Abbey's Advocate

What happens when one of the country's most popular identities goes from reading the news to being the news?

Olivia Law had always been the good girl. Great grades, perfect career, husband, house and hairdo. She'd learnt image was everything so she refused to look below the surface of her life. When not at work, her minutes were filled with causes, chairing boards and dining at fabulous restaurants with her equally fabulous husband, David. She kept up the Botox, blow-dries and worked hard. It wasn't enough, but whenever doubt crept in she'd head to a pilates class or plan a renovation on her trophy house.

Then she turned 45.

Olivia wasn't prepared for David to leave. The fact that they hadn't had sex for two years should have triggered warning bells... it didn't.

In an attempt to fix her broken marriage Olivia exposes herself like never before. But when her confession goes viral, the husband, house and job disappear. The woman who once offered glamorous reassurance and a steady gaze is labelled a princess of perversion. Humiliated, defeated, facing fifty shades of failure, she's left wondering who the hell she really is? Stripped bare, she abandons perfection... and something remarkable happens.

Olivia Law just might get her sass back (and this time, it's the real thing).

The brilliant new novel from J.D. Barrett about break ups, breakdowns and break throughs. Batteries not included.

Sometimes love means having to broaden your literary horizons Frankie Rose is desperate for love. Or a relationship. Or just a date with a semi-normal person will do.

It's not that she hasn't tried. She's the queen of online dating. But enough is enough. Inspired by her job at The Little Brunswick Street Bookshop, Frankie decides to take fate into her own hands and embarks on the ultimate love experiment.

Her plan? Plant her favourite books on trains inscribed with her contact details in a bid to lure the sophisticated, charming and well-read man of her dreams.

Enter Sunny, and one spontaneous kiss later, Frankie begins to fall for him. But there's just one problem - Frankie is strictly a classics kind of gal, and Sunny is really into Young Adult. Like really.

A clever, funny and wryly observed story about books and discovering who you really are.

Luminous and deeply affecting, A Hundred Small Lessons is about the many small decisions - the invisible moments - that come to make a life. The intertwined lives of two women from different generations tell a rich and intimate story of how we feel what it is to be human, and how place can transform who we are. It takes account of what it means to be mother or daughter; father or son. It's a story of love, and of life.

When Elsie Gormley falls and is forced to leave her Brisbane home of sixty-two years, Lucy Kiss and her family move in, with their new life - new house, new city, new baby. Lucy and her husband Ben are struggling to transform from adventurous lovers to new parents and seek to smooth the rough edges of their present with memories of their past as they try to discover their future selves.

In her nearby nursing home, Elsie revisits the span of her life - the moments she can't bear to let go; the haunts to which she might yet return. Her memories of marriage, motherhood, love and death are intertwined with her old house, whose rooms seem to breathe Elsie's secrets into Lucy.

Through one hot, wet Brisbane summer, seven lives - and two different slices of time - wind along with the flow of the river, as two families chart the ways in which we come, sudden and oblivious, into each other's stories, and the unexpected ripples that flow out from those chance encounters.

'A luminous evocation of ordinary lives and the city that shapes them. Ashley Hay brings a pointillist eye to the daily miracles of love, of chance, of belonging.' Kris Olsson, author of Kibble prize-winner Boy, Lost

A powerfully told, gripping novel of family, guilt, empire, and race set in the dusty, deserted outback of Queensland in the 1880s. Tommy McBride and his brother Billy return to the isolated family home to find their parents have been brutally murdered. Haunted and alone, their desperate search for the killers leads them to the charismatic and deadly Inspector Noone and his Queensland Native Police an infamous arm of colonial power whose sole purpose is the 'dispersal' of Indigenous Australians in protection of settler rights. The retribution that follows will not only devastate Tommy and his relationship with his brother, but leave a terrible and lasting mark on the colony and the country it later becomes. This is a stunning debut from a major new talent.

Kurt Stocker's Swiss childhood is dominated by strict and god-fearing parents. He enters a seminary with the intent of becoming a priest and making his parents proud of him, but struggles to adapt. Leaving this vocation behind, he marries Liesl and they eventually emigrate to Australia.

Decades later in small town Australia, Terry Riley feels drawn to convent life, despite her parent's objections. At the convent she is haunted by a strange sickness and knows in time that she must return to a more conventional life. It is then she begins a relationship with the now divorced Kurt, who was once her high school teacher.

This is the story of an odd couple, of an older man and a younger woman in love with one another, but so damaged by their past lives that even a regular sexual relationship seems impossible. Beautiful in its frankness but disturbing in its examination of faith and human existence, this is a novel that is affectionate, haunting and ultimately unforgettable.

An ambitious novel of ideas set against a phantasmagoric Sydney - J. M. Coeztee A defrocked priest, Antony Elm, has made his way into a desert outside Alice Springs, where he intends to stay for forty days and forty nights. He is undergoing a crisis of faith and has brought with him the typescript for a book he has failed to finish about a meeting between Albert Einstein and the French philosopher Henri Bergson. This story concerns a crisis of understanding, as Bergson confronts Einstein about the meaning of time.

On the back of his typescript Antony writes another story, somehow close to his heart, which concerns two young men traveling to Sydney from Canberra for the first time in the early 1980s. This story, about a crisis of love, takes place in a single night as the boys encounter temptation, damnation and salvation in the world of alternative music Antony becomes increasingly delirious, observing temptations of the flesh and spirit, scribbling in the margins of his two unspooling narratives, awaiting a rescue that may or may not come.

The wilful and eccentric Lola Quinlan is off on the trip of a lifetime, taking her beloved granddaughter and great-granddaughter with her. More than sixty years after emigrating to Australia, she's keeping a secret promise to return to her Irish homeland.

But as she embarks on her journey, the flamboyant Lola is still hiding the hurtful reasons she left Ireland in the first place. What - and who - will be waiting for her on the other side of the world?

The Trip of a Lifetime is a big, bold, beautiful book about the light and dark times of life, and all the wonders in between. Moving from the Clare Valley of South Australia to the lush Irish countryside, this is a delightful, emotional story about a colourful and huge-hearted family that you'll want to call your own.

The nursery gate is a good place for parents to meet one another. As the mother of two small children, Isabel finds herself enlarging her circle of friends to include other parents. She meets Patricia, an Irishwoman, a musician and the single mother of a small boy called Basil Phelps. Isabel hears from her husband, Jamie, that this child is allegedly the unacknowledged son of a well-known Edinburgh organist, Basil Phelps.

Patricia takes to Isabel, but Isabel is suspicious - there is something about Patricia that she does not quite like, but, with her usual attention to moral obligation, she does her best to be civil and supportive. That is until she sees Patricia with a mysterious, freckled man. Isabel gets it into her head that this is Patricia's lover, and that he must be the real father of young Basil. When further discoveries are made, everything is turned on its head.

Despite Jamie's discouragement, Isabel decides that she is going to get to the bottom things. Yet, when the truth is finally revealed, it seems that Isabel has misjudged Patricia; in fact, she has misjudged just about everybody.

An utterly wonderful novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, set in Brisbane's violent working class suburban fringe - from one of Australia's most exciting new writers.

Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer.

But Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.

A story of brotherhood, true love and the most unlikely of friendships, Boy Swallows Universe will be the most heartbreaking, joyous and exhilarating novel you will read all year.

In October 1940, the handsome young David Sparsholt arrives in Oxford. A keen athlete and oarsman, he at first seems unaware of the effect he has on others - particularly on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist and destined to become a writer himself. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove: an ephemeral, uncertain place, in which nightly blackouts conceal secret liaisons. Over the course of one momentous term, David and Evert forge an unlikely friendship that will colour their lives for decades to come...

Alan Hollinghurst's masterly new novel evokes the intimate relationships of a group of friends bound together by art, literature and love across three generations. It explores the social and sexual revolutions of the most pivotal years of the past century, whose life-changing consequences are still being played out to this day. Richly observed, disarmingly witty and emotionally charged, The Sparsholt Affair is an unmissable achievement from one of our finest writers.

They told him everything.

He told everyone else.

Over countless martini-soaked Manhattan lunches, they shared their deepest secrets and greatest fears. On exclusive yachts sailing the Mediterranean, on private jets streaming towards Jamaica, on YucatBn beaches in secluded bays, they gossiped about sex, power, money, love and fame. They never imagined he would betray them so absolutely.

In the autumn of 1975, after two decades of intimate friendships, Truman Capote detonated a literary grenade, forever rupturing the elite circle he'd worked so hard to infiltrate. Why did he do it, knowing what he stood to lose? Was it to punish them? To make them pay for their manners, money and celebrated names? Or did he simply refuse to believe that they could ever stop loving him? Whatever the motive, one thing remains indisputable- nine years after achieving wild success with In Cold Blood, Capote committed an act of professional and social suicide with his most lethal of weapons... Words.

A dazzling debut about the line between gossip and slander, self-creation and self-preservation, SWAN SONG is the tragic story of the literary icon of his age and the beautiful, wealthy, vulnerable women he called his Swans.

'Writers write. And one can't be surprised if they write what they know.'

The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Atonement brilliantly illuminates the collision of sexual longing, deep-seated fears, and romantic fantasy on a young couple's wedding night. It is 1962, and Florence and Edward are celebrating their wedding in a hotel on the Dorset coast. Yet as they dine, the expectation of their marital duties become overwhelming. Unbeknownst to them both, the decisions they make this night will resonate throughout their lives. With exquisite prose, Ian McEwan creates in On Chesil Beach a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

A rediscovered German classic novel from 1942, The Seventh Cross is both a gripping escape story and a powerful novel of resistance.

'At once a suspenseful manhunt story and a knowing portrait of the perils of ordinary life in Hitler's Germany, The Seventh Cross is not only an important novel, but an important historical document. This new, unabridged translation is a genuine publishing event' JOSEPH KANON, author of The Good German and Leaving Berlin 'It was [Seghers] who taught my generation and anyone who had an ear to listen after that not-to-be-forgotten war to distinguish right from wrong. The Seventh Cross shaped me; it sharpened my vision' Gunter Grass 'A masterpiece. Written in the midst of terror, but with such clarity, such acuity; Seghers is a writer of rare insight' Rachel Seiffert, author of A Boy in Winter Seven prisoners escape from Westhofen concentration camp. Seven crosses are erected in the grounds and the commandant vows to capture the fugitives within a week. Six men are caught quickly, but George Heisler slips through his pursuers' fingers and it becomes a matter of pride to track him down, at whatever cost.

Who can George trust? Who will betray him? The years of fear have changed those he knew best: his brother is now an SS officer; his lover turns him away. Hunted, injured and desperate, time is running out for George, and whoever is caught aiding his escape will pay with their life.

The Seventh Cross powerfully documents the insidious rise of a fascist regime - the seething paranoia, the sudden arrests, the silence and fear.

'A fascinating insight into life in pre-war Nazi Germany just as the horrors of the Nazi regime were beginning to unfold. This is an important novel, as much for its picture of German society as for its insight into the psyche of ordinary people confronting their personal fears and mixed loyalties' Simon Mawer, author of The Glass Room The Seventh Cross was written by one of the most important German writers of the twentieth century. Her aim was to write, 'A tale that makes it possible to get to know the many layers of fascist Germany through the fortunes of a single man.' She had four copies of the manuscript: one was destroyed in an air raid; a friend lost the second copy while fleeing the Nazis; another was found by the Gestapo; only the fourth copy survived, which, fortunately, she sent to her publisher in America just before she escaped Nazi-occupied France. Published in 1942, The Seventh Cross was an immediate bestseller and was the basis for an MGM film starring Spencer Tracy in 1944. It has been translated into more than 40 languages.

A philandering art dealer tries to give up casual love affairs - seeking only passionate kisses as a substitute. A man recounts his personal history through the things he has stolen from others throughout his life. A couple chart the journey of their five year relationship backwards, from awkward reunion to lovelorn first encounter. And, at the heart of the book, a 24-year old young woman, Bethany Mellmoth, embarks on a year-long journey of wishful and tentative self-discovery.

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth depicts the random encounters that bring the past bubbling to the surface; the impulsive decisions that irrevocably shape a life; and the endless hesitations and loss-of-nerve that wickedly complicate it. These funny, surprising and moving stories are a resounding confirmation of Boyd's powers as one of our most original and compelling storytellers.

Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the post: it is from an ex-boyfriend of nine years who is engaged to someone else. Arthur can't say yes - it would be too awkward; he can't say no - it would look like defeat. So, he begins to accept the invitations on his desk to half-baked literary events around the world.

From France to India, Germany to Japan, Arthur almost falls in love, almost falls to his death, and puts miles between him and the plight he refuses to face. Less is a novel about mishaps, misunderstandings and the depths of the human heart.

Nour has lost her father. She has also lost the place she was born in and now lives in the Syrian town of Homs, along with her sisters and mother. And so, by the fig tree in the garden, Nour whispers the stories her Baba once told her, so that the roots of the tree will carry those stories back to where her father is buried and he won't feel so alone. Her favourite is the story of Rawiya, a young girl from the twelfth century who left her home in search of adventure, dressed as a boy.

But Syria is changing and it isn't long before protests and shelling destroy the peace of the quiet city. As Nour begins her own journey as a refugee, she draws strength and inspiration from the voyage of Rawiya, who became apprenticed to the famous mapmaker, Al Idrisi, and who battled mythical creatures and endured epic battles in the attempt to compile the most accurate map of the world ever made.

THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS is a breathtakingly beautiful novel that illuminates the story of a country in turmoil, a tale of human resilience and the power of stories to transform.

Margot Baumann has left school to take up her sister's job in the mailroom of a large prison. But this is Germany in 1944, and the prison is Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.

Margot is shielded from the camp's brutality as she has no contact with prisoners. But she does handle their mail and, when given a cigarette lighter and told to burn the letters, she is horrified by the callous act she must carry out with her own hands. This is especially painful since her brother was taken prisoner at Stalingrad and her family have had no letters from him. So Margot steals a few letters, intending to send them in secret, only to find herself drawn to their heart-rending words of hope, of despair, and of love.

This is how Margot comes to know Dieter Kleinschmidt - through the beauty and the passion of his letters to his girlfriend.

And since his girlfriend is also named Margot, it is like reading love letters written for her.

From award-winning Australian author James Moloney, comes a fresh and compelling story about love, loss and profound bravery.

A sweeping, romantic, and profoundly moving novel, set in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and Los Angeles in the 1950s, about a lonely young man, a beautiful widow, and the amnesiac soldier whose puzzling case binds them together even as it tears them apart.

In 1920, two young Americans meet in Verdun, the city in France where one of the most devastating battles of the war was waged. Tom is an orphan from Chicago, a former ambulance driver now gathering bones from the battlefield; Sarah is an expatriate from Boston searching for the husband who wandered off from his division and hasn't been seen since. Quickly, the two fall into a complicated affair against the ghostly backdrop of the ruined city. Months later, Sarah and Tom meet again at the psychiatric ward of an Italian hospital, drawn there by the appearance of a mysterious patient the doctors call Douglas Fairbanks (after the silent film actor) - a shell-shocked soldier with no memory of who he is. At the hospital, Tom and Sarah are joined by Paul, an Austrian journalist with his own interest in the amnesiac.

