 6-year-old Shreya whose life tilts between her life at home and the outside world.
Milo Finds $105 Matt Stanton
HarperCollins, $14.99 A story about friendships and how they can morph and evolve, and how first impressions are not always what they seem. The language between the kids is authentic and there is a strong sense of family in the book.
Mouse’s Wood
Worst Week Ever! Tuesday
Thames & Hudson, $29.99
Scholastic, $15.99
Alice Melvin
Matt Cosgrove & Eva Amores
Written in a gentle rhyme this is an exquisitely illustrated novelty picture book with die-cut flaps that follows the woodland ramblings of Mouse as he journeys from friend to friend and maps out the changes in seasons from January through to December.
Have you ever had a bad week? Justin Chase sure has, and this is it! He barely made it through Monday, but now it’s ... Tuesday! With a missing cat, aliens, his embarrassing dad, it’s all awaiting to blow up into a hair-raising, teeth-shattering disaster of epic proportions!
The Wonders of Never Giving Up
The Ogress & The Orphans Kelly Barnhill
Maddy Mara, Cheryl Orsini (ill)
Bonnier, $16.99
Affirm, $19.99 Even champions started somewhere. From sporting triumphs and engineering feats to best-selling novels and medical marvels, many of our greatest achievements are only possible with great determination. An uplifting celebration of grit and a humorous reminder to all kids: sometimes the trick is quite simply ... don’t quit.
Caspar Salmon, Matt Hunt (ill)
Nosy Crow, $22.99 Is this book really only about counting to ‘ONE’? Because there are SO MANY fun things that you could count. But - wait - maybe there’s a way to outsmart the book...and count all the way up to 100!
Melissa Greenwood
We Run Tomorrow Nat Amoore
Penguin, $16.99
How To Count To One
Miimi Marraal, Mother Earth
A sweet and clever fairytale about what happens to a community when kindness and empathy are replaced with distrust and division. A story about what it means to be a good neighbour—what it means to be good.
ing as 22 e l Re ay ‘ M
HarperCollins, $24.99 From Gumbaynggirr artist Melissa Greenwood, of mother-daughter art and design label Miimi and Jiinda, comes a deeply felt and heart-stirring picture book about the connection between mothers, babies and Miimi Marraal, Mother Earth.
g sin lea ‘22 e R ay M
Tonight, they’re gonna kidnap their best friend. And tomorrow? They run. Bestselling author Nat Amoore joins forces with acclaimed graphic novelist Mike Barry to bring you a story of four kids - and four superheroes - who are taking their future into their own hands.
The Way of Dog Zana Fraillon
Penguin, $16.99
ing as 22 e l Re ay ‘ M
How does a dog find his way home when he never had one to begin with? Scruffity is born into the harsh, grey world of a puppy farm. Just as his chances of adoption grow dangerously thin, Scruffity is set free by a boy as unwanted and lonely as he is.
We Who Hunt The Hollow Kate Murray
HardieGrant
$19.99
S e v e n t e e n - y e a r- o l d Priscilla Daalman’s entire family are Hollow Warriors. She’s desperate to live up to their legacy, but she’s convinced neither she nor her superpower – the ability to sense Hollow energy – is up to the task. A firecracker urban fantasy about the youngest daughter of a family of women warriors, and the power she wishes she had. Ages 12+
Seven Days Fleur Ferris
Penguin
$16.99
Reid All About It
Teen Fiction & YA
p. p.18 5
g sin lea ‘22 e R ay M
A fast-paced, action-packed story of how the past catches up to us. Seven days to solve a century-old crime. Seven days to unearth the treasure. Seven days to survive. The countdown is on. Ages 12+
Anatomy
During the Second COVID Lockdown I re-read all the Sherlock Holmes stories (4 Long and 58 Short). As I did so, I underwent the now common and - mostly pleasurable - sensation of recalling how I reacted when they were first read nearly four decades ago. I was only able to find a joke – that I had missed (or simply forgotten) - in the entire canon: This conversation between Holmes and Watson in The Valley of Fear. (1915): “‘You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?’ ‘The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks -‘ ‘My blushes, Watson!’ Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice. ‘I was about to say, “as he is unknown to the public”.’ ‘A touch! A distinct touch!’ cried Holmes. ‘You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself.” In a Preface to a 1929 reissue of the Holmes Long Stories’, their creator expressed the hope: “… that the younger public may find these romances of interest, and that here and there one of the older generation may recapture an ancient thrill.”
