Abbey's Advocate

From the inimitable mind of award-winning author Jesse Ball, a novel about an unsettlingly familiar society that has renounced the concept of equality-and the devastating consequences of unmitigated power.

The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It was a misguided endeavour. The world is divided into two groups, pats and quads. The pats may kill the quads as they like, and do. The quads have no recourse but to continue with their lives.

The Divers' Game is a thinly veiled description of our society, an extreme case that demonstrates a truth- we must change or our world will collapse. What is the effect of constant fear on a life, or on a culture? Brilliantly constructed and achingly tender, The Divers' Game shatters the notion of common decency as the binding agent between individuals, forcing us to consider whether compassion is intrinsic to the human experience. With his signature empathy and ingenuity, Jesse Ball's latest work solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary fiction's most mesmerising talents.

'One of Australia's most stimulating contemporary writers.'Canberra Times

Although set a hundred years ago, John Clanchy's new novel powerfully captures the devastating and persistent reality of a fundamental flaw in the role of our major institutions. Central to In Whom We Trust is James Pearse, an essentially good but circumstantially weak man, who is forced to examine his role at the St Barnabas Home for Children, an orphanage that has betrayed the individuals entrusted to its care. He must face the devastating wider consequences of a life of moral equivocation.

Clanchy has been writing fiction for forty years -In Whom We Trust is his twelfth book- and has won numerous local, state, national and international awards for his novels, novellas and short stories.

Some review comments on Clanchy's writing:
'Clanchy presents moral dilemmas with a clear eye… He writes as if bothwords and people are important to him.' The Age
'Clanchy has...psychological acuity, stylistic variety and an unpretentious and justified confidence in his story-telling gifts.' The Canberra Times, Brisbane Times
'...moments of humour form a perfect counterbalance to the more serious content found... Expertly told, without a false note.' Australian Book Review
'Writing that glows with the reassuring light of Clanchy's compassion and humanity.' The West Australian

From the Stella shortlisted author of Poum and Alexandre, this is a heartwarming novel about longing, absence and the people we unexpectedly come to love.

After many years spent living in Seoul, a young man called Harold drifts back to Australia and rents a room above a fish and chip shop called The Sea & Us. Who he meets and what he experiences there propels him to question his own yearnings and failings, and to fight for meaning and a sense of place that can only be reached by facing what is lost.

By turns electric, tender, and hopeful, The Sea & Us is a gem of literary imagination. Catherine de Saint Phalle brilliantly captures disparate characters and their common human desire for community and connection. Long after the last page closes, 'we can hear the bell tinkle. Someone wants some fish and chips.' 'Mesmerising. Full of love and charm...beautifully written.' - Herald Sun

`This story has its genesis in fact, when three Fraser Island people were taken to Germany in 1882-83. The sole survivor was Bonangera (Boni/Bonny) whose life-size plaster cast remains at the Musee des Confluences, Lyon, France. The silencing that Badtjala people continue to endure in the localised historiography of place is ongoing.' Dr Fiona Foley, Badtjala artist and academic

Fraser Island, 1882. The population of the Badtjala people is in sharp decline following a run of brutal massacres. When German scientist Louis Muller offers to sail three Badtjala people - Bonny, Jurano and Dorondera - to Europe to perform to huge crowds, the proud and headstrong Bonny agrees, hoping to bring his people's plight to the Queen of England.

Accompanied by Mullers bright, grieving daughter, Hilda, the group begins their journey to belle-epoque Europe to perfom in Hamburg, Berlin, Paris and eventually London. While crowds in Europe are enthusiastic to see the unique dances, singing, fights and pole climbing from the oldest culture in the world, the attention is relentless, and the fascination of scientists intrusive. When disaster strikes, Bonny must find a way to return home.

A story of love, bravery, culture, and the fight against injustice, Paris Savages brings a little-known part of history to blazing life, from award-winning novelist Katherine Johnson.

Iraqi aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Australia, decades later, Gerry is in fear of his tyrannical father, Toohey, who has returned from the Iraq War bearing the physical and psychological scars of conflict. Meanwhile, Robbie is dealing with her own father's dementia when the past enters the present.

These characters' worlds intertwine in a brilliant narrative of guilt and reckoning, trauma and survival. Crossing the frontiers of war, protest and reconciliation, Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance- the damage that one generation passes on to the next, and the potential for transformation.

As the wife of retired ship's doctor Dr Henry Parker, Evelyn is living out her twilight years aboard the Golden Sunset. Every night she dresses for dinner - gown, tiara, runners - and regales her fellow passengers with stories of a glamorous life travelling the world in luxury as well as showing off her superior knowledge of everything from ships' customs to biographical details of her heroine, Florence Nightingale. The crew treat her with deference. And forbearance.

But when Henry goes missing, Evelyn sets off to search every part of the grand ocean liner to find him, casino, nightclub and off-limits areas included. Misadventures are had, new friends are made, scandalous behaviour noted - all news to Evelyn. If only she could remember the events of the night before as clearly as she can recall the first time she met Henry on a passage from England to Australia in 1953 and fell in love, abandoning her dreams to become a midwife to be a wife instead - and the long-ago painful events that left Evelyn all at sea.

Why is it so hard to remember some things and so hard to forget others? And where is Henry? The Last Voyage of Mrs Henry Parker is a love letter to the memories we make over the course of a lifetime, and how the heart remembers what matters, even when the mind has long forgotten.

Khaki Town, Judy Nunn's exciting new novel, is inspired by a true wartime story that has remained a well-kept secret for over seventy years.

It seems to have happened overnight, Val thought . How extraordinary. We've become a khaki town.

It's March 1942. Singapore has fallen. Darwin has been bombed. Australia is on the brink of being invaded by the Imperial Japanese Forces. And Val Callahan, publican of The Brown's Bar in Townsville, could not be happier as she contemplates the fortune she's making from lonely, thirsty soldiers.

Overnight the small Queensland city is transformed into the transport hub for 70,000 American and Australian soldiers destined for combat in the South Pacific. Barbed wire and gun emplacements cover the beaches. Historic buildings are commandeered. And the dance halls are in full swing with jazz, jitterbug and jive.

The Australian troops begrudge the confident, well-fed 'Yanks' who have taken over their town and their women. There's growing conflict, too, within the American ranks, because black GIs are enjoying the absence of segregation. And the white GIs don't like it.

As racial violence explodes through the ranks of the military, a young United States Congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, is sent to Townsville by his president to investigate. 'Keep a goddamned lid on it, Lyndon,' he is told, 'lest it explode in our faces ...'

'An extremely talented storyteller and comedian...this book is full of heart and humour' - Ronny Chieng

'a compelling novel that is difficult to put down' - Books + Publishing

Mike Amon is a regular teenager. All he wants is to fit in. He wants to sit at the cool bench. He wants to be a star athlete. He wants his first kiss.

He also wants his mum to survive.

When his mum is suddenly diagnosed with advanced breast and brain cancer, Mike knows it's a long shot, but if he manages to achieve his dreams, maybe it'll give his mum enough strength to beat an incurable disease.

In the meantime, he has to live with his African dad whom he doesn't really know, a man who has strange foreign ways - and who Mike doesn't really feel comfortable sharing his teenage desires and deepest fears with. He doesn't even want to think about what it might mean if his mum never comes home from the hospital.

Based on his award-winning stand-up show, and the loss of his own mother when he was 12, Matt Okine's coming-of-age novel is a funny, heart-warming, and sometimes surreal look at how young people deal with grief, the loss of loved ones, and becoming an adult - all whilst desperately trying to fit in with the other kids.

'Intimate and affecting' - Claudia Karvan

'Hilarious, heartfelt, and utterly ridiculous in all the right ways' - Alex Dyson

A big, bold and hauntingly beautiful story that captures a defining moment in Australia's history.

Everywhere he looked he saw what Utzon saw. The drama of harbour and horizon, and at night, the star-clotted sky. It held the shape of the possible, of a promise made and waiting to be kept ...

In 1965 as Danish architect Jorn Utzon's striking vision for the Sydney Opera House transforms the skyline and unleashes a storm of controversy, the shadow of the Vietnam War and a deadly lottery threaten to tear the country apart.

Journalist Pearl Keogh, exiled to the women's pages after being photographed at an anti-war protest, is desperate to find her two missing brothers and save them from the draft. Axel Lindquist, a visionary young glass artist from Sweden, is obsessed with creating a unique work that will do justice to Utzon's towering masterpiece.