Each is keeping a secret; each has been shaken by the horrors of war. Decades later, Tom, now a successful screenwriter, encounters Paul by chance in LA, still grappling with the questions raised by this gorgeous and incisive novel: How to begin again after unfathomable trauma? How to love after so much loss? And who, in the end, was Douglas Fairbanks?

From the bone-strewn fields of Verdun to the bombed-out cafes of Paris, from the riot-torn streets of Bologna to the riotous parties of 1950s Hollywood, The Verdun Affair is a riveting tale of romance, grief and the far-reaching consequences of a single lie.

A small city in western France,. The early twentieth century. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy 17-year-old with a rare talent for drawing, is entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, the daughter of a Jewish newspaper magnate, and the two young women embark on a clandestine love affair.

Stifled by provincial convention and a society that is overtly patriarchal, they reinvent themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore and move to Paris, where they are swept up in the most glamorous social circles, meeting everyone from Hemingway and Dali to Andre Breton, and produce photographic work of great originality and strangeness.

As World War Two looms, they leave for Jersey, and it is here that they confront their destiny, dreaming up a campaign of propaganda against Hitler's occupying forces.

From one of our most celebrated writers, Never Anyone But You explores the gripping true story of two extraordinary women who challenged gender boundaries, and ultimately risked their lives in the fight against oppression. Theirs is a story that has been hidden in the margins of history - until now...

The long-awaited novel from the bestselling author of Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad.

The long-awaited novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad, Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Anna observes the uniformed servants, the lavishing of toys on the children, and some secret pact between her father and Dexter Styles.

Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career as a Ziegfield folly, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a night club, she chances to meet Styles, the man she visited with her father before he vanished, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father's life, the reasons he might have been murdered.

Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller and a wealth of detail about organized crime, the merchant marine and the clash of classes in New York, Egan's first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America and the world. Manhattan Beach is a magnificent novel by one of the greatest writers of our time.

The sequel to Kingdom of the Wicked: Book One Rules (Wilkinson Publishing, October 2017) From the best-selling author of The Hand that Signed the Paper, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, comes a sensational epic novel. Published in association with Ligature (www.ligatu.re) 786 ab urbe condita 33AD. Time is running out for Yeshua Ben Yusuf, on trial for capital crimes after rioting against the monmeychanges in the temple.

His Roman defence lawyer and the Legion's military prosecutor bring their witnesses before Pontius Pilate followers, soldiers, religious leaders, even his mother revealing the accused man in ways that surprise and move those gathering for the verdict, connecting and transforming their lives. As Yeshua Ben Yusuf awaits judgment, the wounded Zealots prepare a final desperate strike. On the outskirts of Jerusalem, the occupation, the resistance and one holy man will meet their fate together.

To those around her she was a loyal subject. In her heart she was a traitor. 1399: England's crown is under threat. King Richard II holds onto his power by an ever-weakening thread, with exiled Henry of Lancaster back to reclaim his place on the throne.

For Elizabeth Mortimer, there is only one rightful King - her eight-year-old nephew, Edmund. Only he can guarantee her fortunes, and protect her family's rule over the precious Northern lands bordering Scotland.

But many, including Elizabeth's husband, do not want another child-King. Elizabeth must hide her true ambitions in Court, and go against her husband's wishes to help build a rebel army.

To question her loyalty to the King places Elizabeth in the shadow of the axe.

To concede would curdle her Plantagenet blood.

This is one woman's quest to turn history on its head.

Oceania 1879. A family of settlers from New Zealand are the sole inhabitants of a remote volcanic island.

For two years they have struggled with the harsh reality of trying to make this unforgiving place a paradise they can call their own. At last, a ship appears. The six Pacific Islanders on board have travelled eight hundred miles across the ocean in search of work and new horizons. Hopes are high for all, until a vulnerable boy vanishes. In their search for the lost child, settlers and newcomers together uncover far more than they were looking for. The island's secrets force them all to question their deepest convictions.

For ten years a man calling himself Will Power lived in near-total isolation in northern New South Wales, foraging for food, eating bats and occasionally trading for produce.

But who was this mysterious man who roamed the forest and knew all of its secrets and riddles? Some people thought he might be Jesus. Others feared he was a more sinister figure. The truth was that he was neither miraculous nor malevolent, but he was, most certainly, gifted. And when he finally emerged from the forest, emaciated and close to death, he was determined to reclaim his real name and 'give society another chance'.

Today, Dr Gregory Peel Smith, who left school at the age of fourteen, has a PhD and teaches in the Social Sciences at university. His profoundly touching and uplifting memoir is at once a unique insight into how far off track a life can go and powerful reminder that we can all find our way back if we pause for a moment in the heart of the forest.

A fiercely intelligent, heartbreakingly honest memoir and feminist call to arms in the tradition of Fight Like A Girl

Eggshell Skull: A well-established legal doctrine that a defendant must 'take their victim as they find them': If a thin skull caused the death of someone after a punch, that victim's weakness cannot mitigate the seriousness of the crime, nor the punishment.

But what if it also works the other way? What if a defendant on trial for sexual crimes has to accept his 'victim' as she comes: a strong, determined accuser who knows the legal system, who will not back down until justice is done?

Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Brisbane Magistrates Court as a bright-eyed judge's associate. Eighteen months later she was back as the complainant in her own case.

This is the story of Bri's journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge's associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland--where justice can look very different, especially for women. Confronted by horrific criminal behaviour every day in court, Bri's eyes were opened to the inequity of the legal system and how complainants in sex crime investigations and trials struggle to receive justice, are re-victimised, and let down by the system with heartbreaking frequency.

The injustice Bri witnessed, mourned and raged over every day finally forced her to confront her own personal history, one she'd vowed never to tell. And this is how, after years of struggle, she found herself on the other side of the courtroom, telling her story.

Bri Lee has written a fierce and eloquent memoir that addresses both her own reckoning with the past to speak the truth, as well as the stories around her, with wit, empathy and unflinching courage. Eggshell Skull is a haunting appraisal of modern Australia from a new and essential voice.

Samuel Johnson was a critic, an essayist, a poet and a biographer. He was also, famously, the compiler of the first good English dictionary, published in 1755. A polymath and a great conversationalist, his intellectual and social curiosity were boundless. Yet he was a deeply melancholy man, haunted by dark thoughts, sickness and a diseased imagination.

In his own life, both public and private, he sought to choose a virtuous and prudent path, negotiating everyday hazards and temptations. His writings and aphorisms illuminate what it means to lead a life of integrity, and his experience, abundantly documented by him and by others (such as James Boswell and Hester Thrale), is a lesson in the art of regulating the mind and the body.

Johnson’s story touches on many themes that have enduring significance. He was, and remains, a perceptive commentator on the vanity of human wishes, the rewards and dangers of charity, the need to cultivate kindness, the complexities of family life (especially marriage), the effects of boredom and the fleeting nature of pleasure. He writes and speaks incisively and humanely about the ego, ambition, hypocrisy, fallibility and disorders of the mind, as well as the corrosive effects of obsession, the precariousness of fame and the skulduggery of the literary world.

He is a source of profound good sense about what it means to teach, read, write and travel. More than that, though, he continually translates his experience of poverty, scorn, pain and madness into a rich understanding of how to be.

A visionary scientist, a supreme painter, a man of eccentricity and ambition: Leonardo da Vinci had many lives. The child of a fleeting affair between a country girl and a young notary, Leonardo was never legitimized by his father and received no formal education. While this freedom from the routine of rigid and codified learning may have served to stimulate his natural creativity, it also caused many years of suffering and an insatiable need to prove his own worth. It was a striving for glory and obsessive thirst for knowledge that prompted Leonardo to seek the protection and favour of the most powerful figures of his day: from Lorenzo de' Medici to Ludovico Sforza, from the French governors of Milan to eventually the Papacy in Rome, where he could vie for renown with Michelangelo and Raphael.

In this revelatory account, Antonio Forcellino draws on his expertise as both an historian and a restorer of some of the world's greatest works of art to give us a more detailed view of Leonardo than ever before. Through careful analyses of his paintings and compositional technique, down to the very materials used, Forcellino offers new insight into Leonardo's artistic and intellectual development. He spans the great breadth of Leonardo's genius, discussing his contributions to mechanics, optics, anatomy, geology and metallurgy, as well as providing acute psychological observations and sketches about the political dynamics and social contexts in which Leonardo worked.

Forcellino throws brilliant light on a life all too often overshadowed and obscured by myth, providing us with a new perspective on the personality and motivations of one of the greatest geniuses of Western culture.

Henry Marsh has spent four decades operating on the human brain. In this searing and provocative memoir following his retirement from the NHS, he reflects on the experiences that have shaped his career and life, gaining a deeper understanding of what matters to us all in the end.

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.

Was Niccolo Machiavelli really the cynical schemer of legend - or was he a profound ethical thinker, who tried to save the democratic freedom of Renaissance Florence as it was threatened by ruthless dynasties? This revelatory biography shows us a man of fox-like dissimulation: a master of disguise in dangerous times.

'A gripping portrait of a brilliant political thinker, who understood the dangers of authoritarianism and looked for ways to curb them' The New Yorker

'Compelling... this unconventional biography questions whether the philosopher deserves his reputation as an advocate for tyranny' Julian Baggini, Financial Times

HISTORY is one of Abbey's specialisations, with a range at 131 York Street that is a constant delight to our customers. So we're thrilled to be able to offer you the new title from that titan of wartime history writing, Antony Beevor - AT HALF PRICE during June!

The great airborne battle for the bridges in 1944 by Britain's Number One bestselling historian and author of the classic Stalingrad.

On 17 September 1944, General Kurt Student, the founder of Nazi Germany's parachute forces, heard the growing roar of aero engines. He went out on to his balcony above the flat landscape of southern Holland to watch the vast air armada of Dakotas and gliders,carrying the British 1st Airborne and the American 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions. He gazed up in envy at the greatest demonstration of paratroop power ever seen.

Operation Market Garden, the plan to end the war by capturing the bridges leading to the Lower Rhine and beyond, was a bold concept: the Americans thought it unusually bold for Field Marshal Montgomery. But the cost of failure was horrendous, above all for the Dutch who risked everything to help. German reprisals were cruel and lasted until the end of the war.

The British fascination for heroic failure has clouded the story of Arnhem in myths, not least that victory was possible when in fact the plan imposed by Montgomery and General 'Boy' Browning was doomed from the start. Antony Beevor, using many overlooked and new sources from Dutch, British, American, Polish and German archives, has reconstructed the terrible reality of this epic clash. Yet this book, written in Beevor's inimitable and gripping narrative style, is about much more than a single dramatic battle. It looks into the very heart of war.

The Darkening Age is the largely unknown story of how a militant religion comprehensively and deliberately extinguished the teachings of the Classical world, ushering in centuries of unquestioning adherence to 'one true faith'.

Despite the long-held notion that the early Christians were meek and mild, going to their martyr's deaths singing hymns of love and praise, the truth, as Catherine Nixey reveals, is very different. Far from being meek and mild, they were violent, ruthless and fundamentally intolerant. Unlike the polytheistic world, in which the addition of one new religion made no fundamental difference to the old ones, this new ideology stated not only that it was the way, the truth and the light but that, by extension, every single other way was wrong and had to be destroyed. From the 1st century to the 6th, those who didn't fall into step with its beliefs were pursued in every possible way: social, legal, financial and physical. Their altars were upturned and their temples demolished, their statues hacked to pieces and their priests killed. It was an annihilation.

Authoritative, vividly written and utterly compelling, this is a remarkable debut from a brilliant young historian.

‘Dark Emu injects a profound authenticity into the conversation about how we Australians understand our continent ... [It is] essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what Australia once was, or what it might yet be if we heed the lessons of long and sophisticated human occupation.’ Judges for 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards

Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating, and storing — behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.

Bruce’s comments on his book compared to Gammage’s: “ My book is about food production, housing construction and clothing, whereas Gammage was interested in the appearance of the country at contact. [Gammage] doesn’t contest hunter gatherer labels either, whereas that is at the centre of my argument.”

The 1838 Myall Creek Massacre is remembered for the brutality of the crime committed by white settlers against innocent Aboriginal men, women and children, but also because eleven of the twelve assassins were arrested and brought to trial. Amid tremendous controversy, seven were hanged. Myall Creek was not the last time the colonial administration sought to apply the law equally to Aboriginal people and settlers, but it was the last time perpetrators of a massacre were convicted and hanged.

Marking its 180th anniversary, this book explores the significance of one of the most horrifying events of Australian colonialism. Thoughtful and fearless, it challenges us to look at our history without flinching as an act of remembrance and reconciliation.

On New Year's Eve 2001, with her husband by her side, Phillipa McGuinness buried her son. They stood with a young priest in Chua Chu Kang Cemetery and watched a small coffin go into the ground. Later that night, shattered, they sat looking out at the hundreds of ships waiting to come into port in Singapore's harbor. Or trying to leave, who could tell? Each of them thinking about the next year, starting within hours. Phillipa wanted time to push on, for 2001 to be over, but she was also scared. What might be next?

2001 was an awful year. It's the only year where you can mention a day and a month using only numbers and everyone knows what you mean. But 9/11 wasn't the only momentous event that year. In Australia a group of orange-jacketed asylum seekers on deck the Norwegian vessel Tampa seemed responsible for Prime Minister John Howard's statement not long after- 'We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.' These words became his mantra during the bruising election that followed in November, both sides of politics affected by their venom and insularity, or their strength and resolve, depending on which way you looked at it.

The year had started with what was supposed to be a celebratory event of sophistication and nuance, reflecting the kind of country we hoped we had become. Yet the Centenary of Federation on 1 January turned out to be a class-A fizzer. The nation seemed to decide that what was really worth commemorating wasn't the peaceful bringing together of colonial states into a Commonwealth but the doomed assault on a Turkish beach that happened fourteen years later in 1915. It is easier to animate young men dying than old men signing a constitution.

2001 marked the halfway point of twenty years of continuous economic growth in Australia. But the year started with shiny tech startups continuing their implosion following the dotcom bubble burst. The deal of the (nascent) century, the merger between Netscape and AOL, seemingly an all-powerful mega corporation, began to slide. Yet perhaps the digital world as we now know it did start in 2001, at least for what is now the most powerful company in the world. For this was the year that Google, in no hurry to launch an IPO, received its PageRank patent, assigned to Larry Page and Stanford University. The rest, as they say, is history. Apple launched the iPod in 2001, not only transforming the soundtrack to our lives but shifting cultural alignments so that distributors became the richest guys in the room, rather than the artists writing, singing and playing the songs.

If 2001 were a movie - oh wait, of course it was - its tagline might be 'The year that changed everything'. And that change is not over.

The final volume of the critically acclaimed and groundbreaking trilogy chronicling the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, one of history's most complex and charismatic leaders

This meticulously researched study opens with Napoleon no longer in power, but instead a prisoner in a dressing-gown just off the English coast. This may have been a great fall from power, but Napoleon, international celebrity of his age, still held immense attraction and glamour. Every day, huge crowds would gather on the far shore in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. Exile on St Helena was decided upon by his captors as the only solution for containing the troublesome potential of this once most powerful of leaders.