Dana Schwartz
Little Brown
$22.99
A Reese Witherspoon YA Book Club Pick! Lionhearted heroine you’ll root for from page one? Check. Dark academia vibes? Check. Cheeky romantic banter that will make you blush? Check, check and CHECK. A gripping, ridiculously clever tale filled with revelations about life and death. Ages 14+
The Golden Hour Niki Smith
Little Brown
$19.99 Graphic Novel
Struggling with anxiety after witnessing a harrowing instance of gun violence, Manuel Soto copes through photography, using his cell-phone camera to find anchors that keep him grounded. As Manuel aides his new friends in their preparations for the local county fair, he learns to open up, confronts his deepest fears, and even finds first love. Ages 12+
We have. Stephen About the book: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The Original Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Facsimile Edition. Hardcover. (Mallard Press, New York. NY. USA) 1990. $45.00 Green cloth covered boards with gilt lettering. 1126pp., b/w illustrations. Age toned text block. Browned edges. Dustjacket has slight edge wear and small enclosed tear to the spine.
Another Year of Wonder
Performing Arts
Clemency Burton-Hill
Headline
$45.00
A carefully curated collection of classical music offering one piece to listen to every day of the year. In this follow-up to her much-loved YEAR OF WONDER, award-winning violinist, journalist and broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill seeks to demystify the music by humanising its creators and seeks to represent the widest possible picture of what the genre known as ‘classical music’ can be.
Exit Stage Left Nick Duerden
Hachette
$32.99
Nick Duerden has spent many years interviewing the most famous musicians on the planet. Without exception, they are at their most interesting when they’ve peaked, and when they are on their way down. In many ways, this is when these former idols are at their most heroic, too, because they reveal themselves not only to be humane and sensitive, but also still driven to create, to fulfil their lingering dreams, to refuse to live quietly.
p. 19 Acanthus Claire Potter
Giramondo
$24.00
In Cars: On Diana Leanne Shapton
NewSouth
$29.99
Time Is A Mother Ocean Vuong
NewSouth
$29.99
In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of his mother’s death, embodying the paradox of sitting within grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Vivid, brave, and propulsive, Vuong’s poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicentre of the break.
Cartwarra or what? Alf Taylor
Judith Wright
National Library of Australia
$24.99
A visual essay, a poem, a study of Princess Diana, image, celebrity and identity. Artist and writer Leanne Shapton has painted Princess Diana from the hundreds of photographs of her getting out of cars, examining her iconography and meaning in gesture and form. In Cars: On Diana is about photography, celebrity, identity, facsimile, and where to hold the beheld. It is also an obsessive and loving collection of studies, abstracted and haunting.
Coming out in May
Birds The poems in Birds commemorate Judith’s love of birds, while on a deeper level exploring a gamut of very human experiences, from the delightful, to the humorous, to the sorrowful. Featuring a contemporary, elegant design, and illustrated with artworks by renowned nature painters such as William T. Cooper, Neville Cayley, and Lilian Medland, this book will be treasured not only by lovers of poetry and art, but anyone who appreciates beauty.
New collection, ten years in the making, by one of Australia’s richest lyrical poets. Acanthus offers a collection of poems that dwell in the landscapes of the northern and southern hemispheres, evoking myth and fantasy and romance, as they move between observation and imagination.
Magabala Books
$24.99
Selected poems and stories is a compendium of Alf’s works that span several literary genres, and is representative of an older generation of Blak writers who were survivors of the Stolen Generations. This collection delicately weaves together his past works for a new generation, in which not much has changed. This collection of stories and poems is, at best, raw, intermittently melodramatic, but always full of colourful, engaging characters imbued with playful humour and ironic storytelling.
