Abbey's Advocate
JUNE 2019 • Selected Titles • Printable Version
Advocate - Australian Fiction
abbeys.com.au
The White Girl
Tony Birch
$29.95
Paperback
Odette Brown has lived her whole life on the fringes of a small country town. Raising her granddaughter Sissy on her own, Odette has managed to stay under the radar of the welfare authorities who are removing Aboriginal children from their communities. When the menacing Sergeant Lowe arrives in town, determined to fully enforce the law, any freedom that Odette and Sissy enjoy comes under grave threat. Odette must make an impossible choice to protect her family.
In The White Girl, Tony Birch has created memorable characters whose capacity for love and courage are a timely reminder of the endurance of the human spirit.
'Birch has great empathy and a skilful pen to match.' - SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
In The White Girl, Tony Birch has created memorable characters whose capacity for love and courage are a timely reminder of the endurance of the human spirit.
'Birch has great empathy and a skilful pen to match.' - SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
A Lifetime of Impossible Days
Tabitha Bird
$32.99
Paperback • 400 pages
'Every so often a book comes along that reaffirms the glory and beauty of life. Tabitha Bird has gifted us this wonder' Cass Moriarty 'A magical tale of healing . . . it's sure to cast a spell over readers' Mindfood magazine Meet Willa Waters, aged 8 . . . 33 . . . and 93.
On one impossible day in 1965, eight-year-old Willa receives a mysterious box containing a jar of water and the instruction- 'One ocean- plant in the backyard.' So she does - and somehow creates an extraordinary time slip that allows her to visit her future selves.
On one impossible day in 1990, Willa is 33 and a mother-of-two when her childhood self magically appears in her backyard. But she's also a woman haunted by memories of her dark past - and is on the brink of a decision that will have tragic repercussions . . .
On one impossible day in 2050, Willa is a silver-haired, gumboot-loving 93-year-old whose memory is fading fast. Yet she knows there's something she has to remember, a warning she must give her past selves about a terrible event in 1990. If only she could recall what it was.
Can the three Willas come together, to heal their past and save their future, before it's too late?
'A wonderful debut . . . An uplifting story about the power of forgiveness, the ability to heal and the magical idea of being able to travel back in time to fix a broken future.' Good Reading Magazine 'A courageous and magical debut novel that reminds us that while we can't change events from our past, we do have the power to change the story we tell ourselves about them.' Sally Piper
On one impossible day in 1965, eight-year-old Willa receives a mysterious box containing a jar of water and the instruction- 'One ocean- plant in the backyard.' So she does - and somehow creates an extraordinary time slip that allows her to visit her future selves.
On one impossible day in 1990, Willa is 33 and a mother-of-two when her childhood self magically appears in her backyard. But she's also a woman haunted by memories of her dark past - and is on the brink of a decision that will have tragic repercussions . . .
On one impossible day in 2050, Willa is a silver-haired, gumboot-loving 93-year-old whose memory is fading fast. Yet she knows there's something she has to remember, a warning she must give her past selves about a terrible event in 1990. If only she could recall what it was.
Can the three Willas come together, to heal their past and save their future, before it's too late?
'A wonderful debut . . . An uplifting story about the power of forgiveness, the ability to heal and the magical idea of being able to travel back in time to fix a broken future.' Good Reading Magazine 'A courageous and magical debut novel that reminds us that while we can't change events from our past, we do have the power to change the story we tell ourselves about them.' Sally Piper
A Month of Sundays
Liz Byrski
$19.99
Paperback • 352 pages
For over ten years, Ros, Adele, Judy and Simone have been in an online book club, but they have never met face to face. Until now...
Determined to enjoy her imminent retirement, Adele invites her fellow bibliophiles to help her house-sit in the Blue Mountains. Each member has been asked to bring a book which will teach the others more about her. With the women all facing crossroads in their lives, it turns out there's a lot for them to learn, not just about their fellow book-clubbers, but about themselves.
PRAISE FOR A MONTH OF SUNDAYS 'She writes with warmth, insight and gently humour about ordinary, flawed characters grappling with relevant, real-life issues.' Courier Mail 'Byrski...is by turns turbulent and tender. Her characters are portrayed as...warm, funny, flawed heroes and heroines grappling with the cards destiny has dealt them.' West Australian '[A Month of Sundays] demonstrated the capacity of a book to act as a mirror to the soul and an eloquent guide to a more contented future. Executed with wit and affection, the novel delivers exactly what it promises.' Weekend Australian 'This is a great example of the joy a good book can bring.' Courier Mail
Determined to enjoy her imminent retirement, Adele invites her fellow bibliophiles to help her house-sit in the Blue Mountains. Each member has been asked to bring a book which will teach the others more about her. With the women all facing crossroads in their lives, it turns out there's a lot for them to learn, not just about their fellow book-clubbers, but about themselves.
PRAISE FOR A MONTH OF SUNDAYS 'She writes with warmth, insight and gently humour about ordinary, flawed characters grappling with relevant, real-life issues.' Courier Mail 'Byrski...is by turns turbulent and tender. Her characters are portrayed as...warm, funny, flawed heroes and heroines grappling with the cards destiny has dealt them.' West Australian '[A Month of Sundays] demonstrated the capacity of a book to act as a mirror to the soul and an eloquent guide to a more contented future. Executed with wit and affection, the novel delivers exactly what it promises.' Weekend Australian 'This is a great example of the joy a good book can bring.' Courier Mail
Strange Blasphemy
Anson Cameron
$29.99
Paperback • 352 pages
At a surf campus, a weekend of cultural exchange begins, during which a group of less-advantaged boys from Dallas Islamic Academy are taught to surf by boys from Yarraside Grammar, an elite private school. A sexual encounter takes place on the beach between Seb, a rich kid from the Grammar, and Fariad, a Muslim Afghan refugee from the Academy. Little does anyone know that this encounter has been unwittingly recorded by a drone, sent up by one of the Grammar schoolkids to watch the antics of the surfers.
What then ensues no one can predict. Sides are taken. Threats are made. Seb's and Fariad's families and communities are involved. In not giving his side of the story, Seb enters a living nightmare, where, in his attempts to protect Fariad, and defuse the situation, he unleashes a storm of hatred, suspicion, lies, deceit ... and ultimately murder.
What then ensues no one can predict. Sides are taken. Threats are made. Seb's and Fariad's families and communities are involved. In not giving his side of the story, Seb enters a living nightmare, where, in his attempts to protect Fariad, and defuse the situation, he unleashes a storm of hatred, suspicion, lies, deceit ... and ultimately murder.
Allegra in Three Parts
Suzanne Daniel
$29.99
Paperback
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Eleven-year-old Allegra shuttles between her grandmothers who live next door to one another but couldn't be more different. Matilde works all hours and instils discipline, duty and restraint. She insists that Allegra focus on her studies to become a doctor.
Meanwhile free-spirited Joy is full of colour, possibility and emotion, storing all her tears in little glass bottles. She is riding the second wave of the women's movement in the company of her penny tortoise, Simone de Beauvoir, encouraging Ally to explore broad horizons and live her 'true essence'.
And then there's Rick who lives in a flat out the back and finds distraction in gambling and solace in surfing. He's trying to be a good father to Al Pal, while grieving the woman who links them all but whose absence tears them apart.
Allegra is left to orbit these three worlds wishing they loved her a little less and liked each other a lot more. Until one day the unspoken tragedy that's created this division explodes within the person they all cherish most.
PRAISE FOR ALLEGRA IN THREE PARTS 'Allegra in Three Parts is an accomplished, moving and thoughtful read' Books+Publishing
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Hitch
Kathryn Hind
$32.99
Paperback • 288 pages
Amelia stands beside a highway in the Australian desert, alone except for her dog and the occasional road train that speeds past her raised thumb.
After her mother's funeral, Amelia was confronted by Zach and reminded of the relationship they had when she was a teenager. She feels complicit and remains unable to process what happened. So she ran. Her best friend, Sid, is Zach's cousin and the one person in the world she can depend upon.
But, of course, the road isn't safe either. Amelia is looking for generosity or human connection in the drivers she finds lifts with, and she does receive that. But she is also let down.
Hitch is a raw exploration of consent and its ambiguities, personal agency and the choices we make. It's the story of twenty-something Amelia and her dog Lucy hitchhiking from one end of the country to the other, trying to outrun grief and trauma, and moving ever closer to the things she longs to escape.
Kathryn Hind, winner of the inaugural Penguin Literary Prize, writes with acuity, empathy and wisdom. She is a shining new light on the Australian literary scene.
After her mother's funeral, Amelia was confronted by Zach and reminded of the relationship they had when she was a teenager. She feels complicit and remains unable to process what happened. So she ran. Her best friend, Sid, is Zach's cousin and the one person in the world she can depend upon.
But, of course, the road isn't safe either. Amelia is looking for generosity or human connection in the drivers she finds lifts with, and she does receive that. But she is also let down.
Hitch is a raw exploration of consent and its ambiguities, personal agency and the choices we make. It's the story of twenty-something Amelia and her dog Lucy hitchhiking from one end of the country to the other, trying to outrun grief and trauma, and moving ever closer to the things she longs to escape.
Kathryn Hind, winner of the inaugural Penguin Literary Prize, writes with acuity, empathy and wisdom. She is a shining new light on the Australian literary scene.
Crossings
Alex Landragin
$32.99
Paperback
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A Parisian bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript containing three stories, each as unlikely as the other.
The first, 'The Education of a Monster', is a letter penned by the poet Charles Baudelaire to an illiterate girl. The second, 'City of Ghosts', is a noir romance set in Paris in 1940 as the Germans are invading. The third, 'Tales of the Albatross', is the strangest of the three: the autobiography of a deathless enchantress. Together, they tell the tale of two lost souls peregrinating through time.
An unforgettable tour de force, Crossings is a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes.
'A magnificent, intricate machine of a book that is a sheer delight to read. With vivid characters and a brilliant premise, it is a puzzle, a love story and an adventure. Wildly imaginative and quite unlike anything I have ever read before.' Chris Womersley 'Audacious, ambitious and spellbinding, Crossings isn't just a complex literary thriller, an intriguing puzzle, or a thoroughly enjoyable romantic alternative history of Paris and the Pacific islands, but all of these things at once.' Jane Rawson 'Crossings is playful, obsessive, romantic, intelligent, and wholly absorbing, with fascinations enough for a whole shelf of novels. It's a book that feels not endless but endlessly replenishable.' Kevin Brockmeier
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The Passengers
Eleanor Limprecht
$19.99
Paperback • 344 pages
'A stunning exploration of hope and desire, fear and control, this story is full of heart and heartbreak' Ashley Hay, author of The Railwayman's Wife 'A compelling novel about the bruises inflicted by fate and by ourselves, and the blessings to be found in resilience, determination, and love.' Debra Adelaide, author of The Household Guide to Dying Sarah and Hannah are on a cruise from San Diego, California to Sydney, Australia. Sarah, Hannah's grandmother, is returning to the country of her birth, a place she hasn't seen since boarding the USS Mariposa in 1945. Then she, along with countless other war brides, sailed across the Pacific to join the American servicemen they'd married during World War II.
Now Hannah is the same age Sarah was when she made her first journey, and in hearing Sarah tell the story of her life, realises the immensity of what her grandmother gave up.
The Passengers is a luminous novel about love: the journeys we undertake, the sacrifices we make and the heartache we suffer for love It is about how we most long for what we have left behind. And it is about the past - how close it can still feel - even after long passages of time.
'Two women, two generations, two countries, two journeys. Eleanor Limprecht gracefully navigates the crosscurrents of history and creates vibrant characters from the extraordinary true experiences of Australian war brides. Sarah and Hannah's urgent search for love and wholeness moved me in both senses: they touched my heart and I still feel I am churning across the Pacific with them. A deeply satisfying novel.' Susan Wyndham, former literary editor, The Sydney Morning Herald
Now Hannah is the same age Sarah was when she made her first journey, and in hearing Sarah tell the story of her life, realises the immensity of what her grandmother gave up.
The Passengers is a luminous novel about love: the journeys we undertake, the sacrifices we make and the heartache we suffer for love It is about how we most long for what we have left behind. And it is about the past - how close it can still feel - even after long passages of time.
'Two women, two generations, two countries, two journeys. Eleanor Limprecht gracefully navigates the crosscurrents of history and creates vibrant characters from the extraordinary true experiences of Australian war brides. Sarah and Hannah's urgent search for love and wholeness moved me in both senses: they touched my heart and I still feel I am churning across the Pacific with them. A deeply satisfying novel.' Susan Wyndham, former literary editor, The Sydney Morning Herald
The Nancys
R.W.R. McDonald
$29.99
Paperback • 396 pages
'Funny, dark and above all, heart-warming, The Nancys is a celebration of what's important in life - which is family, friendship and also: makeovers. R.W.R. McDonald's novel is face-paced, clever and full of wit and repartee. McDonald pays homage to the novel's namesake Nancy Drew, but adds elements of RuPaul and Shirley Barrett's The Bus on Thursday. The result is a work of fiction that is smart, darkly comic and, in the very best of ways, completely bizarre.' - Katherine Collette, author of The Helpline 'A delight - moving and hilarious. I loved every minute I spent with these characters.' - Paddy O'Reilly 'How does The Nancys manage to be both sharp and blackly funny, but also uplifting and sweet?' - Toni Jordan Tippy Chan is eleven and lives in a small town in a very quiet part of the world - the place her Uncle Pike escaped from the first chance he got as a teenager. Now Pike is back with his new boyfriend Devon to look after Tippy while her mum's on a cruise. Tippy is in love with her uncle's old Nancy Drew books, especially the early ones where Nancy was sixteen and did whatever she wanted. She wants to be Nancy and is desperate to solve a real mystery. When her teacher's body is found beside Riverstone's only traffic light, Tippy's moment has arrived. She and her minders form The Nancys, a secret amateur detective club. But what starts as a bonding and sightseeing adventure quickly morphs into something far more dangerous. A wrongful arrest, a close call with the murderer, and an intervention from Tippy's mum all conspire against The Nancys. But regardless of their own safety, and despite the constant distraction of questionable fashion choices in the town that style forgot, The Nancys know only they can stop the killer from striking again. The Nancys is gripping and glorious, a heart-warming novel for anyone who's ever felt they were on the outside looking in. At its heart it is about the family we make and how we must summon the courage to face the truth, no matter what the cost may be.
Those Other Women
Nicola Moriarty
$19.99
Paperback
An online rivalry between mums and non-mums spills dangerously into the real world 'I devoured it, loved it and totally escaped into it ... Fun and topical' Marian Keyes 'Super addictive, cleverly plotted and ridiculously relatable ... the characters begin to feel like your new best friends' 9 Honey Poppy's world has tipped sideways: the husband who never wanted children has betrayed her with her broody best friend. At least Annalise is on her side. Poppy's new friend is determined to celebrate their freedom from kids so together they create a Facebook group to meet up with like-minded women, and perhaps vent a little about smug mums and their privileges at work.
Meanwhile Frankie would love a night out, away from her darlings - she's not had one in years - and she's sick of being judged by women at the office and stay-at-home mums. When Poppy and Annalise's group takes off and frustrated members start confronting mums like Frankie in the real world. Cafes become battlegrounds, playgrounds become warzones and offices have never been so divided.
A rivalry that was once harmless fun is spiralling out of control. Because one of their members is a wolf in sheep's clothing. And she has an agenda of her own.
'Thoughtful, whip-smart and emotionally rich contemporary fiction' Booktopia
Meanwhile Frankie would love a night out, away from her darlings - she's not had one in years - and she's sick of being judged by women at the office and stay-at-home mums. When Poppy and Annalise's group takes off and frustrated members start confronting mums like Frankie in the real world. Cafes become battlegrounds, playgrounds become warzones and offices have never been so divided.
A rivalry that was once harmless fun is spiralling out of control. Because one of their members is a wolf in sheep's clothing. And she has an agenda of her own.
'Thoughtful, whip-smart and emotionally rich contemporary fiction' Booktopia
This Taste for Silence
Amanda O'Callaghan
$22.95
Paperback
The balance of power in a marriage shifts, with shocking consequences. An elderly woman recounts a chilling childhood memory on the family farm. A taxi driver with a missing wife reveals unexpected skills. An inherited painting brings an eerily troubling legacy.
Subtle, compelling and unsettling, Amanda O'Callaghan's stories work at the edges of the sayable, through secrets, erasures and glimpsed moments of disclosure. They shimmer with unspoken histories and characters who have a 'taste for silence'.
Subtle, compelling and unsettling, Amanda O'Callaghan's stories work at the edges of the sayable, through secrets, erasures and glimpsed moments of disclosure. They shimmer with unspoken histories and characters who have a 'taste for silence'.
The Cinema at Starlight Creek
Alli Sinclair
$29.99
Paperback
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How far would you go to follow your dream?
Queensland, 1994: When location manager Claire Montgomery arrives in rural Queensland to work on a TV mini-series, she's captivated by the beauty of Starlight Creek and the surrounding sugarcane fields. Working in a male-dominated industry is challenging, but Claire has never let that stop her pursuing her dreams-until now. She must gain permission to film at Australia's most historically significant art deco cinema, located at Starlight Creek. But there is trouble ahead. The community is fractured and the cinema's reclusive owner, Hattie Fitzpatrick, and her enigmatic great nephew, Luke Jackson, stand in her way, putting Claire's career-launching project-and her heart-at risk.
Hollywood, 1950: Lena Lee has struggled to find the break that will catapult her into a star with influence. She longs for roles about strong, independent women but with Hollywood engulfed in politics and a censorship battle, Lena's timing is wrong. Forced to keep her love affair with actor Reeves Garrity a secret, Lena puts her career on the line to fight for equality for women in an industry ruled by men. Her generous and caring nature steers her onto a treacherous path, leaving Lena questioning what she is willing to endure to get what she desires.
Can two women-decades apart-uncover lies and secrets to live the life they've dared to dream?
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Advocate - Fiction
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The Silence of the Girls
Pat Barker
$19.99
Paperback • 336 pages
Queen Briseis has been stolen from her conquered homeland and given as a concubine to a foreign warrior. The warrior is Achilles- famed hero, loathed enemy, ruthless butcher, darkly troubled spirit. Briseis's fate is now indivisibly entwined with his.
No one knows it yet, but there are just ten weeks to go until the Fall of Troy, the end of this long and bitter war. This is the start of The Iliad- the most famous war story ever told. The next ten weeks will be a story of male power, male ego, male violence. But what of the women? The thousands of female slaves in the soldiers' camp - in the laundry, at the loom, laying out the dead? Briseis is one of their number - and she will be our witness to history.
No one knows it yet, but there are just ten weeks to go until the Fall of Troy, the end of this long and bitter war. This is the start of The Iliad- the most famous war story ever told. The next ten weeks will be a story of male power, male ego, male violence. But what of the women? The thousands of female slaves in the soldiers' camp - in the laundry, at the loom, laying out the dead? Briseis is one of their number - and she will be our witness to history.
You Will Be Safe Here
Damian Barr
$29.99
Paperback • 352 pages
`This is a book that tilts the world' STYLIST 'A gripping, heartbreaking tale of uncomfortable histories and the resilience of love' GRAHAM NORTON 'I want you to read this ... I enjoy a lot of books but few stay with me like this has' PHILIPPA PERRY 'Completely gripping and profoundly moving' MAGGIE O'FARRELL 'Very beautiful. Only a truly wise and kind person could write such a book' MAX PORTER 'Heart-wrenching ... redemptive and full of love' JOJO MOYES A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME An OBSERVER, FINANCIAL TIMES and GUARDIAN Pick for 2019 The book that will change the way you see the world.
2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he's not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they `make men out of boys'. Guaranteed.
1901. The height of the second Boer War in South Africa. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise: they will be safe.
2010. Sixteen-year-old outsider Willem just wants to be left alone with his books and his dog. Worried he's not turning out right, his ma and her boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Training Camp. Here they `make men out of boys'. Guaranteed.
1901. The height of the second Boer War in South Africa. Sarah van der Watt and her son are taken from their farm by force to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp where, the English promise: they will be safe.
The Shielding of Mrs Forbes: Faber Stories
Alan Bennett
$7.99
Paperback • 80 pages
Thinking Betty was in the bath Graham was watching a late-night programme on Channel 4 called 'Footballers with Their Shirts Off' when she unexpectedly came in on the trail of the hairdryer.
'I didn't know you were interested in football,' said Betty.
No one must ever find out that Graham is 'not the marrying sort'. Certainly not his wife, or his mother. As sex, blackmail and fanatical tidiness take over the West Yorkshire parish of Alwoodley, an unlikely caper unfolds.
'I didn't know you were interested in football,' said Betty.
No one must ever find out that Graham is 'not the marrying sort'. Certainly not his wife, or his mother. As sex, blackmail and fanatical tidiness take over the West Yorkshire parish of Alwoodley, an unlikely caper unfolds.
Leading Men
Christopher Castellani
$22.99
Paperback • 368 pages
PORTOFINO, ITALY. JULY 1953 At a glittering party thrown by Truman Capote, literary sensation Tennessee Williams and his longtime lover Frank Merlo meet the enigmatic Anja Blomgren, an aspiring Swedish actress.
Their encounter will alter the course of their lives forever.
Spanning half a century and featuring a dazzling cast of characters - from Anna Magnani cooking pasta amatriciana in a sun-kissed kitchen in Rome, to Ludovico Visconti barking orders on his latest film set - LEADING MEN is a heart-breaking novel about life in the shadows of greatness, and a moving re-telling of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century.
'I read LEADING MEN in one rapt afternoon, and spent hours afterwards just stunned from having been immersed in such a tender, psychologically devastating, and gorgeously precise novel' Lauren Groff, author of FATES AND FURIES
'An alert, sweeping novel. To hold it in your hands is like holding a front-row opera ticket' Dwight Garner, New York Times
'This is a novel of rare insight and beauty, and Castellani is a writer of brilliant gifts' Garth Greenwell, author of WHAT BELONGS TO YOU
Their encounter will alter the course of their lives forever.
Spanning half a century and featuring a dazzling cast of characters - from Anna Magnani cooking pasta amatriciana in a sun-kissed kitchen in Rome, to Ludovico Visconti barking orders on his latest film set - LEADING MEN is a heart-breaking novel about life in the shadows of greatness, and a moving re-telling of one of the great literary love stories of the twentieth-century.
'I read LEADING MEN in one rapt afternoon, and spent hours afterwards just stunned from having been immersed in such a tender, psychologically devastating, and gorgeously precise novel' Lauren Groff, author of FATES AND FURIES
'An alert, sweeping novel. To hold it in your hands is like holding a front-row opera ticket' Dwight Garner, New York Times
'This is a novel of rare insight and beauty, and Castellani is a writer of brilliant gifts' Garth Greenwell, author of WHAT BELONGS TO YOU
The Tenth Muse
Catherine Chung
$32.99
Paperback • 304 pages
The first thing I remember being said of me with any consistency was that I was intelligent - and I recognized even then that it was a comment leveled at me with as much disapproval as admiration. Still, I never tried to hide or suppress my mind as some girls do, and thank god, because that would have been the beginning of the end.
From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she faces the most human of problems - who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?
On her quest to conquer the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II. Forced to confront some of the biggest events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, Katherine strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics, reclaiming the voices of the women who came before her whose love of the language of numbers connects them across generations.
THE TENTH MUSE is a brilliant, involving novel asking questions about who gets to tell the story of intellectual endeavour, and those who lost everything during World War II.
Praise for THE TENTH MUSE 'Arresting in scope and its treatment of time, its prose at turns crystalline and richly balletic, this story pulls puzzle from puzzle - human, historical and all too contemporary' Helen Oyeyemi
From childhood, Katherine knows she is different, and that her parents are not who they seem to be. But in becoming a mathematician, she faces the most human of problems - who is she? What is the cost of love, and what is the cost of ambition?
On her quest to conquer the Riemann Hypothesis, the greatest unsolved mathematical problem of her time, she turns to a theorem with a mysterious history that holds both the lock and key to her identity, and to secrets long buried during World War II. Forced to confront some of the biggest events of the twentieth century and rethink everything she knows of herself, Katherine strives to take her place in the world of higher mathematics, reclaiming the voices of the women who came before her whose love of the language of numbers connects them across generations.
THE TENTH MUSE is a brilliant, involving novel asking questions about who gets to tell the story of intellectual endeavour, and those who lost everything during World War II.
Praise for THE TENTH MUSE 'Arresting in scope and its treatment of time, its prose at turns crystalline and richly balletic, this story pulls puzzle from puzzle - human, historical and all too contemporary' Helen Oyeyemi
The Daughter's Tale
Armando Lucas Correa
$32.99
Paperback • 320 pages
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New York City, 2015: Elise Duval, eighty years old, receives a phone call from a woman recently arrived from Cuba bearing messages from a time and country that she's long forgotten. A French Catholic who arrived in new York after World War II, Elise and her world are forever changed when the woman arrives with letters written to Elise from her mother in German during the war, unravelling more than seven decades of secrets.
Berlin, 1939: Bookstore owner and recent widow Amanda Sternberg is fleeing Nazi Germany with her two young daughters, heading towards unoccupied France. She arrives in Haute-Vienne with only one of her girls. Their freedom is short-lived and soon they are taken to a labour camp.
Inspired by one of the most shocking atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, the 1944 massacre of all the inhabitants of the village of Oradour-Sur-Glane in the south of France, The Daughter's Tale is a beautifully crafted family saga of love, survival and hope against all odds.
`Breathtakingly threaded together from start to finish with the sound of a beating heart.' THE NEW YORK TIMES
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Paris Echo
Sebastian Faulks
$19.99
Paperback • 352 pages
The Sunday Times Bestseller 'Superb... Weaves winningly between the present and the Second World War, between Tangier and Paris' Observer American academic Hannah and runaway Moroccan teenager Tariq have little in common, yet both find themselves haunted by the ghosts of Paris.
Hannah listens to the extraordinary witness of women living under the German Occupation and finds a city bursting with clues, connections and past love affairs, while in the migrant suburbs Tariq is searching for a mother he barely knew. Urgent and deeply moving, Paris Echo asks how much we really need to know in order to live a valuable life.
'An exquisite book. Deeply affecting' Daily Mail
Hannah listens to the extraordinary witness of women living under the German Occupation and finds a city bursting with clues, connections and past love affairs, while in the migrant suburbs Tariq is searching for a mother he barely knew. Urgent and deeply moving, Paris Echo asks how much we really need to know in order to live a valuable life.
'An exquisite book. Deeply affecting' Daily Mail
Gun Island
Amitav Ghosh
$32.99
Paperback • 320 pages
Bundook. Gun. A common word, but one which turns Deen Datta's world upside down.
A dealer of rare books, Deen is used to a quiet life spent indoors, but as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey; one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen's eyes to the realities of growing up in today's world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey which will upend everything he thought he knew about himself, about the Bengali legends of his childhood and about the world around him.
GUN ISLAND is a beautifully realised novel which effortlessly spans space and time. It is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women.
A dealer of rare books, Deen is used to a quiet life spent indoors, but as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey; one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen's eyes to the realities of growing up in today's world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey which will upend everything he thought he knew about himself, about the Bengali legends of his childhood and about the world around him.
GUN ISLAND is a beautifully realised novel which effortlessly spans space and time. It is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women.
City of Girls
Elizabeth Gilbert
$32.99
Paperback
It is the summer of 1940. Nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris arrives in New York with her suitcase and sewing machine, exiled by her despairing parents. Although her quicksilver talents with a needle and commitment to mastering the perfect hair roll have been deemed insufficient for her to pass into her sophomore year of Vassar, she soon finds gainful employment as the self-appointed seamstress at the Lily Playhouse, her unconventional Aunt Peg's charmingly disreputable Manhattan revue theatre.
There, Vivian quickly becomes the toast of the showgirls, transforming the trash and tinsel only fit for the cheap seats into creations for goddesses. Exile in New York is no exile at all: here in this strange wartime city of girls, Vivian and her girlfriends mean to drink the heady highball of life itself to the last drop. And when the legendary English actress Edna Watson comes to the Lily to star in the company's most ambitious show ever, Vivian is entranced by the magic that follows in her wake.
But there are hard lessons to be learned, and bitterly regrettable mistakes to be made. Vivian learns that to live the life she wants, she must live many lives, ceaselessly and ingeniously making them new.'At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is,' she confides.
And so Vivian sets forth her story, and that of the women around her women who have lived as they truly are, out of step with a century that could never quite keep up with them.