Philip Dwyer closes his ambitious trilogy exploring Napoleon 's life, legacy and myth by moving from those first months of imprisonment, through the years of exile, up to death and then beyond, examining how the foundations of legend that had been laid by Napoleon during his lifetime continued to be built upon by his followers.

Napoleon III- The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815-1840 is a considered and illuminating exploration of one of the most charismatic and able leaders of history in the closing chapters of his life. It is a fitting and authoritative end to a definitive work.

The story of Catholic Emancipation begins with the violent Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in 1780, fuelled by the reduction in Penal Laws against the Roman Catholics harking back to the sixteenth century. Some fifty years later, the passing of the Emancipation Bill was hailed as a 'bloodless revolution'.

Had the Irish Catholics been a 'millstone', as described by an English aristocrat, or were they the prime movers? While the English Catholic aristocracy and the Irish peasants and merchants approached the Catholic Question in very different ways, they manifestly shared the same objective.

Antonia Fraser brings colour and humour to the vivid drama with its huge cast of characters: George III, who opposed Emancipation on the basis of the Coronation Oath; his son, the indulgent Prince of Wales, who was enamoured with the Catholic Maria Fitzherbert before the voluptuous Lady Conyngham; Wellington and the 'born Tory' Peel vying for leadership; 'roaring' Lord Winchilsea; the heroic Daniel O'Connell. Expertly written and deftly argued, The King and Catholics is also a distant mirror of our times, reflecting the political issues arising from religious intolerance.

There is nothing quite as beautiful as an English country house in summer. And there has never been a summer quite like that Indian summer between the two world wars, a period of gentle decline in which the sun set slowly on the British Empire and the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes.

Real life in the country house during the 1920s and 1930s was not always so sunny. By turns opulent and ordinary, noble and vicious, its shadows were darker. In The Long Weekend, Adrian Tinniswood uncovers the truth about a world half-forgotten, draped in myth and hidden behind stiff upper lips and film-star smiles.

Drawing on hundreds of memoirs, on unpublished letters and diaries, on the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and unhappy heiresses and bullying butlers, The Long Weekend gives a voice to the people who inhabited this world and shows how the image of the country house was carefully protected by its occupants above and below stairs, and how the reality was so much more interesting than the dream.

A revelatory account of the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler, based on new and award-winning research, and recently discovered archival material.

The Death of Democracy explores one of the great questions in all of human history- what caused the fall of one of the most progressive governments in twentieth-century Europe, and the rise of the most terrifying? Drawing on extraordinary individual stories to illustrate its broader arguments, this revelatory new account presents a panoramic portrait of Germany at a turning point, focusing on the global dimension of the Nazi phenomenon as part of a widespread reaction against a world order of triumphant, cosmopolitan liberal democracy and capitalism after the First World War. This was a world situation that pushed its opponents to embrace authoritarianism, nationalism and economic self-sufficiency, kick-starting a revolution reliant upon the innovative exploitation of new media technologies, and the formidable political and self-promotional skills of its leader.

Based on award-winning research and recently discovered archival material, The Death of Democracy is an authoritative and panoramic new survey of one of the most pivotal periods in modern history, and a book with a clear and important message for the world today.

The new bestseller that shows why everything we thought we knew about history was wrong.

Most history is hierarchical: it's about popes, presidents, and prime ministers. But what if that's simply because they create the historical archives? What if we are missing equally powerful but less visible networks - leaving them to the conspiracy theorists, with their dreams of all-powerful Illuminati?

The twenty-first century has been hailed as the Networked Age. But in The Square and the Tower Niall Ferguson argues that social networks are nothing new. From the printers and preachers who made the Reformation to the freemasons who led the American Revolution, it was the networkers who disrupted the old order of popes and kings. Far from being novel, our era is the Second Networked Age, with the computer in the role of the printing press. But networks have a dark side, prone to clustering, contagions, and even outages. And the conflicts of the past already have unnerving parallels today, in the time of Facebook, Islamic State and Trumpworld.

July 4, 2018 will see the 100th anniversary of the World War One Battle of Hamel, fought on the Somme on American Independence Day, an Allied victory, achieved in a staggering 93 minutes, which introduced tactics that dramatically turned the tide against the Germans and changed the way that war is fought.

The battle of Hamel was remarkable for its speed, the tactics employed, numerous acts of extreme bravery, and the fact that for the first time in history American troops fought under Australian command.

The Battle of Hamel, explores the preparations and ramifications for this blitzkreig and the parts played by six men in particular:

    * General John Monash, a former Melbourne engineer who had risen through militia ranks to become the first Australian corps commander of WWI, and who put his career on the line by conceiving and commanding the bold Hamel assault, implementing it despite the reservations of his British superior and the interference of American commander General Pershing and Monash’s own Australian prime minister, Billy Hughes.

    * Australians Private Henry Dalziel and Lance Corporal Jack Axford, who both won the Victoria Cross (VC) for their gallantry during the battle, and Sergeant Ned Searle (who is related to Stephen Dando-Collins), who set out to win a Victoria Cross during the battle.

    * Colonel Joseph B Sanborn, at 64 supposedly much too old for front line service, yet who, as commander of the American 131st Regiment, defied the orders of US commander General Pershing to lead his men into battle alongside the Australians. On General Monash’s recommendation, Sanborn was awarded the British Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).

    * American Corporal Thomas Pope, who won America’s highest gallantry award, the Medal of Honor (MOH), for his part in the Battle of Hamel, becoming the first member of the US Army to be awarded the Medal of Honor in World War One. Pope would live to 94, becoming the last WWI Medal of Honor winner to pass away.

By the end of World War I, 45,000 Australians had died on the Western Front. Some bodies had been hastily buried mid-battle in massed graves; others were mutilated beyond recognition. Often men were simply listed as 'Missing in Action' because nobody knew for sure.

Lieutenant Robert Burns was one of the missing, and now that the guns had fallen silent his father wanted to know what had become of his son. He wasn't the only one looking for answers. A loud clamour arose from Australia for information and the need for the dead to be buried respectfully.

Many of the Australians charged with the grizzly task of finding and reburying the dead were deeply flawed. Each had his own reasons for preferring to remain in France instead of returning home. In the end there was a great scandal, with allegations of 'body hoaxing' and gross misappropriation of money and army possessions leading to two highly secretive inquiries.

Untold until now, Missing in Action is the compelling and unexpected story of those dark days and darker deeds and a father's desperate search for his son's remains.

'We just found Sydney. We've got it. It's absolutely crystal clear. She's sitting upright in a small debris field. There's no doubt about it.'

For sixty-six years it was Australia's greatest maritime mystery: what happened to the 'pride of the fleet' HMAS Sydney - was she beaten in a fair fight with the German cruiser Kormoran, or was there treachery involved? Could the Kormoran survivors' account of the battle and its aftermath be believed? Why were there no survivors from Sydney? And where was the wreck?

One of the world's foremost shipwreck hunters, David L. Mearns first heard the story of the Sydney in 1996. It left an indelible impression on him. Hunting the Sydney ten years later tested all his skills as a detective, engineer, marine scientist and navigator. But find it he did, and with that momentous discovery came answers to the mystery; closure to relatives still grieving the 645 men dead; accountability to the RAN, which had all but given up hope of ever finding its most iconic ship; and a sad but gripping explanation of the staggering naval disaster, allowing Australians to finally make sense of the conflicting, conspiratorial and painful event.

Sixteen years before the Second World War, Adolf Hitler had already begun his plan to take over the world. With the help of nine close conspirators and a few hundred followers, he staged his first attempt at an overthrow of the German government. That night, Hitler stood on a table in the middle of Munich's crowded Burgerbrau Beer Hall, fired his revolver into the air and shouted 'The National Revolution has begun!' Although they managed to kill nineteen people, including four policemen, the attempt was far from a triumph. Cuffed and behind bars, Hitler and his accomplices, including Germany's most prominent war hero, found themselves accused of high treason; if found guilty, they would face deportation, or worse, life in prison.

But the trial did not go as the prosecution had planned and, instead of being cowed, Hitler put his charisma and media savvy to the test, turning the trial into the single greatest opportunity of his life. Frustrating the prosecution and deftly enforcing his position under the eye of a sympathetic judge, Hitler's flamboyant rhetoric, combined with his timely populist message, would win him many admirers in the courtroom and in the media alike. Drawing on the original court transcripts and hundreds of other documents, David King's The Trial of Adolf Hitler is the first book-length account of this gripping true story of drama, intrigue and significance.

Is the 45th President of the United States under the control of a foreign power? Award-winning Associated Press reporter Seth Hettena untangles the story of Donald Trump's long involvement with Russia in damning detail - including new reporting never before published.

As Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the relationship between members of Trump's campaign and Russian operatives continues, there is growing evidence that Trump has spent decades cultivating ties to corrupt Russians and the post-Soviet state.

In Trump/Russia- a definitive history, Seth Hettena chronicles the many years Trump has spent wooing Russian money and power. From the collapse of his casino empire - which left Trump desperate for cash - and his first contacts with Russian deal-makers and financiers, on up to the White House, Hettena reveals the myriad of shady people, convoluted dealings, and strange events that suggest how indebted to Russia the forty-fifth US president might be.

Using deeply researched reporting, along with newly uncovered information, court documents, and exclusive interviews with investigators and FBI agents, Hettena provides an expansive and essential primer to the Trump/Russia scandal, leaving no stone unturned.

'Written with intensity and excitement, Wild Sea is a poetic exploration of a vast, wondrous ocean and a ripping yarn. TOM GRIFFITHS

'An apparition of an adult wandering albatross comes into view. A small flutter and powerful wings arch upward in a slow, poised descent to feed the waiting mouth. Fluffy chicks, half-grown, huddle close to the grass. One strides over to a neighbouring giant petrel chick and picks a fight. They remind me of bored teenagers filling in time between snacks.'

Latitude 54° 02' South, Longitude 37° 14' West: Prion Island, South Georgia

Unimpeded by any landmass, the mysterious Southern Ocean flows completely around Earth from west to east between the seasonally shifting icy continent of Antarctica and the coastlines and islands of Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa.

Weaving together sea captains' journals, whalers' log books, explorers' letters, scientific research and ancient beliefs with her own voyage of discovery, Joy McCann reveals the secrets of a little-known ocean and its importance as a barometer of climate change.

On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Bleriot, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin's most audacious intelligence operation.

On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.

Recognising Russia was 100 years behind the encircling capitalist powers, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had sent Shumovsky on a mission to acquire America's vital secrets to help close the USSR's yawning technology gap. The road to victory began in the classrooms and laboratories of MIT - Shumovsky's destination soon became the unwitting finishing school for elite Russian spies. The USSR first transformed itself into a military powerhouse able to confront and defeat Nazi Germany. Then in an extraordinary feat that astonished the West, in 1947 American ingenuity and innovation exfiltrated by Shumovsky made it possible to build and unveil the most advanced strategic bomber in the world.

Following his lead, other MIT-trained Soviet spies helped acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project. By 1949, Stalin's fleet of TU-4s, now equipped with atomic bombs could devastate the US on his command. Appropriately codenamed BLERIOT, Shumovsky was an aviation spy. Shumovsky's espionage was so successful that the USSR acquired every US aviation secret from his network of agents in factories and at top secret military research institutes.

In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin's most audacious intelligence operation. She pieces together every aspect of Shumovsky's life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives, exposing how even Shirley Temple and Franklin D. Roosevelt unwittingly advanced his schemes.

A genuinely new Second World War story, The 21 Escapes of Lt Alastair Cram is a riveting account of the wartime exploits of Alastair Cram, brilliantly told by the American author, David Guss. Cram was taken prisoner in North Africa in November 1941, which began a long odyssey through ten different POW camps and three Gestapo prisons. He became a serial escapee - fleeing his captors no fewer than twenty-one times, including his final, and finally successful, escape from a POW column in April 1945.

Perhaps the most dramatic of his attempts was from Gavi, the 'Italian Colditz'. Gavi was a maximum-security prison near Genoa for the pericolosi, the 'most dangerous' inmates because of their perpetual hunger to escape. It was here that Alastair met David Stirling, the legendary founder of the SAS, and cooked up the plan for what would become the 'Cistern Tunnel' escape, one of the most audacious but hitherto little-known mass escape attempts of the entire war.

A story of courage in the face of extraordinary odds, it is a testament to one man's dogged determination never to give up.

A major new talent unveils a glittering and gruesome history of the body in the Middle Ages, from saints' relics to lovesick troubadours.

Dripping with blood and gold, fetishized and tortured, gateway to earthly delights and point of contact with the divine, forcibly divided and powerful even beyond death, there was no territory more contested than the body in the medieval world.

In Medieval Bodies , art historian Jack Hartnell uncovers the complex and fascinating ways in which the people of the Middle Ages thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves. In paintings and reliquaries that celebrated the - sometimes bizarre - martyrdoms of saints, the sacred dimension of the physical left its mark on their environment. In literature and politics, hearts and heads became powerful metaphors that shaped governance and society in ways that are still visible today. And doctors and natural philosophers were at the centre of a collision between centuries of sophisticated medical knowledge, and an ignorance of physiology as profound as its results were gruesome.

Like a medieval pageant, this striking and unusual history brings together medicine, art, poetry, music, politics, cultural and social history and philosophy to reveal what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

Two thousand years ago, the Romans sought to absorb into their empire what they regarded as a remote, almost mythical island on the very edge of the known world - Britain. The expeditions of Julius Caesar and the invasion of ad 43 brought fundamental and lasting changes to the island. Not least among these was a pantheon of new Classical deities and religious systems, along with a clutch of exotic eastern cults including Christianity. But what of Britannia and her own home-grown deities? What cults and cosmologies did the Romans encounter and how did they in turn react to them? Under Roman rule, the old gods were challenged, adopted, adapted, absorbed and re-configured.

In this fresh and innovative new account, Miranda Aldhouse-Green balances literary, archaeological and iconographic evidence (and scrutinizes their shortcomings and how we interpret them) to illuminate the complexity of religion and belief in Roman Britain, and the two-way traffic of cultural exchange and interplay between imported and indigenous cults. Despite the remoteness of this period, on the threshold between prehistory and history, many of the forces, tensions, ideologies and issues of identity at work are still relevant today, as Sacred Britannia skilfully draws out.

Lucius Verus is one of the least regarded Roman emperors, despite the fact that he was co-ruler with his adoptive brother Marcus Aurelius for nine years until his untimely death. The later sources were strangely hostile to him and modern writers tend to dismiss him, but contemporary writings shine a more favourable light on his accomplishments.

His handling of military affairs, particularly the conflict with Parthia after their invasions of Armenia and Syria, deserves a new consideration in the light of a careful reassessment of all the available source material. This volume looks at the upbringing of the boy who lost two fathers, acquired a brother, had his name changed twice, became a general overnight, and commanded the army that defeated one of Rome's greatest foes in the 2nd century AD.

