June July Gleaner

From David’s Desk

So we come to mid-year, a chance to take a break and take stock, amid all the activity and changes for us in 2023. And I’ll begin with a warm welcome to our new Gleaner editor, Gabriel Wilder, who brings a wealth of journalistic experience with her to the role. We’re all looking forward to working with her.

An update on those comprehensive and exciting renovations at 49 Glebe Point Road (above), half way through the process. The place looks like a bomb site, as architects, builders, engineers, and all kinds of specialists work their way through the myriad of complex issues involved in restoring the battered old building. Never fear, they’re on schedule, but just to remind readers, that means we won’t move back down the road until early next year. So please keep coming to our lovely “outpost office” shop up the hill, for the rest of the year. In the meantime, we’ll try to ramp up our much missed events program, if we can secure some viable space options outside the shop.

We’ve been closely associated, as booksellers, with the Sydney Writers’ festival, for almost 20 years now, and I’m pleased to report that the recent event at Carriageworks and elsewhere was one of the best. There was great energy and vibrancy within and without the many sessions, and I was delighted by the enormous response to the children’s program, both at Carriageworks and at the hugely popular Schools Days programs. I hope that podcasts and repeats of some of the best sessions come your way, meanwhile, start planning for next year!

So much has been happening that I’ve been on a (time) restricted reading diet. But I wanted to remind everyone of two “recent-ish” publications, in case you missed them. Old God’s Time, Sebastian Barry’s unforgettable and haunting exploration of memory, loss and justice. A retired police detective, living in pinched circumstances in a lean-to that is attached to an old castle on a bleak Irish coast, has to come to terms with his past actions. Barry’s moral sense is unerring, it’s beautifully done.

As well done, in its own uniquely different way, is Fiona Kelly McGregor’s Iris, published late last year. Its brilliance crept up on me as I read it. It’s a bold and boisterous and thoroughly original recreation of the pre-WWII underbelly of Sydney, arranged around the fictionalised life of one Iris Webber, a notorious figure of the time. I loved it.

Finally, and importantly, July sees the publication of what must be the most anticipated book of the year, Anna Funder’s Wifedom. It won’t disappoint – I can only find superlatives to describe my response. Magnificent, profound, utterly original genre-bending work will do to begin with. Wifedom moves seamlessly from the known facts and history of the life of Eileen O’Shaughnessy, wife of George Orwell, to the imagined world behind the letters written by her to her best friend, and takes in, for good measure, contemporary reflections and responses from Funder to her own world as writer, wife, mother. It’s a dazzling and captivating and challenging achievement. A tour de force. Read it and see.

Letitia reviews: Yellowface

The new American bestseller Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang is a compelling story about an author who steals the manuscript of her much more successful and suddenly deceased “friend”. This very “now” novel is set against a background of cultural appropriation, social media and the publishing world. An engrossing story that will appeal to lovers of contemporary fiction and books about books. A great bookclub choice.

Zara reviews: August Blue

Deborah Levy

$35 Penguin

Deborah Levy’s highly anticipated new novel is set across Greece, Paris, London and Italy. Elsa, a famous pianist fallen from grace, is a funny, obsessive protagonist and her navigation of childhood loss and personal identity is deeply moving. This book is an instant Levy classic.

Victoria reviews: Forbidden Notebook

Alba De Cespedes

If you love Elena Ferrante, you’ll love this glorious book by Alba De Cespedes. It is a snapshot of a woman living in Italy in the 50s just after WWII. She shares her inner-most thoughts – her desires and fears – at a time when it was “forbidden” for a woman to show or share her discontent with her life of child-rearing and housework. With a foreword by Jhumpa Lahiri who sets the scene.

Andrew reviews: I Am Homeless If This Is

Lorrie Moore

Not My Home

One of Lorrie Moore’s greatest short stories, People Like That Are the Only People Here, takes as its grim setting a paediatric oncology ward, and yet is a wickedly exciting tightrope walk, in which Moore deftly flits between pitch-black gallows humour and the monstrous tragedy of parents facing the likely death of their children. It is vertiginously, dizzyingly, funny and poignant. I’m pleased to say Moore consummately traverses similar terrain with this, her first novel in 14 years, largely set in a Bronx hospice and centring on two brothers as one fights to stay alive. Moore is on fire with this perfectly calibrated, smartly funny, eagle-eyed, beautiful, and moving book.

Tilda reviews: Eta Draconis

Brendan Ritchie

Eta Draconis is a binary star in the constellation Draco, which forms the shape of a wolf lying in wait for a camel’s foal. It sends meteors crashing to Earth and onto the two sisters at the heart of this blazing novel by Brendan Ritchie. Facing a world both familiar and unrecognisable, they undergo a fraught journey along the west coast of Australia from home to university. Along the way they relearn their shared past, and begin to understand what a future looks like in the midst of this cosmic threat.

$33 Pushkin Press

$30 Faber

$33 New South

R.F. Kuang $33 HarperCollins

Ultimo Press

$35

Sad Girl Novel

Pip Finkemeyer

Over the course of a year in Berlin, an aspiring novelist, Kim, and her historian best friend, Bel, confront their twin acts of creation. Kim is becoming a writer, and is determined to write a bestseller. As she attempts to buoy herself using other people for external motivation, they poke holes in her fantasies. Meanwhile, Bel is becoming a mother, and gives birth, certain it will fulfil her in ways her career does not. Kim and Bel support and deceive each other as only the best of friends can.

Feast

Emily O’Grady

Alison is an actress who no longer acts, Patrick a musician past his prime. The eccentric couple live an isolated, debauched existence in an old manor house in Scotland. That is, until Patrick’s teenage daughter, Neve, flees Australia to spend a year with her doting father, and the stepmother she barely knows. Despite Neve’s objections, her mother Shannon arrives in Scotland, bringing with her a hidden agenda that has the potential to shatter the delicate façade of the loving, if dysfunctional, family.

Minds of Sand and Light

Text

Secrets of the Huon Wren

Claire Van Ryn

Senior journalist Allira is writing a story when she meets Nora, a nursing home resident with dementia. Bit by bit, Nora reveals details about her younger life as a spirited teenage girl living beneath the Great Western Tiers in lutruwita/Tasmania’s heartland. When Allira opens up to Nora about her own recent tragedy, the secrets embedded in the story of a carved Huon pine wren become the key to a life-changing discovery from the past. The Secrets of the Huon Wren is a lyrical and highly evocative story about two lives connected by a shared tragedy, and a universal love.

House of Longing

Tara Calaby

Where other young women see their destiny in marriage and motherhood, the reclusive Charlotte wants only to work with her father in his business. Then Flora Dalton bursts through the shop door and into Charlotte’s life – and a new world of baffling desires and possibilities seems to open up. But Melbourne society of the 1890s is not built to embrace unorthodoxy. When tragedy strikes Charlotte finds herself admitted to Kew Lunatic Asylum ‘for her own safety’. A compulsively readable historical romance.

HarperCollins $30

The world is in the midst of a new Cold War – between the wasteful nations of the West, and the oppressively tyrannical regime of the Greater Far East. Ruth Sharpe and Cassie Bailey are radical journalists and brilliant hackers investigating rumours that multiple governments are covertly run by sentient AI systems. They will need to cut through decades of lies to reach the truth and warn the world. A gripping dystopian thriller from the bestselling author of the Dark Heavens and Dragon Empire series.

Where I Slept

Libby Angel

Text Publishing $33

Where I Slept is the story of a young woman’s devastating and inspirational search for a life of artistic integrity. Leaving a seedy boarding house in a provincial town in the 1990s, she travels to Melbourne where she lives in bohemian share houses with painters, activists, addicts and petty criminals, and, for a time, in the streets, parks and railway stations of a city both richly gratifying and callously indifferent. Libby Angel’s work of autofiction is an unforgettable portrait of a life on the fringes, peppered with dark humour and moments of elation – a poem of longing and desire.

Kylie Chan

Allen & Unwin $33

Penguin

$27

International Literature

Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories

Various authors

This exciting new collection celebrates the Spanish short story, from its modern origins in the 19th century to the remarkable work being written today. It blends hidden gems and old favourites, surprising new voices and giants of Spain’s literary culture, from Emilia Pardo Bazán and Leopoldo Alas, through Mercè Rodoreda and Manuel Rivas, to Javier Marías. Brimming with romance, horror, history, farce, strangeness and beauty, and showcasing alluring hairdressers, war defectors, vampiric mothers, and talismanic mandrake roots, the daring and entertaining assortment of tales in The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories will be a treasure trove for readers.