There, Vivian quickly becomes the toast of the showgirls, transforming the trash and tinsel only fit for the cheap seats into creations for goddesses. Exile in New York is no exile at all: here in this strange wartime city of girls, Vivian and her girlfriends mean to drink the heady highball of life itself to the last drop. And when the legendary English actress Edna Watson comes to the Lily to star in the company's most ambitious show ever, Vivian is entranced by the magic that follows in her wake.
But there are hard lessons to be learned, and bitterly regrettable mistakes to be made. Vivian learns that to live the life she wants, she must live many lives, ceaselessly and ingeniously making them new.'At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time. After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is,' she confides.
And so Vivian sets forth her story, and that of the women around her women who have lived as they truly are, out of step with a century that could never quite keep up with them.
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The Other Mother
Matthew Green
$29.99
Paperback • 272 pages
The one he loves most, is the one he knows least Thirteen-year-old Michael Parsons is dealing with a lot. His father's sudden death; his mother's new husband, Glen, who he loathes; his two younger siblings, who he looks after more and more now his mother works extra shifts.
And then one day, Michael wakes up and his mother is gone. In her place is an exact, duplicate mother. The 'other mother'. No one else seems to notice the real version is missing. His brother, his sister and even Glen act as if everything's normal. But Michael knows in his heart that this mother is not his. And he begins to panic.
What follows is a big-hearted coming-of-age story of a boy struggling with an unusual disorder that poses unparalleled challenges - but also, as he discovers, offers him unique opportunities.
And then one day, Michael wakes up and his mother is gone. In her place is an exact, duplicate mother. The 'other mother'. No one else seems to notice the real version is missing. His brother, his sister and even Glen act as if everything's normal. But Michael knows in his heart that this mother is not his. And he begins to panic.
What follows is a big-hearted coming-of-age story of a boy struggling with an unusual disorder that poses unparalleled challenges - but also, as he discovers, offers him unique opportunities.
The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man
Jonas Jonasson , Rachel Willson-Broyles
$19.99
Paperback • 448 pages
The sequel to Jonas Jonasson's international bestseller The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared It all begins with a hot air balloon trip and three bottles of champagne. Allan and Julius are ready for some spectacular views, but they're not expecting to land in the sea and be rescued by a North Korean ship, and they could never have imagined that the captain of the ship would be harbouring a suitcase full of contraband uranium, on a nuclear weapons mission for Kim Jong-un ...
Soon Allan and Julius are at the centre of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump. Things are about to get very complicated ...
Soon Allan and Julius are at the centre of a complex diplomatic crisis involving world figures from the Swedish foreign minister to Angela Merkel and President Trump. Things are about to get very complicated ...
Ask Again, Yes
Mary Beth Keane
$32.99
Paperback • 400 pages
Gillam, upstate New York- a town of ordinary, big-lawned suburban houses. The Gleesons have recently moved there and soon welcome the Stanhopes as their new neighbours. Lonely Lena Gleeson wants a friend but Anne Stanhope - cold, elegant, unstable - wants to be left alone.
It's left to their children - Lena's youngest, Kate, and Anne's only child, Peter - to find their way to one another. To form a friendship whose resilience and love will be almost broken by the fault line dividing both families, and by the terrible tragedy that will engulf them all. A tragedy whose true origins only become clear many years later . . .
A story of love and redemption, faith and forgiveness, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood - villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so. A story of how, if we're lucky, the violence lurking beneath everyday life can be vanquished by the power of love.
It's left to their children - Lena's youngest, Kate, and Anne's only child, Peter - to find their way to one another. To form a friendship whose resilience and love will be almost broken by the fault line dividing both families, and by the terrible tragedy that will engulf them all. A tragedy whose true origins only become clear many years later . . .
A story of love and redemption, faith and forgiveness, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood - villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so. A story of how, if we're lucky, the violence lurking beneath everyday life can be vanquished by the power of love.
The Ditch
Herman Koch
$29.99
Paperback • 304 pages
When Robert Walter, popular mayor of Amsterdam, sees his wife toss her head back in laughter while chatting to one of his aldermen at a New Year's reception, he immediately suspects the worst. Despite their long and happy marriage, Robert is convinced that Sylvia is cheating on him - and with the straitlaced alderman, no less, who is committed to the environment and wants to spoil the capital's skyline with wind turbines. Soon afterwards, a journalist produces a photograph of a police officer being beaten up by three protesters during a demonstration against the Vietnam War. She claims that the mayor is one of the protesters.
Then, out of the blue, Robert's 94-year-old father turns up on the steps of the city hall, desperate to speak to him. He and his wife want to die together. They do not want to burden their son with their deteriorating health, so why not end their own lives when the time is right?
The Ditch shows a seemingly stable man rapidly becoming entangled in his own fears and suspicions. Or is everything not what it seems, and is Robert Walter actually seeing things clearly for the very first time?
Then, out of the blue, Robert's 94-year-old father turns up on the steps of the city hall, desperate to speak to him. He and his wife want to die together. They do not want to burden their son with their deteriorating health, so why not end their own lives when the time is right?
The Ditch shows a seemingly stable man rapidly becoming entangled in his own fears and suspicions. Or is everything not what it seems, and is Robert Walter actually seeing things clearly for the very first time?
The Great Believers
Rebecca Makkai
$22.99
Paperback • 528 pages
WINNER OF THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
WINNER OF THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD - BARBARA GITTINGS LITERATURE AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE LA TIMES FICTION AWARD
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup: bringing an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDs epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, he finds his partner is infected, and that he might even have the virus himself. The only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. Yale and Fiona's stories unfold in incredibly moving and sometimes surprising ways, as both struggle to find goodness in the face of disaster.
'Stirring, spellbinding and full of life' Tea Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of THE TIGER'S WIFE
WINNER OF THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD - BARBARA GITTINGS LITERATURE AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE LA TIMES FICTION AWARD
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup: bringing an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDs epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, he finds his partner is infected, and that he might even have the virus himself. The only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago epidemic, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways the AIDS crisis affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. Yale and Fiona's stories unfold in incredibly moving and sometimes surprising ways, as both struggle to find goodness in the face of disaster.
'Stirring, spellbinding and full of life' Tea Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of THE TIGER'S WIFE
The Den
Abi Maxwell
$32.99
Paperback • 320 pages
For readers of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES or THE GIRLS, a story of two extraordinary, magnetic women and their disappearances - a hundred years apart - from the small New England town they call home.
Henrietta and Jane are growing up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, their mother a remote artist, their father in thrall to the folklore and legend of their corner of New England. When Henrietta falls under the spell of Kaus, an outsider and petty criminal, Jane takes to trailing the couple, spying on their trysts, until one night, Henrietta vanishes into the woods.
Elspeth and Claire are sisters separated by an ocean. Elspeth's pregnancy at seventeen meant she was quickly married and sent away from her Scottish village to make a new life in America. When she comes to the attention of the local mill owner, a series of wrenching and violent events unfolds, culminating in her disappearance.
As Jane and Claire search in their own times for their missing sisters, each uncovers the strange legend of Cold Thursday, and of a family apparently transformed into coyotes. But what does his myth really mean? Are their sisters dead, destroyed by the men who desired them? Or have they made new lives, elsewhere, beyond the watchful eyes of the community they longed to escape?
Henrietta and Jane are growing up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, their mother a remote artist, their father in thrall to the folklore and legend of their corner of New England. When Henrietta falls under the spell of Kaus, an outsider and petty criminal, Jane takes to trailing the couple, spying on their trysts, until one night, Henrietta vanishes into the woods.
Elspeth and Claire are sisters separated by an ocean. Elspeth's pregnancy at seventeen meant she was quickly married and sent away from her Scottish village to make a new life in America. When she comes to the attention of the local mill owner, a series of wrenching and violent events unfolds, culminating in her disappearance.
As Jane and Claire search in their own times for their missing sisters, each uncovers the strange legend of Cold Thursday, and of a family apparently transformed into coyotes. But what does his myth really mean? Are their sisters dead, destroyed by the men who desired them? Or have they made new lives, elsewhere, beyond the watchful eyes of the community they longed to escape?
Love and Ruin
Paula McLain
$22.99
Paperback • 432 pages
In 1937, courageous and independent Martha Gellhorn travels to Madrid to report on the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War, and finds herself drawn to the stories of ordinary people caught in devastating conflict. She also finds herself unexpectedly - and uncontrollably - falling in love with Ernest Hemingway, a man already on his way to being a legend. In the shadow of the impending Second World War, and set against the tumultuous backdrops of Madrid, Finland, China, and especially Cuba, where Martha and Hemingway made their home, their relationship and professional careers ignite.
But when Hemingway publishes the biggest literary success of his career, they are no longer equals, and Martha must make a choice: surrender to the suffocating demands of a domestic lifestyle, or risk losing her husband by forging her way as her own woman and writer. It is a dilemma that will force her to break his heart, and her own.
Based on a true story Martha Gellhorn was one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLLS was dedicated to Martha, and inspired by the time they were together in Spain. It was Hemingway's most successful book to date, it sold half a million copies within months, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and triumphantly reestablished his literary reputation
But when Hemingway publishes the biggest literary success of his career, they are no longer equals, and Martha must make a choice: surrender to the suffocating demands of a domestic lifestyle, or risk losing her husband by forging her way as her own woman and writer. It is a dilemma that will force her to break his heart, and her own.
Based on a true story Martha Gellhorn was one of the greatest war correspondents of the 20th century FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLLS was dedicated to Martha, and inspired by the time they were together in Spain. It was Hemingway's most successful book to date, it sold half a million copies within months, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and triumphantly reestablished his literary reputation
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata , Ginny Tapley Takemori , Ginny Tapley Takemori
$19.99
Paperback • 176 pages
Meet Keiko.
Keiko is 36 years old. She's never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years.
Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married.
But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store...
Keiko is 36 years old. She's never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years.
Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married.
But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store...
The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant
Kayte Nunn
$29.99
Paperback • 384 pages
A cache of unsent love letters from the 1950s is found in a suitcase on a remote island in this mysterious love story by top ten bestselling author, Kayte Nunn 1951. Esther Durrant, a young mother, is committed to an isolated mental asylum by her husband. Run by a pioneering psychiatrist, the hospital is at first Esther's prison but soon becomes her refuge.
2018. Free-spirited marine scientist Rachel Parker embarks on a research posting in the Isles of Scilly, off the Cornish coast. When a violent storm forces her to take shelter on a far-flung island, she discovers a collection of hidden love letters. Captivated by their passion and tenderness, Rachel determines to track down the intended recipient.
Meanwhile, in London, Eve is helping her grandmother, a renowned mountaineer, write her memoirs. When she is contacted by Rachel, it sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to reveal secrets kept buried for more than sixty years.
The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant is a deeply atmospheric, resonant novel that charts the heart's wild places, choices and consequences. If you love Elizabeth Gilbert and Kate Morton you will devour this book.
Praise for the bestselling The Botanist's Daughter:
'Two incredibly likeable, headstrong heroines . . . watching them flourish is captivating. With these dynamic women at the helm, Kayte weaves a clever tale of plant treachery involving exotic and perilous encounters in Chile, plus lashings of gentle romance. Compelling storytelling' The Australian Women's Weekly 'I loved The Botanist's Daughter. I was transported to the 1880s and Chile, to contemporary Sydney and Kew. A gripping read' JOY RHOADES, author of The Woolgrower's Companion 'The riveting story of two women, divided by a century in time, but united by their quest to discover a rare and dangerous flower. Fast-moving and full of surprises, The Botanist's Daughter brings the exotic world of 19th-century Chile thrillingly to life' KATE FORSYTH
2018. Free-spirited marine scientist Rachel Parker embarks on a research posting in the Isles of Scilly, off the Cornish coast. When a violent storm forces her to take shelter on a far-flung island, she discovers a collection of hidden love letters. Captivated by their passion and tenderness, Rachel determines to track down the intended recipient.
Meanwhile, in London, Eve is helping her grandmother, a renowned mountaineer, write her memoirs. When she is contacted by Rachel, it sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to reveal secrets kept buried for more than sixty years.
The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant is a deeply atmospheric, resonant novel that charts the heart's wild places, choices and consequences. If you love Elizabeth Gilbert and Kate Morton you will devour this book.
Praise for the bestselling The Botanist's Daughter:
'Two incredibly likeable, headstrong heroines . . . watching them flourish is captivating. With these dynamic women at the helm, Kayte weaves a clever tale of plant treachery involving exotic and perilous encounters in Chile, plus lashings of gentle romance. Compelling storytelling' The Australian Women's Weekly 'I loved The Botanist's Daughter. I was transported to the 1880s and Chile, to contemporary Sydney and Kew. A gripping read' JOY RHOADES, author of The Woolgrower's Companion 'The riveting story of two women, divided by a century in time, but united by their quest to discover a rare and dangerous flower. Fast-moving and full of surprises, The Botanist's Daughter brings the exotic world of 19th-century Chile thrillingly to life' KATE FORSYTH
There There
Tommy Orange
$19.99
Paperback • 304 pages
One of Barack Obama's best books of 2018, the New York Times bestselling novel about contemporary America from a bold new Native American voice 'A thunderclap' Marlon James 'Astonishing' Margaret Atwood, via Twitter 'Pure soaring beauty' Colm T ibin Jacquie Red Feather is newly sober and hoping to reconnect with her estranged family. That's why she is there. Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle's death, while Edwin is looking for his true father and Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance.
All of them are connected by bonds they may not yet understand. All of them are here for the celebration that is the Big Oakland Powwow. But Tony Loneman is also there. And Tony has come to the Powow with darker intentions.
'An exhilarating, polyphonic debut novel... Dazzling' Daily Telegraph 'Lyrical and playful, shaking and shimmering with energy... Orange creates beauty out of tragedy' Guardian 'Bold and engrossing... Orange has got under his characters' skins, allowing them to speak for themselves' Financial Times A New York Times Top 10 Best Book 2018 An Oprah Magazine Top 15 Best Book 2018 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019 Winner of the Writer's Center First Novel Award 2018
All of them are connected by bonds they may not yet understand. All of them are here for the celebration that is the Big Oakland Powwow. But Tony Loneman is also there. And Tony has come to the Powow with darker intentions.
'An exhilarating, polyphonic debut novel... Dazzling' Daily Telegraph 'Lyrical and playful, shaking and shimmering with energy... Orange creates beauty out of tragedy' Guardian 'Bold and engrossing... Orange has got under his characters' skins, allowing them to speak for themselves' Financial Times A New York Times Top 10 Best Book 2018 An Oprah Magazine Top 15 Best Book 2018 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2019 Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019 Winner of the Writer's Center First Novel Award 2018
Patient X: The Case-Book of Ryunosuke Akutagawa
David Peace
$19.99
Paperback • 336 pages
Ryuosuke Akutagawa was one of Japan's great writers. He lived through Japan's turbulent Taisho period, including the devastating 1923 earthquake, only to take his own life at the age of just thirty-five in 1927.
Inpsired by Akutagawa's stories, essays and letters, David Peace has fashioned an extraordinary novel of tales. An intense, passionate, haunting paean to one writer, it also thrillingly explores the act of writing itself, and the role of the artist, both in public and private life, in times which darkly mirror our own.
Inpsired by Akutagawa's stories, essays and letters, David Peace has fashioned an extraordinary novel of tales. An intense, passionate, haunting paean to one writer, it also thrillingly explores the act of writing itself, and the role of the artist, both in public and private life, in times which darkly mirror our own.
Normal People
Sally Rooney
$19.99
Paperback • 288 pages
Current #1 bestselling paperback in the UK - read the word-of-mouth phenomenon!
'Effortlessly brilliant ... tender and devastating.' - Guardian Books of the Year Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins.
Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.
'Brilliant ... It takes immense talent to write this well and make it look so easy ...
This is a novel that one enjoys like comfort food, with delight, all in a rush, and only once it has been consumed does one realise how formidable and nourishing it is, how heavy it sits inside you, a treat you'll be digesting long after you leave the table.' - The Australian 'Rooney's work is undeniably a voice for millennial fiction. My generation. Reading it felt like someone had captured my thoughts (even the secret ones) and made me feel less alone - until it ended, and then it was heartbreaking.' - Annie Brown, Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald 'In Normal People, Sally Rooney essentially gives us a field guide to relating to other humans - with the in-built pleasures of an exceptionally good literary romance.' - Sydney Morning Herald 'What makes Rooney's books so captivating and impossible to put down is the way she crafts characters and dialogue-at times, the conversations in her books can seem so real that you almost feel like you're eavesdropping on something you shouldn't be.' - Vanity Fair 'The first great millennial novelist' - The New Yorker Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and Winner of Specsavers National Book Awards International Author of the Year
'Effortlessly brilliant ... tender and devastating.' - Guardian Books of the Year Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in the west of Ireland, but the similarities end there. In school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation - awkward but electrifying - something life-changing begins.
Normal People is a story of mutual fascination, friendship and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find they can't.
'Brilliant ... It takes immense talent to write this well and make it look so easy ...
This is a novel that one enjoys like comfort food, with delight, all in a rush, and only once it has been consumed does one realise how formidable and nourishing it is, how heavy it sits inside you, a treat you'll be digesting long after you leave the table.' - The Australian 'Rooney's work is undeniably a voice for millennial fiction. My generation. Reading it felt like someone had captured my thoughts (even the secret ones) and made me feel less alone - until it ended, and then it was heartbreaking.' - Annie Brown, Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald 'In Normal People, Sally Rooney essentially gives us a field guide to relating to other humans - with the in-built pleasures of an exceptionally good literary romance.' - Sydney Morning Herald 'What makes Rooney's books so captivating and impossible to put down is the way she crafts characters and dialogue-at times, the conversations in her books can seem so real that you almost feel like you're eavesdropping on something you shouldn't be.' - Vanity Fair 'The first great millennial novelist' - The New Yorker Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and Winner of Specsavers National Book Awards International Author of the Year
Something to Live For
Richard Roper
$32.99
Paperback • 352 pages
'A magnificent read. Tender, funny, compelling' Lucy Foley, bestselling author of The Hunting Party Sometimes you have to risk everything to find your something...
All Andrew wants is to be normal. He has the perfect wife and 2.4 children waiting at home for him after a long day. At least, that's what he's told people.
The truth is, his life isn't exactly as people think and his little white lie is about to catch up with him.
Because in all Andrew's efforts to fit in, he's forgotten one important thing: how to really live. And maybe, it's about time for him to start.
Your favourite authors have all got Something to Live For...
'Funny, moving and uplifting...
I loved it' Libby Page, bestselling author of The Lido 'Heart-breaking. Hilarious. Life-affirming' Holly Bourne, bestselling author of How Do You Like Me Now?
'Funny, moving and thought-provoking - I loved this' Clare Mackintosh, bestselling author of Let Me Lie 'I completely fell under its spell. It pulls you in, makes you laugh and breaks your heart - in short, does everything that you want a novel to do. What an extraordinary debut' Gill Hornby, bestselling author of The Hive 'Endearing and delightful' Prima Book of the Month 'Funny, tender and all-the-feels' Red 'A perfect, quirky summer page-turner. A life-affirming debut' The Times ** This book is published in the US under the title How Not to Die Alone **
All Andrew wants is to be normal. He has the perfect wife and 2.4 children waiting at home for him after a long day. At least, that's what he's told people.
The truth is, his life isn't exactly as people think and his little white lie is about to catch up with him.
Because in all Andrew's efforts to fit in, he's forgotten one important thing: how to really live. And maybe, it's about time for him to start.
Your favourite authors have all got Something to Live For...
'Funny, moving and uplifting...
I loved it' Libby Page, bestselling author of The Lido 'Heart-breaking. Hilarious. Life-affirming' Holly Bourne, bestselling author of How Do You Like Me Now?
'Funny, moving and thought-provoking - I loved this' Clare Mackintosh, bestselling author of Let Me Lie 'I completely fell under its spell. It pulls you in, makes you laugh and breaks your heart - in short, does everything that you want a novel to do. What an extraordinary debut' Gill Hornby, bestselling author of The Hive 'Endearing and delightful' Prima Book of the Month 'Funny, tender and all-the-feels' Red 'A perfect, quirky summer page-turner. A life-affirming debut' The Times ** This book is published in the US under the title How Not to Die Alone **
The Last Adventure of Napoleon Sunshine
Pascal Ruter
$29.99
Paperback • 272 pages
At the age of eighty-five my grandfather Napoleon decided he needed to try something new . . .
Everything starts to go south when Napoleon leaves his wife. An eighty-five-year-old former boxer with a restless, youthful spirit, Napoleon decides to say to hell with it all! He wants a new life. With his ten-year-old grandson Leonard Sunshine, he embarks on a moving adventure, a rebellion against everything that takes the fun out of life. Above all, Leonard is determined to spare his grandfather the fate of the elderly - his final years spent exiled in a retirement home.
The chaotic duo adopt a dog, drive a fake taxi, escape to the seaside, sabotage door-to-door salesmen and plot to kidnap a famous radio star.
From the heart of Paris to the coast of Normandy, THE LAST ADVENTURE OF NAPOLEON SUNSHINE is a moving, life-affirming and melancholy tale of new beginnings and the importance of family.
Everything starts to go south when Napoleon leaves his wife. An eighty-five-year-old former boxer with a restless, youthful spirit, Napoleon decides to say to hell with it all! He wants a new life. With his ten-year-old grandson Leonard Sunshine, he embarks on a moving adventure, a rebellion against everything that takes the fun out of life. Above all, Leonard is determined to spare his grandfather the fate of the elderly - his final years spent exiled in a retirement home.
The chaotic duo adopt a dog, drive a fake taxi, escape to the seaside, sabotage door-to-door salesmen and plot to kidnap a famous radio star.
From the heart of Paris to the coast of Normandy, THE LAST ADVENTURE OF NAPOLEON SUNSHINE is a moving, life-affirming and melancholy tale of new beginnings and the importance of family.
Jeeves and the King of Clubs
Ben Schott
$19.99
Paperback • 320 pages
'Peerless in its wit, elegance and silliness.' Evening Standard BOOKS OF THE YEAR Storm clouds loom over Europe. Treason is afoot in the highest social circles. The very security of the nation is in peril. Jeeves, it transpires, has long been an agent of British Intelligence, but now His Majesty's Government must turn to the one man who can help . . . Bertie Wooster.
'A most thrilling return of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster . . . it vibrates with the spirit and the rhythms of his heart.' 'Remarkably good . . . in its similes, pace and general zing, this yarn is eerily Wodehousian.'
'A most thrilling return of Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster . . . it vibrates with the spirit and the rhythms of his heart.' 'Remarkably good . . . in its similes, pace and general zing, this yarn is eerily Wodehousian.'
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World
Elif Shafak
$32.99
Paperback • 368 pages
'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away . . . ' Our brains stay active for ten minutes after our heart stops beating. For Tequila Leila, each minute brings with it a new memory- growing up with her father and his two wives in a grand old house in a quiet Turkish town; watching the women gossip and wax their legs while the men went to mosque; sneaking cigarettes and Western magazines on her way home from school; running away to Istanbul to escape an unwelcome marriage; falling in love with a student who seeks shelter from a riot in the brothel where she works. Most importantly, each memory reminds Leila of the five friends she met along the way - the friends who are now desperately trying to find her.
Testament
Kim Sherwood
$22.99
Paperback • 464 pages
'Captivating' Heather Morris 'Beautiful' Andrew Miller 'Hugely poignant' Independent 'Moving' Sunday Times Longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize * Winner of the Bath Novel Award * Winner of the Harpers Bazaar Big Book of the Year * Shortlisted for the Best First Novel Award * Of everyone in her complicated family, Eva was always closest to her grandfather. She is making a film about his life. She is with him when he dies.
It is only when she finds the letter from the Jewish Museum in Berlin, hidden in his painting studio, that she realises how many secrets he kept.
As she uncovers everything he endured in the Holocaust - and what it took to learn to live again - Eva is confronted by the lies that haunt her family, and a truth that changes her own identity.
Kim Sherwood's hope-filled first novel is a powerful portrait of survival echoing through the generations; a testament of love, legacy, and all the important questions we leave unasked.
It is only when she finds the letter from the Jewish Museum in Berlin, hidden in his painting studio, that she realises how many secrets he kept.
As she uncovers everything he endured in the Holocaust - and what it took to learn to live again - Eva is confronted by the lies that haunt her family, and a truth that changes her own identity.
Kim Sherwood's hope-filled first novel is a powerful portrait of survival echoing through the generations; a testament of love, legacy, and all the important questions we leave unasked.
The Electric Hotel
Dominic Smith
$32.99
Paperback • 464 pages
'Utterly absorbing, astonishingly inventive, and richly imagined. Dominic Smith is a wizard.' Andrea Barrett, National Book Award Winner and author of Archangel From the award-winning author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Last Painting of Sara de Vos comes a luminous novel tracing the intertwined fates of a silent-film director and his muse.
Dominic Smith's The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey--America's first movie town--and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man's doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.
For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films, who started out as a concession agent for the Lumiere brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard. But when a film-history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel--the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose--the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration, and Claude's memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.
Dominic Smith's The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey--America's first movie town--and on the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one man's doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.
For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films, who started out as a concession agent for the Lumiere brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard. But when a film-history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel--the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose--the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration, and Claude's memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.
Last Stories
William Trevor
$19.99
Paperback • 240 pages
In this final collection of ten exquisite, perceptive and profound stories, William Trevor probes into the depths of the human spirit. Here we encounter a tutor and his pupil, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when they meet again years later; a young girl who discovers the mother she believed dead is alive and well; and a piano-teacher who accepts her pupil's theft in exchange for his beautiful music. These gorgeous stories - the last that Trevor wrote before his death - affirm his place as one of the world's greatest storytellers.
The Neighborhood
Mario Vargas Llosa
$19.99
Paperback • 272 pages
When a high-profile businessman is blackmailed by a notorious magazine editor, his comfortable life is threatened by the salacious expose. While attempting to field the scandal, the businessman's wife, seeking comfort, begins a secret affair with the wife of his best friend.
Then the editor is found murdered, and the two couples have no choice but to descend into the murkiest depths of Peruvian society, while the magazine's staff embarks on its greatest revelation yet . . .
Then the editor is found murdered, and the two couples have no choice but to descend into the murkiest depths of Peruvian society, while the magazine's staff embarks on its greatest revelation yet . . .
Frankissstein: A Love Story
Jeanette Winterson
$29.99
Paperback • 352 pages
From 'one of the most gifted writers working today' (New York Times) comes an audacious new novel about the bodies we live in and the bodies we desire In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love - against their better judgement - with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI.
Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with Mum again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere.
Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead... but waiting to return to life.
But the scene is set in 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley writes a story about creating a non-biological life-form. 'Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.' What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realise. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.
Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with Mum again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere.
Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead... but waiting to return to life.
But the scene is set in 1816, when nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley writes a story about creating a non-biological life-form. 'Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.' What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realise. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.
Advocate - Historical Fiction
abbeys.com.au
The Devil's Slave (#2 Frances Gorges Historical Trilogy)
Tracy Borman
$32.99
Paperback • 400 pages
In this powerful follow-up to THE KING'S WITCH, the Gorges family remains under threat from King James and his circle. Any hint of association with the members of the Gunpowder Plot will lead to mortal danger, but old loyalties - and loves - will not always be denied.
Praise for THE KING'S WITCH 'The adventures of her courageous heroine put flesh on the bones of a fascinating historical framework'Sunday Mirror 'Tracy Borman's debut historical novel has it all: conspiracy, betrayal, dark intrigues, bloody deeds, a poignant love story - and the most famous plot in English history' Alison Weir, author of the SIX TUDOR QUEENS series 'An accomplished novel with a vivid historical setting . . . the scenes in which Frances defends herself accusations of witchcraft are particularly strong' The Times
Praise for THE KING'S WITCH 'The adventures of her courageous heroine put flesh on the bones of a fascinating historical framework'Sunday Mirror 'Tracy Borman's debut historical novel has it all: conspiracy, betrayal, dark intrigues, bloody deeds, a poignant love story - and the most famous plot in English history' Alison Weir, author of the SIX TUDOR QUEENS series 'An accomplished novel with a vivid historical setting . . . the scenes in which Frances defends herself accusations of witchcraft are particularly strong' The Times
War of the Wolf (#11 Last Kingdom)
Bernard Cornwell
$19.99
Paperback • 352 pages
AN EPIC NEW NOVEL FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR In the battle for power, two enemies will collide Lord Uhtred of Bebbanburg knows that peace is far from reach. Though he has won the battle for his ancestral home, rebellion looms in Mercia and invading Norsemen appear at every turn.
With the country in turmoil, Uhtred comes face-to-face with King Skoll, a violent Norseman leading an army of ulfhedinn, or wolf warriors, hellbent on seizing a kingdom - and killing any in his path.