His rise to power is placed in the context of Rome's campaigns in the East and the part played by all from the ordinary soldiers up to the aristocracy who commanded them in making Lucius Verus Parthian Wars a success.

The book features 2 b/w maps, 8pp b/w plates.

The ancient evidence suggests that international commerce supplied Roman government with up to a third of the revenues that sustained their empire. In ancient times large fleets of Roman merchant ships set sail from Egypt on voyages across the Indian Ocean. They sailed from Roman ports on the Red Sea to distant kingdoms on the east coast of Africa and the seaboard off southern Arabia. Many continued their voyages across the ocean to trade with the rich kingdoms of ancient India. Freighters from the Roman Empire left with bullion and returned with cargo holds filled with valuable trade goods, including exotic African products, Arabian incense and eastern spices.

This book examines Roman commerce with Indian kingdoms from the Indus region to the Tamil lands. It investigates contacts between the Roman Empire and powerful African kingdoms, including the Nilotic regime that ruled Meroe and the rising Axumite Realm. Further chapters explore Roman dealings with the Arab kingdoms of south Arabia, including the Saba-Himyarites and the Hadramaut Regime, which sent caravans along the incense trail to the ancient rock-carved city of Petra.

The Roman Empire and the Indian Ocean is the first book to bring these subjects together in a single comprehensive study that reveals Romes impact on the ancient world and explains how international trade funded the Legions that maintained imperial rule. It offers a new international perspective on the Roman Empire and its legacy for modern society.

Gaius Caligula reigned for four short years from 37 to 41 CE before his infamous tenure came to a violent end. While much has been written about Caligula s notorious excesses and court life, relatively little of his military and foreign policy has been seriously studied. 

This is a military history of Rome during Caligula's reign. Caligula had been raised in a military camp (his nickname, Caligula, means  Little Boot . His years as emperor came in the wake of the great consolidation of Tiberius  gains in Germany and Pannonia, and in large part made possible the invasions of Gaul and Britain that were undertaken by his uncle and successor, Claudius. His expeditions in Gaul were part of a programme of imitation of his storied predecessor, and crowning completion of what had been left undone in the relatively conservative military policy years of Augustus and Tiberius.

Caligula: An Unexpected General offers a new appraisal of Caligula as a surprisingly competent military strategist, arguing that his achievements helped to secure Roman military power in Europe for a generation.

I'm a Wathaurong man. I'm an artist who draws on life in this big red and yellow and black country. Stan Yarra Yarramunua - artist, musician, actor, social worker, businessman.

From growing up in poverty in Swan Hill - and sometimes on the road, with his itinerant father - Yarra had a tumultuous and often rough childhood. He learnt early how to lift a wallet or two, and grew into a ratbag who looked set to follow in his father's footsteps- fall into one too many skirmishes with the law; have one too many drinks, sliding down the path to alcoholism.

Yet after years of addiction, Stan gave up drinking, discovered painting and found his true name of Yarramunua. Soon he was selling his traditional paintings, and hand-crafted clapsticks, didgeridoos and boomerangs, at markets across Melbourne. He opened one of the first privately owned Aboriginal art galleries in Australia, and represented Indigenous artists from around the country, including from the desert regions.

Today, Yarra is an internationally renowned artist and performer. But he hasn't forgotten his roots- he is committed to improving the lives of Aboriginal kids in his home town, and has helped many young Indigenous men find their way out of addiction and despair. This is an inspiring story of a remarkable man overcoming hardship, striving for a better life, and reclaiming his ancestry.

`Benjamin Duterrau and his National picture project are at the core of this publication because he was the colonial artist most interested in Tasmania's Aboriginal people, and the only artist who chose to depict, on a substantial scale, their conciliation or pacification by George Augustus Robinson', writes Tim Bonyhady and Greg Lehman in their introduction to The National Picture: The Art of Tasmania's Black War.

The fresh research presented by Bonyhady and Lehman in this insightful new book from the National Gallery of Australia will no doubt tantalise art lovers and historians alike. It will also appeal to anyone interested in Australia's colonial past and in the ongoing interrogation of the historical record by Aboriginal artists and activists. Bonyhady and Lehman's introduction continues: `For Tasmanian Aboriginal people today, Duterrau's paintings provide a tantalising and rare visual record of the unique culture practice of their ancestors. Robinson's journals offer written descriptions of activities, such as spear-making and throwing, kangaroo hunting and ceremonial dance, accompanied by only a scattering of small, often crude sketches, which are vitally important firsthand observations'.

This publication serves to conjure up and interrogate Tasmania's colonial past. Colonial representations of Tasmanian Aboriginal people are among the most remarkable and contentious expressions of Australian colonial art. The National Picture sheds new light on the under-examined figures in this difficult narrative: colonial artist Benjamin Duterrau, the controversial George Augustus Robinson and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people upon whose land the British settled.

Nganga (ng gar na): To see and understand.

Aunty, Uncle, sorry business, deadly, women's business, marngrook, dreamtime, Elders, songlines. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander words have become part of our everyday vocabulary but we may not know their true meaning of the word or where the words come from. In Nganga, Aunty Fay Muir and Sue Lawson have brought together these words, their meanings and their history. Engage with the rich and unique culture of Aboriginal Australians through this authoritative and concise collection.

The greatest escape story of Australian colonial history by the son of Australia's best-loved storyteller In 1823, cockney sailor and chancer James Porter was convicted of stealing a stack of beaver furs and transported halfway around the world to Van Diemen's Land. After several escape attempts from the notorious penal colony, Porter, who told authorities he was a 'beer-machine maker', was sent to Macquarie Harbour, known in Van Diemen's Land as hell on earth.

Many had tried to escape Macquarie Harbour; few had succeeded. But when Governor George Arthur announced that the place would be closed and its prisoners moved to the new penal station of Port Arthur, Porter, along with a motley crew of other prisoners, pulled off an audacious escape. Wresting control of the ship they'd been building to transport them to their fresh hell, the escapees instead sailed all the way to Chile. What happened next is stranger than fiction, a fitting outcome for this true-life picaresque tale.

The Ship That Never Was is the entertaining and rollicking story of what is surely the greatest escape in Australian colonial history. James Porter, whose memoirs were the inspiration for Marcus Clarke's For the Term of his Natural Life, is an original Australian larrikin whose ingenuity, gift of the gab and refusal to buckle under authority make him an irresistible anti-hero who deserves a place in our history.

On the morning of 5 May 1998, HMAS Westralia proceeded to sea. As the engines were brought to full power hoses burst. Flames erupted and thick, black smoke filled the engine room. The crew fought bravely to save their ship but were unable to save midshipman Megan Pelly, Petty Officer Shaun Smith, Leading Seaman Bradley Meek and Able Seaman Phillip Carroll.

The human cost was lost in the battle and blame game between different government departments and private companies. The families wanted the truth and genuine compassion but their hard-fought battle for justice revealed a labyrinth of innuendo concerning fraud, nepotism, dishonesty, incompetence and official cover-up. The questions remained: Who was responsible? And would they be held accountable?

A History of South Australia investigates South Australia's history from before the arrival of the first European maritime explorers to the present day, and examines its distinctive origins as a 'free' settlement. In this compelling and nuanced history, Paul Sendziuk and Robert Foster consider the imprint of people on the land - and vice versa - and offer fresh insights into relations between Indigenous people and the European colonisers. They chart South Australia's economic, political and social development, including the advance and retreat of an interventionist government, the establishment of the state's distinctive socio-political formations, and its relationship to the rest of Australia and the world. The first comprehensive, single-volume history of the state to be published in over fifty years, A History of South Australia is an essential and engaging contribution to our understanding of South Australia's past.

Two tales of a city: The historical race to reach one of the world's most mythologized places, and the story of how a contemporary band of archivists and librarians, fighting to save its ancient manuscripts from destruction at the hands of al Qaeda, added another layer to the legend.

To Westerners, the name `Timbuktu' long conjured a tantalising paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for discovery tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, climate, and disease.

Timbuktu was rich in another way too. A medieval centre of learning, it was home to tens - according to some, hundreds - of thousands of ancient manuscripts, on subjects ranging from religion to poetry, law to history, pharmacology, and astronomy. When al-Qaeda-linked jihadists surged across Mali in 2012, threatening the existence of these precious documents, a remarkable thing happened: a team of librarians and archivists joined forces to spirit the manuscripts into hiding.

Relying on extensive research and firsthand reporting, Charlie English expertly twines these two suspenseful strands into a fascinating account of one of the planet's extraordinary places, and the myths from which it has become inseparable.

In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to the city of Paris after the brutal deaths of two magistrates. Reynie, pragmatic yet fearless, tackles the dirty and terrifying streets only to discover a tightly knit network of witches, poisoners and priests whose reach extends all the way to Versailles. As the chief investigates a growing number of deaths at court, he learns that no one is safe from their deadly love potions and inheritance stews -not even the Sun King himself.

Based on court transcripts and Reynie's compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker's riveting true crime narrative makes the characters breathe on the page as she follows the police chief into the dark labyrinths of crime-ridden Paris, the glorious halls of royal palaces, secret courtrooms and torture chambers in a tale of deception and murder that reads like fiction.

The Voyages of Captain James Cook is now available in a paperback edition specially to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Cook's first voyage.

Captain James Cook's eighteenth century adventures circumnavigating the globe culminated in England's mapping of the known world. Now available in a handsome paperback edition, The Voyages of Captain James Cook tells the epic tale of expert cartographer and navigator Cook and his crew who set out from London on a quest of scientific discovery and exploration.

Over the course of three voyages, they sailed the South Pacific, South America, Antarctica, New Zealand, the Pacific Northwest, the Arctic Circle, and much more. From Cook's travels came a wealth of knowledge: documentation of flora and fauna, indigenous peoples, and, best of all, maps of the world - all of which were recorded for posterity in Cook's journals and in the work of many crew members.

By the time Cook died in 1779, he had created charts so accurate that some were used into the 1990s. The Voyages of Captain James Cook is a handsome illustrated volume that's rich with excerpts from Cook's journals, illustrations, photos, and more that together create a fascinating account of his voyages.

At 11.30 a.m. on Saturday 12 August 2000, two massive explosions roared through the shallow Arctic waters of the Barents Sea. The Kursk, pride of the Northern Fleet and the largest attack submarine in the world, was hurtling towards the ocean floor.

In Kursk (originally published as A Time to Die), award-winning journalist Robert Moore vividly recreates this disaster minute by minute. Venturing into a covert world where the Cold War continues out of sight, Moore investigates the military and political background to the tragedy.

But above all, he tells the nail-bitingly poignant human story of the families waiting ashore, of the desperate efforts of British, Norwegian and Russian rescuers, and of the Kursk sailors, trapped in the aft compartnemt, waiting for rescue, as a horrified world followed their battle to stay alive...

In An Iron Wind, historian Peter Fritzsche draws on first-person accounts to show how civilians in occupied Europe struggled to understand the terrifying chaos of World War II.

As the Third Reich targeted Europe's Jews, confusion and mistrust reigned. Was collaboration or resistance the wisest response? And where was God?

Piecing together the broken words of the war's witnesses and victims, Fritzsche offers a haunting picture of the most violent conflict in modern history.

The Sahara Desert, February 1962: the wreckage of a plane emerges from the sands revealing, too, the body of the plane's long-dead pilot. But who was he? And what had happened to him?

Baker Street, London, June 1927: twenty-five-year-old Jessie Miller had fled a loveless marriage in Australia, longing for adventure in the London of the Bright Young Things. At a gin-soaked party, she met Bill Lancaster, fresh from the Royal Air force, his head full of a scheme that would make him as famous as Charles Lindbergh, who has just crossed the Atlantic. Lancaster wanted to fly three times as far - from London to Melbourne - and in Jessie Miller he knew he had found the perfect co-pilot.

By the time they landed in Melbourne, the daring aviators were a global sensation - and, despite still being married to other people, deeply in love. Keeping their affair a secret, they toured the world until the Wall Street Crash changed everything; Bill and Jessie - like so many others - were broke. And it was then, holed up in a run-down mansion on the outskirts of Miami and desperate for cash, that Jessie agreed to write a memoir. When a dashing ghostwriter Haden Clark was despatched from New York, the toxic combination of the handsome interloper, bootleg booze and jealousy led to a shocking crime. The trial that followed put Jessie and Bill back on the front pages and drove him to a reckless act of abandon to win it all back.

The bestselling, prize-winning author explores the impact of the Second World War - for nations, cities and families around the world.

How does the experience and memory of the Second World War - one of the most catastrophic events in human history - affect our lives today?

The years after 1945 were a time of both terror and wonder, whose impact still dominates our lives. Out of the ashes of war came the superpowers and nations of the modern world. From the new technologies delivered by scientists came the possibility of nuclear war. Politicians fantasized about overhauled societies, with some arguing for global government, others for independence, leading to the arguments about nationalism, immigration and globalisation that exist today.

As well as analyzing the major changes and the myths that emerged, The Fear and the Freedom uses individual stories to examine the philosophical and psychological impact of the war, by showing how leaders and ordinary people coped with the post-war world and turned one of the greatest traumas in history into an opportunity for change. This is the definitive exploration of the aftermath of WWII - and the impact it still has.

Jim Bodero spent much of World War Two in several versions of hell. Taken prisoner when Singapore fell into Japanese hands early in 1942, he – along with thousands of fellow POWs – was conscripted as a slave labourer. He was deep underground, in a coal mine near Nagasaki, when the US dropped its second atomic bomb, on 9 August 1945. The blast that obliterated the city and incinerated 66,000 people freed Jim from his living hell below the ground. But his struggles were far from over.

Badly debilitated by the daily privations of working in the mine, weakened by chronic starvation, as well as suffering from the tropical diseases he contracted during his time on the Death Railway and on nightmarish prisoner-transport ships, he was more dead than alive.

Jim was repatriated to Australia, but his war never really ended, its legacy a lifetime of pain. Jim’s story reveals some of the darkest chapters of the twentieth century. His suffering at the hands of a sadistic enemy was extreme, but through those and all the subsequent years, he never lost his sense of humour. His story is infused with it and, as such, is a glowing testament to the resilience that has sustained Australians at war, especially when the going got tough.

Winner of the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize 2013

Niall Ferguson's Civilization: The Six Killer Apps of Western Power is a vital, brilliant look at the winning tools of power.

In 1412, Europe was a miserable backwater ravaged by plague, bad sanitation and incessant war, while the Orient was home to dazzling civilizations. Yet, somehow, the West came to dominate the Rest for most of the next half millennium.

In this vital, brilliant book, Niall Ferguson reveals the six 'killer applications' that the Rest lacked: competition, science, property rights, medicine, consumerism and the work ethic. And he asks: do we still have these winning tools? Or is this the end of Western ascendancy?

Grab your towel and hitchhike across the galaxy with Australia's most popular scientist Dr Karl Kruszelnicki. Learn about Dr Karl, the universe and everything, and discover how air-conditioning is sexist, how you can kill a spinning hard drive by shouting at it and how space junk is threatening our future capabilities for space travel.