Art & Photography
p. p.20 5
A House Party in Tuscany
Thames & Hudson
$65.00
The British Surrealists
Amber Guinness
Desmond Morris
There are many farmhouses in Tuscany, but few are quite so magical as Arniano. Filled with recipes for classic dishes and cocktails, feast curation, seasonal menu suggestions and notes on an Italian pantry and wines, A House Party in Tuscany will transport you to the Tuscan countryside and bring the conviviality of Arniano to your table.
The lives, loves and works of key British Surrealists revealed by one of the last surviving members of this movement, bestselling author and artist Desmond Morris.
Thames & Hudson
$49.99
Embroidery
Banksy
Various Contributors
Alessandra Mattanza
Peribo
$75.00
The most wide-ranging and up-to-date volume available on the enigmatic and controversial graffiti artist, this deeply researched and highly personal tribute explores how Banksy continues to defy accepted wisdom about artistic success, growing only more famous and powerful even as he sticks to his anti-establishment platform and to his mission to give a voice to the voiceless.
Gingko Press
$89.95
What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined
Catholica: The Visual Culture Suzanna Ivanic
Niki De Saint Phalle & Nicole Rudick
Siglio Press
$89.95
This unconventional, illuminated biography, told in the first person in Saint Phalle’s voice and her own hand, dilates large and small moments in Saint Phalle’s life which she sometimes reveals with great candor, at other times carefully unwinding her secrets.
This book carefully selects 20 contemporary embroidery artists and showcases their delicate artworks together with in-depth and thematic interviews, making it not only a feast for the eyes but a practical guidebook for those who are looking to be inspired. It includes an international cast of skilled practitioners who create gorgeous embroideries of landscapes, architecture, animals, plants, typography, patterns and more.
A clear, concise and detailed analysis of the eclectic and beautiful visual and material culture of Catholicism. Thames & Hudson
$50.00
Focusing on a carefully curated selection of Catholic art and artefacts, this book explains the meaning of the iconography and the mystic power of the faith’s ritual objects
Coming this May Hanna Höch
A Brief History of Protest Art
Tate PB
$29.99
Aindrea Emelife
Dawn Ades
This book is a short visual journey through 100 years of protest art. Commencing with the Dada artists, one of the first groups to become known for activist art - opposing bourgeois culture and reacting to the First World War and the nationalism that they thought had led to it.
Celebrated Dada artist Hannah Höch explores her use of collage as the artistic medium of choice for both satire and poetic beauty. This book examines the artist’s career from the 1920s to the 1970s, charting her oeuvre from early works influenced by fashion and mass media, through to her later compositions of lyrical abstraction.
Prestel
$65.00
The Wilder Aisles Recently, I came across two Indian crime books that I hadn’t seen before. Both are part of a series, and I read the first two in each one. The first, Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan features Persis Wadia, India’s first female Police Inspector. As a woman, Persis is not respected. She is mistrusted and consigned to the midnight shift, along with various other officers thought to be of no use. One night when Persis is at her desk the phone rings and she hears of the death of Sir James Herriot, a prominent English diplomat. The country’s most sensational case has become hers. She meets Archie Blackfinch, a Scotland yard criminologist, and together they work to solve the case, but are hampered by the sexism Persis faces. However, Persis is smart, stubborn and determined to win, whatever the cost. The books are all set in Bombay, as the city was then called, and having visited the city a couple of times it was part of the joy of reading the books The second book, A Murder at Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey, introduces Perveen Mistry, a young lawyer turned private detective. Perveen was educated at Oxford, and on returning home to Bombay, she joined her father’s law firm, as one of the first female lawyers in India, and the first one in Bombay. Perveen is investigating a suspicious will that her firm has been asked to execute. As she gets more involved in the case, she sees that she may be in danger from those who don’t want the truth to be exposed. Fearing that another killing could take place, Perveen becomes more determined to find out what happened on Malabar Hill, and she goes behind the curtain to speak with the widows of Malabar Hill. Both books are very enjoyable and would make excellent Autumn/winter reading.