Surrounded and outnumbered by new enemies, Uhtred must call on all his skill and courage to survive, and prevent his beloved Northumbria from falling to the Viking hoards.
With the country in turmoil, Uhtred comes face-to-face with King Skoll, a violent Norseman leading an army of ulfhedinn, or wolf warriors, hellbent on seizing a kingdom - and killing any in his path.
Surrounded and outnumbered by new enemies, Uhtred must call on all his skill and courage to survive, and prevent his beloved Northumbria from falling to the Viking hoards.
Brigantia (#3 Vindolandia)
Adrian Goldsworthy
$29.99
Paperback • 400 pages
The third instalment in this series set on the frontier of Roman Britain. Flavius Ferox has been summoned to Londinium but before he sets out he must find the killer of a murdered freedman.
From bestselling historian Adrian Goldsworthy, a profoundly authentic, action-packed adventure set in Roman Britain.
AD 100: BRITANNIA. THE EDGE OF THE ROMAN WORLD. Flavius Ferox is the hardbitten centurion charged with keeping the peace on Britannia's frontier with the barbarian tribes of the north. Now he's been summoned to Londinium by the governor, but before he sets out an imperial freedman is found brutally murdered in a latrine at Vindolanda fort - and Ferox must find the killer. As he follows the trail, the murder leads him to plots against the empire and Rome itself, and an old foe gathering mysterious artefacts in the hope of working a great magic. Bandits, soldiers, and gladiators alike are trying to kill him, old friends turn traitor, and Ferox is lured reluctantly to the sinister haunts of the old druids on the isle of Mona, and the bitter power struggle among the Brigantes, the great tribe of the north... 'An instant classic of the genre' HARRY SIDEBOTTOM. 'An authentic, enjoyable read' THE TIMES.
From bestselling historian Adrian Goldsworthy, a profoundly authentic, action-packed adventure set in Roman Britain.
AD 100: BRITANNIA. THE EDGE OF THE ROMAN WORLD. Flavius Ferox is the hardbitten centurion charged with keeping the peace on Britannia's frontier with the barbarian tribes of the north. Now he's been summoned to Londinium by the governor, but before he sets out an imperial freedman is found brutally murdered in a latrine at Vindolanda fort - and Ferox must find the killer. As he follows the trail, the murder leads him to plots against the empire and Rome itself, and an old foe gathering mysterious artefacts in the hope of working a great magic. Bandits, soldiers, and gladiators alike are trying to kill him, old friends turn traitor, and Ferox is lured reluctantly to the sinister haunts of the old druids on the isle of Mona, and the bitter power struggle among the Brigantes, the great tribe of the north... 'An instant classic of the genre' HARRY SIDEBOTTOM. 'An authentic, enjoyable read' THE TIMES.
See more in stock for HISTORICAL FICTION
Lancelot
Giles Kristian
$19.99
Paperback • 450 pages
Conn Iggulden has called it 'a masterpiece' while The Times has hailed it 'a gorgeous, rich retelling of the Arthurian tale' . . .
Rome is burning.
In Britain, Uther Pendragon is dying.
Enemies stalk his land.
Into this uncertain world a boy is cast - an outsider, plagued by memories of those he's lost.
Under the watchful eye of Merlin, the boy begins his journey to manhood. He meets another outcast, Guinevere - wild, proud and beautiful. And he is dazzled by Arthur - a warrior who carries the hopes of the people like a flaming torch in the dark.
But these are treacherous times, and the fate of Britain rests on a sword's edge. This young man becomes a lord of war- loved, hated, admired and feared. He is a man forsaken but not forgotten.
He is Lancelot.
Set in a 5th century Britain besieged by invading bands of Saxons and Franks, Irish and Picts, Giles Kristian's epic new novel tells - in Lancelot's own words - the story of the most revered yet reviled of all Arthur's knights, the warrior who fought at his lord's side - yet stole his wife. This is the story of one of the great figures of British myth and legend - a story ready to be re-imagined for our times.
Rome is burning.
In Britain, Uther Pendragon is dying.
Enemies stalk his land.
Into this uncertain world a boy is cast - an outsider, plagued by memories of those he's lost.
Under the watchful eye of Merlin, the boy begins his journey to manhood. He meets another outcast, Guinevere - wild, proud and beautiful. And he is dazzled by Arthur - a warrior who carries the hopes of the people like a flaming torch in the dark.
But these are treacherous times, and the fate of Britain rests on a sword's edge. This young man becomes a lord of war- loved, hated, admired and feared. He is a man forsaken but not forgotten.
He is Lancelot.
Set in a 5th century Britain besieged by invading bands of Saxons and Franks, Irish and Picts, Giles Kristian's epic new novel tells - in Lancelot's own words - the story of the most revered yet reviled of all Arthur's knights, the warrior who fought at his lord's side - yet stole his wife. This is the story of one of the great figures of British myth and legend - a story ready to be re-imagined for our times.
Now We Shall Be Entirely Free
Andrew Miller
$22.99
Paperback • 432 pages
* WINNER OF THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE * The rapturously acclaimed new novel by the Costa Award-winning author of PURE, hailed as 'excellent', 'gripping', 'as suspenseful as any thriller', 'engrossing', 'moving' and 'magnificent'.
One rainswept winter's night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain's disastrous campaign against Napoleon's forces in Spain.
Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind. He will not - cannot - talk about the war or face the memory of what took place on the retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he lights out instead for the Hebrides, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer with secret orders are on his trail.
In luminous prose, Miller portrays a man shattered by what he has witnessed, on a journey that leads to unexpected friendships, even to love. But as the short northern summer reaches its zenith, the shadow of the enemy is creeping closer. Freedom, for John Lacroix, will come at a high price. Taut with suspense, this is an enthralling, deeply involving novel by one of Britain's most acclaimed writers.
'His writing suspends life until it is read and is a source of wonder and delight' Hilary Mantel on Casanova in the Sunday Times
One rainswept winter's night in 1809, an unconscious man is carried into a house in Somerset. He is Captain John Lacroix, home from Britain's disastrous campaign against Napoleon's forces in Spain.
Gradually Lacroix recovers his health, but not his peace of mind. He will not - cannot - talk about the war or face the memory of what took place on the retreat to Corunna. After the command comes to return to his regiment, he lights out instead for the Hebrides, unaware that he has far worse to fear than being dragged back to the army: a vicious English corporal and a Spanish officer with secret orders are on his trail.
In luminous prose, Miller portrays a man shattered by what he has witnessed, on a journey that leads to unexpected friendships, even to love. But as the short northern summer reaches its zenith, the shadow of the enemy is creeping closer. Freedom, for John Lacroix, will come at a high price. Taut with suspense, this is an enthralling, deeply involving novel by one of Britain's most acclaimed writers.
'His writing suspends life until it is read and is a source of wonder and delight' Hilary Mantel on Casanova in the Sunday Times
Shadowplay
Joseph O'Connor
$32.99
Paperback • 320 pages
'Joseph O'Connor is a very great artist and storyteller. The quotient of enjoyment in his extraordinary new novel is stupendous' Sebastian Barry 1878- The Lyceum Theatre, London. Three extraordinary people begin their life together, a life that will be full of drama, transformation, passionate and painful devotion to art and to one another. Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation, outspoken and generous of heart; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker.
Fresh from life in Dublin as a clerk, Bram may seem the least colourful of the trio but he is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. But the Chief is determined that nothing will get in the way of his manager's devotion to the Lyceum and to himself. And both men are enchanted by the beauty and boldness of the elusive Ellen.
This exceptional novel explores the complexities of love that stands dangerously outside social convention, the restlessness of creativity, and the experiences that led to Dracula, the most iconic supernatural tale of all time.
Fresh from life in Dublin as a clerk, Bram may seem the least colourful of the trio but he is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. But the Chief is determined that nothing will get in the way of his manager's devotion to the Lyceum and to himself. And both men are enchanted by the beauty and boldness of the elusive Ellen.
This exceptional novel explores the complexities of love that stands dangerously outside social convention, the restlessness of creativity, and the experiences that led to Dracula, the most iconic supernatural tale of all time.
A Sea of Gold (#21 Thomas Kydd)
Julian Stockwin
$22.99
Paperback • 400 pages
So begins a relationship, professional and personal, that will be unlike any that Kydd has known: a relationship that will lead him, almost simultaneously, to first glory, then ruin.
The French fleet is massing in the Basque Roads in a near impregnatable position. The Admiralty orders Cochrane to command an attack, to the chagrin of more senior officers who object to being overlooked and Cochrane's reputation for daring. Cochrane insists that his new friend, Kydd, is in the forefront of the assault armada, a motley collection of rocket, bomb and fire ships that will set the anchorage ablaze - this despite Kydd's almost pathological fear of fire.
The fallout from what follows will see Kydd financially ruined, with only his former shipmates, his oldest friend of all, Nicholas Renzi, and the whisper of hidden Spanish treasure promising the sea of gold that he needs to save himself.
'Tension surges through A SEA OF GOLD... In this rousing yarn, Stockwin again raises naval fiction to a new level' - Quarterdeck 'Stockwin has surpassed himself with A SEA OF GOLD... a fine, filly favoured vintage yarn' - Warships 1809. After his heroic actions during the retreat to Corunna, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is the toast of London society. Here he falls in with the legendary frigate captain, Lord Thomas Cochrane.
Praise for Julian Stockwin's KYDD series 'In Stockwin's hands the sea story will continue to entrance readers across the world' - Guardian 'Paints a vivid picture of life aboard the mighty ship-of-the-line' Daily Express 'This heady adventure blends fact and fiction in rich, authoritative detail' Nautical Magazine 'Fans of fast-paced adventure will get their fill with this book' Historical Naval Society
The French fleet is massing in the Basque Roads in a near impregnatable position. The Admiralty orders Cochrane to command an attack, to the chagrin of more senior officers who object to being overlooked and Cochrane's reputation for daring. Cochrane insists that his new friend, Kydd, is in the forefront of the assault armada, a motley collection of rocket, bomb and fire ships that will set the anchorage ablaze - this despite Kydd's almost pathological fear of fire.
The fallout from what follows will see Kydd financially ruined, with only his former shipmates, his oldest friend of all, Nicholas Renzi, and the whisper of hidden Spanish treasure promising the sea of gold that he needs to save himself.
'Tension surges through A SEA OF GOLD... In this rousing yarn, Stockwin again raises naval fiction to a new level' - Quarterdeck 'Stockwin has surpassed himself with A SEA OF GOLD... a fine, filly favoured vintage yarn' - Warships 1809. After his heroic actions during the retreat to Corunna, Captain Sir Thomas Kydd is the toast of London society. Here he falls in with the legendary frigate captain, Lord Thomas Cochrane.
Praise for Julian Stockwin's KYDD series 'In Stockwin's hands the sea story will continue to entrance readers across the world' - Guardian 'Paints a vivid picture of life aboard the mighty ship-of-the-line' Daily Express 'This heady adventure blends fact and fiction in rich, authoritative detail' Nautical Magazine 'Fans of fast-paced adventure will get their fill with this book' Historical Naval Society
The Pharmacist's Wife
Vanessa Tait
$19.99
Paperback • 400 pages
Edinburgh, 1869 Newly married, Rebecca longs for the life of a well-heeled gentlewoman. Her husband Alexander, a respected pharmacist, is eager to join pioneering fellow inventors in the history books. But beneath his ordered exterior, Rebecca is horrified to find a world of dark secrets. As she struggles with his infidelity and strange sexual desires, Alexander tries to pacify her so-called hysteria with his magical new wonder-drug, heroin...
As Rebecca's forced dependence takes her further from herself, Alexander's desire to profit from his creation leads him along a path that blurs science, passion, and death. Soon, they both learn that addiction, obsession and vengeance make for a deadly alchemy...
As Rebecca's forced dependence takes her further from herself, Alexander's desire to profit from his creation leads him along a path that blurs science, passion, and death. Soon, they both learn that addiction, obsession and vengeance make for a deadly alchemy...
Advocate - Australian Biography
abbeys.com.au
Before I Forget
Geoffrey Blainey
$45.00
Hardback • 400 pages
Now in his late-eighties, and listed by the National Trust as a 'Living Treasure', in Before I Forget Geoffrey Blainey reflects on his humble beginnings as the son of a Methodist Minister and school teacher, one of five children, and a carefree childhood spent in rural Victoria, from Terang to Leongatha, Geelong to Ballarat. From a young age these places ignited for Blainey a great affection for the Australian landscape, and a deep curiosity in Australia's history. He longed to travel, and would climb atop the roof of their home to stare out at the Great Dividing Range and imagine the world beyond.
His mother created gardens wherever they went and had literary ambitions of her own; his father spent more on books than he could ever afford, and the library travelled with the family. Blainey's devotion to the Geelong Football Club began in Newtown from where he'd watch his team play at Corio, and as a newsboy he developed an early interest in current affairs, following the dramas and triumphs of the Second World War and the political careers of local identities John Curtin and Robert Menzies. With a burning desire to see Sydney but barely a penny to his name, he hitched there with a schoolfriend to see the harbour that greeted the First Fleet, and visited the national theatre of Parliament House on the way home to see Billy Hughes, JT Lang, Arty Fadden, Arthur Calwell, Enid Lyons and hero Ben Chifley in action.
The course of Blainey's life changed when he was awarded a scholarship to board at Wesley College in Melbourne - an opportunity that instilled in him a great love of learning, under the tutelage of a group of inspiring teachers. This flourished further at the University of Melbourne, first as a wide-eyed student at Queen's Collage, where he was lectured by Manning Clarke, and later as a professor of history. Later he and Manning Clarke became great friends, both sitting on the Whitlam Government's new Literature Board. Hours spent at Melbourne's State Library as a student poring over the country's old newspapers cemented his calling to become a professional historian. Like Clarke Blainey has always been compelled to visit the places of our historical interest, including places of archaeological and Indigenous significance. Now the author of over forty books, Geoffrey Blainey claims he has discovered Australia's history his own way - and is still learning.
Warm, insightful and lyrically written, Before I Forget recounts the experiences and influences that have shaped the astonishing mind of Australia's most loved historian. But in this book Blainey has given us something more - a fascinating and affectionate social history in and of itself.
His mother created gardens wherever they went and had literary ambitions of her own; his father spent more on books than he could ever afford, and the library travelled with the family. Blainey's devotion to the Geelong Football Club began in Newtown from where he'd watch his team play at Corio, and as a newsboy he developed an early interest in current affairs, following the dramas and triumphs of the Second World War and the political careers of local identities John Curtin and Robert Menzies. With a burning desire to see Sydney but barely a penny to his name, he hitched there with a schoolfriend to see the harbour that greeted the First Fleet, and visited the national theatre of Parliament House on the way home to see Billy Hughes, JT Lang, Arty Fadden, Arthur Calwell, Enid Lyons and hero Ben Chifley in action.
The course of Blainey's life changed when he was awarded a scholarship to board at Wesley College in Melbourne - an opportunity that instilled in him a great love of learning, under the tutelage of a group of inspiring teachers. This flourished further at the University of Melbourne, first as a wide-eyed student at Queen's Collage, where he was lectured by Manning Clarke, and later as a professor of history. Later he and Manning Clarke became great friends, both sitting on the Whitlam Government's new Literature Board. Hours spent at Melbourne's State Library as a student poring over the country's old newspapers cemented his calling to become a professional historian. Like Clarke Blainey has always been compelled to visit the places of our historical interest, including places of archaeological and Indigenous significance. Now the author of over forty books, Geoffrey Blainey claims he has discovered Australia's history his own way - and is still learning.
Warm, insightful and lyrically written, Before I Forget recounts the experiences and influences that have shaped the astonishing mind of Australia's most loved historian. But in this book Blainey has given us something more - a fascinating and affectionate social history in and of itself.
Breaking Badly
Georgie Dent
$29.99
Paperback • 288 pages
SIGNED COPIES • SHIPPING NOW!
Within a year Georgie was unemployed, back living with her parents and suffering such crippling anxiety that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
BREAKING BADLY is the story of a nervous breakdown in slow motion, a life that fell apart and what it took to put it back together again. Brutally honest and warmly engaging, it's a must-read for anyone who sometimes feels close to the edge.
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Outback Songman: My Life
Ted Egan
$32.99
Paperback • 360 pages
They don't make them like Ted anymore. He's the quintessential bush storyteller; he has rubbed shoulders with some of the best-known and least-known of his countrymen and women, and he can wring a heart-wrenching song out of a beer carton.
In Outback Songman, Ted Egan recounts the story of his rich and extraordinary life. Born to a working-class family in Melbourne's Coburg, he has never had a music lesson. Nonetheless, he has composed some of the first original songs about Australian history and ethos, many of which are now classics.
Through his stories of growing up during World War II, teaching in a bush school, working with Aboriginal people in the Gulf Country, and performing in Alice Springs and around the country, Ted Egan brings to life an Australia that has largely disappeared. His encounters offer insights into national politics and everyday life over the past eight decades. His generosity of spirit and his deep understanding of his country shine from every page.
'Ted Egan is a national treasure.' - Russell Crowe, actor 'Ted Egan is a gifted natural born storyteller and a wonderful writer.' - Geraldine Doyle, singer and comedian
In Outback Songman, Ted Egan recounts the story of his rich and extraordinary life. Born to a working-class family in Melbourne's Coburg, he has never had a music lesson. Nonetheless, he has composed some of the first original songs about Australian history and ethos, many of which are now classics.
Through his stories of growing up during World War II, teaching in a bush school, working with Aboriginal people in the Gulf Country, and performing in Alice Springs and around the country, Ted Egan brings to life an Australia that has largely disappeared. His encounters offer insights into national politics and everyday life over the past eight decades. His generosity of spirit and his deep understanding of his country shine from every page.
'Ted Egan is a national treasure.' - Russell Crowe, actor 'Ted Egan is a gifted natural born storyteller and a wonderful writer.' - Geraldine Doyle, singer and comedian
488 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Idiots
Kitty Flanagan
$29.99
Paperback • 224 pages
Kitty Flanagan is all about giving the people what they want, and it's become increasingly apparent that people want 488 Rules for Life. Ever since she appeared on the ABC's The Weekly with her segment about this 'pretend' book, she's been stopped in the street, approached in the supermarket, the cafe, even the dog park by people wanting to know where they could get a copy.
Kitty says: 'Who knew other people loved rules as much as I do? I'm so excited, this feels like it could be more than a book, it could be a movement, a way of life even! With any luck, we may well see someone from the 488 Rules Party standing at the next election. However, let's be clear about one thing, it won't be me:
Rule no. 242 - Comedians should not be Prime Minister. Nor should Shannon Noll. Or any other actor or celebrity who just so happens to say something with which you agree.
488 Rules is a book for anyone who believes good manners and common sense are the way forward. It's time to make the world idiot-free and lovely.'
Kitty says: 'Who knew other people loved rules as much as I do? I'm so excited, this feels like it could be more than a book, it could be a movement, a way of life even! With any luck, we may well see someone from the 488 Rules Party standing at the next election. However, let's be clear about one thing, it won't be me:
Rule no. 242 - Comedians should not be Prime Minister. Nor should Shannon Noll. Or any other actor or celebrity who just so happens to say something with which you agree.
488 Rules is a book for anyone who believes good manners and common sense are the way forward. It's time to make the world idiot-free and lovely.'
Split
Lee Kofman
$32.99
Paperback • 320 pages
In this compelling anthology of personal essays, curated by award-winning author Lee Kofman, some of Australia's most beloved writers reveal, for the first time, powerful, occasionally funny and often heartbreaking stories of significant endings and their aftermath.
Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project, shares how he discarded his past - perhaps autistic - self, while comedian Sami Shah writes about his public split from Islam, the religion of his birth. Ramona Koval delves into the bittersweet end to her career at the ABC and Fiona Wright explores how her anorexia has affected her romantic relationships. Whereas Kate Holden suggests that for some, splitting - whether from memorabilia, books or lovers - is unimaginable.
Join eighteen acclaimed storytellers in their candid and courageous reflections on the intrinsic human experience of loss and leaving, which acknowledge the price we can often pay for a much-needed end, or new beginning.
Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project, shares how he discarded his past - perhaps autistic - self, while comedian Sami Shah writes about his public split from Islam, the religion of his birth. Ramona Koval delves into the bittersweet end to her career at the ABC and Fiona Wright explores how her anorexia has affected her romantic relationships. Whereas Kate Holden suggests that for some, splitting - whether from memorabilia, books or lovers - is unimaginable.
Join eighteen acclaimed storytellers in their candid and courageous reflections on the intrinsic human experience of loss and leaving, which acknowledge the price we can often pay for a much-needed end, or new beginning.
Winning for Women: A Personal Story
Iola Mathews
$29.95
Paperback • 328 pages
What was it like to be involved in the heady days of `second wave' feminism in Australia, when the role of women at home and at work changed decisively? Iola Mathews was one of the founders of the Women's Electoral Lobby, a journalist at The Age, and later a leading ACTU advocate for women workers during the `Accord' with the Hawke-Keating Government. She was one of the first generation of women trying to `have it all' with a career and children.
In this honest and revealing memoir, she takes us inside the day-to-day groundwork required to bring about reforms in areas like affirmative action, equal pay, superannuation, childcare, parental leave and work-family issues. This is an important record of a pivotal time for women in Australia's history. Iola brings wisdom and experience to it, reflecting on where we are today, with suggestions for further reform. It's a vital source for policy makers and all those interested in women, work and families.
`Iola Mathews has written a fascinating insider account of how she battled for major reforms for women, especially during her time at the ACTU, where she won landmark cases on parental leave and wage justice for child care and clerical workers. It is so important to know the stories behind these historic victories.' - Anne Summers 'Iola's story shows what can be achieved when passionate people commit to changing the rules and fighting for fairness. Her story shows the best qualities of the union movement - people working to make life better for others and to pursue equality and fairness. A great story of a moment of immense change for working women in Australia, and of the people in the movement who made that change possible.' -Sally McManus
In this honest and revealing memoir, she takes us inside the day-to-day groundwork required to bring about reforms in areas like affirmative action, equal pay, superannuation, childcare, parental leave and work-family issues. This is an important record of a pivotal time for women in Australia's history. Iola brings wisdom and experience to it, reflecting on where we are today, with suggestions for further reform. It's a vital source for policy makers and all those interested in women, work and families.
`Iola Mathews has written a fascinating insider account of how she battled for major reforms for women, especially during her time at the ACTU, where she won landmark cases on parental leave and wage justice for child care and clerical workers. It is so important to know the stories behind these historic victories.' - Anne Summers 'Iola's story shows what can be achieved when passionate people commit to changing the rules and fighting for fairness. Her story shows the best qualities of the union movement - people working to make life better for others and to pursue equality and fairness. A great story of a moment of immense change for working women in Australia, and of the people in the movement who made that change possible.' -Sally McManus
Tripping with Jenny
Mudrooroo
$29.95
Paperback • 260 pages
An autobiography of the Aboriginal writer Mudrooroo, following the publication of his book Wild Cat Falling, and travels to Europe and India with his first wife Jenny, runinating on his Aboriginal background and his interest in Buddhism in the period 1965 to 1968.
Book features :
- First autobiography of controversal figure in Australian literature.
- Review copies out in May to get extensive reviews, notable interest from the Australian and Fairfax.
Book features :
- First autobiography of controversal figure in Australian literature.
- Review copies out in May to get extensive reviews, notable interest from the Australian and Fairfax.
Little One
Peter Papathanasiou
$29.99
Paperback • 336 pages
SIGNED COPIES • SHIPPING NOW!
Peter grew up an only child in Australia, finally discovering his true parentage in 1999 when his mother revealed the secret of his birth and the sacrifice that lay behind. By then, Peter's birth mother had died, but he found he had two older brothers still living in northern Greece. This is where the story begins.
What follows is a moving and compelling memoir of family and place, as Peter traces his parents' journey to Australia, their struggle as migrants, and the very different world that they came from - a world where the bond of family was so strong, a husband and wife were prepared to make an extraordinary gift.
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Angel Of Death: Dulcie Markham, Australia's most beautiful bad woman
Leigh Straw
$32.99
Hardback
The newspapers called her 'Australia's most beautiful bad woman' and she was deadly to know...
This is the story of 'Pretty' Dulcie Markham, a key figure of the underworld of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, who, according to one crime reporter, 'saw more violence and death than any other woman in Australia's history'. Nicknamed the 'Black Widow' and 'Angel of Death' by the crooks, reporters and police who knew her best, Dulcie's lovers were stabbed and gunned down in the most violent years of Australian crime, the 1920s to the 1950s. Not always by her ...
This is the story of 'Pretty' Dulcie Markham, a key figure of the underworld of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, who, according to one crime reporter, 'saw more violence and death than any other woman in Australia's history'. Nicknamed the 'Black Widow' and 'Angel of Death' by the crooks, reporters and police who knew her best, Dulcie's lovers were stabbed and gunned down in the most violent years of Australian crime, the 1920s to the 1950s. Not always by her ...
No Man's Land: the untold story of automation and QF72
Kevin Sullivan
$34.99
Paperback
A gripping account of how a major air disaster was averted, by the captain and former Top Gun pilot Instinctively, I release my pressure on the sidestick. Out of my subconscious, a survival technique from a previous life emerges: Neutralise! I'm not in control so I must neutralise controls. I never imagined I'd use this part of my military experience in a commercial airliner ...
On routine flight QF72 from Singapore to Perth on 7 October 2008, the primary flight computers went rogue, causing the plane to pitch down, nose first, towards the Indian Ocean - twice.
The Airbus A330 carrying 315 passengers and crew was out of control, with violent negative G forces propelling anyone and anything untethered through the cabin roof.
It took the skill and discipline of veteran US Navy Top Gun Kevin Sullivan, captain of the ill-fated flight, to wrestle the plane back under control and perform a high-stakes emergency landing at a RAAF base on the WA coast 1200 kilometres north of Perth.
In No Man's Land, the captain of the flight tells the full story for the first time. It's a gripping, blow-by-blow account of how, along with his co-pilots, Sullivan relied on his elite military training to land the gravely malfunctioning plane and narrowly avert what could have been a horrific air disaster.
As automation becomes the way of the future, and in the aftermath of Ethiopian Airlines flight 961 and Lion Air flight JT610, the story of QF72 raises important questions about how much control we relinquish to computers and whether more checks and balances are needed.
On routine flight QF72 from Singapore to Perth on 7 October 2008, the primary flight computers went rogue, causing the plane to pitch down, nose first, towards the Indian Ocean - twice.
The Airbus A330 carrying 315 passengers and crew was out of control, with violent negative G forces propelling anyone and anything untethered through the cabin roof.
It took the skill and discipline of veteran US Navy Top Gun Kevin Sullivan, captain of the ill-fated flight, to wrestle the plane back under control and perform a high-stakes emergency landing at a RAAF base on the WA coast 1200 kilometres north of Perth.
In No Man's Land, the captain of the flight tells the full story for the first time. It's a gripping, blow-by-blow account of how, along with his co-pilots, Sullivan relied on his elite military training to land the gravely malfunctioning plane and narrowly avert what could have been a horrific air disaster.
As automation becomes the way of the future, and in the aftermath of Ethiopian Airlines flight 961 and Lion Air flight JT610, the story of QF72 raises important questions about how much control we relinquish to computers and whether more checks and balances are needed.
See more in stock for TRAVEL
Advocate - Biography
abbeys.com.au
Spies and Stars: MI5, Showbusiness and Me
Charlotte Bingham
$29.99
Paperback • 272 pages
The wickedly funny sequel to the MI5 and Me, described by Tatler as 'a stone cold comic classic', following the irrepressible Lottie's adventures in 1950s London London in the 1950s. Lottie is a reluctant typist at MI5 and the even more reluctant daughter of the organisation's most illustrious spy. Now she has had the bad luck to fall in love with Harry, a handsome if frustrated young actor, who has also been press-ganged into the family business, acting as one of her father's undercover agents in the Communist hotbed of British theatre.
Together the two young lovers embark on a star-studded adventure through the glittering world of theatre - but, between missing files, disapproving parents, and their own burgeoning creative endeavours, life is about to become very complicated indeed...
Together the two young lovers embark on a star-studded adventure through the glittering world of theatre - but, between missing files, disapproving parents, and their own burgeoning creative endeavours, life is about to become very complicated indeed...
Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps: A Life of John Buchan
Ursula Buchan
$49.99
Hardback • 512 pages
John Buchan's name is known across the world for The Thirty-Nine Steps. In the past hundred years the classic thriller has never been out of print and has inspired numerous adaptations for film, television, radio and stage, beginning with the celebrated version by Alfred Hitchcock.