In this big, bold and hauntingly beautiful portrait of art and life, Shell captures a world on the brink of seismic change through the eyes of two unforgettable characters caught in the eye of the storm.

And reminds us why taking a side matters.

Praise for Shell `Kristina Olsson is such a graceful, wise and perceptive writer. The woman's massive heart is one big literary taproot feeding all of us answers about the Australian condition' Trent Dalton, bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe `A luminous look at a city at a time of change, a time when the building of the Sydney Opera House was a reach for greatness.' The New York Times `Olsson's writing is beautiful, captivating, and is enough in itself to recommend this book ... Her descriptions are vivid, evocative.' New York Journal of Books `A classic in the making.' Australian Financial Review `A shimmering love letter to Sydney, with the husk of the emerging Opera House its beating heart ... Required reading.' Australian Women's Weekly

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ---- Set between Prague and Melbourne in 1980, this achingly tender and deceptively simple novel tells of two children who never meet, but who are related through their formidable grandmothers. Ludek in Prague is curious, energetic, boastful and funny. His family don't have much, but then again, no-one in his neighbourhood does. There are often shortages but there's always something happening and his grandmother manages well enough. Mala Liska in Melbourne is quiet, observant, dutiful and imaginative. Her grandparents scrimp and save so they can occasionally go back to visit Prague; things are measured out and weighed up and carefully preserved but Mala always feels she has what she needs. As the novel switches back and forth, deep truths are revealed, about staying and going, sacrifices and resentments, family and the tales they tell to protect themselves - and always, of love. A truly beautiful, unforced and gentle novel - one of my favourites this year!  Lindy Jones

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Prague, 1938: Eva flies down the street from her sister. Suddenly a man steps out, a man wearing a hat. Eva runs into him, hits the pavement hard. His hat is in the gutter. His anger slaps Eva, but his hate will change everything, as war forces so many lives into small, brown suitcases.

Prague, 1980: No one sees Ludek. A young boy can slip right under the heavy blanket that covers this city - the fear cannot touch him. Ludek is free. And he sees everything. The world can do what it likes. The world can go to hell for all he cares because Babi is waiting for him in the warm flat. His whole world.

Melbourne, 1980: Mala Li ka's grandma holds her hand as they climb the stairs to their third floor flat. Inside, the smell of warm pipe tobacco and homemade cakes. Here, Mana and Bill have made a life for themselves and their granddaughter. A life imbued with the spirit of Prague and the loved ones left behind.

Favel Parrett's deep emotional insight and stellar literary talent shine through in this love letter to the strong women who bind families together, despite dislocation and distance. It is a tender and beautifully told story of memory, family and love. Because there is still love. No matter what.

'I am absolutely terrified of losing a job I absolutely hate.' Stephen Maserov has problems. A onetime teacher, married to fellow teacher Eleanor, he has retrained and is now a second-year lawyer working at mega-firm Freely Savage Carter Blanche. Despite toiling around the clock to make budget, he's in imminent danger of being downsized. And to make things worse, Eleanor, sick of single-parenting their two young children thanks to Stephen's relentless work schedule, has asked him to move out.

To keep the job he hates, pay the mortgage and salvage his marriage, he will have to do something strikingly daring, something he never thought himself capable of. But if he's not careful, it might be the last job he ever has...

Warm, dramatic, and at times laugh-out-loud funny, with the narrative pull of a thriller, Maybe the Horse Will Talk is a love story, a reflection on contemporary marriage, and on friendship. It is also an unflinching examination of sexual harassment in the workplace and an expose of corporate corruption that taps directly into the pulse of our times.

'Australia's outstanding social novelist' (Times Literary Supplement), Elliot Perlman '...has many things working in his favor as a novelist- curiosity, erudition, daring and a gift for seducing readers into going along with him for the ride. He'll get you where you want to go...' (Washington Post)

A right-wing US president has withdrawn America from the Middle East and the UN. Daesh has a thoroughfare to the sea and China is Australia's newest ally. When a bomb goes off in remote Tasmania, Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane.

Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go.

Bruny is a searing, subversive, brilliant novel about family, love, loyalty and the new world order.

Praise for The Museum of Modern Love:

'A glorious novel, meditative and special in a way that defies easy articulation.' Hannah Kent, author of Burial Rites 'Audacious and beautiful.' Dominic Smith, author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 'I adored it, and it is my book of the year so far.' Amanda Rayner, Readings Reviews '... coruscates with captivating energy ... Incisive, beautiful, and precise.' Foreword Reviews, starred review 'Captivating ... a gem of a novel.' Library Journal, starred review 'Deeply involving ... profound ... emotionally rich and thought-provoking.' Booklist, starred review 'With rare subtlety and humanity, this novel relocates the difficult path to wonder in us all.' The Christina Stead Prize 2017 'Profound ... a tender meditation on art, love, grief, and life.' Bustle 'An unusual and lively work of fiction.' Newsday

Even a good woman can be pushed too far...

From bestselling author Tricia Stringer, this beautifully realised multi-generational family story looks at what happens when real-life betrayals and struggling relationships clash with outdated ideas of what a woman should be.

Natalie King's life is full. Some might say too full. With her teaching job, a farm to run, three grown daughters who have not quite got a handle on things, a reserved husband and a demanding mother-in-law, most days she is too busy to think about whether she is happy. But her life has meaning, doesn't it? After all, she is the one person everyone depends upon.

But when an odd gift from her mother-in-law - an old book in the form of stern and outdated advice for young wives - surfaces again, it brings with it memories she thought she had buried deep. Has this insidious little book exerted some kind of hold over her? Could it be that in her attempts to be a loving wife and mother, she no longer knows who she is?

On a day when it seems everyone is taking her for granted, and as the ghost of a past betrayal rises, it becomes clear that even this good mother and model wife can be pushed too far ...

People went on about death bringing friends together, but it wasn't true. The graveyard, the stony dirt - that's what it was like now . . . Despite the three women knowing each other better than their own siblings, Sylvie's death had opened up strange caverns of distance between them.

Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her?

They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house - not for festivities, but to clean the place out before it is sold.

Without Sylvie to maintain the group's delicate equilibrium, frustrations build and painful memories press in. Fraying tempers, an elderly dog, unwelcome guests and too much wine collide in a storm that brings long-buried hurts to the surface - and threatens to sweep away their friendship for good.

The Weekend explores growing old and growing up, and what happens when we're forced to uncover the lies we tell ourselves. Sharply observed and excruciatingly funny, this is a jewel of a book: a celebration of tenderness and friendship that is nothing short of a masterpiece.

'A compelling and vivid look at the friendships we make as women. Honest, unsettling and, like all good literature, had me asking questions about life and myself.' Heather Rose, author of The Museum of Modern Love, winner of the 2017 Stella Prize

You can talk about living in the Mallee. And you can talk about a Mallee tree. And you can talk about the Mallee itself: a land and a place full of red sand and short stubby trees. Silent skies. The undulating scorch of summer plains. Quiet, on the surface of things.

But Elise wasn't from the Mallee, and she knew nothing of its ways.

Discover the world of a small homestead perched on the sunburnt farmland of northern Victoria. Meet Elise, whose urbane 1950s glamour is rudely transplanted to the pragmatic red soil of the Mallee when her husband returns to work the family farm. But you cannot uproot a plant and expect it to thrive. And so it is with Elise. Her meringues don't impress the shearers, the locals scoff at her Paris fashions, her husband works all day in the back paddock, and the drought kills everything but the geraniums she despises.

As their mother withdraws more and more into herself, her spirited, tearaway daughters, Marjorie and Ruby, wild as weeds, are left to raise themselves as best they can. Until tragedy strikes, and Marjorie flees to the city determined to leave her family behind. And there she stays, leading a very different life, until the boy she loves draws her back to the land she can't forget...

'In the same vein as Rosalie Ham, Brinsden weaves a compelling story of country Australia with all its stigma, controversy and beauty.' Fleur McDonald

'I ADORE cold-war novels and I live for love stories - The Museum of Broken Promises is a perfect combination of both. It's a gem of a book ... beautiful, elegant.' Marian Keyes 'Intricately plotted and beautifully written, the characters and the setting stay with you and leave you yearning for Paris.' Katie Fforde, author of A Vintage Wedding Paris, today. The Museum of Broken Promises is a place of wonder and sadness, hope and loss. Every object in the museum has been donated - a cake tin, a wedding veil, a baby's shoe. And each represent a moment of grief or terrible betrayal. The museum is a place where people come to speak to the ghosts of the past and, sometimes, to lay them to rest. Laure, the owner and curator, has also hidden artefacts from her own painful youth amongst the objects on display.