Mother’s Day Picks Mums are the absolute best. They’ve always got our backs, know the right words to say when you’re having a terrible day, and will never stop reminding you about sunscreen. They might act cool, tell you they don’t want anything special cause they’ve got everything, but that shouldn’t stop you from putting a smile on her face. From film-guides, to powerful memoirs, from nail-biting thrillers to stories from Greece, here is our curated list for Mother’s Day!
The Feminist Film Guide by Mallory Andrews $29.99
Yiayia Next Door by Daniel and Luke Mancuso $36.99
Words For Lucy by Marion Halligan $32.99
If I had one quibble it would be the hint of romance. It is definitely unnecessary!
Janice
The School For Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan $32.99
• Symbols of Australia with Richard White
• Wobbly Truths & Other Stories and The English Teacher with Natalie Scott
1/4
3/4
13/4 • Trifecta - Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy; The Politics of Permaculture & Young People and the Far Right
PRA 5/4
ROSE
E
Discuss with Suzanna Falkiner
Is AI Good for the Planet?
19/4
Discuss with Brendetta Brevini
E
On Mental Illness and Vulnerability with Sarah Krasnostein
20/4
Meet Carl Rhodes
E
Woke Capitalism: How corporate morality is sabotaging democracy
E
6/4
E
14/4
Son of Sin Talk with Omar Sakr
Quarterly Essay
• 21/4
Those Who Perish with Emma Viskic’s Caleb Zelic series
• 22/4
The Writer Laid Bare with Lee Koffman 24/4
• 7/4 & 28/4
Feminism and the making of a child’s rights revolution by Isobelle Barrett Meyering
• 8/4 The Scarlett Cross by Lyn McFarlane 10/4
E 12/4
E E
Talk with Gina Rushton The Most Important Job in the World Affection Lynn Hard, drawings by Gary Shead
Purchase of tickets are mandatory for events marked with E.
Meet with Allen Behn
E
No Enemies No Friends: Restoring Australia’s Global Relevance
26/4
Talk with Troy Bramston Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny
E
28/4 6 for 6:30 with Jane Hutcheon
E
Rebel Talk
• Mortals with Rachel and Ross Menzies
29/4
LIRPA
• River Child book launch with Jo Tuscano • When A Soulmate Says No by Amanda Trenfield
4/5
E
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E 11/5
E 12/5
E
Events p. 23
3/5
27/5
E
Meet Indira Naidoo The Space Between The Stars
Memories and Elephants: The art of casual racism with Meaghan Katrak Harris
10/5
•
1/5
Blown Away with Colin Putt
6/5
6 for 6:30 with Kevin Rudd
• Burning Ambition: The Centenary of Australia-New Zealand Football Ashes book launch with Trevor Thompson and Dr Nick Guoth
thinkers, and speakers in an engaging discussion of their work. All events take place upstairs at 49 Glebe Point Road.
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Book launches are free and open to the public. Our Literary Events are $12 & $9 concession (pensioner/student) and free to gleeclub members – though bookings are still required, as popular events do sell out. Weekday events generally commence at 6pm for 6.30pm, and weekend events at 2.30pm for 3pm. Places are unreserved, so arrive a little early if you require a particular seat.
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Bookings are essential for both free and ticketed events, so we can staff and cater the event appropriately. Phone 02 9660 2333 or book online on our website.
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An order confirmation will be emailed immediately upon completion of your booking; please bring a copy as proof of your booking, as we do not issue physical tickets. For virtual (zoom events) we send a Zoom link to all registered attendees by late morning on the day of the event.
Stephen Charles and Catherine Williams Antoinette Lattouf How To Lose Friends and Influence White People
Secrets Beyond the Screen
M AY
13/5
31/5
Join leading Australian and international authors,
Keeping Them Honest
• 26/5 Anita Jacoby launches
Secrets Beyond the Screen
• 29/5 Blown Up, Blown Over, and
The Avoidable War
Witches, Women & Words launch with Beatriz Copello
Talk with Anita Jacoby
Gleebooks recommends the SWF Debut Authors Ange Reviews: This is Sakr’s first novel and his poetic roots shine through. It reads like an epic, a saga, a tale I can imagine being sung in previous centuries. With beauty and pain he tells the story of Jamal, coming of age as a queer Muslim in Western Sydney. An intoxicating atmosphere I gladly inhaled — more should be said but I fear I cannot do it justice.