The Ghost Theatre

Mat Osman

Bloomsbury

$33

Named book of the year by The Evening Standard, The Observer and The Times, Matt Osman’s magical Elizabethan tale tells the story of Shay, a messenger girl and trainer of hawks, and Nonesuch, the dark star of the city’s fabled child theatre scene. Together they create The Ghost Theatre: a troupe staging magical plays in London’s hidden corners. As their hallucinatory performances incite rebellion among the city’s outcasts, the pair’s relationship sparks and burns against a backdrop of the plague and a London in flames. The Ghost Theatre is a beautifully written story of rebellion and magic, of mysticism and broken love in the streets of Elizabethan London.

The Wind Knows My Name

Isabel Allende

Bloomsbury

The East Indian

Brinda Charry

Among the settlers, slaves and indentured servants that make the treacherous journey across the Atlantic to the New World in the early 1600s – for some, an exciting opportunity, for others, a brutal abduction –there is also Tony, the first Indian to set foot on American soil. East Indian follows Tony from his homeland on the Coromandel Coast of India to London, where the orphaned teenager is kidnapped and bound to servitude on a Virginia plantation. The East Indian is a Dickensian-style yarn about family, friendship, and finding oneself in the seeds of a new world.

Bad Summer People

Emma Rosenblum

Penguin

Outsiders aren’t welcome on the island where the same families have been holidaying for years. There are the Weinsteins, the Metzners, the Grobels, and the unlucky-inlove Rachel Woolf. Then Robert arrives, the handsome new tennis coach, who some people are going out of their way to make very welcome … But then a body is found face-down beneath the boardwalk. None of them would claim to be a good person, but who among them is capable of murder?

The Bee Sting

Paul Murray

Penguin

Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht and his mother sends him alone to England, away from danger in Austria. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador, but the pair become separated and Anita finds herself alone in the Nogales camp. Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is a testament to the sacrifices that parents make, and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers.

$33

The Barnes family is in trouble, on the verge of fracturing and in a crisis with roots that stretch deep into the past. When the moment of reckoning finally arrives, all four of them must decide how far they’re willing to go to save the family, and whether there’s still time to give their story a happy ending … From the author of Skippy Dies comes a dazzlingly intricate and poignant tragicomedy about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good man at the end of the world.

The Happy Couple

Naoise Dolan

Naoise Dolan, author of the runaway sensation Exciting Times, returns with a novel about four characters, linked by the wedding they are all set to attend. Will it be the happiest day of their lives? The beginning of the lives they have always imagined? Or the end of them? As the wedding approaches and these four lives intersect, each character will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after.

Hachette

Scribe $35

Mater 2-10

Hwang Sok-yong

Yellowface

R.F. Kuang

Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is; she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American. In this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author R. F. Kuang, takes on questions of diversity, racism, cultural appropriation and the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society.

The Moon Represents My Heart

Pim Wangtechawat

$33

The Wang family are hiding a secret – they all have the ability to time travel. When parents Joshua and Lily depart for the past and never return, their children Tommy and Eva are forced to deal with their grief alone. Eva might be trying to find her place in the present, but Tommy is pulled further and further into a past that he hopes holds the truth. When he falls in love with a woman from a different era, his inability to confront his own history has severe ramifications for the people who can bring him happiness.

Big Swiss

Jen Beagin

Big Swiss. That’s Greta’s nickname for her – she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. But Greta has never met Big Swiss and is miles away from Switzerland, sitting at a desk in her own house, transcribing this disembodied voice. What she doesn’t know is that she’s about to bump into Big Swiss in the local dog park. A new – and not entirely honest – relationship is going to be born.

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home

Lorrie Moore

$30 Faber

Finn is in the grip of middle-age and on an enforced break from work. High up in a New York City hospice, he sits with his beloved brother Max, who is slipping from one world into the next. But when a phone call summons Finn back to a troubled old flame, a strange journey begins, opening a trapdoor in reality. It will prompt a questioning of life and death, grief and the past, comedy and tragedy, and the diaphanous separations that lie between them all. Lorrie Moore’s new novel is a magic box of longing and surprise.

Cursed Bunny

Bora Chung

This genre-defying collection of short stories blurs the lines between magical realism, horror, and science fiction. Using elements of the fantastic and surreal, Bora Chung exposes the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society, gliding effortlessly from terrifying to wryly humorous in a skilful translation by the acclaimed Anton Hur. Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.

Bloomsbury

HarperCollins

$33

The Discreet Charm of the Big Bad Wolf

Alexander McCall Smith

In the hilarious new novel in the Detective Varg series, Ulf Varg will need to resolve both a sensitive crime and his own delicate dilemma. In the midst of the downsizing of the Department of Sensitive Crimes due to the recent downturn of sensitive crime, Ulf embarks on an important inquiry: a man’s cabin has disappeared and Ulf must find out what happened.

The Mill House Murders

Yukito Ayatsuji

Every year, a group of acquaintances pays a visit to the castle-like Mill House, home to the reclusive Fujinuma Kiichi, who has lived his life behind a mask since a disfiguring car accident. This year, however, the visit is disrupted by a gruesome murder. As Kiyoshi Shimada investigates, death strikes again, and again … can he get to the truth before the killer gets to him?

Central Park West

James Comey

Exquisite Corpse

Marija Pericic

$35

Beautiful but impoverished Lina Dahlstrom is dying of tuberculosis and it seems that no one can save her. All hope is lost until an eccentric doctor, Carl Dance, becomes enthralled with Lina’s charms and vows to do everything in his power to cure her. But when the illness claims Lina’s life, Dance’s obsession grows. And so begins a mad and criminal scheme to bring her back from beyond the grave. Set in Stockholm in 1930 and based on true events, Exquisite Corpse is a story about the madness and horror of a romance that knows no bounds.

A Chateau Under Siege

Martin Walker

$33

Federal prosecutor Nora Carleton has spent years building a case against a powerful New York mobster. Desperate to stop the mobster from walking free, Nora investigates the darker side of the city. The more she uncovers, the deeper the corruption runs. Former director of the FBI James Comey draws on years of experience for this thrilling debut novel.

Cross Down

James Patterson

Penguin $33

When a series of military-style attacks erupts across the United States, Detective John Sampson is called in to investigate. As Sampson discovers a lead through an ex-military contact, his partner Alex Cross is brutally side-lined, leaving him certain about one thing: he can trust no one. Sampson must revisit his military past if he is to save his country’s future.

The event of the Perigord tourist season is to be the re-enactment of the liberation of the historic town of Sarlat from the English in 1370. But it all goes wrong when the man playing the part of the French general is almost killed. France’s favourite country cop, Bruno Courreges, discovers that the man’s wound was faked, and that he is secretly negotiating a massive deal to build a semi-conductor industry in France. But then a new and dangerous player emerges, determined to nip the deal in the bud.

The Scarlet Papers

Matthew Richardson Penguin $33

The devastating secrets of the Scarlet Papers connect three people across decades: a brilliant German scientist spirited out of the ruins of Nazi Europe in search of a new life; a rising star of the British diplomatic service in Moscow, 1964, whose job is not what it seems;and a once promising academic offered an opportunity to seal his place in history in London in the present day. This single document binds their stories, their lives, and the fate of the world.

Hachette

Pushkin Press

Head of Zeus

Ultimo Press

Hachette

The Wilder Aisles

Two new crime books for your winter reading, and one not crime, but you could say a crime was committed in a certain way.

The first is a rather unusual approach to writing a crime novel as it tells the story of a cold case through the format of a fictional true crime TV series, using interviews, newspaper reports and so on.

The name of the fictional Netflix series is Infamous: Who Killed Luke Ryder. The book is Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter, who is well-known for her DI Adam Fawley books. (Unfortunately I have never come across them, but I will rectify that soon.) While I found it a bit difficult at the beginning, I soon got into it and really enjoyed reading it.

Thirty years ago, Andrew Howard, the step-father of filmmaker Guy Howard, was found dead in the garden of the family home. No-one saw or heard anything and there was no sign of a break-in. What was he doing outside on a cold night? The whole family – Andrew’s wife, Caroline, and his three children, are under suspicion except for Rupert, who was 10 at the time. The question is: can the docu-drama solve this long ago murder? Why was Andrew Howard killed, and do any of the suspects found by the investigators amount to anything? This is a great fun read.

The second book is The Cook by Ajay Chowdury. It is a follow-up to The Waiter, which I haven’t read, but intend to do, after reading this. The story revolves around a restaurant in Brick Lane in London. It is called Tandoori Knights, and the cook of the title is Kamil Rahmann, who was once a detective in Kolkata, but now spends his time in a hot, steamy kitchen serving delicious Indian food to a devoted clientele. After the dead body of a woman who is known to Kamil, Salma Main, is found in her apartment building, Kamil feels compelled to find out what happened. His friend Naila is very keen to join him in the investigation; she was a student at the same college as Salma, and undertakes to investigate on the campus. Along with this investigation, some locals are becoming concerned about the rise in homeless deaths in the area near the restaurant. Anjoli, Kamil’s boss and friend, believes they are being murdered. At first the two cases seem not to have anything in common, but as they develop, connections emerge, stretching from London to Lahore. I have been to Brick Lane, like probably lots of readers, and it was good to read a book set in such an old, interesting part of London, although probably much has changed since I was there some time ago.