Yet there was vastly more to `JB'. He wrote more than a hundred books - fiction and non-fiction - and a thousand articles for newspapers and magazines. He was a scholar, antiquarian, barrister, colonial administrator, journal editor, literary critic, publisher, war correspondent, director of wartime propaganda, member of parliament and imperial proconsul - given a state funeral when he died, a deeply admired and loved Governor-General of Canada.
His teenage years in Glasgow's Gorbals, where his father was the Free Church minister, contributed to his ease with shepherds and ambassadors, fur-trappers and prime ministers. His improbable marriage to a member of the aristocratic Grosvenor family means that this account of his life contains, at its heart, an enduring love story.
Ursula Buchan, his granddaughter, has drawn on recently discovered family documents to write this comprehensive and illuminating biography. With perception, style, wit and a penetratingly clear eye, she brings vividly to life this remarkable man and his times.
Yet there was vastly more to `JB'. He wrote more than a hundred books - fiction and non-fiction - and a thousand articles for newspapers and magazines. He was a scholar, antiquarian, barrister, colonial administrator, journal editor, literary critic, publisher, war correspondent, director of wartime propaganda, member of parliament and imperial proconsul - given a state funeral when he died, a deeply admired and loved Governor-General of Canada.
His teenage years in Glasgow's Gorbals, where his father was the Free Church minister, contributed to his ease with shepherds and ambassadors, fur-trappers and prime ministers. His improbable marriage to a member of the aristocratic Grosvenor family means that this account of his life contains, at its heart, an enduring love story.
Ursula Buchan, his granddaughter, has drawn on recently discovered family documents to write this comprehensive and illuminating biography. With perception, style, wit and a penetratingly clear eye, she brings vividly to life this remarkable man and his times.
Made In Scotland: My Grand Adventures in a Wee Country
Billy Connolly
$19.99
Paperback • 288 pages
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Where do you come from? It's one of the most basic human questions of all. But there is another question, which might sound a wee bit similar but is actually very different- What do you come from? And, let me tell you, that question can take you all sorts of strange places...' In Made in Scotland, legendary comic and national treasure Billy Connolly returns to his roots, reflecting on his life, his homeland and what it means - then and now - to be Scottish.
Full of Billy's distinctive humour, Made in Scotland is a hilarious and heartfelt love letter to the place and the people that made him.
Full of Billy's distinctive humour, Made in Scotland is a hilarious and heartfelt love letter to the place and the people that made him.
Chanel's Riviera: Life, Love and the Struggle for Survival on the Cote d Azur, 1930 1944
Anne De Courcy
$32.99
Paperback • 304 pages
Far from worrying about the onset of war, in the spring of 1938 the burning question on the French Riviera was whether one should curtsey to the Duchess of Windsor. Few of those who had settled there thought much about what was going on in the rest of Europe. It was a golden, glamorous life, far removed from politics or conflict.
Featuring a sparkling cast of artists, writers and historical figures including Winston Churchill, Daisy Fellowes, Salvador Dali, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Eileen Gray and Edith Wharton, with the enigmatic Coco Chanel at its heart, CHANEL'S RIVIERA is a captivating account of a period that saw some of the deepest extremes of luxury and terror in the whole of the twentieth century.
From Chanel's first summer at her Roquebrune villa La Pausa (in the later years with her German lover) amid the glamour of the pre-war parties and casinos in Antibes, Nice and Cannes to the horrors of evacuation and the displacement of thousands of families during the Second World War, CHANEL'S RIVIERA explores the fascinating world of the Cote d'Azur elite in the 1930s and 1940s. Enriched with much original research, it is social history that brings the experiences of both rich and poor, protected and persecuted, to vivid life.
Featuring a sparkling cast of artists, writers and historical figures including Winston Churchill, Daisy Fellowes, Salvador Dali, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Eileen Gray and Edith Wharton, with the enigmatic Coco Chanel at its heart, CHANEL'S RIVIERA is a captivating account of a period that saw some of the deepest extremes of luxury and terror in the whole of the twentieth century.
From Chanel's first summer at her Roquebrune villa La Pausa (in the later years with her German lover) amid the glamour of the pre-war parties and casinos in Antibes, Nice and Cannes to the horrors of evacuation and the displacement of thousands of families during the Second World War, CHANEL'S RIVIERA explores the fascinating world of the Cote d'Azur elite in the 1930s and 1940s. Enriched with much original research, it is social history that brings the experiences of both rich and poor, protected and persecuted, to vivid life.
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Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy
Savannah Knoop
$27.99
Paperback • 224 pages
The true story of Savannah Knoop, JT LeRoy, and one of the most famous literary hoaxes of all time, soon to be a major motion picture.
More than ten years after the New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy, her story continues to fascinate. To some, it was a compelling experiment with authorship and identity. To others, it was an unforgivable deception. In Girl Boy Girl, Knoop tells her side of the story, revealing how she came to portray the young trans hustler turned literary wunderkind - a persona created by her sister-in-law, Laura Albert, to help sell her books.
For six years Knoop led this bizarre double life, trading a precarious existence as a college dropout for a life in which she was embraced by celebrities and artists - Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Mary Ellen Mark, Winona Ryder, Asia Argento, Gus Van Sant, Mike Pitt, Calvin Klein, and Shirley Manson, to name a few - and traveled the world. Knoop reveals how playing JT LeRoy gave her a sense of confidence and entitlement she never had before. But as JT's fame grew, the charade became harder to maintain, and Knoop started to resent "pretending to be someone who had nothing to do with me, representing something I hadn't created." Much more than an inside look at one of the most famous literary hoaxes of all time, this book is also the story of a woman who inadvertently finds herself by pretending to be someone else.
This edition of the book features a new introduction by the author, whose story will soon be a major motion picture starring Kristen Stewart as Savannah/JT.
More than ten years after the New York Times unmasked Savannah Knoop as the face of the mysterious author JT LeRoy, her story continues to fascinate. To some, it was a compelling experiment with authorship and identity. To others, it was an unforgivable deception. In Girl Boy Girl, Knoop tells her side of the story, revealing how she came to portray the young trans hustler turned literary wunderkind - a persona created by her sister-in-law, Laura Albert, to help sell her books.
For six years Knoop led this bizarre double life, trading a precarious existence as a college dropout for a life in which she was embraced by celebrities and artists - Carrie Fisher, Courtney Love, Mary Ellen Mark, Winona Ryder, Asia Argento, Gus Van Sant, Mike Pitt, Calvin Klein, and Shirley Manson, to name a few - and traveled the world. Knoop reveals how playing JT LeRoy gave her a sense of confidence and entitlement she never had before. But as JT's fame grew, the charade became harder to maintain, and Knoop started to resent "pretending to be someone who had nothing to do with me, representing something I hadn't created." Much more than an inside look at one of the most famous literary hoaxes of all time, this book is also the story of a woman who inadvertently finds herself by pretending to be someone else.
This edition of the book features a new introduction by the author, whose story will soon be a major motion picture starring Kristen Stewart as Savannah/JT.
I Spy: My Life in MI5
Tom Marcus
$32.99
Paperback • 336 pages
Tom Marcus spent years of his life working covertly against those who want to do us harm. Now, for the first time, he tells the full story of what it is like to live your life in the shadows and who you need to become to survive.
First published in 2016, Soldier Spy was a series of stories from Tom's years in MI5 and has now sold over 250,000 copies across all editions and was a Sunday Times bestseller for five months. I Spy takes us deeper into his life as a spy.
First published in 2016, Soldier Spy was a series of stories from Tom's years in MI5 and has now sold over 250,000 copies across all editions and was a Sunday Times bestseller for five months. I Spy takes us deeper into his life as a spy.
Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent
Paul Mendes-Flohr
$44.99
Hardback • 440 pages
The first major biography in English in over thirty years of the seminal modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber An authority on the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965), Paul Mendes-Flohr offers the first major biography in English in thirty years of this seminal modern Jewish thinker. The book is organized around several key moments, such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three, a foundational trauma that, Mendes-Flohr shows, left an enduring mark on Buber's inner life, attuning him to the fragility of human relations and the need to nurture them with what he would call a dialogical attentiveness.
Buber's philosophical and theological writings, most famously I and Thou, made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber's life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century.
Buber's philosophical and theological writings, most famously I and Thou, made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber's life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century.
The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
Dennis C. Rasmussen
$37.99
Paperback • 336 pages
The story of the greatest of all philosophical friendships-and how it influenced modern thought David Hume is arguably the most important philosopher ever to have written in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as the Great Infidel for his religious skepticism and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith, now hailed as the founding father of capitalism, was a revered professor of moral philosophy. Remarkably, Hume and Smith were best friends, sharing what Dennis Rasmussen calls the greatest of all philosophical friendships. The Infidel and the Professor tells the fascinating story of the close relationship between these towering Enlightenment thinkers-and how it influenced their world-changing ideas. It shows that Hume contributed more to economics-and Smith contributed more to philosophy-than is generally recognized. The result is a compelling account of a great friendship that had great consequences for modern thought.
Calypso
David Sedaris
$22.99
Paperback • 272 pages
'Sedaris is the premier observer of our world and its weirdnesses' Adam Kay, author of THIS IS GOING TO HURT 'He's like an American Alan Bennett' Guardian A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 'Entrancing . . . This book allows us to observed not just the nimble-mouthed elf of his previous work, but a man in his seventh decade expunging his darker secrets and contemplating mortality . . . The brilliance of David Sedaris's writing is that his very essence, his aura, seeps through the pages of his books like an intoxicating cloud, mesmerising us so that his logic becomes ours' Alan Cumming, Scotsman If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with CALYPSO. You'd be wrong.
When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.
With CALYPSO, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny - it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's writing has never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.
This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumour joke. CALYPSO is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet - and it just might be his very best.
When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it's impossible to take a vacation from yourself.
With CALYPSO, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny - it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's writing has never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.
This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumour joke. CALYPSO is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet - and it just might be his very best.
The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation: a Legacy of Triumph and Tragedy
J. Randy Taraborrelli
$39.99
Hardback • 624 pages
A unique burden was inherited by the children of the original Kennedy icons, JFK and his celebrated siblings. Raised in a world of enormous privilege, against the backdrop of American history, their own lives often veered between towering accomplishment and moments of personal heartbreak. These are the Kennedy stories you've never heard before:
*The real story of JFK, Jr.'s tumultuous marriage to Carolyn Bessette and the details of their tragic deaths *Caroline Kennedy's surprising marriage to Ed Schlossberg and her rivalry with her brother, John *The unexpected way pop star Taylor Swift helped Conor Kennedy cope with his mother's suicide *Congressman Joseph Kennedy III's rise to power and his compelling Democratic response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Based on exclusive first-hand interviews and in-depth research, THE KENNEDY HEIRS is an epic drama of ambition, scandal, pride and power.
*The real story of JFK, Jr.'s tumultuous marriage to Carolyn Bessette and the details of their tragic deaths *Caroline Kennedy's surprising marriage to Ed Schlossberg and her rivalry with her brother, John *The unexpected way pop star Taylor Swift helped Conor Kennedy cope with his mother's suicide *Congressman Joseph Kennedy III's rise to power and his compelling Democratic response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address Based on exclusive first-hand interviews and in-depth research, THE KENNEDY HEIRS is an epic drama of ambition, scandal, pride and power.
Advocate - History
abbeys.com.au
The Song of Simon de Montfort: England's First Revolutionary and the Death of Chivalry
Sophie Therese Ambler
$39.99
Hardback • 368 pages
'Alive with human detail and acute political judgement, this book marks the arrival of a formidably gifted historian.' Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets and The Templars It was around half-past eight in the morning, with summer rainclouds weighing heavy in the sky, that Simon de Montfort decided to die. It was 4 August 1265 and he was about to face the royal army in the final battle of a quarrel that had raged between them for years. Outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and certain to lose, Simon chose to fight, knowing that he could not possibly win the day.
The Song of Simon de Montfort is the story of this extraordinary man: heir to a great warrior, devoted husband and father, fearless crusader knight and charismatic leader. It is the story of a man whose passion for good governance was so fierce that, in 1258, frustrated by the King's refusal to take the advice of his nobles and the increasing injustice meted out to his subjects, he marched on Henry III's hall at Westminster and seized the reins of power.
Montfort established a council to rule in the King's name, overturning the social order in a way that would not be seen again until the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century. Having defeated the King at the Battle of Lewes in 1264, Montfort and his revolutionary council ruled England for some fifteen months, until the enmity between the two sides exploded on that August day in 1265. When the fighting was over, Montfort and a host of his followers had been cut down on the battlefield, in an outpouring of noble blood that marked the end of chivalry in England as it had existed since the Norman Conquest.
Drawing on an abundance of sources that allow us to trace Montfort's actions and personality in a depth not possible for earlier periods in medieval history, Sophie Therese Ambler tells his story with a clarity that reveals all of the excitement, chaos and human tragedy of England's first revolution.
The Song of Simon de Montfort is the story of this extraordinary man: heir to a great warrior, devoted husband and father, fearless crusader knight and charismatic leader. It is the story of a man whose passion for good governance was so fierce that, in 1258, frustrated by the King's refusal to take the advice of his nobles and the increasing injustice meted out to his subjects, he marched on Henry III's hall at Westminster and seized the reins of power.
Montfort established a council to rule in the King's name, overturning the social order in a way that would not be seen again until the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century. Having defeated the King at the Battle of Lewes in 1264, Montfort and his revolutionary council ruled England for some fifteen months, until the enmity between the two sides exploded on that August day in 1265. When the fighting was over, Montfort and a host of his followers had been cut down on the battlefield, in an outpouring of noble blood that marked the end of chivalry in England as it had existed since the Norman Conquest.
Drawing on an abundance of sources that allow us to trace Montfort's actions and personality in a depth not possible for earlier periods in medieval history, Sophie Therese Ambler tells his story with a clarity that reveals all of the excitement, chaos and human tragedy of England's first revolution.
The Rising Tide: Among the Islands and Atolls of the Pacific Ocean
Tom Bamforth
$29.99
Paperback • 272 pages
Vanuatu. Marshall Islands. Fiji. The names evoke white-sand beaches, swaying palms and lazy holidays. But in reality, these idyllic places are tropical maelstroms of global realpolitik, caught between the world's superpowers, former colonial masters and tin-pot despots. Collectively the Pacific nations, which form one third of the globe's surface area, are one of the most strategically important regions in the world - for military might, for energy security and geopolitical borders. Even more importantly, these nations are at the frontline of climate change, as rising sea levels, salinity, cyclones and pollution put their very existence at stake.
Using his extensive personal experience in the Pacific, Tom Bamforth shows us the people of the islands, their cultures and how they live in these remote and increasingly challenging places. From uprisings in New Caledonia to tsunamis in Tonga, this is a book about interaction, race, colonisation, climate change, nuclear testing, resistance, cultural preservation, urban life, the tastiness of well roasted pig, and the pleasures of canoeing at dusk. It is sometimes said that the Pacific is to the contemporary world what the Mediterranean was to the ancients and what the Atlantic was to the twentieth century. The Rising Tide, then, is a journey into the ocean of the future.
With humour and insight, Tom Bamforth presents both an insider's and an outsider's view of life in the Pacific, rendered in vivid detail and colour. Gripping and beautifully written, The Rising Tide masterfully weaves the stories of people at the forefront of global change around a broader narrative of political mismanagement, culture, diplomacy and identity.
Using his extensive personal experience in the Pacific, Tom Bamforth shows us the people of the islands, their cultures and how they live in these remote and increasingly challenging places. From uprisings in New Caledonia to tsunamis in Tonga, this is a book about interaction, race, colonisation, climate change, nuclear testing, resistance, cultural preservation, urban life, the tastiness of well roasted pig, and the pleasures of canoeing at dusk. It is sometimes said that the Pacific is to the contemporary world what the Mediterranean was to the ancients and what the Atlantic was to the twentieth century. The Rising Tide, then, is a journey into the ocean of the future.
With humour and insight, Tom Bamforth presents both an insider's and an outsider's view of life in the Pacific, rendered in vivid detail and colour. Gripping and beautifully written, The Rising Tide masterfully weaves the stories of people at the forefront of global change around a broader narrative of political mismanagement, culture, diplomacy and identity.
Honourable Exit: How a few brave Americans risked all to save their Vietnamese allies at the end of the war
Thurston Clarke
$49.99
Hardback • 448 pages
1973. US participation in the Vietnam War ends. As troops withdraw, President Nixon pledges to assist the South in the event of invasion by the North. 1975. North Vietnam begins a full-scale assault on the South. Congress does nothing. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese face execution or life in concentration camps. An iconic photograph is taken of the Fall of Saigon, depicting desperate Vietnamese people scrambling to board a helicopter evacuating the last of the American soldiers. It is an image of US failure and shame. Or is it? In Honourable Exit, Clarke revisits the last days of the Vietnam War to uncover the previously untold story of a life-saving mass evacuation. During those final days, a number of Americans - diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, missionaries, contractors, and spies - risked their lives and disobeyed orders to help their translators, drivers, colleagues, neighbours, friends, and even perfect strangers to escape. By the time the last US helicopter left Vietnam on 30 April 1975, these heroic Americans had helped to spirit over 130,000 South Vietnamese to resettlement in the US and life as American citizens. Groundbreaking, page-turning, and authoritative, Honourable Exit is a deeply moving history of Americans in one of their little-known finest hours. 'Vietnam is America's unfinished war - unfinished because so many, men and women, have yet to come home body and soul. Honourable Exit is that homecoming. Beautifully written, achingly poignant, scrupulously reported, this story is a revelation. We see history in ways we hadn't imagined. Honourable Exit is a book for every generation of readers.' - Doug Stanton, #1 New York Times bestselling author of 12 Strong and The Odyssey of Echo Company 'In this moving account of the Righteous Americans , Clarke celebrates the forgotten men and women who, in the face of great opposition, managed to pull off an epic humanitarian and immigration success story. A powerful and inspiring lesson in courage that could not be more relevant today.' - Rory Kennedy, Academy Award-nominated director and producer of Last Days in Vietnam 'Filled with new information and riveting recreations of daring rescues, this book adds significantly to the history of a notable moment in U.S. military history.' - Publishers Weekly
Macedonian Phalangite vs Persian Warrior: Alexander confronts the Achaemenids, 334-331 BC
Murray Dahm , Peter Dennis
$32.99
Paperback • 80 pages
In August 334 BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire and systematically set about its conquest. At the core of Alexander's army were 10,000 members of the phalanx, the phalangites. Armed with a long pike and fighting in formations up to 16 ranks deep, these grizzled veterans were the mainstay of the Macedonian army.
Facing them were the myriad armies of the peoples that made up the Persian Empire. At the centre of these forces was the formation known as the Immortals: 10,000 elite infantry, armed with spears and bows.
In this study, a noted authority assesses the origins, combat role and battlefield performance of Alexander's phalangites and their Persian opponents in three key battles of the era - the Granicus River, Issus and Gaugamela - at the dawn of a new way of waging war.
Facing them were the myriad armies of the peoples that made up the Persian Empire. At the centre of these forces was the formation known as the Immortals: 10,000 elite infantry, armed with spears and bows.
In this study, a noted authority assesses the origins, combat role and battlefield performance of Alexander's phalangites and their Persian opponents in three key battles of the era - the Granicus River, Issus and Gaugamela - at the dawn of a new way of waging war.
Hitler's Last Plot: The 139 VIP Hostages Selected for Death in the Final Days of World War II
Ian Sayer , Jeremy Dronfield
$39.99
Hardback • 352 pages
In April 1945, as Germany faced defeat, Hitler planned to round up the Third Reich's most valuable prisoners and send them to his Alpine Fortress, where he and the SS would keep the hostages as they made a last stand against the Allies. The prisoners included European presidents, prime ministers, generals, British secret agents, and German anti-Nazi clerics, celebrities, and officers who had aided the July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler--and the prisoners' families. Orders were given to the SS: if the German military situation deteriorated, the prisoners were to be executed--all 139 of them.
So began a tense, deadly drama. As some prisoners plotted escape, others prepared for the inevitable, and their SS guards grew increasingly volatile, drunk, and trigger-happy as defeat loomed. As a dramatic confrontation between the SS and the Wehrmacht threatened the hostages caught in the middle, the US Army launched a frantic rescue bid to save the hostages before the axe fell.
Drawing on previously unpublished and overlooked sources, HITLER'S LAST PLOT is the first full account of this astounding and shocking story, from the original round-up order to the prisoners' terrifying ordeal and ultimate rescue. Told in a thrilling, page-turning narrative, this is one of World War II's most fascinating episodes.
So began a tense, deadly drama. As some prisoners plotted escape, others prepared for the inevitable, and their SS guards grew increasingly volatile, drunk, and trigger-happy as defeat loomed. As a dramatic confrontation between the SS and the Wehrmacht threatened the hostages caught in the middle, the US Army launched a frantic rescue bid to save the hostages before the axe fell.
Drawing on previously unpublished and overlooked sources, HITLER'S LAST PLOT is the first full account of this astounding and shocking story, from the original round-up order to the prisoners' terrifying ordeal and ultimate rescue. Told in a thrilling, page-turning narrative, this is one of World War II's most fascinating episodes.
Counter Attack: Villers-Bretonneux - April 1918
Peter Edgar
$19.99
Paperback • 160 pages
The brutal 1914 German invasion of Belgium and France had gained a large portion of both countries. Over three-and-a-half punishing years the Allies were slowly pushing the Germans back but in March 1918, Germany launched a massive spring offensive. Resting in the Ypres sector after the horrors of the Passchendaele campaign, the Australians were among the first sent south to try to block the enemy.
Now, after an unprecedented fortnight of advance, Germany's goal was to capture the town of Villers-Bretonneux, key to the major rail junction of Amiens. The first attempt on 4 April found the 9th Australian Infantry Brigade in the centre of the line. They stopped the enemy at the gates. Then on 24 April the Germans launched a new attack, led by tanks, and took the town.
Standing by to counter-attack were the 15th and 13th brigades of the Australian Corps. Not everything went to plan and casualties were high, but the counter-attack was brilliantly executed in spite of the odds. It became 'a soldier's fight' in which the Australian troops' morale and eagerness to get to grips with the enemy, together with their aggressive, well-practised moves under fire triumphed.
Counter Attack: Villers-Bretonneux - April 1918 details the pivotal role the Australians played in denying German victory. Villers-Bretonneux was never again threatened by the enemy
Book Features:
- Part of the highly successful Australian Army Campaign Series.
- Full colour with low RRP of $19.99 provides great value for money.
- National PR campaign targeting Australia’s leading Military – History Magazines and Journals – physical and online.
- Advertised in trade publications – InCite Magazine, Good Reading and B+P Magazine.
- Mainstream Capital City newspaper book reviews and ABC local and national radio for author interviews.
Now, after an unprecedented fortnight of advance, Germany's goal was to capture the town of Villers-Bretonneux, key to the major rail junction of Amiens. The first attempt on 4 April found the 9th Australian Infantry Brigade in the centre of the line. They stopped the enemy at the gates. Then on 24 April the Germans launched a new attack, led by tanks, and took the town.
Standing by to counter-attack were the 15th and 13th brigades of the Australian Corps. Not everything went to plan and casualties were high, but the counter-attack was brilliantly executed in spite of the odds. It became 'a soldier's fight' in which the Australian troops' morale and eagerness to get to grips with the enemy, together with their aggressive, well-practised moves under fire triumphed.
Counter Attack: Villers-Bretonneux - April 1918 details the pivotal role the Australians played in denying German victory. Villers-Bretonneux was never again threatened by the enemy
Book Features:
- Part of the highly successful Australian Army Campaign Series.
- Full colour with low RRP of $19.99 provides great value for money.
- National PR campaign targeting Australia’s leading Military – History Magazines and Journals – physical and online.
- Advertised in trade publications – InCite Magazine, Good Reading and B+P Magazine.
- Mainstream Capital City newspaper book reviews and ABC local and national radio for author interviews.
Fatal Mission: The Life and Death of the Crew of the Naughty Nan 467 Sqn Raaf
Mal Elliott
$29.99
Paperback • 224 pages
Fatal Mission is the story of Australian navigator Oscar Furniss, just one of 55,000 young men who perished while flying for Bomber Command during World War II. Lovingly crafted by his nephew, Mal Elliott, this book brings to life a young man whose name was never spoken by his family and who was a stranger to his modern-day descendants. Elliott follows Oscar from his carefree childhood in the Blue Mountains through his training over the vast emptiness of Canada to the mist-shrouded patchwork landscapes of Britain and on to the hostile skies of occupied France. He uses the accounts of the two surviving aircrew to piece together the events of the fateful night that saw most of the crew of Lancaster JA901, affectionally know as Naughty Nan, perish as pilot Colin Dickson heroically manoeuvred his burning aircraft away from the towns and villages that dotted the landscape.
This has been a difficult book for Elliott to write as it contains a harrowing description of his uncle’s last moments. The terrible impact of the deaths of the aircrew are vividly described alongside the miraculous tales of the two survivors. But for the family of Oscar Furniss there would be no miracle, just the lingering weight of deep and lasting grief. This is a story that moves beyond the technical descriptions of bombing missions to describe the human toll of conflict. It underlines the crucial importance of commemoration, of refusing to allow those who perished in war to be forgotten. Theirs was a sacrifice that we who live in freedom should never forget.
This has been a difficult book for Elliott to write as it contains a harrowing description of his uncle’s last moments. The terrible impact of the deaths of the aircrew are vividly described alongside the miraculous tales of the two survivors. But for the family of Oscar Furniss there would be no miracle, just the lingering weight of deep and lasting grief. This is a story that moves beyond the technical descriptions of bombing missions to describe the human toll of conflict. It underlines the crucial importance of commemoration, of refusing to allow those who perished in war to be forgotten. Theirs was a sacrifice that we who live in freedom should never forget.
The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz
Jack Fairweather
$35.00
Paperback • 400 pages
How do you keep fighting in the face of unimaginable horror?
This is untold story of one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War.
In the Summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich.
His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention centre -- Auschwitz.
It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi's terrifying designs. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities to the West, culminating in the mass murder of over a million Jews. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust - yet his story was all but forgotten for decades.
This is the first major account of his amazing journey, drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp's fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
The result is a enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man's attempt to change the course of history.
This is untold story of one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War.
In the Summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich.
His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention centre -- Auschwitz.
It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi's terrifying designs. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities to the West, culminating in the mass murder of over a million Jews. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust - yet his story was all but forgotten for decades.
This is the first major account of his amazing journey, drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp's fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
The result is a enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man's attempt to change the course of history.
The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong Un
Anna Fifield
$32.99
Paperback • 288 pages
THE GREAT SUCCESSOR is an irreverent yet insightful quest to understand the life of Kim Jong Un, one of the world's most secretive dictators. Kim's life is swathed in myth and propaganda, from the plainly silly--he supposedly ate so much Swiss cheese that his ankles gave way--to the grimly bloody stories of the ways his enemies and rival family members have perished at his command.
One of the most knowledgeable journalists on modern Korea, Anna Fifield has exclusive access to Kim's aunt and uncle who posed as his parents while he was growing up in Switzerland, members of the entourage that accompanied Dennis Rodman on his quasi-ambassadorial visits with Kim, and the Japanese sushi chef whom Kim befriended and who was the first outsider to identify him as the inevitable successor to his father as supreme ruler. She has been able to create a captivating portrait of the oddest and most isolated political regime in the world, one that is broken yet able to summon a US president for peace talks, bankrupt yet in possession of nuclear weapons. Kim Jong Un; ridiculous but deadly, and a man of our times.
One of the most knowledgeable journalists on modern Korea, Anna Fifield has exclusive access to Kim's aunt and uncle who posed as his parents while he was growing up in Switzerland, members of the entourage that accompanied Dennis Rodman on his quasi-ambassadorial visits with Kim, and the Japanese sushi chef whom Kim befriended and who was the first outsider to identify him as the inevitable successor to his father as supreme ruler. She has been able to create a captivating portrait of the oddest and most isolated political regime in the world, one that is broken yet able to summon a US president for peace talks, bankrupt yet in possession of nuclear weapons. Kim Jong Un; ridiculous but deadly, and a man of our times.
Botany Bay and the First Fleet: The Real Story
Alan Frost
$39.99
Paperback • 512 pages
Now in one definitive volume, Botany Bay and the First Fleet is a full, authentic account of the beginnings of modern Australia.
In 1787 a convoy of eleven ships, carrying about 1400 people, set out from England for Botany Bay, on the east coast of New South Wales. In deciding on Botany Bay, British authorities hoped not only to rid Britain of its excess criminals, but also to gain a key strategic outpost and take control of valuable natural resources.