Son of Sin by Omar Sakr Love & Virtue by Diana Reid
Permafrost by SJ Norman Hovering by Rhett Davis
International Fiction
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Andy Reviews: Huge sigh of relief. Visit from the Goon Squad is one of my favourite novels of …um, this century. So to discover Egan had written a ‘companion novel’ gave me a sense of foreboding. Don’t meddle with a classic! I’m relieved to say The Candy House stands on its own two feet with aplomb — its self-contained chapters are just as wonderfully, kaleidoscopically, beautiful and Egan is as dizzyingly adept as ever, alchemising her fragments into an ineffable wonderful whole.
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit
Children & Teen Mr Bambuckle’s Remarkables by Tim Harris
We Run Tomorrow by Nat Amoore Fly on The Wall by Remy Lai
The First Scientists by Corey Tutt
Rachel Reviews: Nat Amoore is hands down the funniest and funnest lady in town… and boy does she write awesome stories. We Run Tomorrow is great for reluctant readers, strong readers, adults and kids of all ages! There is something in there for everyone… get reading!
Australian Literature
Australiana by Yumna Kassab
David Reviews: A tightly constructed meticulously observed mini-masterpiece. A slender story of a daughter and mother’s shared trip to Japan, where not a word is wasted, nor an inference from action missed. Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au
Devotion by Hannah Kent In Moonland by Miles Allinson
Poetry
Essays & Politics
Drew Reviews: How To Make a Basket is a dazzling and deeply personal collection by a powerful new voice that interrogates the Australian colony and very generously offers a new and beautiful way forward for all of us: a way that is grounded in love for oneselef, each other and for Country. We would all do well to follow the way Jazz has set out in this book. Beyond Belief – Elle Hardy
How to Lose Friends & Influence White People – Antoinette Lattouf
The Most Important Job in the World - Gina Rushton
Indelible City - Louisa Lim
How To Make A Basket by Jazz Money
Memoir All About Yves by Yves Rees
We’ve Got This edited by Eliza Hull
Sister Girl by Jackie Huggins
Bedtime Story by Chloe Hooper
Killernova by Omar Musa
Take Care by Eunice Andrada
Judy Reviews: Written by the author at the time of husband Don Watson’s Leukemia diagnosis & treatment when their children were but 7 & 4. She looks with all her research skill for the right stories to help them understand, to help her go on. She is unsentimental, observing herself as she observes the dread, the worry & Don going about the business of suffering. Their friends with children about the same age are going on the same journey, but that father dies. The community does not know how to be around people facing death & then dying. For Don there comes an incredible reprieve, & life, precious life goes on with the four of them together, but now with the experience Don’s illness has given them. The bedtime story this mother has written now contains them. Such is the power of a story. I found the heartfelt ending declaration deeply moving.
Specials w No .95 1 $2
Crusaders by Dan Jones, was $60
w No .95 7 $1
Everything In Its Place by Oliver Sacks, was $40
w No .95 4 $3
Feast by Anissa Helou, was $80
w No .95 7 $1
Actress by Anne Enright, was $40
w No .95 7 $1
Buzz Sting Bite by Anne Sverdrup Thygeson, was $40
w No .95 9 $1
Vanity Fair’s Women on Women, was $50
w No .95 9 $1
The Three Cornered War by Megan Kate nelson, was $50
w No .95 1 $1
Lonely Boy by Steve Jones, was $25
w No .95 9 $1
The Porpoise by Mark Haddon, was $50
w No .95 6 $1
Live To Eat by Michael Psilakis, was $40
w No .95 7 $1
The Burning Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein , was $40
w No .95 1 $2
150 Glimpses of the Beatles by Caring Brown, was $60
w No .95 7 $1
The Falcon Thief by Joshua Hammer. was $40
w No .95 7 $1
The Disappearance of Emile Zola by Michael Rosen, was $40
w No .95 7 $1
This is not a T-shirt by Bobby Hundreds, was $40
w No .95 0 $1
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, was $23
What We’re Reading Jonathon Reviews Devil House: A true crime author attempts to write about a grisly small town double murder but becomes troubled by the gaps between popular fascination with the occult, bloody-minded media accounts, who the killers and victims are, and how much just goes unsaid. It made me think about the way storytelling is as much about what is included as what is left out. Darnielle seems to want to say that the stories told about these events are akin to epic tales, where how much actually happened and how much is the storyteller’s performance is anyone’s guess — and where the lives involved are forgotten as much as lost.