Prague, 1985. Recovering from the sudden death of her father, Laure flees to Prague. But life behind the Iron Curtain is a complex thing: drab and grey yet charged with danger. Laure cannot begin to comprehend the dark, political currents that run beneath the surface of this communist city. Until, that is, she meets a young dissident musician. Her love for him will have terrible and unforeseen consequences.

It is only years later, having created the museum, that Laure can finally face up to her past and celebrate the passionate love which has directed her life.

The sensational new novel from the million-copy bestselling author of The Miniaturist and The Muse.

One winter's afternoon on Hampstead Heath in 1980, Elise Morceau meets Constance Holden and quickly falls under her spell. Connie is bold and alluring, a successful writer whose novel is being turned into a major Hollywood film. Elise follows Connie to LA, a city of strange dreams and swimming pools and late-night gatherings of glamorous people. But whilst Connie thrives on the heat and electricity of this new world where everyone is reaching for the stars and no one is telling the truth, Elise finds herself floundering. When she overhears a conversation at a party that turns everything on its head, Elise makes an impulsive decision that will change her life forever.

Three decades later, Rose Simmons is seeking answers about her mother, who disappeared when she was a baby. Having learned that the last person to see her was Constance Holden, a reclusive novelist who withdrew from public life at the peak of her fame, Rose is drawn to the door of Connie's imposing house in search of a confession ...

From the million-copy bestselling author of The Miniaturist and The Muse, this is a luminous, powerful and deeply moving novel about secrets and storytelling, motherhood and friendship, and how we lose and find ourselves.

PRAISE FOR THE CONFESSION 'Dazzlingly good. The Confession is that rare thing: an utterly engrossing novel which asks big questions without ever once losing sight of the storyteller's need to entertain and move. I turned the final pages in tears and I know already I shall return to it again and again. Without doubt one of the best novels of recent years.' Elizabeth Day, author of The Party and How To Fail 'I haven't enjoyed a book so much in a long time . . . I lost myself in the story, not wanting to come up for air. A bold, intelligent, wonderful novel' Sarah Winman, author of Tin Man 'Burton is asking important questions in The Confession - questions about motherhood, art and creativity, love, friendship - and in doing this, she has created three utterly fascinating characters. Connie, Elise, and Rose are complicated; complex in ways that women are so rarely allowed to be in literature, demanding that their stories be heard. This is a beautiful novel and one that will stay with me for a very long time' Louise O'Neill, author of Only Ever Yours 'an absorbing, intelligent piece of storytelling' Guardian

A Dog's Promise is the heart-warming and uplifting story about one dog who fulfils his promise and helps a family who needs him the most.

The dog who thinks of himself as 'Bailey' knows one thing for sure: all dogs go to heaven after they have fulfilled their purpose on earth. But Bailey's work on earth is far from finished, there are still so many more humans that need a dog's talent for unconditional love.

There is one family in particular that needs Bailey's help, a family that is on the verge of breaking apart. But if Bailey helps this family he won't remember his previous lives, the connections he's made, and the humans he's met and loved. Bailey must decide whether to sacrifice everything to heal this one, desperate family.

A Dog's Promise is a deeply emotional, beautifully told tale that will speak to dog lovers all over the world who wonder, could this dog have been sent to us specifically, for a reason? A Dog's Promise provides the answer to that eternal question with a resounding, and uplifting, 'Yes!'

Every slave plantation is a house of spies and intrigue. No slave walks a straight line or has a single story - deep within their hearts is betrayal and insurrection. But against whom?

Hiram Walker is a man with a gift and a curse. He was born between worlds- his father a white plantation master, his mother a black slave. And he was born with a secret, special power. Sold to a new mistress as punishment for trying to escape, Hiram discovers her home is a secret hub of the underground railroad- a training ground for its agents. With his special power, Hiram fast becomes a highly skilled agent, retrieving the enslaved from the most dangerous circumstances - but betrayals lurk everywhere. And eventually Hiram must risk everything to return to his father's plantation and free the friends he left there.

After The Childhood of Jesus and The Schooldays of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee completes his trilogy with a new masterwork, The Death of Jesus.

David has grown to be a tall ten-year-old. He is a natural at soccer, and loves kicking a ball around with his friends. His father Sim n and Bolivar the dog usually watch. His mother Ines works in a fashion boutique.

David still asks lots of questions. In dancing class at the Academy of Music he dances as he chooses. He refuses to do sums and will not read any books except Don Quixote.

One day Julio Fabricante, the director of a nearby orphanage, invites David and his friends to form a proper soccer team. David decides he will leave Sim n and Ines to live with Julio. Before long he succumbs to a mysterious illness.

In The Death of Jesus, J. M. Coetzee continues to explore the meaning of a world empty of memory but brimming with questions.

Thirty-four year old Luke O'Brien has left the city to live a quiet, bookish life on the River Sullane in County Waterford. Alone in his big house, he longs for a return to his family's heyday and turns to books-especially Ulysses-for solace and sublimation. One morning a young woman arrives at his door and enters his life, with profound consequences.

A novel that pays glorious homage to Joyce, The River Capture tells of a man's phenomenal descent into near madness when love is lost. It is about humanity's capacity for good and evil and what happens when Nature is thwarted. More than anything, it is a book about the life of the mind and the redemptive powers of art.

A tragedy of manners from the Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers `My favourite book of his yet' Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette 'Pure joy' Mail on Sunday 'Buoyantly insane' New Yorker Frances Price is in dire straits. Scandals swirl around the recently widowed New York socialite, and her adult-aged, toddler-brained son Malcolm is no help.

Cutting their losses, they grab their cat, Small Frank, and head for the exit. Paris becomes the backdrop for a giddy drive to self-destruction, helped along by a cast of singularly curious characters.

Brimming with pathos, warmth and wit, French Exit is a riotous send-up of high society and a moving story of mothers and sons.

Noah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side, but born in the South of France. He is days away from his long-awaited first trip back to Nice, but he receives a call from social services: Noah is the closest available relative of his eleven-year-old great-nephew and he urgently needs someone to take him in.

Plagued by guilt and a feeling of duty to his dead sister, Noah agrees to foster the kid 'just for couple of weeks' and takes him along on his visit to Nice. This unlikely duo, both feeling adrift in their lives and suffering from culture shock, argue about everything from steak frites to Snapchat.

Noah is disappointed by how much Nice has changed since he left. When sharp-eyed Michael identifies the historic Hotel Excelsior in one of Noah's photographs, they decide to check in - but once inside their luxury suite, Noah's perception of his ancestral heritage starts to crack.

Shocking stories of the Nazi occupation surface: a hotel re-purposed for torture, a secret resistance movement, and Noah's mysterious mother on the front lines of history. As dark truths about this famous tourist mecca come to light, Noah learns to appreciate Michael's street-smart wit and ease with technology. He finally grasps the great risks people in all ages have taken for their kin.

A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR `A thrilling, razor-sharp critique of US foreign policy ... Red Birds is an incisive, unsparing critique of war and of America's role in the destruction of the Middle East. It combines modern and ancient farcical traditions in thrilling way` Guardian American pilot Major Ellie has crashed his plane in the middle of a desert. Lucky for him there's room for him at the very refugee camp he was supposed to bomb.

Teenage Momo doesn't see it that way: the camp is a trap, not a refuge. His brother's missing, his parents are in a rage, and an aid worker won't stop trying to interview him for her book on the Teenage Muslim Mind.

Savage, irreverent and deliciously dark, Red Birds is a masterful unravelling of intertwined fates in a forgotten war-scape - and a brilliant satire about satire about the absurdity of war and the impossibility of peace.

'That night Stasia took an oath, swearing to learn the recipe by heart and destroy the paper. And when she was lying in her bed again, recalling the taste with all her senses, she was sure that this secret recipe could heal wounds, avert catastrophes, and bring people happiness. But she was wrong.' At the start of the twentieth century, on the edge of the Russian empire, a family prospers. It owes its success to a delicious chocolate recipe, passed down the generations with great solemnity and caution. A caution which is justified- this is a recipe for ecstasy that carries a very bitter aftertaste . . .

Stasia learns it from her Georgian father and takes it north, following her new husband, Simon, to his posting at the centre of the Russian Revolution in St Petersburg. Stasia's is only the first of a symphony of grand but all too often doomed romances that swirl from sweet to sour in this epic tale of the red century.