According to the conventional account, it was a shambolic affair- underprepared, poorly equipped and ill-disciplined. Here, Alan Frost debunks these myths, and shows that the voyage was in fact meticulously planned - reflecting its importance to Britain's imperial and commercial ambitions. In his examination of the ships, passengers and preparation, Frost reveals the hopes and schemes of those who engineered the voyage, and the experiences of those who made it.
The culmination of thirty-five years' study of previously neglected archives, Botany Bay and the First Fleet offers new and surprising insights into how Australia came to be.
'Fascinating and compelling' -The Weekend Australian 'An exhilarating read. Frost ... is a master of the concise overview, leavened with wonderfully chosen, vivid examples ... Iconoclastic and refreshing.' -The Sydney Morning Herald 'Highly readable, Frost's work will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in early Australia.' -The Sunday Herald Sun
In 1787 a convoy of eleven ships, carrying about 1400 people, set out from England for Botany Bay, on the east coast of New South Wales. In deciding on Botany Bay, British authorities hoped not only to rid Britain of its excess criminals, but also to gain a key strategic outpost and take control of valuable natural resources.
According to the conventional account, it was a shambolic affair- underprepared, poorly equipped and ill-disciplined. Here, Alan Frost debunks these myths, and shows that the voyage was in fact meticulously planned - reflecting its importance to Britain's imperial and commercial ambitions. In his examination of the ships, passengers and preparation, Frost reveals the hopes and schemes of those who engineered the voyage, and the experiences of those who made it.
The culmination of thirty-five years' study of previously neglected archives, Botany Bay and the First Fleet offers new and surprising insights into how Australia came to be.
'Fascinating and compelling' -The Weekend Australian 'An exhilarating read. Frost ... is a master of the concise overview, leavened with wonderfully chosen, vivid examples ... Iconoclastic and refreshing.' -The Sydney Morning Herald 'Highly readable, Frost's work will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in early Australia.' -The Sunday Herald Sun
The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy's Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat
Eric Haseltine
$29.99
Paperback • 320 pages
Moscow in the late 1970s: one by one, CIA assets are disappearing. The perils of American arrogance, mixed with bureaucratic infighting, had left the country unspeakably vulnerable to ultra-sophisticated Russian electronic surveillance. The Spy In Moscow Station tells of a time when - much like today - Russian spycraft was proving itself far ahead of the best technology the U.S. had to offer. This is the true story of unorthodox, underdog intelligence officers who fought an uphill battle against their government to prove that the KGB had pulled off the most devastating and breathtakingly thorough penetration of U.S. national security in history. Incorporating declassified internal CIA memos and diplomatic cables, this suspenseful narrative reads like a thriller - but real lives were at stake, and every twist is true as the US and USSR attempt to wrongfoot each other in eavesdropping technology and tradecraft. The book also carries a chilling warning for the present: like the State and CIA officers who were certain their 'sweeps' could detect any threat in Moscow, we don't know what we don't know.
Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself: The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945
Florian Huber
$32.99
Paperback • 224 pages
In 1945, as the army retreated, the German people were surrendered to the enemy with no means of defence. A wave of suicides rolled across the country as thousands chose death-for themselves and their children-rather than face the defeat of the Third Reich and what they feared might follow. Drawing on eyewitness accounts, historian Florian Huber tells of the largest mass suicide in German history and its suppression by the survivors-a fascinating insight into the feelings of ordinary people caught in the tide of history who saw no other way out.
The Role of the Scroll: An Illustrated Introduction to Scrolls in the Middle Ages
Thomas Forrest Kelly
$46.95
Hardback • 208 pages
The Role of the Scroll answers the question of why scrolls were made when it was possible to produce books. Scrolls were the standard form of book in Western antiquity but from the fourth century onward, the codex began to outnumber scrolls. And yet, people in the Middle Ages continued to make them.
In these colourful pages, the reader will discover remarkable scrolls that range from showy court documents for empresses to tiny amulets for pregnant women, from pilgrimage maps to small, portable actors' scrolls. An alchemical recipe for gold gives a glimpse into medieval life as a metalsmith and a lengthy list of gifts for Queen Elizabeth I enables the reader to observe a court party. Lively and accessible, The Role of the Scroll is essential reading-and viewing-for anyone interested in how people have kept record of life through the ages.
In these colourful pages, the reader will discover remarkable scrolls that range from showy court documents for empresses to tiny amulets for pregnant women, from pilgrimage maps to small, portable actors' scrolls. An alchemical recipe for gold gives a glimpse into medieval life as a metalsmith and a lengthy list of gifts for Queen Elizabeth I enables the reader to observe a court party. Lively and accessible, The Role of the Scroll is essential reading-and viewing-for anyone interested in how people have kept record of life through the ages.
Bletchley Park and D-Day
David Kenyon
$44.99
Hardback • 320 pages
The untold story of Bletchley Park's key role in the success of the Normandy campaign Since the secret of Bletchley Park was revealed in the 1970s, the work of its codebreakers has become one of the most famous stories of the Second World War. But cracking the Nazis' codes was only the start of the process. Thousands of secret intelligence workers were then involved in making crucial information available to the Allied leaders and commanders who desperately needed it.
Using previously classified documents, David Kenyon casts the work of Bletchley Park in a new light, as not just a codebreaking establishment, but as a fully developed intelligence agency. He shows how preparations for the war's turning point-the Normandy Landings in 1944-had started at Bletchley years earlier, in 1942, with the careful collation of information extracted from enemy signals traffic. This account reveals the true character of Bletchley's vital contribution to success in Normandy, and ultimately, Allied victory.
Using previously classified documents, David Kenyon casts the work of Bletchley Park in a new light, as not just a codebreaking establishment, but as a fully developed intelligence agency. He shows how preparations for the war's turning point-the Normandy Landings in 1944-had started at Bletchley years earlier, in 1942, with the careful collation of information extracted from enemy signals traffic. This account reveals the true character of Bletchley's vital contribution to success in Normandy, and ultimately, Allied victory.
Australian Bushrangers 1788-1880
Mark Stacey
$24.99
Paperback
The first 'bushrangers' or frontier outlaws were escaped or time-expired convicts, who took to the wilderness - 'the bush' - in New South Wales and on the island of Tasmania. Initially, the only Crown forces available were redcoats from the small, scattered garrisons, but by 1825 the problem of outlawry led to the formation of the first Mounted Police from these soldiers.
The gold strikes of the 1860s attracted a new group of men who preferred to get rich by the gun rather than the shovel. The roads, and later railways, that linked the mines with the cities offered many tempting targets and were preyed upon by the bushrangers.
This 1860s generation boasted many famous outlaws who passed into legend for their boldness. The last outbreak came in Victoria in 1880, when the notorious Kelly Gang staged several hold-ups and deliberately ambushed the pursuing police. Their last stand at Glenrowan has become a legendary episode in Australian history. Fully illustrated with some rare period photographs, this is the fascinating story of Australia's most infamous outlaws and the men tasked with tracking them down.
The gold strikes of the 1860s attracted a new group of men who preferred to get rich by the gun rather than the shovel. The roads, and later railways, that linked the mines with the cities offered many tempting targets and were preyed upon by the bushrangers.
This 1860s generation boasted many famous outlaws who passed into legend for their boldness. The last outbreak came in Victoria in 1880, when the notorious Kelly Gang staged several hold-ups and deliberately ambushed the pursuing police. Their last stand at Glenrowan has become a legendary episode in Australian history. Fully illustrated with some rare period photographs, this is the fascinating story of Australia's most infamous outlaws and the men tasked with tracking them down.
Living with Hitler: Compelling Recollections of Hitler's Personal Staff
Karl Wilhellm Krause & Herbert Dohring & Anna Plaim...
$34.99
Paperback • 256 pages
This collection paints a picture of Hitler from members of his household in the unique position of being “seemingly ever-present, yet totally unconnected to events.” Compelling recollections from Hitler's Bodyguard Karl Krause (1934-39), his house administrator Herbert Döhring (1935-43) and chambermaid Anna Plaim (1941-43).
From these accounts we get a deeper sense of Hitler in close proximity. These accounts massively add to our understanding of Hitler as a three dimensional character, especially from subjects like Plaim who only knew Hitler's home life, having rarely left Berghof. The authors shed light on his likes and dislikes from foods to his hobbies, creating a strange sense of humanity. This collection also provides fresh anecdotes, observations and portraits of Hitler's entourage and relatives. Plaim's images of Eva Braun came from finding torn fragments in the bin, whilst Döhring sheds light on Martin Bormann's demeanour.
From these accounts we get a deeper sense of Hitler in close proximity. These accounts massively add to our understanding of Hitler as a three dimensional character, especially from subjects like Plaim who only knew Hitler's home life, having rarely left Berghof. The authors shed light on his likes and dislikes from foods to his hobbies, creating a strange sense of humanity. This collection also provides fresh anecdotes, observations and portraits of Hitler's entourage and relatives. Plaim's images of Eva Braun came from finding torn fragments in the bin, whilst Döhring sheds light on Martin Bormann's demeanour.
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
Ben MacIntyre
$22.99
Paperback • 384 pages
On a warm July evening in 1985, a middle-aged man stood on the pavement of a busy avenue in the heart of Moscow, holding a plastic carrier bag. In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket.
The man was a spy. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal- to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever . . .
The man was a spy. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal- to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever . . .
Barbarians at the Wall: The First Nomadic Empire and the Making of China
John Man
$35.00
Paperback • 328 pages
The people of the first nomadic empire left no written records, but from 200 BC they dominated the heart of Asia for 400 years. They changed the world. The Mongols, today's descendants of Genghis Khan, see them as ancestors. Their rise cemented Chinese unity and inspired the first Great Wall. Their heirs under Attila the Hun helped destroy the Roman Empire.
We don't know what language they spoke, but they became known as Xiongnu, or Hunnu, a term passed down the centuries and across Eurasia, enduring today in shortened form as 'Hun'. Outside Asia precious little is known of their rich history, but new evidence reframes our understanding of the indelible mark they left on a vast region stretching from Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China.
Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, Emperors and Barbarians traces their epic story, and shows how the nomadic cultures of the steppes gave birth to a 'barbarian empire' with the wealth and power to threaten the civilised order of the ancient world.
We don't know what language they spoke, but they became known as Xiongnu, or Hunnu, a term passed down the centuries and across Eurasia, enduring today in shortened form as 'Hun'. Outside Asia precious little is known of their rich history, but new evidence reframes our understanding of the indelible mark they left on a vast region stretching from Europe and sweeping right across Central Asia deep into China.
Based on meticulous research and new archaeological evidence, Emperors and Barbarians traces their epic story, and shows how the nomadic cultures of the steppes gave birth to a 'barbarian empire' with the wealth and power to threaten the civilised order of the ancient world.
The Quest for Queen Mary
James Pope-Hennessy , Hugo Vickers
$22.99
Paperback • 320 pages
'A scary portrait of put-upon servants and potty aristos ... this is arguably the most riotously funny volume published this year' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'One of the funniest, most eccentric books of the year' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years. Now published in full for the first time and edited by the highly admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers, this is a riveting, often hilarious portrait of the eccentric aristocracy of a bygone age.
Giving much greater insight into Queen Mary than the official version, and including sharply observed encounters with, among others, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Duke of Gloucester, and a young Queen Elizabeth, THE QUEST FOR QUEEN MARY is set to be a classic of royal publishing.
Giving much greater insight into Queen Mary than the official version, and including sharply observed encounters with, among others, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Duke of Gloucester, and a young Queen Elizabeth, THE QUEST FOR QUEEN MARY is set to be a classic of royal publishing.
The Origin of Empire: Rome from the Republic to Hadrian (264 BC - AD 138)
David Potter
$59.99
Hardback • 448 pages
In 264 BC, a Roman army was poised to cross from southern Italy into Sicily. They couldn't know that this crossing would be Rome's first step on its journey from local republic to vast and powerful empire.
At the beginning of the three dramatic centuries that make up this book's narrative, Rome had no emperor and limited global influence; by the book's end, Hadrian was set to pass into history as one of the greatest emperors, whose territories stretched from England to Turkey.
In David Potter's masterful history of this period, we trace the process of cultural, political and civic transformation which led to the creation of a monarchy and the acquisition of territory, via wars with Hannibal, the destruction of Carthage, Augustan Empire-building and Hadrian's famous wall, all of which contributed to the most successful multi-cultural state in the history of Europe. This is a lively, scholarly approach to an essential era.
At the beginning of the three dramatic centuries that make up this book's narrative, Rome had no emperor and limited global influence; by the book's end, Hadrian was set to pass into history as one of the greatest emperors, whose territories stretched from England to Turkey.
In David Potter's masterful history of this period, we trace the process of cultural, political and civic transformation which led to the creation of a monarchy and the acquisition of territory, via wars with Hannibal, the destruction of Carthage, Augustan Empire-building and Hadrian's famous wall, all of which contributed to the most successful multi-cultural state in the history of Europe. This is a lively, scholarly approach to an essential era.
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Operation Babylift: The incredible story of the inspiring Australian women who rescued hundreds of orphans at the end of the Vietnam War
Ian W. Shaw
$32.99
Paperback • 336 pages
In late March 1975, as the Vietnam War raged, an Australian voluntary aid worker named Rosemary Taylor approached the Australian Embassy seeking assistance to fly 600 orphans out of Saigon to safety.
Rosemary and Margaret Moses, two former nuns from Adelaide, had spent eight years in Vietnam during the war, building up a complex of nurseries to house war orphans and street waifs as the organisation that built up around them facilitated international adoptions for the children. As the North Vietnamese forces closed in on their nurseries, they needed a plan to evacuate the children, or all their work might count for little ...
Based on extensive archival and historical research, and interviews of some of those directly involved in the events described, Operation Babylift details the last month of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the most vulnerable victims of that war: the orphans it created. Through the story of the attempt to save 600 children, we see how a small group of determined women refused to play political games as they tried to remake the lives of a forgotten generation, one child at a time.
Rosemary and Margaret Moses, two former nuns from Adelaide, had spent eight years in Vietnam during the war, building up a complex of nurseries to house war orphans and street waifs as the organisation that built up around them facilitated international adoptions for the children. As the North Vietnamese forces closed in on their nurseries, they needed a plan to evacuate the children, or all their work might count for little ...
Based on extensive archival and historical research, and interviews of some of those directly involved in the events described, Operation Babylift details the last month of the Vietnam War from the perspective of the most vulnerable victims of that war: the orphans it created. Through the story of the attempt to save 600 children, we see how a small group of determined women refused to play political games as they tried to remake the lives of a forgotten generation, one child at a time.
The Reign of Emperor Gallienus: The Apogee of Roman Cavalry
Ilkka Syvanne
$65.99
Hardback • 256 pages
This is the only fully illustrated military life of the Emperor Publius Licinius Egnatius Gallienus (253-268). Considered the most blatantly military man of all of the soldier emperors of the third century, Gallienus is the emperor in Harry Sidebottom's bestselling Warrior of Rome novels.
Gallienus faced more simultaneous usurpations and foreign invasions than any other emperor, but somehow he managed to survive. Dr. Ilkka Syvanne explains how this was possible. It was largely thanks to the untiring efforts of Gallienus that the Roman Empire survived for another 1,200 years. Gallienus was a notorious libertarian, womanizer, and cross-dresser, but he was also a fearless warrior, duellist and general all at the same time. This monograph explains why he was loved by the soldiers,yet so intensely hated by some officers that they killed him in a conspiracy.
The year 2018 is the 1,800th anniversary of Gallienus' date of birth and the 1,750th anniversary of his date of death. The Reign of Gallienus celebrates the life and times of this great man.
Gallienus faced more simultaneous usurpations and foreign invasions than any other emperor, but somehow he managed to survive. Dr. Ilkka Syvanne explains how this was possible. It was largely thanks to the untiring efforts of Gallienus that the Roman Empire survived for another 1,200 years. Gallienus was a notorious libertarian, womanizer, and cross-dresser, but he was also a fearless warrior, duellist and general all at the same time. This monograph explains why he was loved by the soldiers,yet so intensely hated by some officers that they killed him in a conspiracy.
The year 2018 is the 1,800th anniversary of Gallienus' date of birth and the 1,750th anniversary of his date of death. The Reign of Gallienus celebrates the life and times of this great man.
Viking London
Thomas Williams
$34.99
Paperback • 112 pages
Viking Britain author Thomas Williams returns with a brief history of the interaction between the Vikings and the British to tell the story of the occupation of London.
The Vikings remoulded the world, changed the language, and upended the dynamics of power and trade. Monasteries and settlements burned, ancient dynasties were extinguished. And nowhere in these islands saw more aggression than London. Between 842 and 1016, the city was subjected repeatedly to serious assault.
In this short history, bestselling historian Thomas Williams recounts the profound impact Viking raiders from the North had on London. Delving into London's darkest age, he charts how the city was transformed in this period by immigrants and natives, kings and commoners, into the fulcrum of national power and identity. London emerged as a hub of trade, production and international exchange, a financial centre, a political prize, a fiercely independent and often intractable cauldron of spirited and rowdy townsfolk: a place that, a thousand years ago, already embodied much of what London was to become and still remains.
This remarkable book takes the reader into a city of spectres, to its ancient past, to timeworn street names hidden beneath concrete underpasses, to the crypts of old churches, to a stretch of the old river bank, or the depths of museum collections. Nothing is lost in the city. And memories of the Vikings hover like a miasma in these places, blowing across the mud and shingle on the Thames foreshore - ghosts of Viking London.
The Vikings remoulded the world, changed the language, and upended the dynamics of power and trade. Monasteries and settlements burned, ancient dynasties were extinguished. And nowhere in these islands saw more aggression than London. Between 842 and 1016, the city was subjected repeatedly to serious assault.
In this short history, bestselling historian Thomas Williams recounts the profound impact Viking raiders from the North had on London. Delving into London's darkest age, he charts how the city was transformed in this period by immigrants and natives, kings and commoners, into the fulcrum of national power and identity. London emerged as a hub of trade, production and international exchange, a financial centre, a political prize, a fiercely independent and often intractable cauldron of spirited and rowdy townsfolk: a place that, a thousand years ago, already embodied much of what London was to become and still remains.
This remarkable book takes the reader into a city of spectres, to its ancient past, to timeworn street names hidden beneath concrete underpasses, to the crypts of old churches, to a stretch of the old river bank, or the depths of museum collections. Nothing is lost in the city. And memories of the Vikings hover like a miasma in these places, blowing across the mud and shingle on the Thames foreshore - ghosts of Viking London.
Advocate - Science
abbeys.com.au
Wonders Beyond Numbers: A Brief History of All Things Mathematical
Johnny Ball
$22.99
Paperback • 480 pages
In this book, Johnny Ball tells one of the most important stories in world history - the story of mathematics.
By introducing us to the major characters and leading us through many historical twists and turns, Johnny slowly unravels the tale of how humanity built up a knowledge and understanding of shapes, numbers and patterns from ancient times, a story that leads directly to the technological wonderland we live in today. As Galileo said, `Everything in the universe is written in the language of mathematics', and Wonders Beyond Numbers is your guide to this language.
Mathematics is only one part of this rich and varied tale; we meet many fascinating personalities along the way, such as a mathematician who everyone has heard of but who may not have existed; a Greek philosopher who made so many mistakes that many wanted his books destroyed; a mathematical artist who built the largest masonry dome on earth, which builders had previously declared impossible; a world-renowned painter who discovered mathematics and decided he could no longer stand the sight of a brush; and a philosopher who lost his head, but only after he had died.
Enriched with tales of colourful personalities and remarkable discoveries, there is also plenty of mathematics for keen readers to get stuck into. Written in Johnny Ball's characteristically light-hearted and engaging style, this book is packed with historical insight and mathematical marvels; join Johnny and uncover the wonders found beyond the numbers.
By introducing us to the major characters and leading us through many historical twists and turns, Johnny slowly unravels the tale of how humanity built up a knowledge and understanding of shapes, numbers and patterns from ancient times, a story that leads directly to the technological wonderland we live in today. As Galileo said, `Everything in the universe is written in the language of mathematics', and Wonders Beyond Numbers is your guide to this language.
Mathematics is only one part of this rich and varied tale; we meet many fascinating personalities along the way, such as a mathematician who everyone has heard of but who may not have existed; a Greek philosopher who made so many mistakes that many wanted his books destroyed; a mathematical artist who built the largest masonry dome on earth, which builders had previously declared impossible; a world-renowned painter who discovered mathematics and decided he could no longer stand the sight of a brush; and a philosopher who lost his head, but only after he had died.
Enriched with tales of colourful personalities and remarkable discoveries, there is also plenty of mathematics for keen readers to get stuck into. Written in Johnny Ball's characteristically light-hearted and engaging style, this book is packed with historical insight and mathematical marvels; join Johnny and uncover the wonders found beyond the numbers.
The Last Unknowns
John Brockman
$24.99
Paperback • 352 pages
THE UNIVERSE'S ULTIMATE MYSTERIES, PRESENTED BY THE WORLD'S FINEST MINDS (The Guardian)
Featuring a foreword by DANIEL KAHNEMAN, Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow THIS IS A LITTLE BOOK OF PROFOUND QUESTIONS-unknowns that address the secrets of our world, our civilization, the meaning of life.
Here are the deepest riddles that have fascinated, obsessed, and haunted the greatest thinkers of our time, including Nobel laureates, cosmologists, philosophers, economists, prize-winning novelists, religious scholars, and more than 250 leading scientists, artists, and theorists. In The Last Unknowns, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, asks a mind-blowing gathering of innovative thinkers (Booklist): "What is `The Last Question,' your last question, the question for which you will be remembered"
Featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel JARED DIAMOND * Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist RICHARD THALER * Harvard psychologist STEVEN PINKER * religion scholar ELAINE PAGELS * author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics CARLO ROVELLI * Booker Prize-winning novelist IAN McEWAN * neuroscientist SAM HARRIS * philosopher DANIEL C. DENNETT * MIT theorist SHERRY TURKLE * decoder of the human genome J. CRAIG VENTER * The Coddling of the American Mind author JONATHAN HAIDT * Nobel Prize-winning physicist FRANK WILCZEK * UC Berkeley psychologist ALISON GOPNICK * philosopher REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN * New York Times columnist CARL ZIMMER * MIT cosmologist MAX TEGMARK * Whole Earth founder STEWART BRAND * Marginal Revolution economist TYLER COWEN * Anatomy of Love author HELEN FISHER * Noble Prize-winning NASA physicist JOHN C. MATHER * psychologist JUDITH RICH HARRIS * Princeton physicist FREEMAN DYSON * musician BRIAN ENO * environmental scientist JENNIFER JACQUET * Duke economist DAN ARIELY * Oxford philosopher A. C. GRAYLING * Harvard cosmologist LISA RANDALL * anthropologist MARY CATHERINE BATESON * Emotional Intelligence author DANIEL GOLEMAN * Harvard genticist GEORGE CHURCH * Blueprint author NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS * Stanford political scientist MARGARET LEVI * economist ALAN S. BLINDER * publisher TIM O'REILLY * theoretical cosmologist JANNA LEVIN * Serpentine Gallery owner HANS ULRICH OBRIST * Wired founding editor KEVIN KELLY * Cambridge astrophysicist MARTIN REES, and more than 200 others.
Featuring a foreword by DANIEL KAHNEMAN, Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow THIS IS A LITTLE BOOK OF PROFOUND QUESTIONS-unknowns that address the secrets of our world, our civilization, the meaning of life.
Here are the deepest riddles that have fascinated, obsessed, and haunted the greatest thinkers of our time, including Nobel laureates, cosmologists, philosophers, economists, prize-winning novelists, religious scholars, and more than 250 leading scientists, artists, and theorists. In The Last Unknowns, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org, asks a mind-blowing gathering of innovative thinkers (Booklist): "What is `The Last Question,' your last question, the question for which you will be remembered"
Featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel JARED DIAMOND * Nobel Prize-winning University of Chicago economist RICHARD THALER * Harvard psychologist STEVEN PINKER * religion scholar ELAINE PAGELS * author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics CARLO ROVELLI * Booker Prize-winning novelist IAN McEWAN * neuroscientist SAM HARRIS * philosopher DANIEL C. DENNETT * MIT theorist SHERRY TURKLE * decoder of the human genome J. CRAIG VENTER * The Coddling of the American Mind author JONATHAN HAIDT * Nobel Prize-winning physicist FRANK WILCZEK * UC Berkeley psychologist ALISON GOPNICK * philosopher REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN * New York Times columnist CARL ZIMMER * MIT cosmologist MAX TEGMARK * Whole Earth founder STEWART BRAND * Marginal Revolution economist TYLER COWEN * Anatomy of Love author HELEN FISHER * Noble Prize-winning NASA physicist JOHN C. MATHER * psychologist JUDITH RICH HARRIS * Princeton physicist FREEMAN DYSON * musician BRIAN ENO * environmental scientist JENNIFER JACQUET * Duke economist DAN ARIELY * Oxford philosopher A. C. GRAYLING * Harvard cosmologist LISA RANDALL * anthropologist MARY CATHERINE BATESON * Emotional Intelligence author DANIEL GOLEMAN * Harvard genticist GEORGE CHURCH * Blueprint author NICHOLAS A. CHRISTAKIS * Stanford political scientist MARGARET LEVI * economist ALAN S. BLINDER * publisher TIM O'REILLY * theoretical cosmologist JANNA LEVIN * Serpentine Gallery owner HANS ULRICH OBRIST * Wired founding editor KEVIN KELLY * Cambridge astrophysicist MARTIN REES, and more than 200 others.
The Planets
Brian Cox , Andrew Cohen
$39.99
Hardback • 400 pages
`Absolutely beautiful' BBC One Show `Really impressive' Eamonn Holmes, ITV This Morning A companion book to the critically acclaimed BBC series.
The bestselling authors of Wonders of the Universe are back with another blockbuster, a groundbreaking exploration of our Solar System as it has never been seen before.
Mercury, a lifeless victim of the Sun's expanding power. Venus, once thought to be lush and fertile, now known to be trapped within a toxic and boiling atmosphere. Mars, the red planet, doomed by the loss of its atmosphere. Jupiter, twice the size of all the other planets combined, but insubstantial. Saturn, a stunning celestial beauty, the jewel of our Solar System. Uranus, the sideways planet and the first ice giant. Neptune, dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Pluto, the dwarf planet, a frozen rock.
Andrew Cohen and Professor Brian Cox take readers on a voyage of discovery, from the fiery heart of our Solar System, to its mysterious outer reaches. They touch on the latest discoveries that have expanded our knowledge of the planets, their moons and how they come to be, alongside recent stunning and mind-boggling NASA photography.
The bestselling authors of Wonders of the Universe are back with another blockbuster, a groundbreaking exploration of our Solar System as it has never been seen before.
Mercury, a lifeless victim of the Sun's expanding power. Venus, once thought to be lush and fertile, now known to be trapped within a toxic and boiling atmosphere. Mars, the red planet, doomed by the loss of its atmosphere. Jupiter, twice the size of all the other planets combined, but insubstantial. Saturn, a stunning celestial beauty, the jewel of our Solar System. Uranus, the sideways planet and the first ice giant. Neptune, dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds. Pluto, the dwarf planet, a frozen rock.
Andrew Cohen and Professor Brian Cox take readers on a voyage of discovery, from the fiery heart of our Solar System, to its mysterious outer reaches. They touch on the latest discoveries that have expanded our knowledge of the planets, their moons and how they come to be, alongside recent stunning and mind-boggling NASA photography.
The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Maths Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets
Graham Farmelo
$39.99
Hardback • 336 pages
One of the great mysteries of science is that its fundamental laws are written in the language of mathematics. Graham Farmelo's thrilling new book shows how modern maths has helped physicists to rethink gravity, space, and time.
The Universe Speaks in Numbers takes us on an adventure from the Enlightenment to the present with a vibrant cast of characters, illuminating the most exciting and controversial developments in contemporary thought. Always lively and authoritative, Farmelo navigates the reader through the huge imaginative leaps that are edging us towards a radically new conception of the nature of our universe.
The Universe Speaks in Numbers takes us on an adventure from the Enlightenment to the present with a vibrant cast of characters, illuminating the most exciting and controversial developments in contemporary thought. Always lively and authoritative, Farmelo navigates the reader through the huge imaginative leaps that are edging us towards a radically new conception of the nature of our universe.