Could there be life on one of Saturn's moons? How much power could you collect from all the lightning on Earth? Why do books have book-smell? Why is 10 per cent of the Earth's land area prone to sinkholes?

Why are some people chronically late? What would happen if the Earth stopped spinning? Why do most people hardly remember anything from the first half-a-dozen years of their life?

How close are we to the Artificial Uterus? Why do some songs turn into earworms and stick inside your brain? Why does your hotel room access card get wiped so easily?

And is your home WiFi really spying on you?

BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HIDDEN LIFE OF TREES, PETER WOHLLEBEN, INVITES US TO RECONNECT WITH NATURE As soon as we step out of the door, nature surrounds. Thousands of small and large processes are taking place, details that are long often fascinating and beautiful. But we've long forgotten how to recognise them.

Peter Wohlleben, bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees, invites us to become an expert, to take a closer look and interpret the signs that clouds, wind, plants and animals convey. Chaffinches become weather prophets, bees are live thermometers, courgettes tell us the time.

The Weather Detective combines scientific research with charming anecdotes to explain the extraordinary cycles of life, death and regeneration that are evolving on our doorstep, bringing us closer to nature than ever before. A walk in the park will never be the same again.

Ever since Jurassic Park we thought we knew how dinosaurs lived their lives. In this remarkable new book, Brian J. Ford reveals that dinosaurs were, in fact, profoundly different from what we believe, and their environment was unlike anything we have previously thought.

In this meticulous and absorbing account, Ford reviews the latest scientific evidence to show that the popular accounts of dinosaurs' lives contain ideas that are no more than convenient inventions: how dinosaurs mated, how they hunted and communicated, how they nursed their young, even how they moved. He uncovers many surprising details which challenge our most deeply-held beliefs - such as the revelation that an asteroid impact did not end the dinosaurs' existence.

Professor Ford's illuminating examination changes everything. As he unravels the history of the world, we discover that evolution was not Charles Darwin's idea; there were many philosophers who published the theory before him. The concept of continental drift and plate tectonics did not begin with Alfred Wegener a century ago, but dates back to learned pioneers hundreds of years before his time. Ever since scientists first began to study dinosaurs, they have travelled with each other down the wrong path, and Ford now shows how this entire branch of science has to be rewritten.

A new dinosaur species is announced every ten days, and more and more information is currently being discovered about how they may have lived: locomotion, hunting, nesting behaviour, distribution, extinction. Ford brings together these amazing discoveries in this controversial new book which undoubtedly will ruffle a few feathers, or scales if you are an old-school dinosaur lover.

Germany's best-selling science author takes everyday objects and events and weaves them into the sublime fabric of the universe in this highly accessible and beautifully written smart-thinking book.

    How a rose blossom can demonstrate that nothing and nobody exists on their own.
    How a hurricane can reveal the world's unpredictability.
    How the exploits of burglars in New York and London can demonstrate how everything can be in two places at once.
    How a DIY accident can prompt debate on whether the void can exist.
    How a greying beard might demonstrate the irreversibility of time.

Award-winning, bestselling German science author Stefan Klein employs stories about simple everyday items or occurrences as analogies to illuminate counterintuitive realities behind the visible world, revealing the astonishing beauty of the universe.

This book transforms a simple everyday thing such as a rose blossom, or a day of stormy weather, into a key to understanding the most complex ideas and theories in 21st century physics. Through clever use of analogy, Klein renders the complexities and intricacies of physics accessible to a reader with no previous knowledge of the subject. In doing so, he demonstrates that scientific progress is as much, if not more, about the unanswered questions, the dark corners, as it is about what we have discovered; our knowledge constitutes merely 'an island in an ocean of ignorance'.

A thought-provoking and original way in to the most intriguing scientific theories and ideas, designed to be accessible to anyone who has ever been curious about the workings of our universe.

The smart machines revolution is re-shaping our lives and our societies. Here, Nigel Shadbolt (one of Britain's leading authorities on artificial intelligence) and Roger Hampson dispel terror, confusion, and misconception. We are not about to be elbowed aside by a rebel army of super-intelligent robots of our own creation. We were using tools before we became Homo sapiens, and will continue to control them. How we exercise that control - in our private lives, in employment, in politics - and make the best of the wonderful opportunities, will determine our collective future well-being.

Lucid, well-informed, and deeply human, The Digital Ape offers a unique approach. The authors prefer to add augmented wisdom to artificial intelligence.

What is it like to be a dog? A bat? Or a dolphin? To find out, neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team did something unique - they persuaded dogs to lie in an MRI scanner while completely awake. This gave them an unparalleled insight into what makes dogs individuals with varying capacities for self-control, different value systems and a complex understanding of human speech. And that was just the beginning.

From sea lions to the extinct Tasmanian tiger, Berns provides fascinating glimpses into the inner lives of animals. His discoveries have profound implications for how we communicate with and treat our furry, and not-so-furry, friends. Revolutionary and deeply humane, What It's Like to Be a Dog is essential reading for animal lovers of all stripes.

Why do human beings behave as they do?

We are capable of savage acts of violence but also spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other?

Every act of human behaviour has multiple layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the dawn of time and the origins of our species.

In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology affect the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures?

This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all: what makes us human?

Time is the most common noun in the English language yet philosophers and scientists don't agree about what time actually is or how to define it. Perhaps this is because the brain tells, represents and perceives time in multiple ways.

Dean Buonomano investigates the relationship between the brain and time, looking at what time is, why it seems to speed up or slow down and whether our sense that time flows is an illusion. Buonomano presents his theory of how the brain tells time, and illuminates such concepts as free will, consciousness, space-time and relativity from the perspective of a neuroscientist.

Drawing on physics, evolutionary biology and philosophy, he reveals that the brain's ultimate purpose may be to predict the future-and thus that your brain is a time machine.

Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr's students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favoured practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.

Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious - comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within each of these extra-terrestrial objects is the 4.6-billion-year wisdom of Solar System events, and by studying them at close quarters using spacecraft we can coerce them into revealing their closely-guarded secrets. This offers us the chance to answer some fundamental questions about our planet and its inhabitants.

Exploring comets and asteroids also allows us to shape the story of Earth's future, enabling us to protect our precious planet from the threat of a catastrophic impact from space, and maybe to even recover valuable raw materials from them. This cosmic bounty could be as useful in space as it is on Earth, providing the necessary fuel and supplies for humans as they voyage into deep space to explore more distant locations within the Solar System.

Catching Stardust tells the story of these enigmatic celestial objects, revealing how scientists are using them to help understand a crucial time in our history - the birth of the Solar System, and everything contained within it.

How did the banks run wild for so long? Why are so many aged-care residents malnourished? And how is it that arms manufacturers sponsor the Australian War Memorial?

In this passionate essay, Richard Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society. For decades, we have been told that the private sector does everything better, that governments can’t afford to deliver the services they once could, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are less equal, and more of us are economically vulnerable. But now that a royal commission has lifted the rug on the reality of corporate regulation, it seems the era of blind faith in free markets is well and truly over.

So where to from here? In Dead Right, Denniss looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics.

"Neoliberalism, the catch-all term for all things small government, has been the ideal cloak behind which to conceal enormous shifts in Australia's wealth and culture... Over the past thirty years, the language, ideas and policies of neoliberalism have transformed our economy and, more importantly, our culture." - Richard Denniss, Dead Right

Could psychedelic drugs change our worldview? One of America's most revered writers takes us on a mind-altering journey to the frontiers of human consciousness.

'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.

A powerful, thoughtful response to the threat posed by the cultural-left to Western civilisation. This book explores the rise of political correctness in Australia including: the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism; Safe Schools, same-sex marriage and the LGBTQI sexuality and gender agenda; what it means to be Australian, and much more. 'Kevin Donnelly is a persuasive contributor to the endless battle of ideas. He fights the good fight. He continually reminds us of the debt we owe to western civilisation, and in particular the extent to which Judaeo-Christian values have shaped so much of what we hold dear.' John Howard, former prime minister of Australia. Similar to what is happening in America, Europe and the UK, political correctness is destroying Australias cultural heritage and what is best about our institutions and way of life.

This is what Dr Kevin Donnelly explores in How Political Correctness is Destroying Australia. No longer is it possible to acknowledge and celebrate the debt owed to Western civilisation and to argue that Judeo-Christianity and epochal events like the Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment deserve to be praised. Political correctness is also responsible for restricting free speech and open and dispassionate debate. Everyday conversations and interactions are closely scrutinised by the thought-police to ensure nobody offends in areas like gender and sexuality, ethnicity, physical appearance or social background.

There is an alternative to political correctness and the cultural-lefts long march through the institutions. As Donnelly argues in this book, there is much of value and beneficial about Western civilisation and our way of life. Unlike the millions around the world living under the tyranny of totalitarian dictatorships and oligarchies those in the West are guaranteed freedom, liberty and equality before the law, as long as we continue to fight for it.

Soon enough, every parent will have to discuss online safety with their children.

This book is your salvation. Widely regarded as Australia's first cyber cop, cyber-safety expert Susan McLean helps you understand and connect with your child's online world, and guide them safely through it in this revised and updated edition of her bestselling book. She shows you how to establish good online habits, set time restrictions and boundaries, identify good apps and bad apps, deal with cyber bullying, work out who to 'friend' and 'unfriend', and manage your child's digital reputation.

Filled with case studies about what children get up to online and the very latest research, Susan's advice is firm but fair. With her clear guidelines, parents can allow their children to embrace and enjoy technology, without the stress or worry.

If our toddlers had been outside playing in the `fresh air', speaking words precociously or giggling with delight at something `real', we would have happily celebrated this behaviour. But we weren't about to admit that our children were excited about television. Being happy about our children watching the `idiot box' was not something we could admit to.

Troubled by what her daughter was watching, and by how this made her feel as a parent, Emily Booker set out to learn more about children and television: listening not only to scholars and experts in the field, but to children themselves. What she found was that the `problem' of children's addiction to screens is actually, in part, a grown-ups' problem. Speaking to children about what they watch and why reveals a steadily consistent response: they love to seek out programs that are `fun'. But their choices are often a source of anxiety for parents, and appear to provoke a need to censure and control the child's enjoyment. At a time when children's lives are increasingly regulated, and the pressures of parenting are felt ever more keenly, this important book teaches us much about the value of entertainment, not only for children but for adults.

If you've ever suffered from a throbbing guilt-gland when your kids are glued to the screen - here's your antidote. - Kathy Lette Ground-breaking research into the importance of screen time, and fun, for our over-regulated children. A compelling book. - Catharine Lumby

Kate Rossmanith studied people for a living, and thought she understood human nature well. But in the wake of her daughter's birth, the vulnerability and intensity of parenthood took her completely by surprise. Faced with a debilitating insomnia, she spent hours awake reflecting on her own upbringing and the unwelcome role remorse can play in even the most devoted parents' lives.

Increasingly fascinated with the concept of remorse, she was drawn to the criminal courts, observing case after case. She talked to criminals, lawyers and judges alike, trying to answer the fundamental question: how can you know whether a person is ever truly sorry?

But it soon became clear the project was creating seismic shifts in Kate's own life. The more she learnt, the more she saw how her relationship with her father, who for many years was a distant and often angry man, was steeped in remorse. The more she learnt, the more she saw the faultlines in her marriage, widening under the strains of parenthood. And ever present was a family history sketched across war-torn Europe, with the seeds of heartache taking root in Australia.

The moving, often irreverent, story of Arun's years growing up at the iconic Sevagram ashram provides the setting for the treasured moments spent his grandfather, which are an engaging and often surprising read. These memories give a rare insight into Gandhi the man behind the icon, and reveal the motivations behind his ten inspirational lessons.

Arun believes that the violence in the world today makes Gandhi's teachings more vital than ever, and The Gift places these lessons in a modern context, shedding new light on how Gandhi's principles can - and must - be applied to today's concerns.

'Anger is good. It is an energy that compels us to define what is right and wrong' - Mahatma Gandhi, to his grandson, Arun

A selection of his most popular essays from the author called 'Britain's foremost psychoanalytic writer' by the New Yorker.

In the twenty essays gathered here, ranging across his entire oeuvre, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips offers a vivid introduction to his discipline as well as his own unique thinking. Investigating subjects as diverse as desire, family, happiness, tickling, forgetting and even boredom, Phillips proves himself to be not only one of our most engaging writers but also a fascinating and provocative guide to our obsessions as human beings.

Why is the incidence of mental illness in the UK twice that in Germany? Why are Americans three times more likely than the Dutch to develop gambling problems? Why is child well-being so much worse in New Zealand than Japan? As this groundbreaking study demonstrates, the answer to all these hinges on inequality.

In The Spirit Level Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett put inequality at the centre of public debate by showing conclusively that less-equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across everything from education to life expectancy. The Inner Level now explains how inequality affects us individually, how it alters how we think, feel and behave. It sets out the overwhelming evidence that material inequalities have powerful psychological effects: when the gap between rich and poor increases, so does the tendency to defi ne and value ourselves and others in terms of superiority and inferiority. A deep well of data and analysis is drawn upon to empirically show, for example, that low social status is associated with elevated levels of stress, and how rates of anxiety and depression are intimately related to the inequality which makes that status paramount.

Wilkinson and Pickett describe how these responses to hierarchies evolved, and why the impacts of inequality on us are so severe. In doing so, they challenge the conception that humans are innately competitive and self-interested. They undermine, too, the idea that inequality is the product of 'natural' differences in individual ability. This book sheds new light on many of the most urgent problems facing societies today, but it is not just an index of our ills. It demonstrates that societies based on fundamental equalities, sharing and reciprocity generate much higher levels of well-being, and lays out the path towards them.

What if, instead of discovering our sexuality only once, during puberty, we discover it again later - and then again, after that? What if our sexuality reinvents itself every time our desire shifts, every time the object of our desire changes? What if the nature of our desire is constantly changing - growing deeper, lighter, wilder, more reckless, more tender, ore selfish, more devoted, more radical?

How We Desire is an enthralling essay about gender, sexuality and love by one of Germany's most admired writers. It's about growing up, and discovering the contours of desire and difference, about understanding that we sometimes, 'slip into norms the way we slip into clothes, putting them on because they're laid out for ready for us'.

In telling her own story, Emcke draws back the veil on how we experience desire, no matter what our sexual orientation. And she examines how prejudice against homosexuality has survived its decriminalisation in the west.

This marvellous book pays homage to the radical magic and liberating tenderness of desire itself.

A lively, inviting account of the history of economics, told through events from ancient to modern times and the ideas of great thinkers in the field What causes poverty? Are economic crises inevitable under capitalism? Is government intervention in an economy a helpful approach or a disastrous idea? The answers to such basic economic questions matter to everyone, yet the unfamiliar jargon and math of economics can seem daunting. This clear, accessible, and even humorous book is ideal for young readers new to economics and for all readers who seek a better understanding of the full sweep of economic history and ideas.

Economic historian Niall Kishtainy organizes short, chronological chapters that center on big ideas and events. He recounts the contributions of key thinkers including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and others, while examining topics ranging from the invention of money and the rise of agrarianism to the Great Depression, entrepreneurship, environmental destruction, inequality, and behavioral economics. The result is a uniquely enjoyable volume that succeeds in illuminating the economic ideas and forces that shape our world.