Tumbling down the years, and across vast expanses of longing and loss, generation after generation of this compelling family hears echoes and sees reflections. Great characters and greater relationships come and go and come again; the world shakes, and shakes some more, and the reader rejoices to have found at last one of those glorious old books in which you can live and learn, be lost and found, and make indelible new friends.

'The Eighth Life is the saga of a Georgian family - its intricate, interconnected lives, its losses, triumphs, sadnesses, and great loves, set against the sweep of Russian history across the twentieth century ... an unforgettable, rich and textured piece of literature.' -Georgia Brough, Readings 'The novel of the year.' -Der Spiegel 'Not only in its length does this novel resemble the work of Boris Pasternak. You will not want to put it down. The red century devours a family, and history comes with a pinch of chocolate - Like Water for Chocolate, even.' -Brigitte

'Oh, what a book this is! Hoffman's exploration of the world of good and evil, and the constant contest between them, is unflinching; and the humanity she brings to us - it is a glorious experience. The book builds and builds, as she weaves together, seamlessly, the stories of people in the most desperate of circumstances - and then it delivers with a tremendous punch. It opens up the world ... in a way that is absolutely unique. By the end you may be weeping' Elizabeth Strout, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Olive Kitteridge In Berlin in 1941 during humanity's darkest hour, three unforgettable young women must act with courage and love to survive, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites Alice Hoffman.

In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime. She finds her way to a renowned rabbi, but it's his daughter, Ettie, who offers hope of salvation when she creates a mystical Jewish creature, a rare and unusual golem, who is sworn to protect Lea. Once Ava is brought to life, she and Lea and Ettie become eternally entwined, their paths fated to cross, their fortunes linked.

Lea and Ava travel from Paris, where Lea meets her soulmate, to a convent in western France known for its silver roses; from a school in a mountaintop village where three thousand Jews were saved. Meanwhile, Ettie is in hiding, waiting to become the fighter she's destined to be.

What does it mean to lose your mother? How much can one person sacrifice for love? In a world where evil can be found at every turn, we meet remarkable characters that take us on a stunning journey of loss and resistance, the fantastical and the mortal, in a place where all roads lead past the Angel of Death and love is never ending.

Praise for Alice Hoffman: 'A major contribution to twenty-first century literature' Toni Morrisonon The Museum of Extraordinary Things 'A great atmospheric storyteller... Her books are a real pleasure' Kate Atkinson 'Hoffman reminds us with every sentence that words have the power to transport us to alternate worlds, to heal a broken heart, and to tie us irrevocably to the people we love' Jodi Picoult 'Miss Hoffman heals wounds with the gentle touch of an angel' Joseph Heller 'Hoffman... writes with heartbreaking clarity' The Times 'Alice Hoffman is simply brilliant' Daily Mail 'Hoffman knows how to tell a good story' Sunday Times 'Monumental... magical, moving... beautifully written... A genuine masterpiece' Daily Mail on The Dovekeepers 'One of the finest writers of her generation' Newsweek

THE MOST IMPORTANT FRENCH BOOK OF THE YEAR
'One cannot be said to be keeping abreast of contemporary literature without reading Houellebecq's work.' Karl Ove Knausgaard, New York Times Dissatisfied and discontent, Florent-Claude Labrouste begrudgingly works as an engineer for the Ministry of Agriculture, and is in a self-imposed dysfunctional relationship with a younger woman. When he discovers her ongoing infidelity, he decides to abandon his life in Paris and return to the Normandy countryside of his youth. There he contemplates lost loves and past happiness as he struggles to embed himself in a world that no longer holds any joy for him.

His only relief comes in the form of a pill - white, oval, small. Captorix is a new brand of anti-depressant, recently released for public consumption, which works by altering the brain's release of serotonin. With social unrest intensifying around him, and his own depression deepening, Florent-Claude turns to this new medication in the hope that he will find something to live for.

Written by one of the most provocative and prophetic novelists of his generation, Serotonin is at once a devastating story of solitude, longing and individual suffering, and a powerful criticism of modern life.

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe's time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold ...

Toshikazu Kawaguchi's beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

Winner of the Sapir Prize 2019.

A man is bribed to step into a courtroom to call an unknown defendant a murderer. A rich, lonely man hits on the idea of buying up people's birthdays so he'll always have friends calling. A writer agrees to write a story starring his friend so said friend can get a girl into bed. A father and son spot a stranger standing on the edge of a building, and the son shouts encouragement- fly already!

In these 22 short stories, wild capers reveal painful emotional truths, and the bizarre is just another name for the familiar. Wickedly funny and thrillingly smart, Fly Already is a collage of absurdity, despair, and love, from a master of the genre.

'Brilliantly edgy, unsettling, Kafkaesque and often very funny.' -Joyce Carol Oates 'Etgar Keret, the writer of absurd, sad, funny and very short stories, grows up ... These sardonic and very short fables are the next instalment in the series of strange scenarios cooked up in Keret's brain ... They are absurd stories your stoned friend might unfold while giggling, but the best of them land at some insight into the human condition, all economy and charm. This new collection, though, plumbs darker depths.' -Gal Beckerman, The New York Times 'Keret at his best - tender and inventive, not giving too much away ... Keret shines when he's gentle and when he gives himself room to explore his characters ... 'Pineapple Crush' is a lovely, understated story about the human need for connection, and Keret approaches it subtly, portraying the narrator's loneliness without resorting to pity. He doesn't overplay his hand or feel the need to wax whimsical; he's content to consider the human condition in a compassionate, unshowy way. The story is nearly perfect.' -Michael Schaub, NPR

'Part mystery, part war story, part romance, The Winter Soldier is a dream of a novel' Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See From the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner, comes Daniel Mason's The Winter Soldier, a story of love and medicine through the devastation of the First World War.

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War One explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.

But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon's scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient and nurse forever.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and, finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.

Kafka meets The Thick Of It in a bitingly funny new political satire from Ian McEwan

That morning, Jim Sams, clever but by no means profound, woke from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature.

Jim Sams has undergone a metamorphosis. In his previous life he was ignored or loathed, but in his new incarnation he is the most powerful man in Britain - and it is his mission to carry out the will of the people. Nothing must get in his way: not the opposition, nor the dissenters within his own party. Not even the rules of parliamentary democracy.

With trademark intelligence, insight and scabrous humour, Ian McEwan pays tribute to Franz Kafka's most famous work to engage with a world turned on its head.

In 1942 Cilka is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival.

After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator for sleeping with the enemy and sent to a desolate, brutal prison camp in Siberia known as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic Circle.

Innocent and imprisoned once again, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar. When she makes an impression on a female doctor, Cilka is taken under her wing and begins to tend to the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under unimaginable conditions. Cilka finds endless resources within herself as she confronts death and faces terror, each day a battle for survival. And when she nurses a man called Aleksandr, Cilka finds that despite everything that has happened to her, there is room in her heart for love.

Based on what is known of Cilka's time in Auschwitz, and on the experience of women in Siberian prison camps, Cilka's Journey is the breathtaking sequel to The Tattooist of Auschwitz. A powerful testament to the triumph of the human will in adversity, Cilka's Journey will make you weep, but it will also leave you with the remarkable story of one woman's fierce determination to survive, against all odds.

'She was the bravest person I ever met' - Lale Sokolov, The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Inspired by a remarkable true story, the unforgettable journey of five extraordinary women living in extraordinary and perilous times.

Alice Wright has travelled halfway across the world to escape her stifling life in England. Handsome American businessman Bennett Van Cleve represents a fresh start. But she soon realises that swapping the twitching curtains of suburbia for newlywed life in the wild mountains of Kentucky isn't the answer to her prayers. But maybe meeting Margery O'Hara is. The heart and backbone of the small community of Salt Lick, a woman who isn't afraid of anything or anyone, Margery is on a mission.

Enlisting Alice, along with three other women, all from very different backgrounds, to join her, the band of unlikely sisters battle the elements and unforgiving terrain - as well as brave all manner of dangers and social disapproval - to ride hundreds of miles a week to deliver books to isolated families. Transforming the lives of so many is all the impetus they need to take such risks.

And for Alice, her new job and blossoming friendships become an unexpected lifeline, providing her with the courage she needs to make some tough decisions about her marriage. Then a body is found in the mountains, rocking the close-knit community and tearing the women apart as one of them becomes the prime suspect. Can they pull together to overcome their greatest challenge yet?