The Feather Thief: The Natural History Heist of the Century
Kirk Wallace Johnson
$19.99
Paperback • 320 pages
'A tale of obsession ... vivid and arresting' - The Times One summer evening in 2009, twenty-year-old musical prodigy Edwin Rist broke into theNatural History Museum at Tring, home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world. Once inside, Rist grabbed as many rare bird specimens as he was able to carry before escaping into the darkness.
Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist-deep in a river in New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide first told him about the heist. But what would possess a person to steal dead birds? And had Rist paid for his crime? In search of answers, Johnson embarked upon a worldwide investigation, leading him into the fiercely secretive underground community obsessed with the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying.
Was Edwin Rist a genius or narcissist? Mastermind or pawn?
Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist-deep in a river in New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide first told him about the heist. But what would possess a person to steal dead birds? And had Rist paid for his crime? In search of answers, Johnson embarked upon a worldwide investigation, leading him into the fiercely secretive underground community obsessed with the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying.
Was Edwin Rist a genius or narcissist? Mastermind or pawn?
The Secret World of Farm Animals
Jeffrey Masson
$22.99
Paperback • 320 pages
'An unbelievably inspiring book' Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees Did you know that pigs frequently throw tantrums? That chickens are capable of complex communication? That sheep know their own names? That cows grieve when their calves are taken away from them?
Jeffrey Masson delves deep into the mysterious world of farm animals and reveals just how sophisticated these creatures truly are - capable of joy, sadness, love and friendship - just like us.
Jeffrey Masson delves deep into the mysterious world of farm animals and reveals just how sophisticated these creatures truly are - capable of joy, sadness, love and friendship - just like us.
Dinosaur Facts and Figures: The Theropods and Other Dinosauriformes
Ruben Molina-Perez , Asier Larramendi , David Connolly
$64.99
Hardback • 288 pages
An illustrated record book of theropod facts and figures--from the biggest to the fastest to the smartest The theropod dinosaurs ruled the planet for millions of years, with species ranging from the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex to feathered raptors no bigger than turkeys. Dinosaur Facts and Figures is a stunningly illustrated book of records for these marvelous creatures--such as the biggest, the smallest, and the fastest theropods, as well as the ones with the most powerful bite.
This one-of-a-kind compendium features more than 3,000 records, covers some 750 theropod species, and includes a wealth of illustrations ranging from diagrams and technical drawings to full-color reconstructions of specimens. The book is divided into sections that put numerous amazing theropod facts at your fingertips. Comparing Species is organized by taxonomic group and gives comparisons of the size of species, how long ago they lived, and when they were discovered. Mesozoic Calendar includes spreads showing the positions of the continents at different geological time periods and reconstructions of creatures from each period. Prehistoric Puzzle compares bones, teeth, and feathers while Theropod Life uses vivid, user-friendly graphics to answer questions such as which dinosaur was the smartest and which had the most powerful bite. Other sections chart theropod distribution on the contemporary world map, provide comprehensive illustrated listings of footprints, compile the physical specifications of all known theropods and Mesozoic birds, and much more.
The essential illustrated record book for anyone interested in dinosaurs Features thousands of records on everything from the smartest and fastest theropods to the largest theropod eggs Includes more than 2,000 diagrams and drawings and more than 300 digital reconstructions Covers more than 750 theropod species, including Mesozoic birds and other dinosauromorphs Provides detailed listings of footprints, biometric specifications, and scholarly and popular references
This one-of-a-kind compendium features more than 3,000 records, covers some 750 theropod species, and includes a wealth of illustrations ranging from diagrams and technical drawings to full-color reconstructions of specimens. The book is divided into sections that put numerous amazing theropod facts at your fingertips. Comparing Species is organized by taxonomic group and gives comparisons of the size of species, how long ago they lived, and when they were discovered. Mesozoic Calendar includes spreads showing the positions of the continents at different geological time periods and reconstructions of creatures from each period. Prehistoric Puzzle compares bones, teeth, and feathers while Theropod Life uses vivid, user-friendly graphics to answer questions such as which dinosaur was the smartest and which had the most powerful bite. Other sections chart theropod distribution on the contemporary world map, provide comprehensive illustrated listings of footprints, compile the physical specifications of all known theropods and Mesozoic birds, and much more.
The essential illustrated record book for anyone interested in dinosaurs Features thousands of records on everything from the smartest and fastest theropods to the largest theropod eggs Includes more than 2,000 diagrams and drawings and more than 300 digital reconstructions Covers more than 750 theropod species, including Mesozoic birds and other dinosauromorphs Provides detailed listings of footprints, biometric specifications, and scholarly and popular references
Who's Minding the Farm?: In this climate emergency
Patrice Newell
$35.00
Paperback • 320 pages
In an era of rapid climate change, this vital account of how agriculture can address major issues is an Australian story with global ramifications. Patrice is at the frontline of enormous challenges, from water scarcity and land stewardship to food security and the rural-urban divide. The devastation of drought and the crises created by industrial-scale chemically-dependent primary production are discussed and alternatives proposed - along with bold ideas for new sources of energy.
Patrice has travelled the world exploring best practice and invested heavily in organic methods on her farm. She believes we can produce enough good food to feed the world without further environmental wreckage or loss of bio-diversity. With glimpses of the individuals who make working the farm so rewarding, Who's Minding the Farm? provides a window into the pains, pleasures and politics of life on the land, and promotes new ways of thinking, no matter where you live.
Who's minding the farm? A shared responsibility for us all.
Patrice has travelled the world exploring best practice and invested heavily in organic methods on her farm. She believes we can produce enough good food to feed the world without further environmental wreckage or loss of bio-diversity. With glimpses of the individuals who make working the farm so rewarding, Who's Minding the Farm? provides a window into the pains, pleasures and politics of life on the land, and promotes new ways of thinking, no matter where you live.
Who's minding the farm? A shared responsibility for us all.
The Consolations of Physics: Why the Wonders of the Universe Can Make You Happy
Tim Radford
$22.99
Paperback • 192 pages
THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHYSICS is an eloquent manifesto for physics. In an age where uncertainty and division is rife, Tim Radford, science editor of the Guardian for twenty-five years, turns to the wonders of the universe for consolation.
From the launch of the Voyager spacecraft and how it furthered our understanding of planets, stars and galaxies to the planet composed entirely of diamond and graphite and the sound of a blacksmith's anvil; from the hole NASA drilled in the heavens to the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the endeavours to prove the Big Bang, THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHYSICS will guide you from a tiny particle to the marvels of outer space.
From the launch of the Voyager spacecraft and how it furthered our understanding of planets, stars and galaxies to the planet composed entirely of diamond and graphite and the sound of a blacksmith's anvil; from the hole NASA drilled in the heavens to the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the endeavours to prove the Big Bang, THE CONSOLATIONS OF PHYSICS will guide you from a tiny particle to the marvels of outer space.
Adam Spencer's Top 100
Adam Spencer
$26.99
Paperback • 392 pages
Australia's funniest mathematician is back in 2019 with a small format edition of 2018's bestseller. Which number terrifies Ogdokontaheptaphobes? Why would you watch the same clock for 14 years? And have you met the 23-million-digit prime? The answers to all of these questions - and much, much more - are in Adam Spencer's Top 100. Bursting at the seams with puzzles, quizzes, games, numerical trivia and fun, this is the ultimate book for maths nerds and anyone with an inquiring mind. Whether you're 8 or 80, strap your thinking cap on, grab a pencil and get ready to count down from 100 to 1 with Australia's favourite - and funniest - mathematician, Adam Spencer.
Praise for Adam Spencer `The things Adam Spencer writes about should be taught in every school worldwide.' Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers `Even the page numbers will start to look fascinating once you've read this book!' Amanda Keller `Every bright young mind in Australia should read Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers - and we oldies would benefit, too.' Peter FitzSimons
Praise for Adam Spencer `The things Adam Spencer writes about should be taught in every school worldwide.' Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers `Even the page numbers will start to look fascinating once you've read this book!' Amanda Keller `Every bright young mind in Australia should read Adam Spencer's Big Book of Numbers - and we oldies would benefit, too.' Peter FitzSimons
Einstein's War: How Relativity Conquered Nationalism and Shook the World
Matthew Stanley
$35.00
Paperback • 288 pages
In 1916, Arthur Eddington, a war-weary British astronomer, opened a letter written by an obscure German professor named Einstein. The neatly printed equations on the scrap of paper outlined his world-changing theory of general relativity. Until then Einstein's masterpiece of time and space had been trapped behind the physical and ideological lines of battle, unknown.
Einstein's name is now synonymous with 'genius', but it was not an easy road. He spent a decade creating relativity and his ascent to international celebrity, which saw him on the front of papers around the world in 1919, also owed much to Eddington - who he only met after the war - and to international collaboration. We usually think of scientific discovery as a flash of individual inspiration, whereas here we see it is the result of hard work, gambles and wrong turns and all the while subject to the petty concerns of nations, religions and individuals.
Einstein's War teaches us about science through history, and the physics is more accessible as a result - we see relativity built brick-by-brick in front of us, as it happened 100 years ago.
Einstein's name is now synonymous with 'genius', but it was not an easy road. He spent a decade creating relativity and his ascent to international celebrity, which saw him on the front of papers around the world in 1919, also owed much to Eddington - who he only met after the war - and to international collaboration. We usually think of scientific discovery as a flash of individual inspiration, whereas here we see it is the result of hard work, gambles and wrong turns and all the while subject to the petty concerns of nations, religions and individuals.
Einstein's War teaches us about science through history, and the physics is more accessible as a result - we see relativity built brick-by-brick in front of us, as it happened 100 years ago.
See more in stock for SCIENCE
She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Story of Heredity
Carl Zimmer
$24.99
Paperback • 672 pages
Shortlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2018 She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity into a language of genes. As the technology for studying genes became cheaper, millions of people ordered genetic tests to link themselves to missing parents, to distant ancestors, to ethnic identities . . .
But, Zimmer writes, 'Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are-our appearance, our height, our penchants-in inconceivably subtle ways.' Heredity isn't just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors-using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates-but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer's lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it.
Weaving together historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world's best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.
But, Zimmer writes, 'Each of us carries an amalgam of fragments of DNA, stitched together from some of our many ancestors. Each piece has its own ancestry, traveling a different path back through human history. A particular fragment may sometimes be cause for worry, but most of our DNA influences who we are-our appearance, our height, our penchants-in inconceivably subtle ways.' Heredity isn't just about genes that pass from parent to child. Heredity continues within our own bodies, as a single cell gives rise to trillions of cells that make up our bodies. We say we inherit genes from our ancestors-using a word that once referred to kingdoms and estates-but we inherit other things that matter as much or more to our lives, from microbes to technologies we use to make life more comfortable. We need a new definition of what heredity is and, through Carl Zimmer's lucid exposition and storytelling, this resounding tour de force delivers it.
Weaving together historical and current scientific research, his own experience with his two daughters, and the kind of original reporting expected of one of the world's best science journalists, Zimmer ultimately unpacks urgent bioethical quandaries arising from new biomedical technologies, but also long-standing presumptions about who we really are and what we can pass on to future generations.
Advocate - Today's World
abbeys.com.au
The Chaser Quarterly #16: The Chaser's Book of Modern Fairy Tales
The Chaser
$19.95
Paperback • 132 pages
Written by one of Australia's leading satirists, Charles Firth ( The Chaser ), each tale investigates a current topic that you can read to your kids to teach them about how morality actually works nowadays.
-> Why it's alright for banking CEOs to steal money from middle class families -> Why you shouldn't tell anyone about a horrible man if he's more powerful and well connected than you -> Why you should accept gold coins to not talk about rising water levels THE TALES The One Bad Prince A woman travels from a distant land to visit the King to tell him of a terrible tale about an evil Prince. Many years before, she says, this prince was mean and horrible to her. He drank too much, and played weird games the woman didn't like. He was not a good man, he was a very, very bad man. But when the woman told the King this, he went to the courtier to get his version of events. The courtier was not a charming man, he was not a smart man, but he was very well connected, and he told the King another tale about why the King should just ignore the woman. The King immediately banished the woman from the kingdom, and everyone lived happily ever after (except the woman).
Archimedes And His Bath Archimedes was getting into his bath one day when he realised that the water level was rising higher and higher. Eventually he worked out what was happening - a large block of ice was melting into the bath. All he had to do was move the ice away from the stove. But just as he was about to do that, Archimedes was offered a gold coin from charming prince, and told that as long as he did nothing about the melting ice, he would be rewarded with lots of riches. Eventually Archimedes drowns, but he drowns and rich and happy man.
The Bear Family The story of how a mummy bear who is a doctor earns less gold coins than the daddy, who does exactly the same work. Then a prince breaks into the Bear Family's house, and steals everything from him. When the prince is discovered, he is taken before the King for punishment, who instead promoted him to become a CEO of a major bank.
The Boy Who Wanted A Friend Tells the tale of a boy who wanted a friend, and programmed his computer to get friends. He ends up being friends with the entire, but is still lonely. Until, one day, the King's advisor comes and offers him gold coins to spill the beans on all his friends.
-> Why it's alright for banking CEOs to steal money from middle class families -> Why you shouldn't tell anyone about a horrible man if he's more powerful and well connected than you -> Why you should accept gold coins to not talk about rising water levels THE TALES The One Bad Prince A woman travels from a distant land to visit the King to tell him of a terrible tale about an evil Prince. Many years before, she says, this prince was mean and horrible to her. He drank too much, and played weird games the woman didn't like. He was not a good man, he was a very, very bad man. But when the woman told the King this, he went to the courtier to get his version of events. The courtier was not a charming man, he was not a smart man, but he was very well connected, and he told the King another tale about why the King should just ignore the woman. The King immediately banished the woman from the kingdom, and everyone lived happily ever after (except the woman).
Archimedes And His Bath Archimedes was getting into his bath one day when he realised that the water level was rising higher and higher. Eventually he worked out what was happening - a large block of ice was melting into the bath. All he had to do was move the ice away from the stove. But just as he was about to do that, Archimedes was offered a gold coin from charming prince, and told that as long as he did nothing about the melting ice, he would be rewarded with lots of riches. Eventually Archimedes drowns, but he drowns and rich and happy man.
The Bear Family The story of how a mummy bear who is a doctor earns less gold coins than the daddy, who does exactly the same work. Then a prince breaks into the Bear Family's house, and steals everything from him. When the prince is discovered, he is taken before the King for punishment, who instead promoted him to become a CEO of a major bank.
The Boy Who Wanted A Friend Tells the tale of a boy who wanted a friend, and programmed his computer to get friends. He ends up being friends with the entire, but is still lonely. Until, one day, the King's advisor comes and offers him gold coins to spill the beans on all his friends.
On Character
Peta Credlin
$14.99
Paperback • 277 pages
Character might seem like an old fashioned notion today. It brings to mind quaint virtues like loyalty, independence, fortitude and honesty. So has the idea of a person of good character disappeared in the era of personality politics, vaulting ambition, the cult of the celebrity and the obsession with the self(ie)?
Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods from Around the World
Lynne Kelly
$32.99
Paperback • 320 pages
Our brain is a muscle. Like our bodies, it needs exercise. In the last few hundred years, we have stopped training our memories and we have lost the ability to memorise large amounts of information.
Memory Craft introduces the best memory techniques humans have ever devised, from ancient times and the Middle Ages, to methods used by today's memory athletes. Lynne Kelly has tested all these methods in experiments which demonstrate the extraordinary capacity of our brains at any age.
For anyone who needs to memorise a speech or a play script, learn anatomy or a foreign language, or prepare for an exam, Memory Craft is a fabulous toolkit. It offers proven techniques for teachers to help their students learn more effectively. There are also simple strategies for anyone who has trouble remembering names or dates, and for older people who want to keep their minds agile. Above all, memorising things can be playful, creative and great fun.
'Weaving the deep history of memory techniques along with the techniques themselves, Memory Craft is a memory book like no other I've ever read.' - Nelson Dellis, four times USA Memory Champion 'With her infectious enthusiasm and depth of personal experience, Dr Lynne Kelly teaches us how we too can memorise anything...
[and] potentially protect our memories from decline as we age.' - Dr Meredith McKague, University of Melbourne
Memory Craft introduces the best memory techniques humans have ever devised, from ancient times and the Middle Ages, to methods used by today's memory athletes. Lynne Kelly has tested all these methods in experiments which demonstrate the extraordinary capacity of our brains at any age.
For anyone who needs to memorise a speech or a play script, learn anatomy or a foreign language, or prepare for an exam, Memory Craft is a fabulous toolkit. It offers proven techniques for teachers to help their students learn more effectively. There are also simple strategies for anyone who has trouble remembering names or dates, and for older people who want to keep their minds agile. Above all, memorising things can be playful, creative and great fun.
'Weaving the deep history of memory techniques along with the techniques themselves, Memory Craft is a memory book like no other I've ever read.' - Nelson Dellis, four times USA Memory Champion 'With her infectious enthusiasm and depth of personal experience, Dr Lynne Kelly teaches us how we too can memorise anything...
[and] potentially protect our memories from decline as we age.' - Dr Meredith McKague, University of Melbourne
The Courage to be Happy
Ichiro Kishimi , Fumitake Koga
$24.99
Paperback • 272 pages
This book is a compass. Navigate and discover along your path the courage to be happy.
The Courage to be Happy presents profound insights into living life courageously and finding happiness along the way. It has already sold more than a million copies in Japan and is a sequel to The Courage to be Disliked, which has changed lives across the globe as an international bestselling sensation.
As in The Courage to be Disliked, we follow a Socratic dialogue between a philosopher and a young man. The philosopher believes that the key to a life of happiness and fulfilment is offered to us by the theories of Alfred Adler, a forgotten giant of 19th century psychology who has long been overshadowed by his two contemporaries, Freud and Jung. The young man is full of doubt that life can be genuinely improved by simply changing his thinking. Patiently, the philosopher explains the essence of Adler's 'psychology of courage', taking the young man through the mental steps necessary to achieve it, and demonstrating to the young man and to us the changes this psychology will bring to the way we live our lives.
This is a work that is truly life-changing in its power and universally applicable in its scope.
The Courage to be Happy presents profound insights into living life courageously and finding happiness along the way. It has already sold more than a million copies in Japan and is a sequel to The Courage to be Disliked, which has changed lives across the globe as an international bestselling sensation.
As in The Courage to be Disliked, we follow a Socratic dialogue between a philosopher and a young man. The philosopher believes that the key to a life of happiness and fulfilment is offered to us by the theories of Alfred Adler, a forgotten giant of 19th century psychology who has long been overshadowed by his two contemporaries, Freud and Jung. The young man is full of doubt that life can be genuinely improved by simply changing his thinking. Patiently, the philosopher explains the essence of Adler's 'psychology of courage', taking the young man through the mental steps necessary to achieve it, and demonstrating to the young man and to us the changes this psychology will bring to the way we live our lives.
This is a work that is truly life-changing in its power and universally applicable in its scope.
Superbugs: The Race to Stop an Epidemic
Matt McCarthy
$32.99
Paperback • 288 pages
A New York Times bestselling author shares this exhilarating story of cutting-edge science and the race against the clock to find new treatments in the fight against the antibiotic-resistant bacteria known as superbugs.
Physician, researcher, and ethics professor Matt McCarthy is on the front lines of a groundbreaking clinical trial testing a new antibiotic to fight lethal superbugs, bacteria that have built up resistance to the life-saving drugs in our rapidly dwindling arsenal. This trial serves as the backdrop for the compulsively readable Superbugs, and the results will impact nothing less than the future of humanity.
Dr. McCarthy explores the history of bacteria and antibiotics, from Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, to obscure sources of innovative new medicines (often found in soil samples), to the cutting-edge DNA manipulation known as CRISPR, bringing to light how we arrived at this juncture of both incredible breakthrough and extreme vulnerability. We also meet the patients whose lives are hanging in the balance, from Remy, a teenager with a dangerous and rare infection, to Donny, a retired New York City firefighter with a compromised immune system, and many more.
The proverbial ticking clock will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Can Dr. McCarthy save the lives of his patients infected with the deadly bacteria, who have otherwise lost all hope?
'There might not be another author who so fluidly combines a world-class doctor and researcher's knowledge and experience with a memoirist's sensibility. Matt McCarthy is Siddhartha Mukherjee and David Sedaris rolled into one. Who else but McCarthy could write a dispatch from the front lines of the secret fight for the future of the human race that is not just gripping and illuminating, but also poignant and funny?' - Ben Reiter, New York Times bestselling author of Astroball 'Written from the front lines in the battle against resistant microbes, Superbugs will educate and inspire all those concerned about the growing threat to individuals and society. McCarthy offers a fast paced, vivid narrative that grips the reader from the opening pages and never lets go.' - Jerome Groopman MD, co-author of Your Medical Mind 'Superbugs is a riveting look into the world of bacteria and antibiotics. Dr. Matt McCarthy offers a compulsively readable tour through infectious disease. With his characteristic humour and warmth, Dr. McCarthy humanises a fascinating and timely topic that has resonance for us all. In a voice that is thoughtful and honest, punctuated by sharp wit, he reveals the drugs and dilemmas that will impact humanity for years to come. This is a rare and important book.' - Daniela Lamas, author of You Can Stop Humming Now
Physician, researcher, and ethics professor Matt McCarthy is on the front lines of a groundbreaking clinical trial testing a new antibiotic to fight lethal superbugs, bacteria that have built up resistance to the life-saving drugs in our rapidly dwindling arsenal. This trial serves as the backdrop for the compulsively readable Superbugs, and the results will impact nothing less than the future of humanity.
Dr. McCarthy explores the history of bacteria and antibiotics, from Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, to obscure sources of innovative new medicines (often found in soil samples), to the cutting-edge DNA manipulation known as CRISPR, bringing to light how we arrived at this juncture of both incredible breakthrough and extreme vulnerability. We also meet the patients whose lives are hanging in the balance, from Remy, a teenager with a dangerous and rare infection, to Donny, a retired New York City firefighter with a compromised immune system, and many more.
The proverbial ticking clock will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Can Dr. McCarthy save the lives of his patients infected with the deadly bacteria, who have otherwise lost all hope?
'There might not be another author who so fluidly combines a world-class doctor and researcher's knowledge and experience with a memoirist's sensibility. Matt McCarthy is Siddhartha Mukherjee and David Sedaris rolled into one. Who else but McCarthy could write a dispatch from the front lines of the secret fight for the future of the human race that is not just gripping and illuminating, but also poignant and funny?' - Ben Reiter, New York Times bestselling author of Astroball 'Written from the front lines in the battle against resistant microbes, Superbugs will educate and inspire all those concerned about the growing threat to individuals and society. McCarthy offers a fast paced, vivid narrative that grips the reader from the opening pages and never lets go.' - Jerome Groopman MD, co-author of Your Medical Mind 'Superbugs is a riveting look into the world of bacteria and antibiotics. Dr. Matt McCarthy offers a compulsively readable tour through infectious disease. With his characteristic humour and warmth, Dr. McCarthy humanises a fascinating and timely topic that has resonance for us all. In a voice that is thoughtful and honest, punctuated by sharp wit, he reveals the drugs and dilemmas that will impact humanity for years to come. This is a rare and important book.' - Daniela Lamas, author of You Can Stop Humming Now
How Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon
Joshua Mezrich
$32.99
Paperback • 384 pages
Leading transplant surgeon Dr Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, moving organs from one body to another. In this intimate, profoundly moving work, he examines more than one hundred years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the stories of his own patients.
Gripping and evocative, How Death Becomes Life takes us inside the operating room and presents the stark dilemmas that transplant surgeons must face daily: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich's riveting book is a poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.
Gripping and evocative, How Death Becomes Life takes us inside the operating room and presents the stark dilemmas that transplant surgeons must face daily: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich's riveting book is a poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.
The Angina Monologues: Stories of surgery for broken hearts
Samer Nashef
$29.99
Paperback • 288 pages
The Angina Monologues speeds from the transporting of a donor's heart up the motorway hard shoulder, to cautionary stories of excessive intervention gone awry in US hospitals, to a traumatic trip to bring advanced cardiac surgery to the Palestinian West Bank. Nashef tells heart-stopping stories of transplants, bypasses, coronary artery repair, and cardiac arrest. He also delivers humane advice about medical realities rarely observed- the futility of obsessing over diet, the necessity of calculating risks, the role of decision making, the resilience of doctor and patient alike, and the threadbare brilliance of the NHS.
Nashef is a magnificently warm and likeable doctor and writer; and he has the best imaginable bedside manner.
Nashef is a magnificently warm and likeable doctor and writer; and he has the best imaginable bedside manner.
On Freedom
Tory Shepherd
$14.99
Paperback
They're labelled as selfish, as 'deliberately barren', and sometimes as crazy old cat ladies, but increasingly women are choosing to be childfree. Over the next few decades couples without children are set to outnumber those who have them.
Tory Shepherd looks at how women's freedom to choose motherhood is reshaping their own lives as well as society.
Tory Shepherd looks at how women's freedom to choose motherhood is reshaping their own lives as well as society.
A Better Death: Conversations about the art of living and dying well
Ranjana Srivastava
$32.99
Paperback • 352 pages
'Illuminating, inspiring and intensely practical' HUGH MACKAY, author of The Good Life 'Brimming with pathos and profound insights' KON KARAPANAGIOTIDIS, author of The Power of Hope Of all the experiences we share, two universal events bookend our lives: we are all born and we will all die. We don't have a choice in how we enter the world, but we can have a say in how we leave it.
In order to die well, we must be prepared to contemplate our mortality and to broach it with our loved ones, who are often called upon to make important decisions on our behalf. These are some of the most important conversations we can have with each other - to find peace, kindness and gratitude for what has gone before, and acceptance of what is to come.
Dr Ranjana Srivastava draws on two decades of experience to share her observations and advice on leading a meaningful life and finding dignity and composure at its end. With an emphasis on advocacy, leaving a legacy, and staying true to our deepest convictions, Dr Srivastava tells stories of strength, hope and resilience in the face of grief, and offers an optimistic meditation on living and dying well.
`At last, a book that teaches us how to die with kindness, courage and grace' CAROLINE BAUM, author of Only
`The perfect balm for a fearful and technocratic world' MICHAEL McGIRR, author of Books that Saved My Life
`What a gift! Read it and give it to everyone you love' KATE RICHARDS, author of Madness: A Memoir
`Irresistibly compassionate, convincing and wise' MORAG ZWARTZ, author of Being Sam
`Moving and informative, this book will leave an indelible mark' AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY
Dr Ranjana Srivastava OAM is an oncologist, award-winning writer, broadcaster and Fulbright scholar. www.ranjanasrivastava.com
In order to die well, we must be prepared to contemplate our mortality and to broach it with our loved ones, who are often called upon to make important decisions on our behalf. These are some of the most important conversations we can have with each other - to find peace, kindness and gratitude for what has gone before, and acceptance of what is to come.
Dr Ranjana Srivastava draws on two decades of experience to share her observations and advice on leading a meaningful life and finding dignity and composure at its end. With an emphasis on advocacy, leaving a legacy, and staying true to our deepest convictions, Dr Srivastava tells stories of strength, hope and resilience in the face of grief, and offers an optimistic meditation on living and dying well.
`At last, a book that teaches us how to die with kindness, courage and grace' CAROLINE BAUM, author of Only
`The perfect balm for a fearful and technocratic world' MICHAEL McGIRR, author of Books that Saved My Life
`What a gift! Read it and give it to everyone you love' KATE RICHARDS, author of Madness: A Memoir
`Irresistibly compassionate, convincing and wise' MORAG ZWARTZ, author of Being Sam
`Moving and informative, this book will leave an indelible mark' AUSTRALIAN WOMEN'S WEEKLY
Dr Ranjana Srivastava OAM is an oncologist, award-winning writer, broadcaster and Fulbright scholar. www.ranjanasrivastava.com
The Talking Cure: Normal People, Their Hidden Struggles and the Life-Changing Power of Therapy
Gillian Straker , Jacqui Winship
$32.99
Paperback
'Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.' Carl Jung The essence of successful therapy is the relationship between the therapist and the patient, a dance of growing trust and understanding. It is an intimate, messy, often surprising and sometimes confusing business -but when it works, it's life-changing.
In The Talking Cure, psychotherapists Gill Straker and Jacqui Winship bring us nine inspiring stories of transformation.
They introduce us to their clients, fictional amalgams of real-life cases, and reveal how the art of talking and listening helps us to understand deep-seated issues that profoundly influence who we are in the world and how we see ourselves in relation to others. We come to understand that the transformative power of the therapeutic relationship can be replicated in our everyday lives by the simple practice of paying attention and being present with those we love.
Whether you have experienced therapy (or are tempted to try it), or you are just intrigued by the possibilities of a little-understood but transformative process, this wise and compassionate book will deepen your sense of what it is to be open to connection - and your appreciation that to be human is to be a little bit mad.