When Emily Power declared online, 'I am 33 and my parents give me pocket money,' she started a national debate about personal finances and the challenges of breaking into the property market.

The Pocket Money Savings Plan has empowered Emily to move out of stifling debt and start scouting for her first property. It's a radical solution that won't work for everyone, so Emily, who is now editor of Domain magazines, has interviewed experts to devise other savings methods and household budgets to suit your situation, whether you're single, or planning to buy as a couple or a family.

How can you escape the debt trap? What is stamp duty? And where are the right suburbs to buy property? In the plain and motivating language of someone who's been there and done that, Emily takes you through: How to save your pocket money; How to be a cheapskate and keep your friends; How to read the market like a pro; How to find the one; How to win the keys.

Along the way, you'll get tips on building a budget wardrobe, cooking healthy recipes on a shoestring, cheap and effective skincare products and economical wines. Before you know it, you too will be stepping over the threshold of your new home.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, leader of the October 1917 uprising, is one of the most misunderstood leaders of the twentieth century. In his own time, there were many, even among his enemies, who acknowledged the full magnitude of his intellectual and political achievements. But his legacy has been lost in misinterpretation; he is worshipped but rarely read.

Tariq Ali explores the two major influences on Lenin's thought – the turbulent history of Tsarist Russia and the birth of the international labour movement – and explains how Lenin confronted dilemmas that still cast a shadow over the present. Is terrorism ever a viable strategy? Is support for imperial wars ever justified? Can politics be made without a party? Was the seizure of power in 1917 morally justified? Should he have parted company from his wife and lived with his lover?

In The Dilemmas of Lenin, Ali provides an insightful portrait of Lenin's deepest preoccupations and underlines the clarity and vigour of his theoretical and political formulations. He concludes with an affecting account of Lenin's last two years, when he realized that “we knew nothing” and insisted that the revolution had to be renewed lest it wither and die.

What kind of world are we leaving to our grandchildren? How are the discontents kindled today likely to blaze and explode tomorrow?

From escalating climate change to the devastation in Syria, pandemic state surveillance to looming nuclear war, Noam Chomsky takes stock of the world today. Over the course of ten conversations with long-time collaborator David Barsamian, spanning 2013-2016, Chomsky argues in favour of radical changes to a system that cannot possibly cope with what awaits tomorrow.

Interwoven with personal reflections spanning from childhood to his eighth decade of life, Global Discontents also marks out Chomsky's own intellectual journey, mapping his progress to revolutionary ideas and global prominence.

Across the Western world, people are angry about the inability of government to perform basic functions competently. With widespread evidence of policy failures at home and ill-conceived wars and interventions abroad, it is hardly surprising that politicians are distrusted and government is derided as a sprawling, wasteful mess. But what exactly is government supposed to do, and is the track record of Western governments really so awful?

In this compelling book, leading scholar of public policy and management, Alasdair Roberts, explores what government does well and what it does badly. Political leaders, he explains, have always been obliged to wrestle with shifting circumstances and contending priorities, making the job of governing extraordinarily difficult. The performance of western democracies in recent decades is, admittedly, far from perfect but - as Roberts ably shows - it is also much better than you might think.

Donald Trump's election has called into question many fundamental assumptions about politics and society. Should the forty-fifth president of the United States make us reconsider the nature and future of the global order? Collecting a wide range of perspectives from leading political scientists, historians, and international-relations scholars, Chaos in the Liberal Order explores the global trends that led to Trump's stunning victory and the impact his presidency will have on the international political landscape.

Contributors situate Trump among past foreign policy upheavals and enduring models for global governance, seeking to understand how and why he departs from precedents and norms. The book considers key issues, such as what Trump means for America's role in the world; the relationship between domestic and international politics; and Trump's place in the rise of the far right worldwide. It poses challenging questions, including: Does Trump's election signal the downfall of the liberal order or unveil its resilience? What is the importance of individual leaders for the international system, and to what extent is Trump an outlier? Is there a Trump doctrine, or is America's president fundamentally impulsive and scattershot?

The book considers the effects of Trump's presidency on trends in human rights, international alliances, and regional conflicts. With provocative contributions from prominent figures such as Stephen M. Walt, Andrew J. Bacevich, and Samuel Moyn, this timely collection brings much-needed expert perspectives on our tumultuous era.

A renowned philosopher challenges long-held views on just wars, ethical conduct during war, why wars occur, how they alter people and societies, and more For residents of the twenty-first century, a vision of a future without warfare is almost inconceivable. Though wars are terrible and destructive, they also seem unavoidable. In this original and deeply considered book, A. C. Grayling examines, tests, and challenges the concept of war. He proposes that a deeper, more accurate understanding of war may enable us to reduce its frequency, mitigate its horrors, and lessen the burden of its consequences.

Grayling explores the long, tragic history of war and how warfare has changed in response to technological advances. He probes much-debated theories concerning the causes of war and considers positive changes that may result from war. How might these results be achieved without violence? In a profoundly wise conclusion, the author envisions just war theory in new moral terms, taking into account the lessons of World War II and the Holocaust and laying down ethical principles for going to war and for conduct during war.

Considered othe Voltaire of his timeo, Bertrand Russell was a fearless iconoclast who stood unbowed before political and religious leaders; his disdain for conventional thinking and accepted beliefs set him apart from his academic peers and at odds with the authorities throughout his long and storied life.

In his celebrated essay In Praise Of Idleness, Russell champions the seemingly incongruous notion that realising our full potential - and thus enjoying the greatest possible success and happiness - is not accomplished by working harder or smarter, but through harnessing the extraordinary power of idleness.

Russell's penetrating insights and exquisite turns of phrase feel as fresh and relevant today as when they were first written. Arguing that we can achieve far more by doing far less, and that traditional wealth accumulation is a form of cultural and moral poverty, Russell demands greater depth from our age of abundant creativity and heralds the next wave of enlightened entrepreneurs. Replete with a new introduction and afterword, and interspersed with comic illustrations, informative notes plus a curated selection of Russell's best quotes from many of his acclaimed works, this unique edition of In Praise Of Idleness is given new life by New York Times-bestselling author and internationally acclaimed humourist Bradley Trevor Greive.

Meister Eckhart was a medieval Christian mystic whose wisdom powerfully appeals to seekers seven centuries after his death. In the modern era, Eckhart's writings have struck a chord with thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Merton, Sartre, John Paul II, and the current Dalai Lama. Dangerous Mystic grounds Meister Eckhart in a world that is simultaneously familiar and alien.

From one of America's most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness.

At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer - and the reason we make other people suffer - is that we don't see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness.

In this sublime (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life - how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution.

This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright's landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world's most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is provocative, informative and... deeply rewarding (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species.

A remarkable woman challenges the idea that Islam should be defined by masculinity and conservatism.

Named one of the BBC's 100 Women of 2016, and the subject of a Guardian interview, Sherin Khankan is one of the very few female imams in the Western World. In addition she has founded the first mosque for women in Europe.

In her revelatory book, she addresses such issues as the place for modern women in Islam, fundamentalism, radical Islamic groups, Islamic divorce, Sufism...and she also describes her own personal journey as a female Muslim activist.

Women Are The Future of Islam shines a feminist light on a gentler, more inclusive, more liberal - but also fully engaged - side of Islam that we rarely see in the West. It's an eye-opening, highly topical read.

Marking a departure in our understanding of Christian views of the afterlife from 250 to 650 CE, The Ransom of the Soul explores a revolutionary shift in thinking about the fate of the soul that occurred around the time of Rome's fall. Peter Brown describes how this shift transformed the Church's institutional relationship to money and set the stage for its domination of medieval society in the West.

Early Christian doctrine held that the living and the dead, as equally sinful beings, needed each other in order to achieve redemption. The devotional intercessions of the living could tip the balance between heaven and hell for the deceased. In the third century, money began to play a decisive role in these practices, as wealthy Christians took ever more elaborate steps to protect their own souls and the souls of their loved ones in the afterlife. They secured privileged burial sites and made lavish donations to churches. By the seventh century, Europe was dotted with richly endowed monasteries and funerary chapels displaying in marble splendor the Christian devotion of the wealthy dead.

In response to the growing influence of money, Church doctrine concerning the afterlife evolved from speculation to firm reality, and personal wealth in the pursuit of redemption led to extraordinary feats of architecture and acts of generosity. But it also prompted stormy debates about money's proper use'debates that resonated through the centuries and kept alive the fundamental question of how heaven and earth could be joined by human agency.

Outsiders tells the stories of five novelists - Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf - and their famous novels.

We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders, this group biography throws new light on the genius they share. 'Outsider', 'outlaw', 'outcast': a woman's reputation was her security and each of these five lost it. As writers, they made these identities their own, taking advantage of their separation from the dominant order to write their novels.

All five were motherless. With no female model at hand, they learnt from books; and if lucky, from an enlightened man; and crucially each had to imagine what a woman could be in order to invent a voice of their own. They understood female desire: the passion and sexual bravery in their own lives infused their fictions. What they have in common also is the way they inform one another, and us, across the generations. Even today we do more than read them; we listen and live with them.

Lyndall Gordon's biographies have always shown the indelible connection between life and art: an intuitive, exciting and revealing approach that has been highly praised and much read and enjoyed. She names each of these five as prodigy, visionary, outlaw, orator and explorer and shows how they came, they saw and left us changed.

A celebration of the Virago Modern Classics.

2018 will be the fortieth anniversary of Virago Modern Classics. To celebrate this milestone, Virago is publishing an anthology entitled Writers as Readers, collecting forty of the wonderful introductions to Virago Modern Classics editions from the past four decades. The book will be published as a gift hardback, in the same stunning design style as the Virago Designer Classics collection.

Essays in the collection include: Hilary Mantel on Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Saunders on Barbara Pym, Alexander McCall Smith on Angela Thirkell, Jane Gardam on Barbara Comyns, Sarah Dunant on Daphne du Maurier, Angela Carter on Charlotte Bronte, Paula McLain on Mary McCarthy, Linda Grant on Beryl Bainbridge, Penelope Lively on Edith Wharton, Rachel Cooke on Stevie Smith, Mark Bostridge on Vera Brittain, Jonathan Coe on Rosamond Lehmann, Maggie O'Farrell on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jilly Cooper on E. M. Delafield, Julie Burchill on Jacqueline Susann, Carmen Callil on Angela Carter, Sophie Dahl on Stella Gibbons, Diana Souhami on Radclyffe Hall, Amanda Craig on Rebecca West and Marina Lewycka on Monica Dickens, as well as many other Virago Modern Classics treasures.

Featuring 25 of the greatest Australian writing names from UQP's past and present, this unique publishing project will showcase specially commissioned fiction, non-fiction and poetry by Australia's finest writers on themes such as legacy, country, vision and hope. Participating authors include:   

- Ali Alizadeh  - Venero Armanno  - Larissa Behrendt  - Lily Brett  - Gabrielle Carey  - Peter Carey  - Matthew Condon  - David Brooks  - Karen Foxlee  - KBri GYslason  - Rodney Hall  - Steven Herrick  - Sarah Holland-Batt  - Nicholas Jose  - Mireille Juchau  - Julie Koh  - Melissa Lucashenko  - Patti Miller  - David Malouf  - James Moloney  - Jaya Savige  - Josephine Rowe  - Peter Skrzynecki  - Samuel Wagan Watson  - Ellen van Neerven

Summer is the fourth volume of the Seasons quartet, a collection of short prose and diaries written by a father for his youngest daughter, with stunning artwork by Anselm Kiefer.

Your voice woke me up around eight this morning, it sounded unusually close, since, as I discovered upon opening my eyes, you were lying in our bed. You smiled at me and began talking. I made coffee and had a smoke in the office before I ate breakfast with you, and when your mother got up, I came in here to write a new piece.

In Summer, Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about long days full of sunlight, eating ice cream with his children, lawn sprinklers and ladybirds. He experiments with the beginnings of a novel and keeps a diary in which the small events of his family's life are recorded. Against a canvas of memories, longings, and experiences of art and literature, he searches for the meaning of moments as they pass us by.

In November 1838 Frederic Chopin, George Sand and her two children sailed to Majorca to escape the Parisian winter. They settled in an abandoned monastery at Valldemossa in the mountains above Palma, where Chopin finished what would eventually be recognised as one of the great and revolutionary works of musical Romanticism - his 24 Preludes. There was scarcely a decent piano on the island (these were still early days in the evolution of the modern instrument), so Chopin worked on a small pianino made by a local craftsman, which remained in their monastic cell for seventy years after he and Sand had left.

This brilliant and unclassifiable book traces the history of Chopin's 24 Preludes through the instruments on which they were played, the pianists who interpreted them and the traditions they came to represent. Yet it begins and ends with the Majorcan pianino, which during the Second World War assumed an astonishing cultural potency as it became, for the Nazis, a symbol of the man and music they were determined to appropriate as their own.

The unexpected hero of the second part of the book is the great keyboard player and musical thinker Wanda Landowska, who rescued the pianino from Valldemossa in 1913, and who would later become one of the most influential musical figures of the twentieth century. Kildea shows how her story - a compelling account based for the first time on her private papers - resonates with Chopin's, while simultaneously distilling part of the cultural and political history of Europe and the United States in the central decades of the century. Kildea's beautifully interwoven narratives, part cultural history and part detective story, take us on an unexpected journey through musical Romanticism and allow us to reflect freshly on the changing meaning of music over time.

The extraordinary and highly anticipated memoir from visionary filmmaker David Lynch.

In this memoir, David Lynch opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary creativity, the friendships he has made along the way and the struggles he has faced - sometimes successful, sometimes not - to bring his projects to fruition.

Part memoir, part biography, Room to Dream interweaves Lynch's own reflections on his life with the story of those times, as told by Kristine McKenna, drawing from extensive and explosive interviews with ninety of Lynch's friends, family members, actors, agents, musicians and collaborators. Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.

This beautifully illustrated book provides a new interpretation of modern architecture and design in Germany during the heyday of the Bauhaus and the Werkbund, tracing modernism's lasting allure to its many manifestations of luxury. Robin Schuldenfrei casts the work of legendary figures such as Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in an entirely different light, revealing the complexities and contradictions inherent to modernism's promotion and consumption.

Luxury and Modernism shows how luxury was present in bold, literal forms in modern designs - from lavish materials and costly technologies to deluxe buildings and household objects - and in subtler ways as well, such as social milieus and modes of living. While modernism was publicized as a fusion of technology, new materials, and rational aesthetics to improve the lives of ordinary people, it was often out of reach to the very masses it purportedly served. Schuldenfrei exposes the disconnect between modernism's utopian discourse and its luxury objects and elite architectural commissions. Despite the movement's egalitarian rhetoric, many modern designs addressed the desires of the privileged individual. Yet as Schuldenfrei demonstrates, luxury was integral not only to how modern buildings and objects were designed, manufactured, and sold, but has contributed to modernism's appeal to this day.

Featuring stunning color images throughout, Luxury and Modernism provides an entirely new look at one of the most celebrated and influential eras in the history of architecture.