A love letter to the power of books and literature and their ability to bring us together and deliver the truth, as well as a tribute to female friendship, The Giver of Stars is the book that Jojo Moyes was born to write.

'Beguiling... Murakami is brilliant at folding the humdrum alongside the supernatural; finding the magic that's nested in life's quotidian details' Guardian When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he holes up in the mountain home of a famous artist. The days drift by, spent painting, listening to music and drinking whiskey in the evenings. But then he discovers a strange painting in the attic and unintentionally begins a strange journey of self-discovery that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt and a haunted underworld.

A stunning work of imagination, Killing Commendatore is a surreal tale of love and loneliness, war and art.

`What a radical thing, these days, to have written a book so full of warmth and kindness ... Gorgeous' Max Porter, author of Lanny A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick A BBC Radio 4 'Book at Bedtime' An Observer Pick for 2019 One summer following the Second World War, Robert Appleyard sets out on foot from his Durham village. Sixteen and the son of a coal miner, he makes his way across the northern countryside until he reaches the former smuggling village of Robin Hood's Bay. There he meets Dulcie, an eccentric, worldly, older woman who lives in a ramshackle cottage facing out to sea.

Staying with Dulcie, Robert's life opens into one of rich food, sea-swimming, sunburn and poetry. The two come from different worlds, yet as the summer months pass, they form an unlikely friendship that will profoundly alter their futures.

'By an extraordinary act of the imagination we are transported into the inner world of a girl who, after brutal abuse as a slave to Nigerian jihadis, escapes and with dogged persistence begins to rebuild her shattered life. Girl is a courageous book about a courageous spirit.' - J.M. Coetzee Captured, abducted and married into Boko Haram, the narrator of this story witnesses and suffers the horrors of a community of men governed by a brutal code of violence. Barely more than a girl herself, she must soon learn how to survive as a woman with a child of her own. Just as the world around her seems entirely consumed by madness, bound for hell, she is offered an escape of sorts - but only into another landscape of trials and terrors amidst the unforgiving wilds of northeastern Nigeria, through the forest and beyond; a place where her traumas are met with the blinkered judgement of a society in denial. How do we love in a world that has lost its moorings? How can we comprehend the barbarism of our enemies, and learn forgiveness for atrocities committed in the name of ideology?

In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north west London lives the last day of his life.

A mother looks back on her early forays into matters of the human heart, considering the ways in which desire is always an act of negotiation, destruction, and self-invention.

A disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life, unable to move forward into a future that holds no place for him.

A teenage scion of the technocratic elite chases spectres through a premium virtual reality, trailed by a little girl with a runny nose and no surviving family.

We all take a much-needed break from this mess, on a package holiday where the pool's electric blue is ceaselessly replenished, while political and environmental collapse happen far away, to someone else.

Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a sharply alert and slyly prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.

THE INCREDIBLE NEW NOVEL FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR Uhtred of Bebbanburg is a man of his word.

An oath bound him to King Alfred. An oath bound him to AEthelflAEd. And now an oath will wrench him away from the ancestral home he fought so hard to regain. For Uhtred has sworn that on King Edward's death, he will kill two men. And now Edward is dying.

A violent attack drives Uhtred south with a small band of warriors, and headlong into the battle for kingship. Plunged into a world of shifting alliances and uncertain loyalties, he will need all his strength and guile to overcome the fiercest warrior of them all.

As two opposing Kings gather their armies, fate drags Uhtred to London, and a struggle for control that must leave one King victorious, and one dead. But fate - as Uhtred has learned to his cost - is inexorable. Wyrd bid ful arAEd. And Uhtred's destiny is to stand at the heart of the shield wall once again...

Three journeys. One road.

England, 1348. A gentlewoman is fleeing an odious arranged marriage, a Scottish proctor is returning to his monastery in Avignon and a handsome young ploughman in search of adventure is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers. All come together on the road to Calais.

Coming in their direction from across the Channel is the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the population of Northern Europe. As the journey unfolds, overshadowed by the archers' past misdeeds and clerical warnings of the imminent end of the world, the wayfarers must confront the nature of their loves and desires.

A tremendous feat of language and empathy, it summons a medieval world that is at once uncannily plausible, utterly alien and eerily reflective of our own. James Meek's extraordinary To Calais, In Ordinary Time is a novel about love, class, faith, loss, gender and desire - set against one of the biggest cataclysms of human history.

'Du Maurier-tastic' GUARDIAN 'Deliciously sinister' HEAT 'A clever, creepy read' SUNDAY EXPRESS Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken.

But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home.

Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralysed and almost entirely mute Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try and escape her past, but surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers that her new home may be just as dangerous as her last...

As the year 1349 approaches, the Black Death continues its devastating course across England. In Dorseteshire, the quarantined people of Develish question whether they are the only survivors. Guided by their beloved young mistress, Lady Anne, they wait, knowing that when their dwindling stores are finally gone they will have no choice but to leave. But where will they find safety in the desolate wasteland outside? One man has the courage to find out. Thaddeus Thurkell, a free-thinking, educated serf, strikes out in search of supplies and news. A compelling leader, he and his companions quickly throw off the shackles of serfdom and set their minds to ensuring Develish's future - and freedom for its people. But what use is freedom that cannot be gained lawfully? When Lady Anne and Thaddeus conceive an audacious plan to secure her people's independence, neither foresees the life-threatening struggle over power, money and religion that follows ... 'If you enjoy C.J. Sansom or Philippa Gregory, pick up this masterfully woven tale.' Better Reading 'Historical fiction at its finest - the suspense is rife, the clever layers of storytelling second to none.' Theresa Smith Writes 'Vividly readable.' Herald Sun

Carment is one of Australia's best-known plein air artists. It is his distinctive mark as a writer that he writes as he paints - from life - capturing the likeness of a particular place in time, remaining faithful to the moment when he sees something striking or strange. And just as his paintings and drawings are small, limited by what he can carry with him on his travels, so in his writing he is a miniaturist working on a large scale: the tone of his writing matches the style of his brushwork. Free-flowing, yet nuanced, it evokes the places he visits and the people and objects he encounters, friends and strangers, the homeless and the famous - farms, beaches, cottages, building sites, even typewriters and eggs and telegraph poles - each has its story.

This richly illustrated collection of Carment's essays about people and landscapes has been 30 years in the making. It covers the period he has lived in Womerah Lane in the inner-Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, while travelling the country as a plein air artist. Womerah Lane is composed of written pieces set in every state of mainland Australia, accompanied by paintings and drawings made in those places.

"Tom Carment's writing, like his art, seduces quietly: austere, highly articulate, always fresh, with a dry sense of the absurd. In this calm, modest register, he commands great territories." - Helen Garner

"Tom Carment's Womerah Lane is a lively and pensive personal history, chronicling 30 years of life and art from one of Australia's most well-known landscape artists... Womerah Lane is a rich study of contrasts, likely to appeal to readers with an appetite for Australian biography, the arcane of the everyday and the many (sensory) pleasures of landscape artwork." - Nathan Smith, Books+Publishing

The true story of the little-known mental-health pioneer who revolutionised how we see the defining problem of our era- anxiety.

Panic, depression, sorrow, guilt, disgrace, obsession, sleeplessness, low confidence, loneliness, agoraphobia ... Dr Claire Weekes knew how to treat them, but was dismissed as underqualified and overly populist by the psychiatric establishment. In a radical move, she had gone directly to the people. Her international bestseller Self Help for Your Nerves, first published in 1962 and still in print, helped tens of millions of people to overcome all of these, and continues to do so.

Weekes pioneered an anxiety treatment that is now at the cutting edge of modern psychotherapies. Her early explanation of fear, and its effect on the nervous system, is state of the art. Psychologists use her method, neuroscientists study the interaction between different fear circuits in the brain, and many psychiatrists are revisiting the mind-body connection that was the hallmark of her unique work. Face, accept, float, let time pass- hers was the invisible hand that rewrote the therapeutic manual.

This understanding of the biology of fear could not be more contemporary - 'acceptance' is the treatment du jour, and all mental-health professionals explain the phenomenon of fear in the same way she did so many years ago. However, most of them are unaware of the debt they have to a woman whose work has found such a huge public audience. This book is the first to tell that story, and to tell Weekes' own remarkable tale, of how a mistaken diagnosis of tuberculosis led to heart palpitations, beginning her fascinating journey to a practical treatment for anxiety that put power back in the hands of the individual.