In The Talking Cure, psychotherapists Gill Straker and Jacqui Winship bring us nine inspiring stories of transformation.
They introduce us to their clients, fictional amalgams of real-life cases, and reveal how the art of talking and listening helps us to understand deep-seated issues that profoundly influence who we are in the world and how we see ourselves in relation to others. We come to understand that the transformative power of the therapeutic relationship can be replicated in our everyday lives by the simple practice of paying attention and being present with those we love.
Whether you have experienced therapy (or are tempted to try it), or you are just intrigued by the possibilities of a little-understood but transformative process, this wise and compassionate book will deepen your sense of what it is to be open to connection - and your appreciation that to be human is to be a little bit mad.
Reinventing Your Life
Jeffrey E. Young , Janet S. Klosko
$29.99
Paperback • 384 pages
Do you . . .
Put the needs of others above your own? Start to panic when someone you love leaves - or threatens to? Often feel anxious about natural disasters, losing all your money, or getting seriously ill? Find that no matter how successful you are, you still feel unhappy, unfulfilled, or undeserving?
Unsatisfactory relationships, irrational lack of self-esteem, feelings of being unfulfilled - these are all problems that can be solved by changing the types of messages that people internalise. These self-defeating behaviour patterns are called lifetraps, and Reinventing Your Life shows you how to stop the cycle that keeps you from attaining happiness.
Two of America's leading psychologists, Jeffrey E. Young, Ph.
D., and Janet S. Klosko, Ph.
D., draw on the breakthrough principles of cognitive therapy to help you recognize and change negative thought patterns, without the aid of drugs or long-term traditional therapy. They describe eleven of the most common lifetraps, provide a diagnostic test for each, and offer step-by-step suggestions to help you break free of the traps. Thousands of men and women have seen the immediate and long-term results of the extraordinary program outlines in this clear, compassionate, liberating book. Its innovative approach to solving ongoing emotional problems will help you create a more fulfilling, productive life.
Put the needs of others above your own? Start to panic when someone you love leaves - or threatens to? Often feel anxious about natural disasters, losing all your money, or getting seriously ill? Find that no matter how successful you are, you still feel unhappy, unfulfilled, or undeserving?
Unsatisfactory relationships, irrational lack of self-esteem, feelings of being unfulfilled - these are all problems that can be solved by changing the types of messages that people internalise. These self-defeating behaviour patterns are called lifetraps, and Reinventing Your Life shows you how to stop the cycle that keeps you from attaining happiness.
Two of America's leading psychologists, Jeffrey E. Young, Ph.
D., and Janet S. Klosko, Ph.
D., draw on the breakthrough principles of cognitive therapy to help you recognize and change negative thought patterns, without the aid of drugs or long-term traditional therapy. They describe eleven of the most common lifetraps, provide a diagnostic test for each, and offer step-by-step suggestions to help you break free of the traps. Thousands of men and women have seen the immediate and long-term results of the extraordinary program outlines in this clear, compassionate, liberating book. Its innovative approach to solving ongoing emotional problems will help you create a more fulfilling, productive life.
The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World
Jamil Zaki
$32.99
Paperback • 304 pages
Empathy has been on people's mind a lot lately. Philosophers, evolutionary scientists and indeed former President Obama agree that an increase in empathy could advance us beyond the hatred, violence and polarization in which the world seems caught. Others disagree, arguing it is easiest to empathize with people who look, talk or think like us. As a result, empathy can inspire nepotism, racism and worse.
Having studied the neuroscience and psychology of empathy for over a decade, Jamil Zaki thinks both sides of this debate have a point. Empathy is sometimes an engine for moral progress, and other times for moral failure. But Zaki also thinks that both sides are wrong about how empathy works.
Both scientists and non-scientists commonly argue that empathy is something that happens to you, sort of like an emotional knee-jerk reflex. Second, they believe it happens more to some people than others. This lines people up along a spectrum, with deep empaths on one end and psychopaths on the other. What's more, wherever we are on that spectrum, we're stuck there.
In THE WAR FOR KINDNESS, Zaki lays out a very different view of how empathy works, one that breaks these two assumptions. Empathy is not a reflex; it's a choice. We choose empathy (or apathy) constantly: when we read a tragic novel, or cross the street to avoid a homeless person, or ask a distraught friend what's the matter. This view has crucial consequences: if empathy is less a trait (like height), and more a skill (like being good at word games), then we can improve at it. By choosing it more often, we can flex our capabilities and grow more empathic over time. We can also tune empathy, ramping it up in situations where it will help and turning it down when it might backfire.
Zaki takes us from the world of doctors who train medical students to empathise better to social workers who help each other survive empathising too much. From police trainers who help cadets avoid becoming violent cops to political advocates who ask white Americans to literally walk a (dusty) mile in Mexican immigrants' shoes. This book will give you a deepened understanding of how empathy works, how to control it and how to become the type of empathiser you want to be.
Having studied the neuroscience and psychology of empathy for over a decade, Jamil Zaki thinks both sides of this debate have a point. Empathy is sometimes an engine for moral progress, and other times for moral failure. But Zaki also thinks that both sides are wrong about how empathy works.
Both scientists and non-scientists commonly argue that empathy is something that happens to you, sort of like an emotional knee-jerk reflex. Second, they believe it happens more to some people than others. This lines people up along a spectrum, with deep empaths on one end and psychopaths on the other. What's more, wherever we are on that spectrum, we're stuck there.
In THE WAR FOR KINDNESS, Zaki lays out a very different view of how empathy works, one that breaks these two assumptions. Empathy is not a reflex; it's a choice. We choose empathy (or apathy) constantly: when we read a tragic novel, or cross the street to avoid a homeless person, or ask a distraught friend what's the matter. This view has crucial consequences: if empathy is less a trait (like height), and more a skill (like being good at word games), then we can improve at it. By choosing it more often, we can flex our capabilities and grow more empathic over time. We can also tune empathy, ramping it up in situations where it will help and turning it down when it might backfire.
Zaki takes us from the world of doctors who train medical students to empathise better to social workers who help each other survive empathising too much. From police trainers who help cadets avoid becoming violent cops to political advocates who ask white Americans to literally walk a (dusty) mile in Mexican immigrants' shoes. This book will give you a deepened understanding of how empathy works, how to control it and how to become the type of empathiser you want to be.
Advocate - Economics & Business
abbeys.com.au
Licence to be Bad: How Economics Corrupted Us
Jonathan Aldred
$45.00
Hardback • 352 pages
Over the past fifty years, the way we value what is 'good' and 'right' has changed dramatically. Behaviour that to our grandparents' generation might have seemed stupid, harmful or simply wicked now seems rational, natural, woven into the very logic of things. And, asserts Jonathan Aldred in this revelatory new book, it's economics that's to blame.
Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. If, now, we're happy to accept that there can be a market in anything, from queue-jumping to health and education, and to prisoners 'upgrading' to a better class of cell - though we may still draw the line at a market for babies - we have these theorists to thank.
From the logic of game theory, developed in the paranoid world of mathematical-military think tanks in the Cold War, which became the economists' paradigm of rational choice; to the emergence of 'free riding' - cooperation as irrational, because if you do it, no one else will - and the incentivising social engineering of Nudge, Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values.
In short, economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed. Licence to be Bad shows us where to begin.
Licence to be Bad tells the story of how a group of economics theorists changed our world, and how a handful of key ideas seeped into our decision-making and, indeed, almost all aspects of our lives. If, now, we're happy to accept that there can be a market in anything, from queue-jumping to health and education, and to prisoners 'upgrading' to a better class of cell - though we may still draw the line at a market for babies - we have these theorists to thank.
From the logic of game theory, developed in the paranoid world of mathematical-military think tanks in the Cold War, which became the economists' paradigm of rational choice; to the emergence of 'free riding' - cooperation as irrational, because if you do it, no one else will - and the incentivising social engineering of Nudge, Aldred reveals the extraordinary hold of economics on our morals and values.
In short, economics has corrupted us. But if this hidden transformation is so recent, it can be reversed. Licence to be Bad shows us where to begin.
Rockonomics: What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life
Alan Krueger
$32.99
Paperback • 336 pages
Alan Krueger, the former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, uses the music industry, from rock artists to music executives, from managers to promoters, as a way in to explain the principles of economics, and the forces shaping our economic lives.
As economists recognize, the music industry is often a leading indicator of today's economy; it is among the first to be disrupted by the latest wave of technology, and examining the ins and outs of how musicians create and sell new songs and plan concert tours offers valuable lessons for what is in store for businesses and employees in other industries that are struggling to adapt.
Drawing on interviews with leading band members, music executives, managers, promoters, and using the latest data on revenues, royalties, tour dates, and merchandise, ROCKONOMICS takes readers backstage to show how the music industry really works--who makes money and how much, and how the economics of the music industry has undergone a radical transformation during the last twenty years.
Before digitalization and the ability to stream music over the Internet, rock musicians made the bulk of their income from record sales. Today, income from selling songs has plummeted, even for superstars like Taylor Swift; the real money nowadays is derived from concert sales. In 2016, for example, Billy Joel earned $212.4 million from his live performances, and less than $1 million from record sales and streaming. Even Paul McCartney, who has written and recorded more number one songs than anyone in music history, today, earns 93 percent of his income from live concerts. Krueger tackles common questions: How does a song become popular? And how does a new artist break out in today's winner-take-all economy?
As economists recognize, the music industry is often a leading indicator of today's economy; it is among the first to be disrupted by the latest wave of technology, and examining the ins and outs of how musicians create and sell new songs and plan concert tours offers valuable lessons for what is in store for businesses and employees in other industries that are struggling to adapt.
Drawing on interviews with leading band members, music executives, managers, promoters, and using the latest data on revenues, royalties, tour dates, and merchandise, ROCKONOMICS takes readers backstage to show how the music industry really works--who makes money and how much, and how the economics of the music industry has undergone a radical transformation during the last twenty years.
Before digitalization and the ability to stream music over the Internet, rock musicians made the bulk of their income from record sales. Today, income from selling songs has plummeted, even for superstars like Taylor Swift; the real money nowadays is derived from concert sales. In 2016, for example, Billy Joel earned $212.4 million from his live performances, and less than $1 million from record sales and streaming. Even Paul McCartney, who has written and recorded more number one songs than anyone in music history, today, earns 93 percent of his income from live concerts. Krueger tackles common questions: How does a song become popular? And how does a new artist break out in today's winner-take-all economy?
Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
Amanda Montell
$32.99
Paperback • 304 pages
A brash, enlightening and wildly entertaining feminist look at gendered language and the way it shapes us.
English is scattered with perfectly innocuous words that have devolved into insults hurled at women. The word bitch originally meant male or female genitalia. Hussy was simply a housewife, and slut was an untidy man or woman.
Feminist linguist Amanda Montell explains why words matter and why it's imperative that women embrace their unique relationship with language. Drawing on fascinating research, and moving between history and pop culture, Montell deconstructs language - from insults and cursing to grammar and pronunciation - to expose the ways it has been used for centuries to gaslight women. Montell's irresistible intelligence and humour make linguistics not only approachable but downright enthralling.
Wordslut gets to the heart of our language, sheds light on the biases that shadow women in our culture and shows how to embrace language to verbally smash the patriarchy.
I get so jazzed about the future of feminism knowing that Montell's brilliance is rising up and about to explode worldwide. -JILL SOLOWAY
English is scattered with perfectly innocuous words that have devolved into insults hurled at women. The word bitch originally meant male or female genitalia. Hussy was simply a housewife, and slut was an untidy man or woman.
Feminist linguist Amanda Montell explains why words matter and why it's imperative that women embrace their unique relationship with language. Drawing on fascinating research, and moving between history and pop culture, Montell deconstructs language - from insults and cursing to grammar and pronunciation - to expose the ways it has been used for centuries to gaslight women. Montell's irresistible intelligence and humour make linguistics not only approachable but downright enthralling.
Wordslut gets to the heart of our language, sheds light on the biases that shadow women in our culture and shows how to embrace language to verbally smash the patriarchy.
I get so jazzed about the future of feminism knowing that Montell's brilliance is rising up and about to explode worldwide. -JILL SOLOWAY
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Incentivology: The Forces That Explain Tremendous Success and Spectacular Failure
Jason Murphy
$32.99
Paperback • 288 pages
Rewards. Punishments. Prices. The Nobel Prize. Candy Crush. Incentives take more forms than you might expect and they can be hard to spot, but they shape our lives in ways that we rarely examine.
Some incentives are obvious, like for example, publicly committing to doing something you dislike in order to motivate you to do something difficult, like lose weight. But, many of the most powerful incentives are accidental, and invisible even to those who designed them. Some are tame - and some are most definitely not. Whether it's bounties for criminals or Instagrammable meals, training your dog or saving the planet, incentives regularly backfire, go missing, mutate and evolve. Without oversight, their unintended consequences can have very global effects. In Incentivology, economist Jason Murphy uncovers the huge incentive systems we take for granted and turns them inside out. In lively, entertaining prose he explores the mechanisms behind many spectacular failures and successes in our history, culture and everyday lives, and shows us how to use (or lose) incentives in our world at large.
Some incentives are obvious, like for example, publicly committing to doing something you dislike in order to motivate you to do something difficult, like lose weight. But, many of the most powerful incentives are accidental, and invisible even to those who designed them. Some are tame - and some are most definitely not. Whether it's bounties for criminals or Instagrammable meals, training your dog or saving the planet, incentives regularly backfire, go missing, mutate and evolve. Without oversight, their unintended consequences can have very global effects. In Incentivology, economist Jason Murphy uncovers the huge incentive systems we take for granted and turns them inside out. In lively, entertaining prose he explores the mechanisms behind many spectacular failures and successes in our history, culture and everyday lives, and shows us how to use (or lose) incentives in our world at large.
How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics
Michael Pollan
$22.99
Paperback • 480 pages
'It's as if we made entering gothic cathedrals illegal, or museums, or sunsets!' When LSD was first discovered in the 1940s, it seemed to researchers, scientists and doctors as if the world might be on the cusp of psychological revolution. It promised to shed light on the deep mysteries of consciousness, as well as offer relief to addicts and the mentally ill. But in the 1960s, with the vicious backlash against the counter-culture, all further research was banned. In recent years, however, work has quietly begun again on the amazing potential of LSD, psilocybin and DMT. Could these drugs in fact improve the lives of many people? Diving deep into this extraordinary world and putting himself forward as a guinea-pig, Michael Pollan has written a remarkable history of psychedelics and a compelling portrait of the new generation of scientists fascinated by the implications of these drugs. How to Change Your Mind is a report from what could very well be the future of human consciousness.
The Infinite Game
Simon Sinek
$35.00
Hardback • 320 pages
The New York Times-bestselling author of Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, and Together Is Better offers a bold new approach to business strategy by asking one question - are you playing the finite game or the infinite game?
In The Infinite Game, Sinek applies game theory to explore how great businesses achieve long-lasting success. He finds that building long-term value and healthy, enduring growth - that playing the infinite game - is the only thing that matters to your business.
In The Infinite Game, Sinek applies game theory to explore how great businesses achieve long-lasting success. He finds that building long-term value and healthy, enduring growth - that playing the infinite game - is the only thing that matters to your business.
Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
Adam Tooze
$26.99
Paperback • 720 pages
In September 2008 the Great Financial Crisis, triggered by the collapse of Lehman brothers, shook the world. A decade later its spectre still haunts us. As the appalling scope and scale of the crash was revealed, the financial institutions that had symbolised the West's triumph since the end of the Cold War, seemed - through greed, malice and incompetence - to be about to bring the entire system to its knees.
Crashed is a brilliantly original and assured analysis of what happened and how we were rescued from something even worse - but at a price which continues to undermine democracy across Europe and the United States. Gnawing away at our institutions are the many billions of dollars which were conjured up to prevent complete collapse. Over and over again, the end of the crisis has been announced, but it continues to hound us - whether in Greece or Ukraine, whether through Brexit or Trump. Adam Tooze follows the trail like no previous writer and has written a book compelling as history, as economic analysis and as political horror story.
Crashed is a brilliantly original and assured analysis of what happened and how we were rescued from something even worse - but at a price which continues to undermine democracy across Europe and the United States. Gnawing away at our institutions are the many billions of dollars which were conjured up to prevent complete collapse. Over and over again, the end of the crisis has been announced, but it continues to hound us - whether in Greece or Ukraine, whether through Brexit or Trump. Adam Tooze follows the trail like no previous writer and has written a book compelling as history, as economic analysis and as political horror story.
See more in stock for ECONOMICS & BUSINESS
Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love
Naomi Wolf
$32.99
Paperback • 352 pages
The bestselling author of VAGINA illuminates a dramatic history - how a single English law in 1857 led to a maelstrom, with reverberations lasting down to our day.
That law was the Obscene Publications Act and it was a crucial turning point. Why? Because dissent and morality; 'deviancy' and 'normalcy'; unprintable and printable were suddenly lawful concepts in the modern sense. This new law effectively invented modern obscenity. Before 1857 it wasn't 'homosexuality' - a term that didn't yet exist - that was a crime, but simply the act of sodomy. But in a single stroke, not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love also became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. And writers, editors and printers became the gatekeepers with a responsibility to uphold the morals of the society - followed by serious criminal penalties if they didn't. And as the act evolved, joined by other laws against sexual representation and speech, making their way to courts, the authors' or artists' intentions were deemed immaterial. What mattered was if the work in question had a 'tendency . . . to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall'. Wolf paints the dramatic ways this set of laws and consolidation of what we would call homophobia and censorship, played out among a bohemian group of sexual dissidents, including Walt Whitman in America and the homosexual English critic John Addington Symonds - in love with Whitman's homoerotic voice in Leaves of Grass - decades before the infamous 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde. She retrieves forgotten history of men and even young teenage boys, executed at the Old Bailey for 'sodomy' or even 'the attempt'.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Walter Pater and painter Simeon Solomon, were among the writers and artists, and countless booksellers and printers, whose lives were shadowed with jeopardy from this emerging network of laws against speech and love.
She depicts both a fascinating story and, crucially, an important way of understanding how we arrived at our ideas of 'normalcy' and 'deviancy' - and the idea of the state's purported need and right to police speech - ideas which are with us to this day.
Most powerfully, Wolf recounts how a dying Symonds helped write the book on 'sexual inversion' that created our modern understanding of homosexuality. She argues that his secret memoir, mined and explained here fully for the first time, together with a secretly published essay, evolved into what would become the first mainstream gay rights manifesto in the west - proving that the literature of love will ultimately triumph over censorship.
That law was the Obscene Publications Act and it was a crucial turning point. Why? Because dissent and morality; 'deviancy' and 'normalcy'; unprintable and printable were suddenly lawful concepts in the modern sense. This new law effectively invented modern obscenity. Before 1857 it wasn't 'homosexuality' - a term that didn't yet exist - that was a crime, but simply the act of sodomy. But in a single stroke, not only was love between men illegal, but anything referring to this love also became obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. And writers, editors and printers became the gatekeepers with a responsibility to uphold the morals of the society - followed by serious criminal penalties if they didn't. And as the act evolved, joined by other laws against sexual representation and speech, making their way to courts, the authors' or artists' intentions were deemed immaterial. What mattered was if the work in question had a 'tendency . . . to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall'. Wolf paints the dramatic ways this set of laws and consolidation of what we would call homophobia and censorship, played out among a bohemian group of sexual dissidents, including Walt Whitman in America and the homosexual English critic John Addington Symonds - in love with Whitman's homoerotic voice in Leaves of Grass - decades before the infamous 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde. She retrieves forgotten history of men and even young teenage boys, executed at the Old Bailey for 'sodomy' or even 'the attempt'.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Dante and Christina Rossetti, Walter Pater and painter Simeon Solomon, were among the writers and artists, and countless booksellers and printers, whose lives were shadowed with jeopardy from this emerging network of laws against speech and love.
She depicts both a fascinating story and, crucially, an important way of understanding how we arrived at our ideas of 'normalcy' and 'deviancy' - and the idea of the state's purported need and right to police speech - ideas which are with us to this day.
Most powerfully, Wolf recounts how a dying Symonds helped write the book on 'sexual inversion' that created our modern understanding of homosexuality. She argues that his secret memoir, mined and explained here fully for the first time, together with a secretly published essay, evolved into what would become the first mainstream gay rights manifesto in the west - proving that the literature of love will ultimately triumph over censorship.
Advocate - Politics
abbeys.com.au
The Three Dimensions of Freedom
Billy Bragg
$14.99
Paperback • 80 pages
We live in a world where strongman politics are rising; neo-liberalism has hollowed out political parties; and corporations have undermined democracy. Ordinary voters feel helpless to effect change, resulting in outbreaks of populist anger, and traditional platforms for debate are losing their viability as readers source information online.
In this short and vital polemic, progressive thinker and activist Billy Bragg argues that accountability is the antidote to authoritarianism, and that without it, we can never truly be free. He shows us that Freedom requires three dimensions to function: Liberty, Equality, and Accountability - and the result is a three dimensional space in which freedom can be exercised by all.
In this short and vital polemic, progressive thinker and activist Billy Bragg argues that accountability is the antidote to authoritarianism, and that without it, we can never truly be free. He shows us that Freedom requires three dimensions to function: Liberty, Equality, and Accountability - and the result is a three dimensional space in which freedom can be exercised by all.
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Can Political Violence Ever Be Justified?
Elizabeth Frazer , Kimberly Hutchings
$20.95
Paperback • 140 pages
Violence - from state coercion to wars and revolutions - remains an enduring global reality. But whereas it is often believed that the point of constitutional politics is to make violence unnecessary, others argue that it is an unavoidable element of politics.
In this lucid and erudite book, Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings address these issues using vivid contemporary and historic examples. They carefully explore the strategies that have been deployed to condone violence, either as means to certain ends or as an inherent facet of politics. Examining the complex questions raised by different types of violence, they conclude that, ultimately, all attempts to justify political violence fail.
This book will be essential introductory reading for students and scholars of the ethics and politics of political violence.
In this lucid and erudite book, Elizabeth Frazer and Kimberly Hutchings address these issues using vivid contemporary and historic examples. They carefully explore the strategies that have been deployed to condone violence, either as means to certain ends or as an inherent facet of politics. Examining the complex questions raised by different types of violence, they conclude that, ultimately, all attempts to justify political violence fail.
This book will be essential introductory reading for students and scholars of the ethics and politics of political violence.
Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?
Robert Kuttner
$27.95
Paperback • 384 pages
In the years surrounding the Second World War, a serendipitous confluence of events created a healthy balance between the market and the polity-between the engine of capitalism and the egalitarian ideals of democracy. Yet, from the 1970s on, a power shift occurred in which financial regulations were rolled back, taxes were cut, inequality worsened and disheartened voters turned to far-right, faux populism.
Robert Kuttner lays out the events that led to the post-war miracle and charts its dissolution all the way to Trump, Brexit and the tenuous state of the EU. He asks whether today's poisonous alliance of reckless finance and ultra-nationalism is inevitable, and whether democracy can find a way to survive.
Robert Kuttner lays out the events that led to the post-war miracle and charts its dissolution all the way to Trump, Brexit and the tenuous state of the EU. He asks whether today's poisonous alliance of reckless finance and ultra-nationalism is inevitable, and whether democracy can find a way to survive.
How Democracy Ends
David Runciman
$22.99
Paperback • 256 pages
'Scintillating ... thought-provoking ... one of the very best of the great crop of recent books on the subject.' - Observer Democracy has died hundreds of times, all over the world. We think we know what that looks like: chaos descends and the military arrives to restore order, until the people can be trusted to look after their own affairs again. However, there is a danger that this picture is out of date.
Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and paranoid populism have become a reality.
David Runciman, one of the UK's leading professors of politics, answers all this and more as he surveys the political landscape of the West, helping us to spot the new signs of a collapsing democracy and advising us on what could come next.
Until very recently, most citizens of Western democracies would have imagined that the end was a long way off, and very few would have thought it might be happening before their eyes as Trump, Brexit and paranoid populism have become a reality.
David Runciman, one of the UK's leading professors of politics, answers all this and more as he surveys the political landscape of the West, helping us to spot the new signs of a collapsing democracy and advising us on what could come next.
Advocate - Philosophy
abbeys.com.au
Philosophical Elements of a Theory of Society
Theodor W. Adorno
$37.95
Paperback • 192 pages
As an exile in America during the War, Theodor Adorno grew acquainted with the fundamentals of empirical social research, something which would shape the work he undertook in the early 1950s as co-director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Yet he also became increasingly aware of the 'fetishism of method' in sociology, and saw the serious limitations of theoretical work based solely on empirical findings.
In this lecture course given in 1964, Adorno develops a critique of both sociology and philosophy, emphasizing that theoretical work requires a specific mediation between the two disciplines. Adorno advocates a philosophical approach to social theory that challenges the drive towards uniformity and a lack of ambiguity, highlighting instead the fruitfulness of experience, in all its messy complexity, for critical social analysis. At the same time, he shows how philosophy must also realise that it requires sociology if it is to avoid falling for the old idealistic illusion that the totality of real conditions can be grasped through thought alone.
Masterfully bringing together philosophical and empirical approaches to an understanding of society, these lectures from one of the most important social thinkers of the 20th century will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology and the social sciences generally.
In this lecture course given in 1964, Adorno develops a critique of both sociology and philosophy, emphasizing that theoretical work requires a specific mediation between the two disciplines. Adorno advocates a philosophical approach to social theory that challenges the drive towards uniformity and a lack of ambiguity, highlighting instead the fruitfulness of experience, in all its messy complexity, for critical social analysis. At the same time, he shows how philosophy must also realise that it requires sociology if it is to avoid falling for the old idealistic illusion that the totality of real conditions can be grasped through thought alone.
Masterfully bringing together philosophical and empirical approaches to an understanding of society, these lectures from one of the most important social thinkers of the 20th century will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology and the social sciences generally.
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Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae: A Biography
Bernard McGinn
$39.99
Paperback • 272 pages
The life and times of the most important theological work of medieval Christendom Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, it was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of the Catholic Church. It synthesizes an astonishing range of scholarship, covering hundreds of topics and containing more than a million and a half words--and was still unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death. Bernard McGinn, one of today's most acclaimed scholars of medieval Christianity, traces the remarkable life of this iconic work, examining Aquinas's reasons for writing it, its subject matter, and the novel way he organized it. McGinn looks at the influence of Aquinas's masterpiece on such giants of medieval Christendom as Meister Eckhart, its ridicule during the Enlightenment, the role of the Summa in the post-Vatican II church, and the book's enduring relevance today.
Advocate - Religion
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The Lost Art of Scripture
Karen Armstrong
$35.00
Paperback • 480 pages
In our increasingly secular world, holy texts are at best seen as irrelevant, and at worst as an excuse to incite violence, hatred and division. So what value, if any, can scripture hold for us today? And if our world no longer seems compatible with scripture, is it perhaps because its original purpose has become lost?
Today we see the Quran being used by some to justify war and terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The holy texts at the centre of all religious traditions are often employed selectively to underwrite arbitrary and subjective views. They are believed to be divinely ordained; they are claimed to contain eternal truths.
But as Karen Armstrong, a world authority on religious affairs, shows in this fascinating journey through millennia of history, this narrow reading of scripture is a relatively recent phenomenon. For hundreds of years these texts were instead viewed as spiritual tools- scripture was a means for the individual to connect with the divine, to transcend their physical existence, and to experience a higher level of consciousness. Holy texts were seen as fluid and adaptable, rather than a set of binding archaic rules or a 'truth' that has to be 'believed'.
Armstrong argues that only by rediscovering an open engagement with their holy texts will the world's religions be able to curtail arrogance, intolerance and violence. And if scripture is used to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways, we will find that it still has a great deal to teach us.
Today we see the Quran being used by some to justify war and terrorism, the Torah to deny Palestinians the right to live in the Land of Israel, and the Bible to condemn homosexuality and contraception. The holy texts at the centre of all religious traditions are often employed selectively to underwrite arbitrary and subjective views. They are believed to be divinely ordained; they are claimed to contain eternal truths.
But as Karen Armstrong, a world authority on religious affairs, shows in this fascinating journey through millennia of history, this narrow reading of scripture is a relatively recent phenomenon. For hundreds of years these texts were instead viewed as spiritual tools- scripture was a means for the individual to connect with the divine, to transcend their physical existence, and to experience a higher level of consciousness. Holy texts were seen as fluid and adaptable, rather than a set of binding archaic rules or a 'truth' that has to be 'believed'.