I picked up a copy of Such a Fun Age, flicked through it and thought I might read it one day. I bought it and put it aside for another day. Well, that day came, and I was very pleased that I had it on the table beside my bed, with the others that were waiting their turn. The book, by Kiley Reid, is the story of a nanny, Emira, Briar, the child she looks after during the day and Alix, Briar’s mother.

Emira is at a party when she gets a call from Alix that something has happened at the house and she needs Emira to come and take Briar away from the difficult situation. Emira takes her to the local upmarket food store where she is confronted by the security guard and others, who want to know what a black woman is doing with a white child in a store at 11.30 at night. They refuse to believe the truth – that Emira is Briar’s nanny. Kelley, a bystander, intervenes on her behalf. After the incident, a relationship develops between Emira and Kelley. What follows is an interesting study in race relations and the lives of young people living in New York.

As the biggest secret of all is revealed, Emira has no choice but to forge a new life for herself. There are a couple of twists along the way, but the last one really surprised me, and made me rethink the whole story. Although set in 2015, Such a Fun Age could easily have taken place earlier, as little seems to have changed. I know this is not a new book,and many of you would have read it, but to those who haven’t I really recommend it. I really enjoyed it and the story stayed with me for a long time.

– Janice

$62

Homelands

Timothy Garton Ash

Drawing on 50 years of interviews and experience, Homelands tells the epic story of how Europe in the early 21st century, having emerged from its wartime hell, recovered and rebuilt, liberated and united to come close to the ideal of a Europe “whole, free and at peace”, and then faltered. Homelands is both a singular history of a period of unprecedented progress and a clear-eyed account of how so much then went wrong, from the financial crisis of 2008 to the war in Ukraine. A stunning blend of contemporary history, reportage and memoir.

Love Language

Linda Marigliano

$35

Linda Marigliano has built a career out of performing for other people. In her day-job as an on-air presenter or in her family home, she contorted herself into “the cool girl” or “the good girl”. Her “love language” had warped into acts of service that pleased everyone but herself, without boundaries or exceptions. This memoir is Linda’s determined reclamation of her identity; a fiercely relatable and viscerally honest account of what it means to love and be loved.

Hitler Stalin Mum & Dad

Daniel Finkelstein

$30

The Rooster House

Victoria

Belim

In 2014, while the Russian state was annexing Crimea, Victoria discovered her great-grandfather’s diary, one page scored deep with the single line: “Brother Nikodim, vanished in the 1930s fighting for a free Ukraine.” She had never heard of this relative and no one seemed willing to tell her about him. Victoria became obsessed with recovering his story, and returned to her birth country again and again in pursuit of it. In the end her winding search took her back to the place she had always known it would – to the Rooster House, and the dark truths contained in its basement.

Good Girls

Hadley Freeman

$35

From longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his father’s devastating experiences of persecution, resistance and survival during the Second World War. It is a deeply moving, personal and at times horrifying memoir about his parents’ experiences at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the 20th century. It is a story of persecution and survival; and the consequences of totalitarianism told with the almost unimaginable bravery of two ordinary families shining through.

The Best Minds

Jonathan Rosen

$65 Penguin

A novelist’s gripping investigation of the forces that led his childhood best friend from academic stardom to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. The Best Minds is a powerful account of an American tragedy, set in the final decades of the American century, an era that coincided with the emptying out of state mental hospitals. It is a story about the bonds of friendship, the price of delusion and the mystery of identity. The Best Minds is both a beautifully rendered coming-of-age story and an indictment of the profound neglect of mental illness in our society.

From Hadley Freeman, the bestselling author of House of Glass, comes her searing and powerful memoir about mental ill health and her experience with anorexia. Freeman takes the reader inside her head to translate the language of Anorexia Speak: “Boys like girls with curves on them” (If you ever eat anything you will be mauled by thuggish boys with giant paws for hands.) “Have you tried swimming? I find that really improves my appetite.” (You need to do more exercise.) Hadley Freeman starts with the trigger that sparked her illness and moves through four hospitalisations, offering extraordinary insight into her various struggles.

Orwell: The New Life

D.J. Taylor

D.J. Taylor’s new biography, the first full-length study for 20 years, draws on a wide range of previously unseen material – letters to old girlfriends and professional colleagues, the recollections of the dwindling band of people who remember him, new information about his life in the early 1930s – to produce a definitive portrait of this complex, driven and self-mythologising man. The definitive biography of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Jonathan Cape

HarperCollins

Allen & Unwin

Hachette

HarperCollins

Hachette

$18

On Peter Carey: Writers on Writers

Sarah Krasnostein

Exploring dislocation and longing, Sarah Krasnostein dives into Peter Carey’s literary tour de force, True History of the Kelly Gang, shining new light on the impossibly vulnerable Ned Kelly. Carey, who moved from Australia to America, conjured Kelly after seeing Sidney Nolan’s paintings of the bushranger at the Met. In this moving essay Krasnostein, who moved from America to Australia, interrogates notions of home, history, distance and identity in Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel.

Grave Secrets

$25 Penguin

The team at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM) have played pivotal roles in some of Australia’s highestprofile homicide cases. A world-renowned centre of forensic science, it has also led major recovery operations, from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to the 2014 shooting down of flight MH17. Grave Secrets is a gripping account of the work of these forensic scientists on the frontline of Australia’s major crime and disaster investigations.

What We’re Reading

The Power of One

Frances Haugen

In 2021 Frances Haugen went public as the former employee who blew the whistle on Facebook by copying tens of thousands of documents. What she revealed was that Facebook not only set its algorithm to reward extremism, it knew that its platform was being used to foment violence and spread falsehoods. The Power of One is the inspiring story of a woman’s fight to reveal the truth. $35

Victoria reviews: The Year My Family Unravelled

Cynthia Dearborn

This is the familiar story of a daughter who has escaped to the other side of the world to get away from her dysfunctional family but has had to go back to deal with ageing parents suffering from dementia. What is great about Cynthia Dearborn’s book is the emotion, tension, and the hope that shines through, despite the decline of the parents, and health system (a worldwide problem it seems). An enthralling book, right to the end.

Morgan reviews: Why We Are Here

Briohny Doyle

$33 Penguin

In a departure from her previous cli-fi novels, This Island Will Sink and Echolalia, Briohny Doyle brings us a poignant and life-affirming auto-fiction that ponders the big question: why we are here. COVID, lockdown, grieving, loneliness and the healing power of dogs all combine to riveting effect. For lovers of Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy.

Jane reviews: Ghosts of the Orphanage

Christine Kenneally

$35 Hachette

The incidents of murder, and physical, sexual and mental abuse in the worldwide orphanage system, as detailed in this book by Christine Kenneally, are shocking: it’s a story of evil, hatred, and unrelenting horror. It’s due to books like this, based on 10 solid years of research, that we are able to shine a strong spotlight on this issue. This is a monumental book. Not for the faint-hearted.

Black Inc

Meshel Laurie

Hachette

$35 Affirm Press

$35

Trump’s Australia

Bruce Wolpe

Leading expert and US and Australian politics insider Bruce Wolpe reveals the many ways in which Australia was damaged by Donald Trump’s presidency. Trumpism contaminated public debate, emboldened local political and religious extremists, diminished Australia’s economy and international relations – and much more. Wolpe predicts America’s democracy won’t survive a second Trump term. He explains how Australia can draw on its strengths to protect its democracy, economy and society from Trumpism.

End Times

$37

Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.

The Palestine Laboratory

Antony Loewenstein

$35

The Palestine Laboratory shows in depth and for the first time how Israel has become a leader in developing spying technology and defence hardware that fuels some of the globe’s most brutal conflicts – from the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos’s and Jamal Khashoggi’s phones, and the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas. In a global investigation that uncovers secret documents, based on revealing interviews and on-theground reporting, Antony Loewenstein shows how, as ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate tools for despots and democracies.

The Great Greenwashing

John Pabon

Black Inc

$35

Saving the planet is big business. Realising this, savvy companies are hopping on the sustainability bandwagon. Some may have altruistic ends in mind, but most want to make a quick buck. As ethical spending and consumer options increase, greenwashing is not only proliferating, it’s also becoming harder to discern, so how is someone at the supermarket supposed to decipher all this?

In The Great Greenwashing, John Pabon pulls no punches in arming consumers and business professionals with the tools they need to educate themselves, filter out the BS from the truth, and make a positive impact.

Dispatches from the Diaspora

Gary Younge

For the past three decades Gary Younge has had a ringside seat during the biggest events and with the most significant personalities to impact the black diaspora: accompanying Nelson Mandela on his first election campaign, joining revellers on the southside of Chicago during Obama’s victory, entering New Orleans days after hurricane Katrina or interviewing Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Stormzy and Maya Angelou. Dispatches From the Diaspora, analyses how much change is possible and the power of systems to thwart those aspirations.