'It's truly astonishing that Dr Claire Weekes is not a household name ... this book shines a light on her considerable achievements with great respect and meticulous detail.' -Leigh Sales 'By thinking outside the box, and exercising extraordinary clinical sensitivity, the brilliant physician Claire Weekes created a treatment protocol to the unending benefit of tens of millions of patients over the years.' -Dr David Barlow, professor emeritus of psychology and psychiatry at Boston University 'A vivid portrait of an intriguing woman ahead of her time, this is a story of hope, empowerment, and vindication.' -Gina Perry, author of Behind the Shock Machine and The Lost Boys.

In Other People's Houses publishing legend Hilary McPhee exchanges one hemisphere for another. Fleeing the aftermath of a failed marriage, she embarks on a writing project in the Middle East, for a member of the Hashemite royal family, a man she greatly respects. Here she finds herself faced with different kinds of exile, new kinds of banishment.

From apartments in Cortona and Amman and an attic in London, McPhee watches other women managing magnificently alone as she flounders through the mire of Extreme Loneliness.

Other People's Houses is a brutally honest memoir, funny, sad, full of insights into worlds to which she was given privileged access, and of the friendships which sustained her.

And ultimately, of course, this is the story of returning home, of picking up the pieces, and facing the music as her house and her life takes on new shapes.

'He was courageous. He was ambitious. He was skilled. He was visionary. He could be ruthless. He was someone born of a new nation. But he was of a time now long past. And yet in the language of a later generation it could be said he had the right stuff . . . Michael Molkentin captures [Ross Smith] brilliantly.' - Andy Thomas, NASA Astronaut (Retired) In the smouldering aftermath of the First World War a young Australian pilot and his crew prepare to attempt the inconceivable: a flight, halfway around the globe, from England to Australia. The 18,000 kilometre odyssey will take 28 days and test these men and their twin-engine biplane to the limit. It is a trans-continental feat that will change the world and bring the air age to Australia. It will also prove to be the culminating act in the extraordinary and tragically brief life of its commander, Captain Sir Ross Smith.

Raised on a remote sheep station in the dying days of Australia's colonial frontier, there was little in Ross Smith's childhood that suggested a future as one of the world's great pioneering aviators. He went to war in 1914, serving with the light horse at Gallipoli and in the Sinai before volunteering for the fledgling Australian Flying Corps. In a new dimension of warfare, Ross Smith survived two gruelling years of aerial combat over Palestine to emerge as one of the most skilled and highly decorated Australian pilots of the war. In 1919 he was a pilot on the first ever mission to survey an air route from Cairo to the East Indies, before gaining international fame as the winner of the government's GBP10,000 prize for leading the first aircrew to fly from England to Australia. His attempt to exceed this by circumnavigating the world by air in 1922 would end in disaster.

Drawing on the rich and extensive collection of Ross Smith's private papers, Anzac & Aviator tells, for the first time, the gripping story of a remarkable aviator, the extraordinary times in which he lived and the air race that changed the world.

'Standing with Lindbergh, Earhart and Kingsford Smith as one of the greatest pioneers of the air, Sir Ross Smith's life is brilliantly captured in this compelling biography.' - Richard Champion de Crespigny AM, bestselling author and captain of QF32

'David is a gateway to a history that we've so far denied and not embraced. In this country, he's more important than Ned Kelly.' Jack Thompson It's been almost fifty years since a teenage David Gulpilil illuminated screens worldwide with his breakout role in Walkabout. It was one of the first times we'd seen an Aboriginal person cast in a significant role and only four years after Holt's referendum to alter the constitution and give Indigenous people citizenship and, subsequently, the right to vote.

Gulpilil quickly became the face of the Indigenous world to white Australian audiences. Charisma. Good looks. A competent, strong, mysterious man starring in films ranging from Crocodile Dundee to Rabbit-Proof Fence.

But what has marked Gulpilil, despite his fame and popularity, is the feeling that he's been forever stuck between two worlds: a Yolngu man, a hunter, a tracker, who grew up in the bush in Arnhem Land outside any white influence; and a movie star flitting from movie sets to festivals.

Able to exist in both worlds, but never truly home.

From the author of the bestselling Wednesdays with Bob, Derek Rielly builds a narrative around his attempt to encapsulate the most beguiling and unconventional of Australian entertainers, observing Gulpilil's own attempt to find a place in the world. With interviews from notable icons and friends - such as Jack Thompson, Paul Hogan, Phillip Noyce, Craig Ruddy, George Gittoes, Gary Sweet and Damon Gameau - this book unriddles a famous enigma at last.

'He has an extraordinary presence, what ever that word means. It's very real. Some people have it and some people don't. And David has it - he knows how to feed the camera.' Jack Thompson

In 1978, Evan Pederick, a naive 22-year-old in the thrall of a radical religious movement, Ananda Marga, placed an enormous bomb outside Sydney's Hilton Hotel. It killed three people.

A decade later, Pederick confessed to this act of terrorism. But when one of his alleged accomplices was later acquitted, significant parts of Pederick's testimony were undermined and he was accused of being a 'fantasist'.

Conspiracy theories flooded in to fill the vacuum. Was it a plot by ASIO, rather than, as Pederick asserted, a plot to assassinate the Indian prime minister? In the absence of a Royal Commission or similar inquiry, mystery continues to shroud the deadliest terror attack on Australian soil.

Pederick, an Anglican priest, stands by his confession and testimony. Here is his story, told for the first time.

It is an extraordinary tale of guilt, remorse, renewal, and the search for forgiveness.

A revelatory portrait of one of the most talented, poised and respected Australian politicians, written by one of Australia's foremost biographers Senator Penny Wong is an extraordinary Australian politician. Resolute, self-possessed and a penetrating thinker on subjects from climate change to foreign affairs, she is admired by members of parliament and the public from across the political divide.

In this first-ever biography of Penny Wong, acclaimed journalist Margaret Simons traces her story- from her early life in Malaysia, to her student activism in Adelaide, to her time in the turbulent Rudd and Gillard governments, to her key role as a voice of reason in the polarising campaign to legalise same-sex marriage. What emerges is a picture of a leader for modern Australia, a cool-headed and cautious yet charismatic figure of piercing intelligence, with a family history linking back to Australia's colonial settlers and to the Asia-Pacific.

Drawing on exclusive interviews with Penny Wong and her Labor colleagues, parliamentary opponents, and close friends and family, this is a scintillating insight into an Australian politician without precedence.

At 83 years old, Valerie Taylor has lived a big, bold adventurous life.

Born in Australia, Valerie spent a great deal of her childhood in New Zealand. A talented artist, she dropped out of school when she contracted polio and was saved by Sister Elizabeth Kenny's treatment plan; it was two years before she could walk unaided. When Valerie was fifteen, she found work as an animator and moved back to Australia with her family. All the while she thrived on being close to the ocean, and was a keen spear fisher.

In the 1950s, she met Ron Taylor and then her real adventures started. Together they sailed all over the world, photographing and filming their travels for magazines, TV and movies, and making many documentaries. Valerie and Ron became interested in conservation, and focused on sharks in particular. They did all the shark work on Jaws, and James Cameron decided he wanted to become a filmmaker because of Valerie and her husband.

Valerie is working with the brilliant Ben Mckelvey to share her story of falling in love with the ocean and with her husband, Ron. From trainee animator to Spielberg, from JAWS to BLUE LAGOON, this is the remarkable story of an incredible woman.

'Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?' Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms.

Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don't understand what a shop is, home invasions during the Wigtown Book Festival and Granny, his neurotic Italian assistant who likes digging for river mud to make poultices.

The Diary of a Bookseller (soon to be a major TV series) introduced us to the joys and frustrations of life lived in books. Sardonic and sympathetic in equal measure, Confessions of a Bookseller will reunite readers with the characters they've come to know and love.

'Coming from Glasgow, it's weird, I don't really tell jokes, like Irish jokes and all that. I tell wee stories. And some of them don't even have punchlines. But you'll get used to it as the night goes on, and on, and on, and on and on...' In December 2018, after 50-years of belly-laughs, energy, outrage and enjoyment, Billy Connolly announced his retirement from stand-up comedy. It had been an extraordinary career.