Armstrong argues that only by rediscovering an open engagement with their holy texts will the world's religions be able to curtail arrogance, intolerance and violence. And if scripture is used to engage with the world in more meaningful and compassionate ways, we will find that it still has a great deal to teach us.
See more in stock for RELIGION
The Crucible of Islam
G. W. Bowersock
$29.99
Paperback • 240 pages
Little is known about Arabia in the sixth century, yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from the Iberian peninsula to India. Today, Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the global population. A renowned classicist, G. W. Bowersock seeks to illuminate this obscure and dynamic period in the history of Islam-exploring why arid Arabia proved to be such fertile ground for Muhammad's prophetic message, and why that message spread so quickly to the wider world. The Crucible of Islam offers a compelling explanation of how one of the world's great religions took shape.
A remarkable work of scholarship. -Wall Street Journal A little book of explosive originality and penetrating judgment... Part of the joy of reading this account of the background and emergence of early Islam is the knowledge that Bowersock has built it from solid stones, the weight of every one of which he has tested with his own critical mind. Secure that we are in the hands of a master, let us think about the implications of the substantial gains to scholarship that Bowersock has brought us... A masterpiece of the historian's craft. -Peter Brown, New York Review of Books
A remarkable work of scholarship. -Wall Street Journal A little book of explosive originality and penetrating judgment... Part of the joy of reading this account of the background and emergence of early Islam is the knowledge that Bowersock has built it from solid stones, the weight of every one of which he has tested with his own critical mind. Secure that we are in the hands of a master, let us think about the implications of the substantial gains to scholarship that Bowersock has brought us... A masterpiece of the historian's craft. -Peter Brown, New York Review of Books
The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Biography
John J. Collins
$34.99
Paperback • 288 pages
Unraveling the controversies surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls Since they were first discovered in the caves at Qumran in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have aroused more fascination--and controversy--than perhaps any other archaeological find. They appear to have been hidden in the Judean desert by the Essenes, a Jewish sect that existed around the time of Jesus, and they continue to inspire veneration to this day. In this concise and accessible book, John Collins tells the story of the scrolls and the bitter conflicts that have swirled around them since their startling discovery. He explores whether the scrolls were indeed the property of an isolated, quasi-monastic community or more broadly reflected the Judaism of their time. He unravels the impassioned disputes surrounding the scrolls and Christianity, and looks at attempts to reclaim the scrolls for Judaism after the full corpus became available in the 1990s. Collins also describes how the decades-long delay in publishing the scrolls gave rise to sensational claims and conspiracy theories.
The 50 Greatest Churches and Cathedrals of Great Britain
Sue Dobson
$22.99
Paperback • 256 pages
Britain is well-known for its churches and cathedrals; buildings of great architecture and religious grandeur that form many of our recognisable skylines. But these grand structures are also full of facts, histories and stories that you may not have been aware of.
Did you know that there are only three cathedrals in Britain without a ringing bell? Or that St Davids Cathedral, nestled away in a Welsh valley, has a very unique choir, where the top line is sung only by female choristers, aged eight to eighteen? How about that the Great Pyramids in Egypt were the world's tallest structures for over 3,870 years, until the construction of Lincoln Cathedral in 1311?
Award-wining travel writer and editor Sue Dobson takes us on a journey around the United Kingdom, showing us her highlights while providing fascinating details and stories along the way.
Did you know that there are only three cathedrals in Britain without a ringing bell? Or that St Davids Cathedral, nestled away in a Welsh valley, has a very unique choir, where the top line is sung only by female choristers, aged eight to eighteen? How about that the Great Pyramids in Egypt were the world's tallest structures for over 3,870 years, until the construction of Lincoln Cathedral in 1311?
Award-wining travel writer and editor Sue Dobson takes us on a journey around the United Kingdom, showing us her highlights while providing fascinating details and stories along the way.
Advocate - Poetry & Writing
abbeys.com.au
Enigma: Crack the Ultimate Cipher Challenge
Brian Clegg
$19.99
Paperback • 240 pages
The ultimate trial of knowledge and cunning, Enigma features 200 cryptic puzzles and ciphers. The solutions link throughout the book - so you need to solve them all to get to the final round.
With a focus on ciphers and codebreaking, Enigma contains twenty sections, each built around a specific subject from music to literature, physics to politics. To take on Enigma you need good general knowledge and the ability to think laterally. But if you need help, there are plenty of hints to point you in the right direction.
Whether you attempt to crack it alone or work in a team, Enigma will challenge you to the extreme.
Can you take on Enigma and win? There's only one way to find out ...
With a focus on ciphers and codebreaking, Enigma contains twenty sections, each built around a specific subject from music to literature, physics to politics. To take on Enigma you need good general knowledge and the ability to think laterally. But if you need help, there are plenty of hints to point you in the right direction.
Whether you attempt to crack it alone or work in a team, Enigma will challenge you to the extreme.
Can you take on Enigma and win? There's only one way to find out ...
Tyrant: Shakespeare On Power
Stephen Greenblatt
$22.99
Paperback • 224 pages
'Brilliant' Sunday Times How does a truly disastrous leader - a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant - come to power?
This vivid and accessible analysis of Shakespeare's most enduring works sheds light on one of our most urgent contemporary dilemmas.
As an ageing, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social and psychological roots and the twisted consequences of tyranny. What he discovered in his characters remains remarkably relevant today. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues and imagined how they might be stopped.
In Tyrant, Stephen Greenblatt examines the themes of power and tyranny in some of Shakespeare's most famous plays -- from the dominating figures of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus to the subtle tyranny found in Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale.
Tyrant is a highly relevant exploration of Shakespeare's work that sheds new light on the workings of power.
This vivid and accessible analysis of Shakespeare's most enduring works sheds light on one of our most urgent contemporary dilemmas.
As an ageing, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social and psychological roots and the twisted consequences of tyranny. What he discovered in his characters remains remarkably relevant today. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues and imagined how they might be stopped.
In Tyrant, Stephen Greenblatt examines the themes of power and tyranny in some of Shakespeare's most famous plays -- from the dominating figures of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus to the subtle tyranny found in Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale.
Tyrant is a highly relevant exploration of Shakespeare's work that sheds new light on the workings of power.
See more in stock for LITERATURE: HISTORY & CRITICISM
Advocate - Performing Arts
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Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life
Michael Caine
$22.99
Paperback • 304 pages
Hollywood legend and British national treasure Michael Caine shares the wisdom, stories, insight and skills that life has taught him in his remarkable career.
One of our best-loved actors Michael Caine has starred in a huge range of films - including all-time favourites - from the classic British movies Alfie, Zulu and The Italian Job to the Hollywood blockbusting Dark Knight trilogy, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hannah and Her Sisters and Cider House Rules. Caine has excelled in every kind of role - with a skill that's made it look easy.
He knows what success takes - he's made it to the top of his profession from the toughest beginning. But as he says 'Small parts can lead to big things. And if you keep doing things right, the stars will align when you least expect it.' Now in his 85th year he wants to share everything he's learned.
With brilliant new insight into his life and work and with his wonderful gift for story, this is Caine at his wise and entertaining best.
One of our best-loved actors Michael Caine has starred in a huge range of films - including all-time favourites - from the classic British movies Alfie, Zulu and The Italian Job to the Hollywood blockbusting Dark Knight trilogy, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hannah and Her Sisters and Cider House Rules. Caine has excelled in every kind of role - with a skill that's made it look easy.
He knows what success takes - he's made it to the top of his profession from the toughest beginning. But as he says 'Small parts can lead to big things. And if you keep doing things right, the stars will align when you least expect it.' Now in his 85th year he wants to share everything he's learned.
With brilliant new insight into his life and work and with his wonderful gift for story, this is Caine at his wise and entertaining best.
Chopin's Piano: A Journey through Romanticism
Paul Kildea
$22.99
Paperback • 368 pages
Chopin's Piano begins in November 1838, when George Sand, her children and Frederick Chopin took a boat to Majorca for the winter. It describes their circumstances there, and how Chopin completed one of the most revolutionary works in the history of music - his Preludes - on 'a small Mallorquin piano' which he picked up when they arrived and carted up to the monastery in the mountains where he and Sand lodged. Kildea traces the history of the Preludes, their pianists, their interpretations, and the history of the Mallorquin piano itself, to find an unexpected path through the history of romantic music - via Wanda Landowska in Berlin in 1913, Paris in 1940-41 when the Nazis seized the piano, down to the end of romantic music. It is an astonishing narrative and detective story, an unclassifiable and thrilling book, which explores in an original way the changing meaning of music through time.
See more in stock for PERFORMING ARTS
Advocate - Visual Arts & Design
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World Press Photo 2019
$39.99
Paperback • 240 pages
Publishing the results of the most recent annual World Press Photo Contest, this exceptional book contains the very best press photographs from the year 2018 - pictures submitted by photojournalists, picture agencies, newspapers and magazines throughout the world. Selected from thousands of images, these prizewinning photos capture the most powerful, moving and sometimes disturbing images of the year.
Leonardo in Detail: the Portable Edition
Stefano Zuffi
$24.99
Hardback
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is considered one of the greatest painters of all times. Often described as the archetype of the homo universalis, he was a true Renaissance polymath, active in fields as diverse as astronomy, painting, sculpting, science, mathematics, engineering, cartography and architecture. Leonardo's true genius was not as a scientist or an artist, but as a combination of the two: his painting was based on a deep understanding of the workings of the human body and the physics of light and shade. Only two dozens of works are attributed to the Florentine master and this book reveals them as never before, in stunning, full-page details. Leonardo in Detail is organized in thematic chapters, exploring the smiles, gestures, children, animals and nature depicted in the painter's works. Stefano Zuffi plays the perfect guide, explaining the significance of every detail in clear and accessible language, and offering original insights into Leonardo's most popular works, such as the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper and The Lady with an Ermine.
Advocate - Food & Garden
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No Waste Kitchen
Amelia Wasiliev
$19.99
Paperback • 256 pages
Are you looking for ways to save money in the kitchen?
Are you conscious of reducing your household waste wherever you can?
Along with 140 innovative, easy-to-follow recipes, this beautifully illustrated guide includes inspiring tips and practical tricks to make the most of every meal and let nothing go to waste. Freeze, store, save and reuse your leftovers for future meals - you'll have a budget- and environment-friendly kitchen in no time.
Are you conscious of reducing your household waste wherever you can?
Along with 140 innovative, easy-to-follow recipes, this beautifully illustrated guide includes inspiring tips and practical tricks to make the most of every meal and let nothing go to waste. Freeze, store, save and reuse your leftovers for future meals - you'll have a budget- and environment-friendly kitchen in no time.
Winter: Warm recipes for cold nights
Louise Franc
$39.99
Paperback • 336 pages
When the temperature cools down and the nights become longer, we tend to crave our favourite comfort foods - slow-cooked meats that fall off the bone, rich chowders and hearty stews, succulent roasts with all the trimmings and fragrant and warming curries served with steamed rice. This is the time of year when we tend to skip the salads, smoothies and lighter meals and the art of winter cooking comes into its own. Winter: Warm recipes for cold nights, is a stunning collection of innovative cold-weather recipes perfect for this time of year.
From simple and warming traditional comfort foods like classic French onion soup, slow-cooked beef stroganoff, chicken cacciatore, rich osso buco and a moreish tuna pasta bake, to impressive modern cold-weather dishes including Asian-style caramel pork, Panang chicken curry, roasted pumpkin risotto with browned butter and sage, and creamy Calvados chicken, as well as a host of decadent desserts - think dulche de leche and chocolate peanut butter puddings, slow-baked spiced quinces, chai-spiced slow-baked rice puddings and winter warming dried fruit compote - Winter has a recipe to cover every occasion.
With 140 recipes included - designed to not only taste amazing but to warm you up too - Winter is a comprehensive volume on cold-weather cooking. This season now promises to be that much more delicious!
From simple and warming traditional comfort foods like classic French onion soup, slow-cooked beef stroganoff, chicken cacciatore, rich osso buco and a moreish tuna pasta bake, to impressive modern cold-weather dishes including Asian-style caramel pork, Panang chicken curry, roasted pumpkin risotto with browned butter and sage, and creamy Calvados chicken, as well as a host of decadent desserts - think dulche de leche and chocolate peanut butter puddings, slow-baked spiced quinces, chai-spiced slow-baked rice puddings and winter warming dried fruit compote - Winter has a recipe to cover every occasion.
With 140 recipes included - designed to not only taste amazing but to warm you up too - Winter is a comprehensive volume on cold-weather cooking. This season now promises to be that much more delicious!
Advocate - Travel
abbeys.com.au
My Twenty-Five Years In Provence
Peter Mayle
$27.99
Paperback • 208 pages
From the moment twenty-five years ago when Peter Mayle and his wife, Jennie, uprooted their lives in England and crossed the Channel permanently, they never looked back. Here Mayle pays tribute to the most endearing and enduring aspects of their adopted Provence-the charming and indelible parade of village life, the sheer beauty, the ancient history. He celebrates the cafe as an idea and lists some of his favorites; identifies his favorite villages, restaurants, and open-air markets; and recounts his most memorable meals. With his signature warmth, wit, and humor, Peter Mayle was a one-of-a-kind guide to Provence, and in his final book he has crafted a lasting love letter to his adopted home.
Erebus: The Story of a Ship
Michael Palin
$22.99
Paperback • 352 pages
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
In the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, HMS Erebus undertook two of the most ambitious naval expeditions of all time.
On the first, she ventured further south than any human had ever been. On the second, she vanished with her 129-strong crew in the wastes of the Canadian Arctic.
Her fate remained a mystery for over 160 years.
Then, in 2014, she was found.
This is her story.
BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
'Beyond terrific . . . I didn't want it to end.' Bill Bryson
'Illuminated by flashes of gentle wit . . . It's a fascinating story that Palin brings full-bloodedly to life.' Guardian
'Thoroughly absorbs the reader. . . Carefully researched and well-crafted, it brings the story of a ship vividly to life.' Sunday Times
'Magisterial . . . Brings energy, wit and humanity to a story that has never ceased to tantalise people since the 1840s.' The Times
In the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, HMS Erebus undertook two of the most ambitious naval expeditions of all time.
On the first, she ventured further south than any human had ever been. On the second, she vanished with her 129-strong crew in the wastes of the Canadian Arctic.
Her fate remained a mystery for over 160 years.
Then, in 2014, she was found.
This is her story.
BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK
'Beyond terrific . . . I didn't want it to end.' Bill Bryson
'Illuminated by flashes of gentle wit . . . It's a fascinating story that Palin brings full-bloodedly to life.' Guardian
'Thoroughly absorbs the reader. . . Carefully researched and well-crafted, it brings the story of a ship vividly to life.' Sunday Times
'Magisterial . . . Brings energy, wit and humanity to a story that has never ceased to tantalise people since the 1840s.' The Times
Literary Paris: A Photographic Tour
Nichole Robertson
$29.99
Hardback • 128 pages
Historic bookshops. Grand libraries. Hidden cafes. Literary Paris celebrates the bookish delights of Paris in a stunning photographic tour by Paris in Colour author Nichole Robertson. Turning her lens onto spots throughout the city both legendary and little-known, Robertson highlights quiet moments that every book-lover savors-inviting cafe scenes, comfy chairs, enticing book nooks-and the weathered charm of places steeped in centuries of literary history. Quotes by great writers-think Balzac, Colette-are interspersed throughout, and an index of locations featured and a timeline are also included. This immersive homage to the literary culture of the City of Light will transport and inspire bibliophiles and Francophiles alike.
Around the World in 80 Novels: A Global Journey Inspired by Writers from Every Continent
Henry Russell
$22.99
Hardback • 160 pages
Sometimes the setting of a novel is as important as the story - where would Dickens be without London, or Edith Wharton without New York? Who can read Jamaica Inn and not want to visit Bodmin Moor, or enjoy Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and not wonder whether perhaps Botswana should be on your bucket list? Covering every corner of the world, from the most visited cities of Europe to the rural outposts of Australia, there are classics by famous authors, alongside works by new writers. Sometimes a native of the country is best able to convey its true nature, but then an outside observer can recreate the attraction of the unknown. Whether you have already decided on a destination and want to read something to get a feel for the place, or you are just looking for ideas for your next getaway, Around the World in 80 Novels is full of inspirational reads that will fire your imagination and have you reaching for your suitcase.
Advocate - Children's
abbeys.com.au
Detention
Tristan Bancks
$16.99
Paperback • 288 pages
Sima and her family are pressed to the rough, cold ground among fifty others. They lie next to the tall fence designed to keep them in. The wires are cut one by one.
When they make their escape, a guard raises the alarm. Shouting, smoke bombs, people tackled to the ground. In the chaos Sima loses her parents.
Dad told her to run, so she does, hiding in a school and triggering a lockdown. A boy, Dan, finds her hiding in the toilet block.
What should he do? Help her? Dob her in? She's breaking the law, but is it right to lock kids up? And if he helps, should Sima trust him? Or run?
THIS MOMENT, THESE DECISIONS, WILL CHANGE THE COURSE OF THEIR LIVES.
When they make their escape, a guard raises the alarm. Shouting, smoke bombs, people tackled to the ground. In the chaos Sima loses her parents.
Dad told her to run, so she does, hiding in a school and triggering a lockdown. A boy, Dan, finds her hiding in the toilet block.
What should he do? Help her? Dob her in? She's breaking the law, but is it right to lock kids up? And if he helps, should Sima trust him? Or run?
THIS MOMENT, THESE DECISIONS, WILL CHANGE THE COURSE OF THEIR LIVES.
See more in stock for CHILDREN & YA
Movie Time! (#6 Hotdog)
Anh Do , Dan McGuiness
$12.99
Paperback • 128 pages
Hotdog, Lizzie and Kev want to be MOVIE STARS! But first they'll have to try-out with all the other actors to find the perfect roles.
Do Hotdog and his friends have what it takes to get the parts?
Do Hotdog and his friends have what it takes to get the parts?
Pirate Boy of Sydney Town
Jackie French
$16.99
Paperback
A SWASHBUCKLING ADVENTURE FROM AUSTRALIA'S CHILDREN'S LAUREATE
CAN YOU STILL LOVE YOUR FATHER, NO MATTER WHAT HIS CRIMES ARE?
12-year-old Ben Huntsmore is the son of a shipowner, an only child who loves the farming life on his mother's family estate, Badger's Hill.
But when Ben's father loses their ancestral home in 1809 as payment for a gambling debt, Ben reluctantly joins him in a desperate venture to win it back, capturing enemy trading ships off the West Australian coast.
While at sea, Ben must face not just the giant waves of the Southern Ocean, but also the guns of a Dutch ship, along with unexpected treachery. And only the friendships of the mysterious convict Higgins and the young Indigenous sailor Guwara will help Ben survive, as well as show him the true meaning of loyalty and riches.
From renowned children's author Jackie French comes Pirate Boy of Sydney Town, a book filled with swashbuckling adventures set against a background of Australia's hidden history as a pirate port and slavers' den.
PRAISE FOR NANBERRY: BLACK BROTHER WHITE:
"For really, really good Australian young-adult (and middle-grade) historical fiction, Jackie French has always been a winner ... With Nanberry: Black Brother White, she delivers an excellent fictionalised account of the First Fleet's settlement at Sydney Cove ... a powerful novel" - Australian Bookseller & Publisher, 5 stars
"She is one of few masters who can embed historic characters in rattling good tales and her meticulous research is seamlessly inserted so you live the detail rather than learn it. Even if you are not into history, Nanberry will hook you in ... Irresistible for history buffs of any age' - Good Reading Magazine, 5 stars
"I've been telling all my friends to read this book and give it to their kids to read. It's absolutely engrossing." - Herald Sun
CAN YOU STILL LOVE YOUR FATHER, NO MATTER WHAT HIS CRIMES ARE?
12-year-old Ben Huntsmore is the son of a shipowner, an only child who loves the farming life on his mother's family estate, Badger's Hill.
But when Ben's father loses their ancestral home in 1809 as payment for a gambling debt, Ben reluctantly joins him in a desperate venture to win it back, capturing enemy trading ships off the West Australian coast.
While at sea, Ben must face not just the giant waves of the Southern Ocean, but also the guns of a Dutch ship, along with unexpected treachery. And only the friendships of the mysterious convict Higgins and the young Indigenous sailor Guwara will help Ben survive, as well as show him the true meaning of loyalty and riches.
From renowned children's author Jackie French comes Pirate Boy of Sydney Town, a book filled with swashbuckling adventures set against a background of Australia's hidden history as a pirate port and slavers' den.
PRAISE FOR NANBERRY: BLACK BROTHER WHITE:
"For really, really good Australian young-adult (and middle-grade) historical fiction, Jackie French has always been a winner ... With Nanberry: Black Brother White, she delivers an excellent fictionalised account of the First Fleet's settlement at Sydney Cove ... a powerful novel" - Australian Bookseller & Publisher, 5 stars
"She is one of few masters who can embed historic characters in rattling good tales and her meticulous research is seamlessly inserted so you live the detail rather than learn it. Even if you are not into history, Nanberry will hook you in ... Irresistible for history buffs of any age' - Good Reading Magazine, 5 stars
"I've been telling all my friends to read this book and give it to their kids to read. It's absolutely engrossing." - Herald Sun
To the Moon and Back
Bryan Sullivan , Jackie French
$16.99
Paperback
NEW REVISED EDITION TO CELEBRATE THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST MOON LANDING Who were the Honeysuckle Creek mob? And how did they assist the first moon landing?
When man took the first step on the moon it was a bunch of Australian technicians who tracked the spacecraft and sent the first television pictures to the world. No, not at Parkes - the movie 'The Dish' got it wrong. They were from Honeysuckle Creek in the ACT.
This is their story, told by Bryan Sullivan, one of the technicians on duty at the time, and his wife, children's author Jackie French. And to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing, Bryan and Jackie have revisited this book to reflect on the enormous strides that technology has made since this book was first published in 2004.
Winner of the 2005 CBC Eve Pownall Award for Information Books in 2005, To the Moon and Back includes information about the space program and the birth of the internet, as well as supplying the answers to questions such as: How do you go to the toilet in a spacecraft? Have the astronauts ever seen an alien? What made the moon? Can I have a holiday in space?
PRAISE '... fascinating insights into the part that the Australians played in getting the astronauts to the moon and back.' - Bestselling author, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
When man took the first step on the moon it was a bunch of Australian technicians who tracked the spacecraft and sent the first television pictures to the world. No, not at Parkes - the movie 'The Dish' got it wrong. They were from Honeysuckle Creek in the ACT.
This is their story, told by Bryan Sullivan, one of the technicians on duty at the time, and his wife, children's author Jackie French. And to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing, Bryan and Jackie have revisited this book to reflect on the enormous strides that technology has made since this book was first published in 2004.
Winner of the 2005 CBC Eve Pownall Award for Information Books in 2005, To the Moon and Back includes information about the space program and the birth of the internet, as well as supplying the answers to questions such as: How do you go to the toilet in a spacecraft? Have the astronauts ever seen an alien? What made the moon? Can I have a holiday in space?
PRAISE '... fascinating insights into the part that the Australians played in getting the astronauts to the moon and back.' - Bestselling author, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki
Miss Franklin: How Miles Franklin's brilliant career began
Libby Hathorn , Phil Lesnie
$26.99
Hardback • 32 pages
This is a story about iconic Australian writer Stella Miles Franklin, namesake of two major literary prizes, during her brief but formative time as a governess in rural New South Wales. Teenager Stella Miles Franklin has to work to help support her family. Stella is unhappy in her job and longs for the freedom and excitement of city life. While working, she meets a young orphan girl, Imp, who is almost as feisty as Stella herself, and who spurs the older girl to follow her dreams.
Inspired by events in Miles Franklin's life, MISS FRANKLIN is told by multi-award-winning author Libby Hathorn and acclaimed illustrator Phil Lesnie, and includes a facts page about Stella Miles Franklin.
Inspired by events in Miles Franklin's life, MISS FRANKLIN is told by multi-award-winning author Libby Hathorn and acclaimed illustrator Phil Lesnie, and includes a facts page about Stella Miles Franklin.
Wombat, Mudlark and Other Stories
Helen Milroy
$14.99
Paperback • 96 pages
From a falling star to a lonely whale, an entertaining lizard to an enterprising penguin, these Indigenous stories are full of wonder, adventure and enduring friendships. Told in the style of traditional teaching stories, these animal tales take young readers on adventures of self-discovery and fulfilment.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz (YA Edition)
Heather Morris
$24.99
Hardback • 352 pages
SIGNED COPIES • SHIPPING NOW!
In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims' arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.
Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did too.
So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz.
This edition is edited and updated for younger readers, and also contains extra materials, including classroom discussion points, additional photos, maps and documents and other educational resources.
More of the latest new releases
Vincent and the Grandest Hotel on Earth
Lisa Nicol
$16.99
Paperback • 256 pages
Perched high on the snowy slopes of the Mabombo Ranges lies The Grandest Hotel on Earth. It's wilder than the African savanna, more fantastical than Disneyland and more magical than Shangri-la.
So when ordinary eleven-year-old Vincent meets the hotel's young Florence he sets off on a path leading into his most wondrous dreams.
But of course, dreams have a funny way of taking strange and surprising turns and, before long, Vincent is torn between right and wrong, friendship and family and the most enticing of desires - to see into the future . . .
Warning- this book includes insanely cute pocket dogs, travelling by llama or jet pack, chocolate fountains and shoes that play Bach.
So when ordinary eleven-year-old Vincent meets the hotel's young Florence he sets off on a path leading into his most wondrous dreams.
But of course, dreams have a funny way of taking strange and surprising turns and, before long, Vincent is torn between right and wrong, friendship and family and the most enticing of desires - to see into the future . . .
Warning- this book includes insanely cute pocket dogs, travelling by llama or jet pack, chocolate fountains and shoes that play Bach.
Lights Out, Leonard
Josh Pyke , Chris Nixon
$19.99
Hardback • 32 pages
SIGNED COPIES • SHIPPING NOW!
More of the latest new releases
The Search for the Silver Witch (#3 Polly and Buster)
Sally Rippin
$19.99
Hardback • 304 pages
Is being best friends enough to save a whole town?
Polly and Buster have always believed that witches and monsters can be friends, but it seems no-one else agrees. With the witches furious and the monsters in uproar, their whole town is heading for a war ... and yet no-one realises that a much greater menace lurks nearby.
Can Polly and Buster bring everyone together in time to save their town from the biggest danger of all?
The thrilling finale to the much-loved Polly and Buster trilogy, written and illustrated by award-winning and best-selling author Sally Rippin.
Polly and Buster have always believed that witches and monsters can be friends, but it seems no-one else agrees. With the witches furious and the monsters in uproar, their whole town is heading for a war ... and yet no-one realises that a much greater menace lurks nearby.
Can Polly and Buster bring everyone together in time to save their town from the biggest danger of all?
The thrilling finale to the much-loved Polly and Buster trilogy, written and illustrated by award-winning and best-selling author Sally Rippin.
Pay Attention, Carter Jones
Gary D. Schmidt
$14.99
Paperback
Carter Jones is astonished early one morning when he finds a real English butler, bowler hat and all, on the doorstep. He announces he is here to stay to help the Jones family, which is a little bit broken.
In addition to figuring out middle school, Carter has to adjust to the unwelcome presence of this new know-it-all adult in his life and navigate the butler's notions of decorum and love of cricket. And ultimately, when his burden of grief and anger from the past can no longer be ignored, Carter learns that a burden becomes lighter when it is shared.
Sparkling with humour, this insightful and compassionate story is the latest from the award-winning author of Orbiting Jupiter.
In addition to figuring out middle school, Carter has to adjust to the unwelcome presence of this new know-it-all adult in his life and navigate the butler's notions of decorum and love of cricket. And ultimately, when his burden of grief and anger from the past can no longer be ignored, Carter learns that a burden becomes lighter when it is shared.
Sparkling with humour, this insightful and compassionate story is the latest from the award-winning author of Orbiting Jupiter.
Land of Fences
Mark Smith
$19.99
Paperback • 256 pages
Finn and Kas are surviving on the coast-more than surviving- they?re enjoying the surf, the summer and being together. And now, the lights of Wentworth mean life could soon be back to normal. Finn is cautiously optimistic, but Kas knows she can never escape her status as a Siley, and that a return to slavery is a very real possibility. She?s nervous. And it turns out she?s right to be. When Kas is captured and taken inside the fences, Finn faces his greatest challenge yet.
Land of Fences is the compelling third and final novel in Mark Smith?s highly acclaimed action-packed trilogy that began with The Road to Winter.
Land of Fences is the compelling third and final novel in Mark Smith?s highly acclaimed action-packed trilogy that began with The Road to Winter.