Escape from Kabul

Levison Wood and Geraint Jones

The evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 will go down in military history as one of the most unexpected events in modern times. The collapse of the Afghan government and its army and the rise of the Taliban shocked the world. As the Taliban went door to door to execute “collaborators”, a small international task force set out on a daring mission to evacuate as many Afghans and their families as possible. Escape from Kabul is the harrowing true story of Operation Pitting and the Kabul airlift told through first-hand accounts, including politicians, officers, interpreters and soldiers of the Afghan Special Forces.

Anne Boleyn and Elizabeth 1

Tracy Borman

Anne Boleyn is a subject of enduring fascination. By far the most famous of Henry VIII’s six wives, she has inspired books, documentaries and films, and is the subject of intense debate even today, almost 500 years after her violent death. Piecing together evidence from original documents and artefacts, this book sheds new light on two of the most famous and influential women in history.

Fortune’s Bazaar Vaudine England

Many of Hong Kong’s most influential figures during its first century as a city were neither British nor Chinese. England describes those overlooked in history including the opium-traders who built synagogues or churches, ship-owners carrying gold-rush migrants, property tycoons, and more. Fortune’s Bazaar is a vibrant new history of Hong Kong that reveals the untold stories of the diverse peoples who have made it a multicultural world metropolis.

Allen & Unwin

Scribe

Penguin

Faber

Peter Turchin

Hodder & Stoughton

Hodder & Stoughton

$35 Corsair

Explore Australia

$17

Black Inc

$28

Black Inc

$35

Voice to Parliament Handbook

Thomas Mayo and Kerry O’Brien

Indigenous leader Thomas Mayo and acclaimed journalist Kerry O’Brien have written this handbook to answer the most commonly asked questions about why the Voice to Parliament should be enshrined in the Constitution, and how it might function to improve policies affecting Indigenous communities, and genuinely close the gap on inequalities. This guide offers simple explanations you can share among friends, family and community networks in the buildup to the referendum.

Quarterly Essay 90

In this compelling essay, Megan Davis draws out the significance and the promise of the Voice to Parliament and what it could mean for recognition and justice. Davis presents it as an Australian solution to an Australian problem. For Indigenous people, it is a practical response to “the torment of powerlessness”. She highlights the failure of past policies, in areas from child protection to closing the gap, and the urgent need for change.

Mind of the Nation

Michael Wesley

In this eloquent book, Michael Wesley investigates the forces shaping Australia’s universities and their relationship to Australian society. Are universities too commercial? Do they provide value? Are they inclusive? Are they underfunded? What do we want from these institutions, especially post-COVID? Unless a new national vision for higher education is found, Australia’s universities could be set for decline. This is a groundbreaking examination of universities in Australian life – and, more than that, of the “mind of the nation”.

Prudish Nation

Paul Dalgarno

Interviewing more than 30 Australia-based authors and thinkers while examining his own journey towards being openly nonmonogamous, Paul Dalgarno pulls together social history and first-hand accounts of what it means to have “unconventional” relationships in 21st-century Australia. Do terms such as LGBTQIA+ help or hinder progress? How does transitioning now compare to transitioning in the 1990s? Entertaining, insightful, funny and thoughtprovoking, Prudish Nation adjusts the country’s bedside lamp to show us a little more clearly who and what we really are.

Archipelago of Us

Renee Pettitt-Shipp

Five years after first living in the Indian Ocean Territories, Renee Pettitt-Schipp finds herself returning, haunted by memories of the asylum seekers she taught there in Australia’s detention system. Why do the islands still have a hold on her and why are her memories such troubled ones? Closer to Indonesia than Australia, Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands are out of sight and out of mind to most Australians, but they are the sites of some of our frontier wars, the places where our identity is laid bare and where there is time and space enough to ask, can we be better than this?

Back to Bangka

Georgina Banks

Bangka Strait, Indonesia, 1942. Allied ships are evacuating thousands from Singapore. One ship, the Vyner Brooke, is badly bombed and sinks. Its survivors swim for hours to the nearest land, a beach on Bangka Island, but it is soon discovered the place is occupied by Japanese forces. One of the survivors is Australian Army nurse Dorothy “Bud” Elmes, the great-aunt of Georgina Banks. Banks retraces Bud’s steps in Indonesia, and then deep in archives back in Australia. Back to Bangka is a deeply moving intergenerational family story; a gripping retelling and investigation of events that throw a spotlight on women in wartime.

Red, White & Blown: Is the United States of America a Cult?

Guy Rundle

Renowned journalist Guy Rundle uses reports from the 2022 midterm US elections and a series of non-political stories to make the argument that the US is best seen as a cult that is now experiencing the morbid symptoms of its failure. Rundle argues that thinking about the US in this way means that much that is inexplicable about it slots into place. Red, White & Blown poses the question: why are we slavishly attaching ourselves to a cult with a death wish, when in our history we have successfully avoided the very things that have made the US so?

$30

Black Inc

Fremantle

Megan Davis

Viking

Hardie Grant

Being Human Lewis Dartnell

Humans are a wonder of evolution. Powerful yet dextrous, instinctive yet thoughtful, we are expert communicators and innovators. Our exceptional abilities have created the civilisation we know today. But we’re also deeply flawed. Our bodies break. Diseases thwart our boldest plans. Lewis Dartnell explores how our biology has shaped our relationships, our societies, our economies, and our wars – and how it continues to challenge and define our progress. $35

Blue Machine

From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, Helen Czerski explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls of the ocean’s complex, interlinked system. Timely, elegant and passionately argued, Blue Machine draws on years of experience at the forefront of marine science and captures the magnitude and subtlety of this complex force.

The Trials of Life David Attenborough

$35

This is the third and last of Sir David Attenborough’s great natural history books based on his TV series and completes his survey of the animal world that began with Life on Earth and continued with Living Planet In Life on Earth, Sir David showed how each group of animals evolved. In Living Planet he looked at the way they have adapted to the whole range of habitats in which they live. Now, in Trials of Life, he completes the story by revealing how animals behave – and why.

Sci-fi & Fantasy

Perilous Times

Thomas D. Lee

For hundreds of years Sir Kay and his fellow knights of the round table have been woken from their long slumber whenever Britain had need of them; they fought at Agincourt and at the Somme. But now a dragon has been seen for the first time in centuries and there are rumours of Arthur himself returning. And Kay is not the only ancient thing to come crawling up out of the ground; Lancelot is back as well, Thomas D. Lee mixes Arthurian legend with contemporary fantasy in this sharply witty and relevant debut novel.

The Dark Cloud

Guillaume Pitron

A simple “like” sent from our smartphones mobilises what will soon constitute the largest infrastructure built by man. In The Dark Cloud, Guillaume Pitron investigates the underbelly of digital technology, addressing the pressing question of the carbon footprint it leaves behind. He reveals not only how costly the virtual world is, but how damaging it is to the environment.

Powering Up

Alan Finkel

Former chief scientist Alan Finkel shares his compelling insights and expertise and makes the case for Australia leading the way in the global transition to clean energy. Finkel considers the entire supply chain, from raw materials through power infrastructure, the workforce, transportation and household customers. He reveals the outlines of a new geo-economic order and explains in persuasive, practical terms how we can get there.

How to Stay Smart in a Smart World

Gerd Gigerenzer

$27

Drawing on examples from all spheres of life – media literacy, online dating, self-driving cars, the justice system, health records –Gerd Gigerenzer shows how, when it comes to data and decision making, the elegant and nuanced simplicity of human reasoning beats complex algorithms time and time again. Filled with practical examples and cutting-edge research, How to Stay Smart in a Smart World is a liferaft in a sea of information and an invitation to shape the digital world in which we want to live.

Winter’s Gifts

Ben Aaronovitch

A brand new stand-alone novella in the bestselling Rivers of London series. FBI Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds leaves Quantico for snowbound Northern Wisconsin, where she finds that a tornado has flattened half the town – and there’s no sign of retired FBI Agent Patrick Henderson. As the clues lead to the coldest of cold cases – a cursed expedition into the frozen wilderness – Reynolds follows a trail from the start of the American nightmare, to the horror that still lives on today.

Jonathan Cape

HarperCollins

Torva

Black Inc

Helen Czerski

Penguin

Hachette

Hachette

Scribe

Winter reading is upon us and we’ve been cosying up in our reading socks (yes, they’re a real thing and we sell them!) with a smashing selection of new books. So, what are we reading?

Dasha is first cab off the rank and recommends the translated French bestseller My Husband by Maud Ventura. This is one messed-up story about a wife driven to obsess over her husband and marriage – EVERY painstaking detail of their relationship. Despite this description (!), the book is completely enthralling and you’ll be waiting for the other shoe to drop. (Letitia loved this one too.)