When he first started out in the late Sixties, Billy played the banjo in the folk clubs of Glasgow. Between songs, he would improvise a bit, telling anecdotes from the Clyde shipyard where he worked. In the process, he made all kinds of discoveries about what audiences found funny, from his own exaggerated body movements to the power of speaking explicitly about sex. He began to understand the craft of great storytelling too. Soon the songs became shorter and the monologues longer, and Billy quickly became recognised as one of the most exciting comedians of his generation.

Billy's routines always felt spontaneous. He improvised, embellished and digressed as he went: a two-minute anecdote could become a 20-minute routine by the next night of a tour. And he brought a beautiful sense of the absurd to his shows as he riffed on holidays, alcohol, the crucifixion, or naked bungee jumping.

But Billy's comedy could be laced with anger too. He hated pretentiousness and called out hypocrisy where ever he saw it. He loved to shock, and his startling appearance gave him license to say anything he damn well pleased about sex, politics or religion. It was only because he was so likeable that he got it away. Billy had the popular touch. His comedy spanned generations and different social tribes in a way that few others have ever managed.

TALL TALES AND WEE STORIES brings together the very best of Billy's storytelling for the first time and includes his most famous routines including, THE LAST SUPPER, JOJOBA SHAMPOO, INCONTINENCE PANTS and SHOUTING AT WILDEBEEST. With an introduction and original illustrations by Billy throughout, it is an inspirational, energetic and riotously funny read, and a fitting celebration of our greatest ever comedian.

The remarkable life of Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret who was also a Maid of Honour at the Queen's Coronation - and is a character in THE CROWN this spring. Anne Glenconner reveals the real events behind The Crown as well as her own life of drama, tragedy and courage, with the wonderful wit and extraordinary resilience which define her.

Anne Glenconner has been close to the Royal Family since childhood. Eldest child of the 5th Earl of Leicester, she was, as a daughter, described as 'the greatest disappointment' by her family as she was unable to inherit. Her childhood home Holkham Hall is one of the grandest estates in England. Bordering Sandringham the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were frequent playmates.

From Maid of Honour at the Queen's Coronation to Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret, Lady Glenconner is a unique witness to royal history, as well as an extraordinary survivor of a generation of aristocratic women trapped without inheritance and burdened with social expectations.

She married the charismatic but highly volatile Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, who became the owner of Mustique. Together they turned the island into a paradise for the rich and famous, including Mick Jagger and David Bowie, and it became a favourite retreat for Princess Margaret.

But beneath the glitz and glamour there has also lurked tragedy. On Lord Glenconner's death in 2010 he left his fortune to a former employee. And of their five children, two grown-up sons died, while a third son had to be nursed back from a coma by Anne, after having suffered a near fatal accident.

Anne Glenconner writes with extraordinary wit, generosity and courage and she exposes what life was like in her gilded cage, revealing the role of her great friendship with Princess Margaret, and the freedom she can now finally enjoy in later life. She will appear as a character in the new series of THE CROWN this spring.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat... but 1.4 million NHS staff are heading off to work. In this perfect present for anyone who has ever set foot in a hospital, Adam Kay delves back into his diaries for a hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking peek behind the blue curtain at Christmastime.

Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas is a love letter to all those who spend their festive season on the front line, removing babies and baubles from the various places they get stuck, at the most wonderful time of the year.

LOUIS THEROUX: 'For anyone who enjoyed HILLBILLY ELEGY or EDUCATED, UNFOLLOW is an essential text' NICK HORNBY: 'A beautiful, gripping book about a singular soul, and an unexpected redemption' JON RONSON: 'Her journey - from Westboro to becoming one of the most empathetic, thoughtful, humanistic writers around - is exceptional and inspiring' It was an upbringing in many ways normal. A loving home, shared with squabbling siblings, overseen by devoted parents. Yet in other ways it was the precise opposite: a revolving door of TV camera crews and documentary makers, a world of extreme discipline, of siblings vanishing in the night.

Megan Phelps-Roper was raised in the Westboro Baptist Church - the fire-and-brimstone religious sect at once aggressively homophobic and anti-Semitic, rejoiceful for AIDS and natural disasters, and notorious for its picketing the funerals of American soldiers. From her first public protest, aged five, to her instrumental role in spreading the church's invective via social media, her formative years brought their difficulties. But being reviled was not one of them. She was preaching God's truth. She was, in her words, 'all in'.

In November 2012, at the age of twenty-six, she left the church, her family, and her life behind.

UNFOLLOW is a story about the rarest thing of all: a person changing their mind. It is a fascinating insight into a closed world of extreme belief, a biography of a complex family, and a hope-inspiring memoir of a young woman finding the courage to find compassion for others, as well as herself.

In 1994, fledgling journalist Louis Theroux was given a one-off gig on Michael Moore's TV Nation to present a segment on apocalyptic religious sects. Gawky, socially awkward and totally unqualified, his first reaction to this exciting opportunity was panic, but he'd always been drawn to off-beat characters, so maybe his enthusiasm would carry the day. Or, you know, maybe it wouldn't.

In Gotta Get Theroux This, Louis takes the reader on a joyous journey through his life and unexpectedly successful career. Nervously accepting the BBC's offer of his own series, he went on to create an award-winning documentary style that has seen him immersed in worlds as diverse as racist US militias and secretive pro-wrestlers, the violent gangs of Johannesburg and extreme drinkers in London. Arguably his biggest challenge was corralling celebrities in his When Louis Met series, with UK entertainer Jimmy Savile proving most elusive. Blindsided when the sexual abuse revelations about Savile came to light, Louis was to reflect again on the nature of the evil he had spent decades uncovering.

Filled with wry observation, larger-than-life characters and self-deprecating humour, this is Louis at his insightful and honest best.

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.

The British plan to settle Australia was a high-risk venture. We now take it for granted that the first colony was the basis of one of the most successful nations in the world today. But in truth, the New World of the 18th century was dotted with failed colonies, and New South Wales nearly joined them.

The motley crew of unruly marines and bedraggled convicts who arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 in leaky boats nearly starved to death. They could easily have been murdered by hostile locals, been overwhelmed by an attack from French or Spanish expeditions, or brought undone by the Castle Hill uprising of 1804. Yet through fortunate decisions, a few remarkably good leaders, and most of all good luck, Sydney survived and thrived.

Bestselling historian David Hill tells the story of the first three decades of Britain's earliest colony in Australia in a fresh and compelling way.

'David Hill captures Australia's past in a very readable way.' The Weekly Times David Hill is the author of eight books, including the bestselling 1788: The Brutal Truth of the First Fleet, The Forgotten Children, The Great Race and The Making of Australia. He has held numerous executive appointments in his long and successful career, including as managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, chairman of the Australian Football Association, and chief executive of the State Rail Authority. Since 2011 he has been the manager of an archaeological study of the ancient Greek city of Troizen.

Not many ships' cats have even one memorial statue, let alone six. But Trim does, including one outside Euston Station in London, proudly unveiled by Prince William on the bicentenary of Matthew Flinders's death - 19 July 2014.

Trim was the ship's cat who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his voyages to circumnavigate and map the coastline of Australia from 1801 to 1803. He lived quite the adventurous life. As a small kitten he fell overboard while at sea but managed to swim back to the vessel and climb back on board by scaling a rope. This cemented his position as Flinders's beloved companion, and together they survived a voyage around the world, the circumnavigation of Australia and a shipwreck. When Flinders was imprisoned by the French in Mauritius in 1803 Trim shared his captivity until one day he mysteriously disappeared - which heartbreakingly Flinders attributed to his being stolen and eaten by a hungry slave.

Trim, The Cartographer's Cat is an ode to this much-loved ship's cat, which will warm the heart of any cat lover. The first part of the book reproduces Flinders' own whimsical tribute to Trim, written while in captivity in the early 1800s, with added `friendly footnotes' to provide some background to Flinders's numerous literary allusions and nautical terms. Next the book discusses where Flinders was when he wrote his tribute and why, and what his letters and journals from that time tell us about his `sporting, affectionate and useful companion'. Finally, we learn what Trim's views on all of this might have been, in a fun and fanciful observation on his premature epitaph.

Accompanying all of this are beautiful maps, historical artworks, quirky original illustrations by Ad Long and excerpts from Flinders' original script, showing his beautiful handwriting. This book will make a unique and treasured gift for Flinders fans, Trim fans and cat lovers around the world.

What drives veterans, military experts and forensic investigators to dedicate years to search for and identify the remains of fallen warriors? What does it mean to the families of the dead to be able to lay them to rest?

Over thirty five thousand Australian soldiers and airmen are still listed as Missing In Action from the wars of the 20th Century.