"Architects, sculptors, painters, we all must return to the crafts!" declared architect Walter Gropius in his Bauhaus manifesto. Founded in 1919 as an art school in Weimar, the Bauhaus established itself as a major influence on twentieth- century art and design. Bauhaus students were taught by some of the most celebrated artists of the time, including Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Wassily Kandinsky. Having moved to Berlin in 1932 under architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, it was forced to close for good by the Gestapo in 1933.

Uncovering the sources of inspiration that brought the Bauhaus into existence, from medieval cathedrals of Europe and Hokusai prints to William Morris and Arts and Crafts, The Spirit of the Bauhaus explores workshops and courses in detail, illustrating the extraordinary wealth of experimentation in every medium: ceramics, wood and metalwork, textiles, glass- painting, sculpture, mural, printing and binding, theater, architecture, and photography.

This essential and accessible guide to the Bauhaus, published in time for the 100th anniversary of the school in 2019, celebrates a school that continues to be recognized as the most durable and influential source of modern ideas about art, design, and craft.

Craftivism can be your voice of resistance: Craftivism is a non-threatening form of activism that gives people a voice when they feel voiceless and power where they feel powerless. It is an international movement for our time and noted Craftivism expert Sayraphim Lothian has put together the first-ever tutorial book on craftivism.

In Guerilla Kindness: artist, scholar, activist, and YouTube art teacher Sayraphim Lothian gives you an introduction to the art of craftivism, and provides a brief history of creative resistance. This master craftivist shows you how to make and use various crafts for political and protest purposes including:

Embroidery Cross stitch Knitting Stenciling Decoupage Stamping and much more Join us in the Craftivism movement: Craftivism is a growing worldwide movement in which hand crafted works are being used to highlight political issues, creatively engage in activism, and encourage change in the world. Craftivists employ their works to open a space for people to be introduced to issues and to broaden the discussion surrounding them. While it might seem that this most colorful movement began recently, creative resistance has been with us for centuries around the globe, and craftivism and makers stating their mind through the medium of art is here to stay.

Jake Spicer wants you to learn how to draw. This is his complete course in drawing, suitable for complete beginners as well as experienced artists, and designed to help you fit drawing into your lifestyle. Tried-and-tested exercises, ranging from five-minute sketches to dedicated sessions of an hour or longer, cover every subject and location you could wish for, while accessibly written drawing theory helps you relate the technical concepts to your practice, helping you to hone your craft. Whatever your goals are, expert art tutor Jake Spicer gives you the inspiration and encouragement to draw more - and keep improving.

Ah!... to make of painting what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has been before us... a consolatory art for distressed hearts! - Vincent van Gogh    

This engaging book is the first in-depth investigation of the influential role that music and sound played throughout Vincent van Gogh's (1853-1890) life. From psalms and hymns to the operas of Richard Wagner to simple birdsong, music represented to Van Gogh the ultimate form of artistic expression. And he believed that by emulating music painting could articulate deep truths and impart a lasting emotional impact on its viewers.

In Van Gogh and Music Natascha Veldhorst provides close readings of the many allusions to music in the artist's prolific correspondence and examines the period's artistic theory to offer a rich picture of the status of music in late 19th-century culture. Veldhorst shows the extent to which Van Gogh not only admired the ability of music to inspire emotion, but how he incorporated musical subject matter and techniques into his work, with illustrations of celebrated paintings such as Sunflowers in a Vase, which he described as  a symphony in blue and yellow. 

An expansive inquiry into the significance of sound and music for the artist, including the formative influence of his song-filled upbringing, Van Gogh and Music is full of fascinating new insights into the work of one of history's most venerated artists.

Hokusai, a grand protagonist of ukiyo-e , his legacy and powerful influence on European art.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), an unchallenged master of ukiyo-e , the Floating World, active between the late 1700s and the first-half of the 1800s, stands out on the art scene not only for his Great Wave and the series Thirty-six V iews of Mount Fuji of which the print is a part, but also his great versatility expressed in his treatment of all types of subjects: from landscapes to nature, kabuki actor portraits, beautiful women, warriors and even ghosts and spirits, semi-legendary beings and animals. Hokusai is also associated with many changes: of residence, of name (over thirty, even though the main ones are six), of style, with dozens of followers, each of which, in some way, represents one aspect in the Master's vast oeuvre. These include Shinsai, Hokkei and Gakutei who influenced the following generation of artists, together with another individual, who is not considered a direct student of Hokusai but who nonetheless determined in an interesting way the developments in prints of beauty and landscape from 1810 to 1830: Keisai Eisen.

Through a selection of over 250 works from the Municipal Museum of Chiba and other Japanese collections, this publication offers a reading of Hokusai that also includes his legacy, accompanying and comparing his output with that by others who followed in his footsteps and gave life to new lines, forms and balances of colour within the classic themes of ukiyo-e and landscape, nature, beauty, actors, heroes and warriors.

1932 was an extraordinary year for Picasso, even by his own standards. His paintings reached a new level of sensuality and he cemented his status as the most influential artist of the time. Over the course of this year he created some of his best-loved works, from colour-saturated portraits to surrealist drawings, developing ideas from the voluptuous sculptures he had made at his newly acquired country estate. In his personal life, throughout 1932, Picasso kept a delicate balance between tending to his wife Olga Khokhlova and their son Paulo, and his passionate love affair with Marie-Therese Walter, twenty-eight years his junior. This publication will bring these complex artistic and personal dynamics to life.

It was also a year of invention and reflection. Having recently turned fifty, Picasso embarked on the first volume of what remains the most ambitious catalogue of an artist's work ever made. Meanwhile, the first ever retrospective of his work was staged, a show that featured new paintings alongside earlier works in a range of different styles.

Picasso's journeys between his homes in Boisgeloup and Paris capture the contradictions of his existence at this pivotal moment: a life divided between countryside retreat and urban bustle, established wife and recent lover, painting and sculpture, sensuality and darkness. The year ended traumatically when Marie-Therese fell seriously ill after swimming, losing most of her iconic blond hair. In his final works of the year, Picasso transformed the event into scenes of rescue and rape, a dramatic finale to a year of love, fame and tragedy that pushed Picasso to the height of his creative powers.

This lavishly illustrated publication will explore the major themes and concerns of 1932, in essays, artworks and archive photographs. It will strip away common myths to reveal the man and the artist in his full complexity and richness.

Recognized as one of the most interesting and vibrant artists of the Edo period, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861) is a major exponent of ukiyo-e.

His fame is tied to the series of polychrome xylographs that illustrate the 108 heroes from the novel Suikoden (Brigands), a late-18th-century bestseller in China and Japan that described a band of brigands who defend those oppressed by injustice and government corruption. The book conjures imagery of violent, powerful warriors with muscular tattooed bodies - imagery that today inspires manga, anime, tattoo artists and illustrators across the world. Kuniyoshi embraced the genre of warrior prints, but he was also interested in portraits of female beauties, kabuki actors, landscapes, children and ghosts, another greatly admired genre in Japan.

Nonetheless, his name is above all associated with Arcimboldo-like composite figures, figures within figures and parodies of stories and battles. His images are fantastical, baroque, rich in color and detail, with imposing characters and dynamic actions.

This book surveys the work of a versatile and intriguing figure whose impressive technique birthed a school that continued for generations.

Part of the `Biographic' series, which presents an entirely new way of looking at the lives of the world's greatest thinkers and creatives. This book takes the 50 defining facts, dates, thoughts, habits and achievements of Gustav Klimt, and uses infographics to convey all of them in vivid snapshots.

Many people know that Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was an Austrian painter and founding member of the Vienna Secession art group, whose gold-tinged paintings of the female nude include The Kiss. What, perhaps, they don't know is that The Kiss was sold before its completion for 25,000 crowns - over 50 times that paid for any other Austrian painting at the time; that he fathered at least 14 illegitimate children; that his fondness for cats led to his studio being overrun by his feline friends; and that in 2006 he set the record for the highest-priced painting in the world, when his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was sold for $135million. `Biographic: Klimt' presents an instant impression of his life, work and fame, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the artist behind the pictures. It is published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the artist's death.

Each `Biographic' title is designed to be as entertaining as it is informative. Timelines not only pinpoint significant dates, but set them in the context and culture of their times. Dynamic maps locate biographical events alongside other points of interest. Character traits are illuminated by visual comparisons.

When the Roman legions could no longer successfully defend the borders of the Empire, and its territory was prey to raids and invasions by foreign peoples and armies, there arose the need for a new form of defense. Thus were castles born, along with the development of feudalism and the era now known as the Middle Ages.

Placed in isolated positions, often on high ground, castles would become more and more widespread throughout Europe and beyond. Increasingly fortified, to respond to the evolving weapons of the day, they would be built in cities as well and become symbols of power, at times transformed into palaces decorated to represent the glory of their lords.

This form of architecture flourished not only in Europe, but also in Asia and Africa, due to the Crusades and colonial expansion. Thus it would eventually reach the Americas - where more recently it would be repurposed as a form of romantic-gothic architecture - and take on new connotations.

This book, rich with splendid illustrations and in-depth historical and artistic entries, will take readers on a tour through the world's most beautiful castles, where they will get to know architectural styles of this fortification that has had such importance in human history, and which still today fascinates visitors all around the world.

The book features 230 colour photographs.

In more than 2,000 issues, British Vogue magazine has acted as a cultural barometer, putting fashion in the context of the larger world in which we live - how we dress, how we entertain, what we eat, listen to, watch, who leads us, excites us and inspires us.

The century's most talented photographers, illustrators and artists have contributed to it. In Lee Miller it had, unexpectedly, its own war photographer; in Norman Parkinson, Cecil Beaton, David Bailey, Snowdon and Mario Testino the greatest portrait and fashion photographers of their generation; and in Beaton and Irving Penn two giants of twentieth - century photography.

From 1892, American Vogue chronicled the life of beautiful people - their clothes, parties, houses and habits - and the magazine was exported for intrigued British readers. In 1916, when the First World War made trans atlantic shipments impossible, its proprietor, Conde Nast, authorised a British edition. It was an immediate success, and over the following ten decades of uninterrupted publication continued to mirror its times - the austerity and optimism that followed two world wars, the 'Swinging London' scene of the sixties, the radical seventies, the image - conscious eighties - and in its second century remains at the cutting edge of photography and design.

Decade by decade, Vogue 100 : A Century of Style celebrates the greatest moments in fashion, beauty and portrait photography. Illustrated throughout with well - known images, as well as th e less familiar and recently rediscovered, the book focuses on the faces that shaped the cultural landscape: from Matisse to Bacon, Freud and Hirst, from Dietrich to Paltrow, from Fred Astaire to David Beckham, from Lady Diana Cooper to Lady Diana Spencer. It features the fashion designers who defined the century - Dior , Galliano , Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, McQueen - and explores more broadly the changing form of the twentieth - century woman.

The stories of 28 inspirational Australian makeup artists, skin experts, bloggers and cult brand founders.

The beauty scene in Australia is evolving - from the quality of ingredients used by our favourite brands to the accessibility of local beauty products online. Australians are more considered with what we're putting on our skin and we're looking to tastemakers to help us achieve the latest look.

Australian Beauty champions Australians who are the catalysts for change in the industry. These are the stories of the crème of homegrown beauty heroes.

    * Sections featuring simple make-up techniques - including bold lips, natural brows, statement eyes, rosy cheeks - on models of different ethnicities (+ a men's tutorial).
    * Profiles 28 beauty influencers - Elle MacPherson, Napoleon Perdis, Zoë Foster Blake, The Beauty Chef.
    * A fresh look at what defines the Australian beauty scene with an emphasis on natural ingredients, sustainability, as well as local brands.

Raw. Natural. Diverse. Authentic. This is Australian beauty.

The Australian classic bestseller on a happy, healthy gut, by the country's top experts. A healthy body needs a healthy gut. More and more researchers are finding out how complex and important the gut is to our mood, wellness and longevity. So many problems can be traced to the gut - from obesity and allergies to cramping and chronic malaise. Taking care of your gut by understanding what it consists of, how it works and what to feed it is the first step towards good health.

In this revised classic, medical researchers at the Gut Foundation provide all the basics on gut health and disorders, as well as the most recent data on things such as microbiomes and radical treatments. Highly respected nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton shows us that good eating doesn't mean boring food and difficult recipes, but can actually lead to fresh, simple, tasty meals, and - most importantly - a calm, regular and healthy gut.

With around 150 recipes, The Good Gut Cookbook delivers clear, concise advice, backed by the authority of Australia's top gut specialists and most trusted nutritionist.

Imagine having a peaceful relationship with food. One which leaves you feeling healthy, happy and full of life. No anxiety or guilt. No calorie counting or cutting out food groups. No wasting energy worrying about what to eat or striving for a perfect diet that doesn't exist. You're not alone - many people feel anxiety around food, including the need to always `eat clean', or feeling guilty after eating food that is considered unhealthy or not `pure'. In some cases this can lead to eating disorders such as orthorexia.

In Fear-Free Food, nutritionist and Intuitive Eating Counsellor Nicola Jane Hobbs shows you how to break free from the toxic messages of diet culture, make peace with food and discover how to truly nourish yourself.

Filled with compassionate advice, mindset techniques and practical steps to help you trust your body and find food freedom, as well as science-backed information dispelling widespread nutrition myths, Fear-Free Food shows you how to replace dieting and deprivation with nutrition and nourishment.

With over 80 nutritious and delicious recipes to reignite your passion for eating, ranging from Italian Baked Eggs, Sweet Moroccan Falafel and Pan-fried Salmon Tikka, to Lemon Ricotta Pancakes, Honey Oat Banana Bread and Carrot Cake Cookies. Each recipe embraces the Fear-Free Food philosophy of balanced, fun, fear-free eating to inspire you to get creative in the kitchen and fall in love with food, your body and your life!

FREE. FROM. ANIMALS.

Hi, we're Chad and Derek. We're brothers who craft humble vegetables into the stuff of food legend. Everything we create is a bold marriage of delicate and punchy flavours, crunchy textures, and all with knife-sharp attention to detail. We're proud graduates of the University of Common Sense who simply believe that eating more veg is good for you and good for the planet.

The Wicked Healthy Cookbook presents a delicious game plan endorsed by every doctor and health organisation in the world: eat more plants. Chefs Chad and Derek Sarno are among the world's foremost authorities on plant-based cooking and here they share their secrets for making killer meals.

Celebrating the central role of beautiful, crave-able food for our health and vitality, Chad and Derek provide 129 recipes for everyday meals and fancy dinner parties alike and also show us how to kick back and indulge with drool-inducing recipes like:

    * Sloppy BBQ Jackfruit Sliders with Slaw
    * New England Style "Lobstah" Rolls
    * Grilled peaches with Vanilla Spiced Gelato
    * Mango Sriracha Caramel.

It's all part of the plan: Shoot for 80% healthy and 20% wicked, and you'll be 100% sexy: That's Wicked Healthy!