If you want to escape the winter cold and imagine yourself pool-side, Dasha recommends The Guest by Emma Cline, an engaging, psychological, dream-like novel by bestselling author of The Girls (that wild novel about the Manson murders).

Letitia has been talking non-stop about Australian debut novel Girl in a Pink Dress by Kylie Needham – describing it as “flawless”. A woman’s story from muse to esteemed painter, this novel traverses the art world, power, sex, young love, tenderness and fury. Exceptional.

Is sapphic academia a category of literature? Seems so. Mrs. S by K. Patrick is a swoon-worthy novel set in a privileged English boarding school. An Australian matron, the beautiful wife of the headmaster … what could go wrong? A smouldering debut.

Also, don’t miss The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan, a very astute, funny and touching novel about modern relationships and marriage.

Our newest bookselling recruit Lachlan might be late to the Outback Noir Crime Party, but is making up for time with Hayley Scrivenor’s Dirt Town (General Fiction Book of the Year at the ABIA Awards!). It’s a book that transcends crime, with characters you’ll fall for and a truly heartbreaking resolution. Lachlan also inhaled The Rush by Michelle Prak, a turn-of-the-screw type thrill ride set in the South Australian outback. Part Wolf Creek, part The Hunted, and breathlessly paced.

Do you follow us on Instagram? Please do so and enjoy our posts about the dogs and cats who visit our store, new releases, author signings and general bookshop tomfoolery :) See you soon friends.

The Dully Dispatch

Lachlan is also looking forward to The Compost Coach by (ex) inner westie Kate Flood (aka @compostablekate). Whether you’re a novice or dab hand, this book has everything you need to know about compost bins, worm farms and Bokashi.

For non-fiction readers, Koko recommends The Memory of Trees by Viki Cramer, which explores what it means to be a part of a place and community, and the role of the natural landscape. Cramer’s love for the Australian landscape is palpable - this is a persuasive cry for the conservation of trees. Koko also recommends Eda Gunaydin’s Root and Branch, a relatable and witty collection of essays reflecting the experiences of women, Sydneysiders and Turkish Australia.

And for poetry lovers, Arwen recommends the incomparable Mary Oliver. Oliver’s collection of love poetry, Felicity, explores the beauty of human connection and the art of loving the strangeness of the world. The most tender archivist of the landscape, Oliver delves into the sacred and the profane to uplift and inspire the lover in us all.

Soren recently read the middle-grade novel Loki by Louie Stowell, which was funny and quirky and reminiscent of Adrian Mole (remember Adrian and his pimples and poetry?). Soren is completely hooked. Soren also re-read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut and found it even better than the first time.

Isn’t it great when that happens? Truly remarkable stuff.

Woodslane

$50

A Conscious Garden

Rebecca Sullivan

Grow your sustainable gardening skills with expert tips on making the most of your soil and space, companion planting and how to plant vegetables and herbs, must-grow medicinal and food plants, simple composting and mulching, natural pest deterrents and harnessing the power of worm farms, bee hotels and pollination. Coupled with recipes and crafty garden party ideas that save you time, money and stress, Rebecca Sullivan’s eco-conscious tips make gardening simple and stress-free.

Knife Drop: Creative Recipes

Vietnamese Vegetarian Uyen Luu

A collection of delicious vegetarian Vietnamese food, Vietnamese Vegetarian showcases more than 80 of the tastiest vegetarian Vietnamese recipes, including quick dishes such as sweet potato noodles with roasted fennel and sweetheart cabbage and grilled vegetable banh mi, along with dishes fit for a feast, such as mushroom and tofu pho and rice paper pizza, and sweet treats like rainbow dessert and lotus and sweet potato rice pudding. Uyen Luu also provides tips and tricks for adapting the recipes for alternative ingredients.

Simply Scandinavian

$50

Great food doesn’t have to be over the top, fussy, or time intensive to be amazing. In this foundational cookbook, Nick DiGiovanni gives you the tools to become fearless in the kitchen and create unapologetically delicious meals. Building on a foundation of staple recipes such as basic pasta dough and homemade butter, Nick shares a mouthwatering selection of his favourite recipes including custard yoghurt toast, grilled peach burrata salad, smoked bacon carbonara, and his signature MasterChef chocolate pie.

Of Cabbages and Kimchi

James Read

Particular Books

$45

In this playful and accessible guide to fermenting at home, James Read, the founder of Kim Kong Kimchi, demonstrates how the microbial process works, then shares his recipes for recreating these delights in your own kitchen without specialist equipment. Alongside his recipes, he investigates the extraordinary cultural and historic backgrounds of fermented foods, exploring how the microbes that bring them to life have developed alongside our culinary evolution. Featuring more than 50 recipes and packed to the brim with essential howto information, Of Cabbages and Kimchi will help you create, understand and appreciate fermentation’s bubbling magic.

Anastasia Miari

$45

Courgettes from Lesvos. A Tinian fourtalia. Corfiot spicy bourdeto stew. Ionian pasta dishes. Cretan Dakos salad. Watermelon cake from Milos. Yiayia maps out the diverse dishes of Greece – far beyond the most commonlyknown moussaka, Greek salad, and tzatziki dip – through the fascinating recipes and stories of its Yiayiades. With stunning location photography and heart-warming interviews, you will discover the true food of Greece and the characterful grandmothers behind it.

Trine Hahnemann

Simply Scandinavian celebrates the abundance of produce that each new season brings and the simple ways in which it can be enjoyed. In a nod to the Scandinavian way of eating, the book offers more than 80 unpretentious and straightforward dishes with a focus on ease of cooking and seasonality. By showing just how achievable it is to get amazing flavours out of just a handful of good ingredients, Trine Hahnemann creates solutions for easy breakfasts, mid-week meals and simple but impressive ways to entertain family and friends. This is an uncomplicated and greener way to cook and eat, from an expert in Scandinavian cookery.

Bao Family

Celine Chung

Full of recipes sharing their love of bao as well as other Chinese dishes, the Bao Family cookbook symbolises the bridge between two cultures: the traditions of China and the modernity of Parisian life. Through more than 80 classic yet accessible and playful recipes, Celine Chung and her family push back against the stereotypes surrounding Chinese cooking and pay tribute to its diversity and regionality.

What’s for Dinner?

Jill Griffiths

Never before has so much food been produced by so few people to feed so many. Never before have Australian consumers been so disconnected from their food production, yet so interested in how it is done. What’s for Dinner? delves into the way our food is grown and our responsibilities as eaters. Weaving together science, history and lived experience, What’s for Dinner? takes readers on a journey to meet the plants, animals and people who put the food on our plates.

Alpha Books

Yiayia

Hardie Grant

Hardie Grant

Nick DiGiovanni

Quadrille

Murdoch

Thames & Hudson

Beazley: A Biography

Peter FitzSimons HarperCollins Publishers

Australia, 1998

First Edition vii, 467pp.

Hardcover

Black and white photographs, endnotes, bibliography, index

Foreword by [then] British Prime Minister Tony Blair

Signed on the half title page by former Prime Ministers Paul Keating [1991-1996]; Gough Whitlam [1972-1975]; Kim Beazley and author Peter FitzSimons. Signed on the title page by former Prime Minister Bob Hawke [1983-1991].

Slightly rolled. Age-toned text block. Browned edges but otherwise clean and bright. Dustjacket lightly rubbed.

PRICE: $500

Reid All About It

The Special Relationship (2010) is one of my favourite films. Set between 1997 and 2001, it portrays the UK-US relationship between Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton – wonderfully played by Michael Sheen and Dennis Quaid. It depicts Blair’s massive, 179-seat majority win in the May 1997 UK general election, and a subsequent state visit by Bill and Hillary Clinton. In a private meeting, Bill maps out the political future to an awe-struck Tony:

“Progressive centre-left politics is the future … There’s nothing we can’t accomplish. We have a unique opportunity to put right-wing politics out of business for a generation. I’ve got three more years. Al Gore, that’s eight years right there. In Europe, you’re just getting started.”

Tony is equally enthusiastic: “There’s Persson in Sweden, Schroeder in Germany, beyond that Cardoso in Brazil. You’re right!” Clinton sums it up:

Tuesday July 27 1998, Sydney: Labor Party luminaries gather to celebrate the launch of ALP opposition leader Kim Beazley’s biography by Peter FitzSimons, with a foreword by Tony Blair who has lauded Beazley as “this principled man ... I am proud to call a friend”. The federal election is just two months away. Beazley has been opposition leader unopposed since 1996, following Labor’s election loss to John Howard. Two years later, Beazley seems to be Prime Minister-in-waiting following the decline in Howard’s popularity after breaking a commitment not to introduce a goods and services tax.

I was travelling in Germany – meeting my future wife – and voted at the Australian Consulate in Bonn. I had received a postcard from a good mate in Melbourne with a prediction that “Labor would scrape back in on public loathing of the GST.”