Nick Reviews Fairyland: For those familiar with Sumner Locke Elliott only through Careful, He Might Hear You, his 1990 novel, Fairyland will come as a surprise, as it did me. It’s the semi-autobiographical story of a young gay man, learning about himself and making his way in the world, in Sydney of the 1930s. Elliott’s astute observations of what was an undeniably repressed society, and his evocative descriptions of our city back then are quite unforgettable. This is an Australian queer lit classic, and I absolutely loved it!
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Bestsellers—Fiction 1.
Give Unto Others
2.
Revenants
3.
Booth
4.
Son of Sin
5.
Love Stories
Trent Dalton
6.
French Braid
Anne Tyler
7.
The Promise
Damon Galgut
8.
The Problem with Murder
9.
Love & Virtue
Donna Leon Adam Aitken Karen Joy Fowler Omar Sakr
Michael Duffy Diana Reid
10. Australiana
Yumna Kassab
Bestsellers—Non-Fiction 1.
The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian prison
Kylie Moore-Gilbert
2.
Stolen Focus
3.
The Space Between the Stars
4.
The First Astronomers
Duane Hamacher
5.
Ten Steps to Nanette
Hannah Gadsby
6.
Who Needs the ABC?
Johann Hari
Patrick Mullins & Matthew
7.
The Jane Austen Remedy
8.
The Idea of Australia
9.
Don’t Be Too Polite Girls
Indira Naidoo
10. Bob Hawke: Demons & Destiny
Ricketson Ruth Wilson Julianne Schultz Wendy McCarthy Troy Bramston
and another thing... Hello everyone, It gives me great joy to present to you, the newly designed gleaner. Viki and the gleaner have always been synonymous; so two days into my role as the editor, I knew I was stepping into some big (read, ginormous) shoes. Nevertheless, I am hoping to have done it justice, incorporating something old with something new. I am constantly learning more about Gleebooks, its history, and its people, including you, the staunch readers and my inbox is always open for your thoughts and opinions. As for what’s distracting me from coursework this autumn, Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li was an interesting read about six ambitious Chinese diaspora individuals reclaiming their looted art, by (you guessed it) looting them back. I am currently in between the pages of Invisible Women, an eye-opener by Caroline Criado Pérez highlighting the unconscious data bias that exists in our world. It is incredibly enlightening, but also frustrating. Hence, best accompanied by a stress ball or a glass of water. Some titles that have been calling out to me are Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and The School For Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan. I promised myself to not flood my shelves this month but alas, as Henry Ward Beecher puts it, “Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore.” Thank you for sticking till the end of this message. My only request is that you continue to show the same love and support for the gleaner as you have. Until next time, Aks
For more April/May new releases go to:
Main shop—49 Glebe Pt Rd; Ph: (02) 9660 2333, Fax: (02) 9660 9842. Mon to Sat 9am to 6pm; Sunday 10 to 5 Blackheath—Shop 1 Collier’s Arcade, Govetts Leap Rd; Ph: (02) 4787 6340. Open 7 days, 9am to 5pm Blackheath Oldbooks—Collier’s Arcade, Govetts Leap Rd: Open 7 days, 10am to 5pm Dulwich Hill—536 Marrickville Rd Dulwich Hill; Ph: (02) 9560 0660. Tue-Fri 9am to 6pm; Sat 9am to 5pm; Sun 10 to 4; Mon 9 to 5 www.gleebooks.com.au. Email: books@gleebooks.com.au; oldbooks@gleebooks.com.au