Slow cookers aren't just for beef stew! At last, a collection of tried-and-tested slow-cooker recipes for vegetarians and vegie-lovers alike

Whether you're vegetarian or simply looking for ideas for a few meat-free Mondays, Slow Cooker Vegetarian offers a whole new way to celebrate healthy hands-off cooking. Everyone's favourite set-and-forget device gets a modern makeover with 100 recipes for meat-free soups, pastas, salads, hearty comfort food and even desserts.

Throw some fresh, whole foods into the slow cooker and walk away to do something exciting - very few nutrients are lost during the slow cooking process and you'll come back to a complete balanced one-pot meal, usually with no need for additional protein. Rediscover your slow cooker and reclaim your precious time.

Korean cuisine is one of the simplest, healthiest and friendliest in the world - its dishes are perfect for sharing. It's fun to cook Korean: with just a few easily sourced ingredients you'll be able to create your first banchan, the small but delicious side dishes that are served at every meal, and the amazingly simple gut-affirming kimchi, which works with just about any vegetable. Soon you'll graduate to the ever-popular Korean barbecue recipes, galbi, one-pot stews and dosirak (the perfect packed lunch). Koreans often start a meal with the joyful phrase 'Please, eat well!' because they know that food is best eaten in good company and that good health begins with a happy gut.

Master the art of chocolate through one hundred fundamental step-by-step techniques, including chocolate basics (tempering, ganaches, pralines), candy fillings, decorations, doughs, cream and mousse bases, ice cream and sorbet, sauces, and baker's secrets (marbling, faultless cake crusts, beating egg whites, and more). Each method is explained in text and photographs.

More than one hundred recipes include the classics (Black Forest cake, profiteroles, molten chocolate cake), tarts and tartlets (chocolate-pear, nut-caramel), shared delights, teatime treats (macaroons, brownies, milk chocolate and ginger churros), iced desserts (chocolate cappuccino parfait, raspberry meringue with hot chocolate sauce), holiday creations (dark chocolate fondue, hazelnut-praline Yule log), candies and confections (truffles, lollipops, chocolate-cherries), and new trends.

Recipes are graded with a three-star rating so home chefs can gradually develop their abilities with experience. Cross references to techniques, glossary terms, and complementary recipes make navigation easy. The volume is completed with practical resources: visual dictionaries of kitchen equipment and ingredients; tips for conserving chocolate; a guide to dark, milk, and white chocolate and the importance of cocoa content; along with indexes to ingredients, recipes, and techniques.

Dazzling doses of flavour combined with appetising injections of creativity, delivered in just the right way to enjoy for days or decades! Lobster for Josino brings the joy of food to many who might otherwise miss out through practical but expert advice and clever, restaurant-quality recipes.

Inspired by a much-loved Sydney chef's final meal request and belief that the sharing of beautiful food is an essential part of life-however long that might be-Lobster for Josino introduces dozens of amazing new taste ideas for everyone to enjoy.

Bringing rich flavors to the great outdoors, this mouthwatering collection of recipes by Sarah Glover evokes the sights, smells, and tastes of the Australian wilderness.

Sarah Glover loves to cook, whether it's on the edge of a windswept cliff, in a clearing in the forest, or on a sandy stretch of beach. Although she's made a career as a chef in Australia and New York City, her heart lives outdoors. Filled with gorgeous photographs from the shores of Tasmania and beaches of Sydney to the mountains of Australia's east coast, this cookbook shares her recipes and secrets to inspire others to cook and eat outside. She offers tips for preparing food over an open flame as well as a list of basic outdoor cooking equipment.

Anyone who thinks camping food begins and ends with coffee and toasted marshmallows will be surprised to discover how easy it is to create a stunning four-course meal with a few pots and one fire. From solid staples like tender roast chicken and potatoes to dinner-party-worthy kumquat bellinis and quail with truffles, Glover sets the stage for any kind of outdoor experience. Her recipes are simple and straightforward-often involving only a handful of ingredients - and her instructions are breezy and clear.

Whether it's a quiet retreat in nature or a dawn-to-dusk beach party, Sarah Glover has a menu that will satisfy your hunger for fresh, modern food eaten in the great outdoors.

The book features 335 colour illustrations.

The Story of the English Garden is the National Trust's accessible history of the nation's gardens, sumptuously illustrated and artfully curated.

From tiny medieval gardens to vast Georgian parks, from Victorian glasshouses crammed with exotic specimens to the elegant outdoor 'rooms' of the Edwardians and the functional, ecologically aware gardens of today, this book explores the love affair between the English and their gardens for over 500 years. It's a fascinating story about passion - and power and politics too. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout and includes new photography of some of the most influential gardens in the world, including Sissinghurst.

Drawn from the National Trust's extensive archives, The Story of the English Garden is the definitive guide to Europe's greatest collection of historic gardens - a rich celebration of World Heritage sites, rare and exotic plants and groundbreaking architectural design.

Discover the extraordinary landscapes of Anne of Green Gables.

Anne of Green Gables is a worldwide phenomenon that has sold over fifty million copies and inspired numerous films, plays, musicals, and television series. It has turned Prince Edward Island into a multimillion-dollar tourist destination visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year.

In The Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables, Catherine Reid reveals how Lucy Maud Montgomery’s deep connection to the landscape inspired her to write Anne of Green Gables. From the Lake of Shining Waters and the Haunted Wood to Lover’s Lane, readers will be immersed in the real places immortalized in the novel.

Using Montgomery’s journals, archives, and scrapbooks, Reid explores the many similarities between Montgomery and her unforgettable heroine, Anne Shirley. The lush package includes Montgomery’s hand-colourised photographs, the illustrations originally used in Anne of Green Gables, and contemporary and historical photography.

The extraordinary palm: diverse, prolific, essential, symbolic and often sacred, exotic - and at times erotic - exploited and controversial. The signature plant of the tropics and subtropics, these record-breaking botanicals produce the world's biggest and heaviest seed, the longest leaf and the longest stem. Over thousands of years, palms sustained rainforest communities and were bound up with the development of ancient civilizations. They gained mystical and religious meanings and became a plant of abstractions and fantasies, a symbol of being at leisure, away from civilization and closer to nature - and at times of danger and devastation. In the nineteenth century capitalism used palm products to lubricate industry and cleanse empires. Iconic palm houses put on show this exceptional vegetative performer. Far from its natural homelands, it nowadays clothes and glamorizes an astonishing diversity of landscapes. Today oils from palms are consumed daily by millions of people worldwide. The plant is embedded in modern consumer societies, but mired in environmental controversy over the destruction of rainforests. In Palm Fred Gray portrays the cultural and historical significance of this iconic and controversial plant over thousands of years. Superbly illustrated, this lively and engaging book is the first of its kind.

Sunflowers are the most recognizable members of the world's largest family of plants, Asteraceae, which includes lettuce, chrysanthemums, asters, dahlias and weeds. The sunflower family is found in almost all habitats, from the driest deserts through grasslands and the tallest mountains to urban wastelands, and includes more than 32,000 species. The family has become a part of our literary and visual cultures, inspiring artists such as Vincent van Gogh, and is used by advertisers to promote countless products. It produces hugely popular and economically valuable ornamental flowers, as well as familiar flavourings such as tarragon and artemisia, and sunflowers are also used in the production of antimalarial drugs, artificial sweeteners, insecticides and fish poisons. Sunflowers unravels the interplay between the biology of sunflowers and human cultures over the last 6,000 years. It explores our fascination with the family and how our uses of the plants have changed over millennia. Illustrated with many rarely seen images of the sunflower family, this beautiful volume will appeal to those looking for a new, surprising perspective on familiar flowers.

The Crossway is an account of Guy Stagg’s ten-month walk to Jerusalem. The author sets off from Canterbury on New Year’s Day, telling his friends and family only that he will be home before the year’s end.

He follows medieval pilgrimage routes through Western Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East, covering more than five-and-a-half thousand kilometres. He crosses the Alps in the depths of winter, spends Easter in Rome with the new Pope, witnesses the summer protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, and survives the August 2013 bombings in Tripoli. Each night he stays with monks, nuns, priests, and families, gaining a rare insight into the lives of contemporary believers.

Partly conceived as an attempt to rebuild himself after several years of mental illness, the pilgrimage forces Stagg to test the strength of his recovery. It also leaves him wondering: what power might ritual have today for someone without faith?

The Crossway is full of head - and heart-expanding wonders: the perfectly observed sights of a changing landscape, the fascinating reclamation of marginal history, the thrill and shock of perilous adventure, and the encounters with fellow pilgrims that leave Stagg amused, bemused, and, at times, moved.

This a beautiful, inspiring book that will show readers the world afresh and leave their hopes renewed.

A searching, timely account of the condition of contemporary Europe, told through the landscapes of its cities.

Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere.

In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it.

From the phenomenal number-one bestseller David Walliams comes another collection of more hilariously horrible children! Illustrated in glorious and gruesome colour by artist genius, Tony Ross, these stories will appal and delight young readers.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to your bookshelf, 10 more horrendously hilarious stories about the absolute worst children ever! From ten-year old Hank and his endless pranks on his poor, long-suffering family, to Tandy and her titanic tantrums - this brand new collection is the perfect companion to World's Worst Children books 1 and 2 and an ideal gift for the worst children in your life!

This compendium of catastrophically horrid boys and girls is brought to you by the phenomenal number-one bestseller David Walliams, and every story is illustrated in glorious and gruesome colour by the artistic genius Tony Ross.

2018 marks the 10th anniversary of the publication of David Walliams' first novel, The Boy in the Dress.

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- People have come to Australia by boat for centuries, and this book tells the stories of some of those immigrants. Starting with Anak 50 000 years ago, the book progresses through the early and mid 1700s, the late 1780s, early and mid 1800s, decades of the 1900s and ends with Abdul in early 2000s. The children sail on various ships - as traders, explorers, convicts, settlers, cameleers, gold-diggers, orphans, settlers and refugees. Told through the eyes of children who do not know what awaits, and who feel trepidation and uncertainty. Expressive illustrations accompany the text. Mid-to-late primary age readers. Lindy Jones

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Every journey is perilous, every situation heartbreaking. Every refugee is a person forced by famine or war or fear to leave their home, their families, their friends and all they know. Children have travelled on the waves of migration to the shores of Australia for tens of thousands of years. This book tells some of their stories.

Waves is a narrative non-fiction book about the waves of migration to the shores of Australia.

Age range 0 to 3 Set the children in your life on a lifelong path to learning with the next instalment of the Baby University board book series. Full of scientific information from notable experts on evolutionary biology and how organisms mutate, evolve, and survive, this is the perfect book to teach complex concepts in a simple, engaging way. Evolution for Babies is a colourfully simple introduction to Darwin's Theory of Evolution. It's never too early to become a scientist!

Age range 0 to 3 It only takes a small spark to ignite a child's mind! ABCs of Biology introduces babies (and grownups!) to a new engineering concept for every letter of the alphabet-from anatomy, bacteria, and cell, all the way to zoology. With a tongue-in-cheek approach that adults will love, this instalment of the Baby University board book series is written by two science experts and is the perfect way to introduce basic concepts to even the youngest science enthusiast.

Meet Florence, a flamboyant fur seal who lives on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Unlike the other seals, Florence has plans. Big plans. She's going to be a world-famous singer. But does Florence have what it takes to become a real SEALPRANO?

Based on a true story, The Singing Seal is for anyone who has ever felt small but dreamt BIG!

What would you do if everyone thought your best friend was dangerous?

Polly the witch and Buster the monster shouldn't be friends. And they definitely shouldn't be on the run from almost everyone in town. But when Polly is called to the Hollow Valley Mines - the forbidden, haunted mines - by her magic stones, these two best friends have a big decision to make. Do they stay hidden and safe, or risk it all to save the day?

The magical sequel toThe Wayward Witch and the Feelings Monster. Written and illustrated by Sally Rippin.

New kids aren't cool. Everyone knows that. Eleven-year-old Sam is the new kid at school but he has a plan, or two, or three to make himself the most popular kid ever. What you are about to read is unforgettable (lonely losers, frog underpants, human umbrellas, bad boys ...). It's bumpy (jumping out a window is never a good idea). It's the story of a kid who wants to be more. P.S. Sam was not harmed (too much) during the telling of this story.

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Another in the increasing list of inspirational books showing women who have contributed to the world. Divided into sections: Believe & Lead; Imagine & Create; Help & Heal; Think & Solve; Hope & Overcome, this is bright and engaging, with double page spreads for each woman. Illustrations are a mix of photos and colourful slightly naïve paintings, and quotes from the subjects are scattered throughout the concise but informative text. A good mix of women from all nations and periods of history. Lindy Jones

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Instead of just studying history, let's think about HerStory too! In this uplifting and inspiring book, children can learn about 50 intrepid women from around the world and throughout history. Telling the stories of their childhood, the challenges they faced and the changes they made, each lavishly illustrated spread is a celebration of girl power in its many forms. With a range of pioneering careers - from astronauts to activists, musicians to mathematicians and many more - young readers will be inspired to achieve their own dreams and to make the world a better place, too. Compelling, motivating and visually arresting in equal measure, this is the perfect introduction to just some of the amazing women who have shaped our world.

List of women featured: Elizabeth I, Jeanne d'Arc, Indira Gandhi, Teresa Kachindamoto, Empress Wu Zetian, Boudicca, Hatshepsut, Isabella I of Castile, Aung San Suu Kyi, Sacajawea, Frida Kahlo, Beatrix Potter, Coco Chanel, Billie Holiday, Anna Pavlova, Mira Bai, Maya Angelou, Georgia O'Keeffe, Emily Bronte, Sarah Bernhardt, Florence Nightingale, Harriet Tubman, Annie Sullivan, Maria Montessori, Mother Teresa, Mary Seacole, Wangari Maathai, Elizabeth Blackwell, Eva Peron, Dorothy Hodgkin, Marie Curie, Rachel Carson, Ada Lovelace, Hypatia, Rosalind Franklin, Mary Anning, Katherine Johnson, Lisa Meitner, Dian Fossey, Valentina Teryshoka, Malala Yousafzai, Helen Keller, Rigoberta Menchu, Amelia Earhart, Hannah Szenes, Rosa Parks, Noor Inayat Khan, Emmeline Pankhurst, Cathy Freeman, Anne Frank

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- Errol and his Mum are going shopping. Well she is, but he isn't! She counts to three but he still won't do as he's told... Every parent has experienced the frustration of a stubborn toddler, and Errol in his red beanie is an adorable, if wilful, character! Attractively rendered in expressive and simple style by the illustrator of Mopoke, Koalas Eat Gumleaves and Kookaburras Love to Laugh, this is a book adults will enjoy as much as the pre-schoolers they are reading to! Lindy Jones

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Meet Errol, a cheeky and lovable character, who refuses to follow his mum. Even when she counts to three.

Merrick Hilton's done a runner.

His folks think he's studying, but the real world has been calling for years and he can't ignore it any longer. A postie bike, a bedroll and a big sky - that's all he needs.

But there's no telling how he'll handle roadkill, stolen oranges and unexpected romance, let alone the rough stuff. And in the real world nothing goes entirely as planned. Thankfully Victor - the old bloke Merrick meets on the road - knows a thing or two about broken bike chains. And broken hearts.