Big Kim could have been forgiven for feeling the same. Alas, the results saw the ALP gain a 215,000 majority of the twoparty-preferred vote (50.98% to 49.02%) over the LiberalNational Party Coalition – a 4.5 % swing, a gain of 14 seats – and fail to win office. Beazley would continue as ALP leader and suffer a second loss in 2001. Yet at that July launch anything must have seemed possible. A time when it seemed that Kim Christian Beazley was about to join the Political Leaders Club on the “right side of history”.

“People are ready for this. We’re on the right side of history.”

BOOKS THAT MAKE YOU THINK.

‘For lovers of Australian cinema this is a must-read!’ MARGARET POMERANZ

‘Essential reading for anyone with a serious

interest in how power has been exercised in this country.’

FRANK BONGIORNO

Early Readers

Football Fever 4: Gala Day

Kristin Darell

The eyes of the world will be on Australia and New Zealand as they host the ninth FIFA Women’s World Cup this July and August. Football Fever 4: Gala Day, which arrives just in time for kick-off, is the fourth instalment in the Football Fever series and tells the stories of the players in the Under 11s Merridale Fever as they strive to win against all odds. $15

Fiction

The Unlikely Heroes Club

Kate Foster

$17

Underdogs 5: Fish for Trouble

Kate and Jol Temple

The Underdogs are overdue for a holiday! So when the Mayor of Cape Dog asks for help catching a mysterious sea monster that is terrifying the citizens – the Underdogs head for the coast! Will they be able to catch this mystery monster? Will they find the missing Top Dogs? And will Carl get to go on the Splashinator ride at the brand-new Wet Dog Waterpark? Join the crew as the Underdogs set sail on ruff seas in their fishiest mystery ever!

Sunshine on Vinegar Street

Karen Comer

$17 Walker

Eleven-year-old Oli is spending his school holidays at Heroes Club, where kids can build friendships and learn about their emotions, but Oli just wants to be home, where it’s familiar, not-so-boring and he can play his favourite game. But when Oli and the other kids at the club see a stray dog who keeps disappearing into a soon-to-be-demolished building across the street, he and his four fellow heroes hatch a daring rescue plan to save the dog before it’s too late.

TALES AND TAILS

WHEN 8 July, 10:30 am WHERE Foley Park, opposite Gleebooks

$18

Freya’s world is turned upside down when she and her mum move to inner-city Melbourne. Freya is afraid of lifts and the new apartment is on the 11th floor. She’s stuck in a new basketball team where not everyone likes a new star player and she’s stuck in a classroom of kids who don’t know she is a donor-conceived baby. Being the new girl makes Freya feel like a dark cloud on a summer’s day. This is a sweet and emotional novel about friendship, family and accepting change.

Join author Mick Elliott for a free storytime day out as he reads his book Dads and Dogs. All parents and pooches are welcome – and anyone else who loves picture books, reading and having fun. It will be a barking good time for all!

It’s the Sound of the Thing

Maxine Beneba Clarke

This extraordinary collection celebrates the joy of language with relatable poems about everyday life through haiku, sonnets, narrative verse, rhyming couplets, limericks and free verse. There are poems about candy, peanut butter and pets; about a big brother’s messy room, a grandfather’s fading memory and a grandmother’s garden magic. Maxine Beneba Clarke invites readers to fall in love with the wonder that is poetry.

My Heart Was a Tree

Inspired by the woods around his home, and by the mighty forests that support our life on Earth, this book is Michael Morpurgo’s love letter to trees. There are stories from an ancient olive remembering Odysseus and Penelope, and from a eucalyptus that gave shelter to a koala; from a piece of driftwood that was made into a chair, and from a tiny sapling carried by a refugee as a reminder of home. These are poems and stories that will amuse, move and energise readers of all ages.

Allen & Unwin

Puffin

Hardie Grant

Hardie Grant $23

Macmillan $40

Michael Morpurgo

One Little Duck

Katrina Germein and Danny Snell

HarperCollins $23

Oh no, Mother Duck has forgotten how to quack! Every day she tries a new barnyard call, and every night Little Duck returns with a new farm friend. The classic Five Little Ducks meets We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and I Went Walking in an irresistibly fresh, cute and clever picture book that preschoolers will love. From award-winning duo Katrina Germein and Danny Snell.

The

Mermaid Moon

Briony May Smith

Walker $28

Merrin has never been to Molly’s house; how can she visit when she is a mermaid, and has to stay underwater? But then comes the night of the Mermaid Moon, when sea creatures can fly through the air. Together, she and Molly visit the Mermaid Moon festival, eat ice cream, and ride on a swing in Molly’s garden. But trouble arises when it is time for Merrin to leave. If she doesn’t get back home before the moon sets, the Mermaid Moon magic will disappear from the earth forever. This magical picture book is perfect for all young mermaid lovers.

That Bird Has Arms

Kate and Jol Temple

Hardie Grant $23

Roy is an ordinary bird in every way. He is not the biggest, or the smallest. His squawk is not the loudest or the quietest. He even follows the same football team as everyone else. He was very normal except for one thing – he has ARMS. Absolutely nobody knows – and Roy would like to keep it that way. That Bird Has Arms is a story about difference and identity. It’s about learning to see that what sets you apart is what makes you strong, and it’s about pride in your own uniqueness.

This Is Not My Home

Vivienne Chang and Eugenia Yoh

Hachette $30

When Lily’s mum announces their family must move back to Taiwan to take care of her elderly Ah Ma, Lily is devastated to leave behind her whole life for a place that is most definitely not her home. But Lily soon realises, through the help of her family and friends, what home means to them. And perhaps someday – maybe not today, but someday – it might become her home too.

Once Upon a Book

Grace Lin and Kate Messner

Hachette $30

Alice loves to imagine herself in the magical pages of her favourite book. So when it flaps its pages and invites her in, she is swept away to a world of wonder and adventure, riding camels in the desert, swimming under the sea with colourful fish, floating in outer space, and more. But when her imaginative journey comes to an end, she yearns for the place she loves best of all. Paired with vibrant illustrations, this lyrical, expressive story invites the reader to indulge in the power of imagination.

The Gardening Dog

Cindy Wume

The gardening dog is never chosen to go home with anyone who visits the rescue centre where she lives. Instead she spends her time quietly growing beautiful plants. Then one day she meets a boy called Lewis, who much prefers drawing to running around with all the other children. Working together, Lewis and the gardening dog create a wonderful community garden for everyone to share – and as new shoots grow outside, they build a deep friendship that leads to a new start for them both.

Bidhi Galing: Big Rain

Anita Heiss

Simon & Schuster $25

Wagadhaany loved dancing in the rain and listening to her father, Yarri, tell her stories about life on Wiradyuri ngurambang. When white people started building on the floodplains, Yarri was worried. He knew the power of the bila and tried to warn the strangers, but they would not listen. Years later, the big rains came. This is the story of the Great Flood of Gundagai in 1852 and the Wiradyuri heroes, Yarri and Jacky Jacky, who paddled bark canoes through raging floodwaters, risking their lives to save countless others.

Feelings Are Wild

Sophy Williams and Gavin Scott

Allen & Unwin $20

Whether we are grumpy or glad, brave or sad, with a big hug, a kind word, or a little time we can embrace all our wild and wonderful emotions. With gorgeous illustrations and a delightful rhyming text, Feelings Are Wild is the perfect invitation for kids to talk about all the ways they feel.

Macmillan $15

Tamarra, A Story of Termites on Gurindji Country Anthology

Hardie Grant $30

Created as a collaboration between more than 30 First Nations and non-Indigenous contributors, the story and artworks explore how termites and their mounds connect different parts of Country, from tiny Gurindji babies and their loving grandmothers, to spiky spinifex plants growing in the hot sun.

This Book Thinks Ya Deadly!

Corey Tutt

Hardie Grant $35

This Book Thinks Ya Deadly! is an illustrated compendium that celebrates the diversity and success of First Nations People. It features the profiles of more than 70 Blakfellas who are doing deadly things across sport, art, activism and science, through to politics, education and literature. It showcases the careers and personal stories of First Nations people who have done great things, including Professor Marcia Langton, Miranda Tapsell, Danzal Baker (Baker Boy) and Adam Goodes.

Graphic Novel

Ember and the Island of the Lost Creatures

Jason Pamment

Allen

Fitting in can be hard when you’re as small as Ember. He’s hoping his luck changes when Lua, a sea turtle, escorts him across the ocean to a school on a wondrous island. Ember learns that first days can also be hard – especially when they involve fantastical cave-dwellers, storms and classmates that don’t want to make friends. As he struggles to adapt to his school, Ember finds himself at the heart of an otherworldly mystery, facing a strange monster from the deep.

Gleebooks book club

The World’s Most Atrocious Animals

Philip Bunting

The third title in the series from Philip Bunting is filled with facts about some of the scariest creatures in the world. Meet the enormous murder hornets of east and south-east Asia, the poisonous blue-ringed octopus, Africa’s hungry but deadly hippos and some shocking electric eels, among many more. This guide to terrifying animals contains diagrams and fabulous facts that will teach kids about the animals we fear and whether their reputation is deserved.

Stone Age Beasts

Ben Lerwill

From the woolly mammoth to the fearsome sabre-toothed cat, and from the giant eagle to the six-metre snake slithering along the forest floor, this is an awesome introduction to prehistory’s biggest beasts. Featuring 18 animals from all over the world, illustrated by Kate Greenaway Medal-winning illustrator Grahame Baker-Smith, and packed with jawdropping facts, this is an absorbing journey through the Stone Age world.

Teen fiction & YA

We Didn’t Think It Through Gary Lonesborough

Jamie lives in Dalton’s Bay with Aunty Dawn and Uncle Bobby. After another episode of racist harassment from the local bullies, Jamie, Dally and Lenny decide to retaliate by vandalising their car. Then Dally changes the plan. But it’s a bad plan: Jamie ends up in the youth justice system where he must find a way to mend his relationships with himself, his friends, his family and his future.

Calling all bookworms: we want to hear about your favourite reads! We’d love to feature more of our wonderful book clubbers in our Gleaner magazine. So if you’ve got a book you’d love to review or if you want to write about an author that’s visiting, send us an email at rachel@ gleebooks.com.au. We have exciting giveaways waiting for you!

Hamlet Is Not OK R.A. Spratt

Selby’s parents have found out she hasn’t read any books for her English class and sentence her to hard labour – working with Dan, a tutor, to try and catch up. Dan doesn’t just make Selby read Hamlet, he makes her read it out loud. And that’s when magic happens: Selby and Dan are drawn down through the words and into the play itself. They become characters in the heart-wrenching story, buffeted about in the storm of Shakespeare’s language and ideas. Equal parts funny, shocking, clever and thought-provoking, Hamlet Is Not Ok is a unique story where Shakespearean moral dilemmas meet the contemporary teenage experience.

Hardie Grant $30

Walker Books $33

Puffin $17

Allen & Unwin $20

& Unwin $20

Penguin

$40

The Feminist Killjoy Handbook

Sara Ahmed

Do colleagues roll their eyes in a meeting when you use words like sexism or racism? Do you refuse to laugh at jokes that aren’t funny? Then you are a feminist killjoy, and this handbook is for you. Drawing on her own stories and those of others, especially Black and brown feminists and queer thinkers, Sara Ahmed combines depth of thought with honesty and intimacy. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook unpicks the lies our culture tells us and provides a form of solidarity that can be returned to over a lifetime.

What the Greeks Did for Us

$42

Cambridge University Press

$38

Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic” or a replica of the Parthenon in a Chinese theme park, ancient Greek culture shapes our lives. Tony Spawforth explores our classical heritage and reveals its legacy in everything from religion to popular culture and examines the darker side of Greek influence – from the Nazis’ obsession with Spartan “racial purity” to the elitism of classical education.

You Can’t Always Say What You Want

Dennis Baron

The freedom to think what you want and to say what you think has always generated a pushback of regulation and censorship. We are living in a free speech paradox: powerful speakers weaponise their rights in order to silence those who oppose them. To what extent does free speech endanger speech protection? This book examines calls for speech legislation and places it into perspective using examples from the past 200 years. By understanding how things have changed, we can stand up to threats to the freedom of speech.

Cosmography and Geography of Africa

Johannes Leo Africanus

$27 Penguin

In 1518, al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, a Moroccan diplomat, was seized by pirates while travelling in the Mediterranean. Brought before Pope Leo X, he was persuaded to convert to Christianity, in the process taking the name Johannes Leo Africanus. Acclaimed for his learning, Leo would in time write his masterpiece, The Cosmography and the Geography of Africa. It was the first book about Africa, and would remain central to the European understanding of Africa for more than 300 years. This is the first new translation in more than 400 years of one of the great works of the Renaissance.

On Our Best Behaviour

Elise Loehnen

Lust. Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride. These so-called deadly sins, consecrated as an essential pillar of divinity, have been used by the patriarchy to control women, in particular, and keep them small throughout our history. For instance, a fear of gluttony drives us to ignore our appetites and an aversion to greed prevents us from negotiating a better salary. What would happen if we stopped trying to be good? A bold and daring denouncement of that which has been used to condemn badly behaving women, On Our Best Behavior asks: what does it mean to be good, particularly as a woman, in today’s world?

On Women

Susan Sontag

On Women brings together Susan Sontag’s most fearless and incisive writing on women, a crucial aspect of her work that has not until now received the attention it deserves. For the most part written in the 1970s during the height of second-wave feminism, Sontag’s essays are strikingly relevant to our contemporary conversations. At times powerfully in sync and at others powerfully at odds with them, they are always characteristically original in their examinations of the “biological division of labour”, the double-standard for ageing and the dynamics of women’s powerlessness and women’s power.

The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing

Hannah Dawson

The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing is a global anthology examining the diverse and often contradictory ways in which women have written of their pain and exclusion, the strategies they have employed to fight back, and the joy, power, and sisterhood that they have won. Beginning in the 15th century with Christine de Pizan, who imagined a City of Ladies that would serve as a refuge from the harassment of men, the book reaches around the whole earth and through history to us, now, splashing about in the fourth wave. It goes beyond the usual white, Western story, attentive also to class, capitalism and colonialism, and to the other axes of oppression that intersect with sexism.

John Wiley

$35 Bloomsbury

Tony Spawforth

$30

Hamish Hamilton

$55 Penguin

Selected Poems

$15

Little published in her lifetime, Lesbia Harford died young in the late 1920s. Her short lyrical poems about social justice, revolution, free love, feminism and the experience of women display a candour and dynamism unusual for her time and place. This essential new selection of her finest work, chosen and introduced by Gerald Murnane, reaffirms Harford’s position as one of Australia’s preeminent modern poets.

Super Infinite

$45 Bloomsbury

Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in 100 Pieces

Norman Lebrecht

$35

In his myriad lives John Donne was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, a priest, an MP – and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. Along the way he converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a 16-year-old girl without her father’s consent; struggled to feed a family of 10 children; and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of misery, yet expressed in his verse many breathtaking impressions of electric joy and love. This is a sparkling and very modern biography.

Bird’s Eye View

$33 Black Inc

$20

Flying high above us, or landing at our feet; chattering in the park and wheeling in the air; in the forest and the plain, the land and the sea, the city and the country, birds live alongside us, with our world, and their world, touching and meeting in a special kind of many-voiced, many-winged magic. Bird’s Eye View is an enchanting, short collection of poetry and prose by award-winning writer Sophie Masson, with vivid pictures by acclaimed illustrator Lorena Carrington.

Coastal Poetry

Libby Hathorn and Elizabeth Cummings

Local writers Libby Hathorn and Elizabeth Cummings were unusually busy during Covid, exploring the coastal wonders of some of the eastern coastline of Sydney. They responded in poetry to time spent at beaches and on boardwalks from Yarra Bay to Watsons Bay; and Coastal Poetry with its artful photographic depictions of each beach is the result. This unique publication gives insight into the by-the-sea treasures of life in the writers’ local environment celebrating the wonders of nature by the sea.

Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn’t exist. There would be no Wagner, Verdi, Mahler, Nina Simone, Michael Jackson or Ed Sheeran. Norman Lebrecht asks: Why? Who was this titan of world culture? In 100 recordings, freely available on Idagio and YouTube, Lebrecht brings to life the composer as we have never seen him before. Unruly, offensive and hopeless in his housekeeping, yes, but devoted to his art: conquering deafness to pen the Missa Solemnis. In this salacious and salutary biography, Beethoven emerges as the cornerstone of the world.

Half Deaf, Completely Mad

Tony Cohen and John Olsen

Masterful music producer-engineer Tony Cohen defined Australia’s punk and rock sounds in the late ’70s and ’80s. His long and celebrated career took him from the studios of Melbourne and Sydney to West Berlin and London’s Abbey Road, working with innumerable bands up until his death in 2017. In candid reflections, Tony remembers his decades-long relationship with Nick Cave along with behind-thescenes anecdotes of classic recordings by The Ferrets, Laughing Clowns, Models, The Reels, The Go-Betweens, Hunters & Collectors, Cold Chisel, Beasts of Bourbon, The Saints, the Cruel Sea, Paul Kelly and so many more. Half Deaf, Completely Mad is an exuberant, hilarious, tragic and triumphant memoir that reveals a chaotic genius who lived hard and LOUD.

Human Frailty: Hunters & Collectors

Jon Stratton

Released in 1986, Hunters and Collectors album Human Frailty is one of the most important Australian albums of the last two decades of the 20th century. It was pivotal in the group’s career and marked a move into pub rock. The album challenged traditional understandings of Australian masculinity while playing music to predominantly male audiences. The second track on the album, Throw Your Arms Around Me has become an Australian standard. Jon Stratton takes a look at Human Frailty and examines the legacy of an album that transcended the critical categories of its time.

Lesbia Harford

Text Pub

Sophie Masson

Peribo

Faber & Faber

Peribo

Katherine Rundell

$23

Bloomsbury $23

$120 Abrams

Chronorama

Conde Nast Archive

“Chrono”, referring to space-time, and rama, referring to sight, are the cornerstones of this notable art record that depicts the third decade of the 21st century, a decade that had the potential to be another Roaring 20s, and during which, Condé Nast Publications experienced meteoric growth. Taken from the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, House & Garden, GQ, and Glamor, the nearly 400 stunning original vintage prints and illustrations are by top photographers such as Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Eduardo Garcia Benito, Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, and Arthur Elgort. It’s an unprecedented showcase of some of the most important works ever to be produced for the magazine page.

Tiny Living Spaces

Lisa Baker

Portraits 1964: Eyes of the Storm

Paul McCartney

$80

The trend towards the Tiny House – and also the Micro Flat – is more than just a short-term hype. It is an attitude towards life, a contemplation on the essentials to which more and more people are attracted. All over the world, houses and housing units in mini format are en vogue. For many, they are the only way to fulfil the dream of owning one’s own home. These carefully selected projects show how space can be gained by concentrating on substantial, intelligent floor plans and well thought-out storage solutions. They highlight in very different ways that great living quality can be wonderfully made possible in a small space through a clever design.

Ai WeiWei: Making Sense

Justin McGuirk

Artist, film-maker, architect, activist, collector – whatever mode Ai Weiwei is in, he is trying to tell us something about the state of the world. Confronted by the rapid pace of change in his country, Ai became fascinated by Chinese antiquities. His vast collections of historical artefacts, from Stone Age tools to broken teapot spouts, attest to the way the language of objects speaks across the ages. Is this a classic tale of technical progress, or have we lost crucial qualities with the march of time? Ai invites us to make sense of these objects as he explores the tensions between past and present, hand and machine, precious and worthless.

In 2020, an extraordinary trove of nearly 1,000 photographs taken by Paul McCartney was rediscovered in his archive. The photographs are McCartney’s personal record of the beginning of Beatlemania, when he was, as he puts it, in the “eyes of the storm”. The book of the same name presents 275 of McCartney’s photographs, including never-before-seen portraits of John, George and Ringo.

Portraits

$140 Penguin

Text Publishing

$65

Australian designer W. H. Chong is a wellknown book designer, but he is also a master of the portrait. The 300 works in this book are taken from drawings and paintings he has made over the past five-to-10 years and include Benjamin Law, David Malouf, Gareth Liddiard, Gerald Murnane, Helen Garner, Jack Charles, Kate Grenville, Les Murray, Michelle de Kretser, Paul Kelly and more. Portraits is a joyous love letter to those who have followed their passions down less-travelled roads, our culture-makers in all their inspiring variety.

How Ideas Are Born

Miguel Angel Perez Arteaga

$70

An insightful and visually rich book about illustration and the origins of creativity featuring the work of 26 illustrators. The visual elements are complemented by revealing interviews with each artist in which they discuss what compelled them to become illustrators, their inspirations, and the research, methods, personal philosophies and work processes that allow them to transform a creative impulse or an emotion into an idea, and an idea into a work of art.

Braun Publishing AG

Peribo

W.H. Chong

$65

Design Museum Publishing

$35 Penguin

The Well-Lived Life Gladys McGarey

The Well-Lived Life offers a counterintuitive approach to living a rich, full, and purposeful life that isn’t about conserving energy, but rather about spending it wildly. By inspiring readers to find their ”juice” and live in alignment with their true purpose, offering them healing at the deepest level – in body, mind, and spirit and by sharing stories of miraculous healing from her patients as well as from her own extraordinary life, Dr. Gladys will transform how readers think not only about health and healing, but ultimately a satisfying life.

Bringing Up Boys Who Like Themselves

Kasey Edwards & Christopher Scanlon

$30 Scribe

The Autists

Until the 1980s, autism was regarded as a condition found mostly in boys. Even in our time, autistic girls and women have largely remained invisible. When portrayed in popular culture, women on the spectrum often appear simply as copies of their male counterparts – talented and socially awkward. In The Autists, Clara Tornvall reclaims the language to describe autism and explores the autistic experience in arts and culture throughout history. She examines what it might mean to re-read creative works through an autistic lens – what we might discover if we allow perspectives beyond the neurotypical to take centre stage.

$35 Penguin

Following the success of Raising Girls Who Like Themselves, Kasey Edwards and Dr Christopher Scanlon have written a muchrequested book about raising boys. With their trademark warmth, wit and positive outlook, the authors offer techniques to help your boy prepare for whatever life throws at him. It’s an indispensable guide to supporting boys to grow up to be emotionally intelligent, thriving young men.

Your Brain on Art

Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

Canongate

$40

Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as 45 minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience a month can extend your life by 10 years. Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Renée Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain on Art weaves research and insights from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.

Deeper Mindfulness Mark Williams and Danny Penman

In this follow-up to the million-copy bestseller Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Professor Mark Williams and Dr Danny Penman reunite to show readers how to use the foundations of mindfulness to rediscover calm and reclaim your life in our chaotic world. Proven effective at treating anxiety, stress and depression, the practices in Deeper Mindfulness offer a new and more fruitful direction for both novice and experienced meditators. $35

In Praise of Failure Costica Bradatan

Squarely challenging a culture obsessed with success, an acclaimed philosopher argues that failure is vital to a life well lived, curing us of arrogance and self-deception and engendering humility instead. Our obsession with success is hard to overlook. Everywhere we compete, rank, and measure. Yet this relentless drive to be the best blinds us to something vitally important: the need to be humble in the face of life’s challenges. Costica Bradatan mounts his case for failure through the stories of Simone Well, Mahatma Gandhi, Emil Cioran and Yukio Mishima who led lives of impact and meaning, and assiduously courted failure. Their struggles show that engaging with our limitations can be not just therapeutic but transformative.

Being You: The Body Image Book for Boys

Charlotte Markey, Daniel Hart and Douglas Zacher

From early childhood boys often feel pressured to be athletic and muscular. But what impact does this have on physical and mental well-being through their teens and beyond? What can we tell our boys to help them feel happy and confident simply being themselves? Being You is an easy-toread guide to developing a positive body image for boys aged 12+. It covers all the facts on puberty, diet, exercise, self-care, mental health, social media, and everything in between. Boys will find answers to the questions most on their mind, the truth behind many diet and exercise myths, and real-life stories from other boys.

Hachette

Clara Tornvall

$56

John Wiley

$19

Cambridge University Press

Specials

The Art of Logic in an Illogical World by Eugenia Cheng, was $50

Autobiography of a Snake by Andy Warhol was $30

Come Closer & Listen: New Poems by Charles Simic, was $45

The Committed by Viet Tanh Nguyen was $40

The Happiness Philosophers by Bart Schultz was $60

Complete Claudine by Colette, was $35

Now$16.95

The Heart of Things by Richard Holloway was $34.99

Kafka: The Early Years by Reiner Stach, was $60

Land of Tears by Robert Harms, was $50

The Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll, was $35

Correspondence by Guy Debord, was $30

Now$14.95

Crusaders by Dan Jones, was $50

Now$19.95

East Indies by Ian Burnet, was $30

Now$14.95

Flames of Extinction by John Pickrell, was $30

Now$14.95

The Global Age by Ian Kershaw, was $50

Now$19.95

The Great Gatsby graphic novel by Nicki Greenberg, was $50

Now$19.95

Specials

Lotharingia by Simon Winder, was $50

Max Beckmann at the Saint Louis Art Museum, was $120

Mountains of Parnassus, by Czeslaw Milosz $30

The Museum by Owen Hopkins, was $75

Now$39.95

Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem by Robert C. Holub, was $50

Now$19.95

Virginia Woolf by Gillian Gill, was $40

Now$17.95

War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan, was $60

Simple Table, Everyday by Michele Cranston, was $39.95

Now$17.95

Verdi: The Man Revealed by John Suchet, was $50

Now$19.95

Writers’ Letters by Michael & Orlando Bird, was $40

Now$14.95

One Last Song by Mike Ayers, was $30

Now$14.95

Oscar & Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, was $40

Now$17.95

The Piranesi Effect by Kerrianne Stone & Gerard Vaughan, was $60

Now$19.95

A Primer for Forgetting, by Lewis Hyde, was $35

Now$16.95

A Short Life of Kierkegaard by Walter Lowrie, was $30

Now$14.95

Vanguard of the Revolution by James McAdams, was $50

Now$19.95

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