Telling the moving story of the determination and skill of the searchers who apply old-fashioned detective work and cutting-edge science to solve the mysteries of the missing and bring peace of mind and solace to their families and to all those who serve, Where Soldiers Lie follows these investigators and scientists on their mission to locate and identify unrecovered war casualties and to unlock their secrets. From the jungles of Vietnam, where one man led a decade-long battle to recover and bring home the final six, to Korea, Papua New Guinea and the fields of the Somme, Flanders and Fromelles, Where Soldiers Lie is a deeply human story of perseverance, luck and resolution, a story of incredible determination against difficult odds, of exacting forensic analysis and painstaking detective work, to uncover and identify the remains of Australian soldiers, in battlefield over the decades, and to bring their remains home.

Powerful, moving and compelling reading.

Lose yourself in the vast sewer networks that lie beneath the world's great cities - past and present. Let detailed archival plans, maps and photographs guide you through these subterranean labyrinths - previously accessible only to their builders, engineers and, perhaps, the odd rogue explorer. This execrable exploration traces the evolution of waste management from the ingenious infra-structures of the ancient world to the seeping cesspits and festering open sewers of the medieval period. It investigates and celebrates the work of the civil engineers whose pioneering integrated sewer systems brought to a close the devastating cholera epidemics of the mid-19th century and continue to serve a vastly increased population today. And let's not forget those giant fatbergs clogging our underground arteries, or the storm-surge super-structures of tomorrow.

The penultimate volume of Peter Ackroyd's masterful History of England series, Dominion begins in 1815 as national glory following the Battle of Waterloo gives way to post-war depression, spanning the last years of the Regency to the death of Queen Victoria in January 1901.

In it, Ackroyd takes us from the accession of the profligate George IV whose government was steered by Lord Liverpool, who was firmly set against reform, to the reign of his brother, William IV, the 'Sailor King', whose reign saw the modernization of the political system and the abolition of slavery.

But it was the accession of Queen Victoria, aged only eighteen, that sparked an era of enormous innovation. Technological progress - from steam railways to the first telegram - swept the nation and the finest inventions were showcased at the first Great Exhibition in 1851. The emergence of the middle classes changed the shape of society and scientific advances changed the old pieties of the Church of England, and spread secular ideas across the nation. But though intense industrialization brought boom times for the factory owners, the working classes were still subjected to poor housing, long working hours and dire poverty.

It was a time that saw a flowering of great literature, too. As the Georgian era gave way to that of Victoria, readers could delight not only in the work of Byron, Shelley and Wordsworth but also the great nineteenth-century novelists: the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Thackeray, and, of course, Dickens, whose work has become synonymous with Victorian England.

Nor was Victorian expansionism confined to Britain alone. By the end of Victoria's reign, the Queen was also an Empress and the British Empire dominated much of the globe. And, as Ackroyd shows in this richly populated, vividly told account, Britannia really did seem to rule the waves.

The Europeans is both a highly original, panoramic account of how in the 19th century huge aesthetic, economic, technological and legal changes created, for the first time, a genuinely pan-European culture - and an intimate story of a great singer, Pauline Viardot, a great writer, Ivan Turgenev, and a great connoisseur, Pauline's husband Louis. Their passionate, ambitious lives caught up an astonishing array of writers, composers and painters all trying to navigate through an ever more prosperous, demanding and international culture. This culture - through trains, telegraphs and printing - allowed artists of all kinds to create a precarious but real living, shuttling back and forth, from the British Isles to Imperial Russia.

The Europeans is Orlando Figes' masterpiece. Surprising, beautifully written, it describes huge events through intimate details, little-known stories and through the lens of Turgenev and the Viardots' touching, strange love triangle. Events which we now see as central to European high culture are made completely fresh, allowing the reader to revel in the sheer precariousness with which the great salons, premiers and bestsellers came into existence.

George Seddon was renowned for championing a 'sense of place', giving that phrase a uniquely Australian substance. He was a connoisseur of landscapes, from the rugged Snowy Mountains to the humble domestic backyard. With wit and deep knowledge, he radically rethought our relationship with the environment, considering everything from water to mining, suburbs to wilderness.

Seddon was an extraordinary polymath- a professor of geology, the history and philosophy of science, and environmental science, who also taught in departments of English and philosophy. He broke new ground in urban planning, landscape architecture and environmental conservation. The highlights of his wide-ranging and always illuminating work are selected here by Andrea Gaynor, with a lively introduction by historian Tom Griffiths.

'Seddon's vision has enduring significance today- he made life better, planners more thoughtful and landscapes more beautiful; he helped us see our country from the inside. He was a maverick, an original. In his boyish way he encouraged us to wag school from time to time, to climb fences, to play, and to challenge what we read with what we feel, hear and see.' TOM GRIFFITHS 'George Seddon's words are beacons.' TIM FLANNERY

Where does prosperity come from, and how does it spread through a society? What role does innovation play in creating prosperity and why do some eras see the fruits of innovation spread more democratically, and others, including our own, find the opposite? In Capitalism in America, Alan Greenspan, legendary Chair of the Federal Reserve, distils a lifetime of grappling with these questions into a profound assessment of the decisive drivers of the US economy over the course of its history. In partnership with Economist journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge, he unfolds a tale of vast landscapes, titanic figures and triumphant breakthroughs as well as terrible moral failings. Every crucial American economic debate is here - from the role of slavery in the antebellum Southern economy to America's violent swings in its openness to global trade.

At heart, the authors argue, America's genius has been its enthusiasm for the effects of creative destruction, the ceaseless churn of the old giving way to the new. Although messy and painful, it has lifted the overwhelming majority of Americans to standards of living unimaginable even a few generations past. At a time when productivity has again stalled, stirring populist furies, and the continuing of American pre-eminence seems uncertain, Capitalism in America explains why America has worked so successfully in the past and been such a gigantic engine of economic growth.

London- a settlement founded by the Romans, occupied by the Saxons, conquered by the Danes and ruled by the Normans. This unremarkable place - not even included in the Domesday Book - became a medieval maze of alleys and courtyards, later to be chequered with grand estates of Georgian splendour. It swelled with industry and became the centre of the largest empire in history. And rising from the rubble of the Blitz, it is now one of the greatest cities in the world.

From the prehistoric occupants of the Thames Valley to the preoccupied commuters of today, Simon Jenkins brings together the key events, individuals and trends in London's history to create a matchless portrait of the capital. Based in part on his own witness of the events that shaped the post-war city, and with his trademark colour and authority, he shows above all how London has taken shape over more than two thousand years. This is narrative history at its finest, from the most ardent protector of our heritage.

'An absolutely riveting book - reading it makes you intelligent, full of brilliant anecdotes - and very hungry indeed.' - Richard Curtis 'This brilliantly conceived and well-researched book is a source of real delight.' - Dr Annie Gray, BBC Radio 4's The Kitchen Cabinet 'Superbly written, a complete joy to read, and just about the perfect present for anyone even vaguely interested in food.' - Mark Diacono 'A gastronomic delight. You can savour it a course at a time, or you may consume the whole banquet in one sitting. It's delicious either way - utterly scrumptious, in fact!' - Mike Leigh This fascinating miscellany of menus from around the world will educate as well as entertain, delighting both avid foodies and the general reader.

Each menu provides an insight into its particular historical moment - from the typical food on offer in a nineteenth-century workhouse to the opulence of George IV's gargantuan coronation dinner. Some menus are linked with a specific and unforgettable event such as The Hindenburg's last flight menu or the variety of meals on offer for First, Second and Third Class passengers on board RMS Titanic, while others give an insight into sport, such as the 1963 FA Cup Final Dinner or transport and travel with the luxury lunch on board the Orient Express. Also included are literary occasions like Charles' Dickens 1868 dinner at Delmonicos in New York as well as the purely fictional and fantastical fare of Ratty's picnic in The Wind in the Willows.

A sweeping, sobering account (New York Times Book Review) from one of our leading historians, These Truths is nothing short of a masterpiece of American history (NPR).

The challenge of retelling five hundred years of American history in a single volume has been so daunting that hardly any historian has attempted it in decades.

When Jill Lepore's New York Times best-selling These Truths appeared in 2018, critics quickly hailed it as a classic?appealing not only to academics, but to thousands of astonished general readers. Picking up the book out of a feeling of civic duty, they opened its pages to discover a different kind of writing, and what the Washington Post called an honest reckoning with America's past ?a story filled with women and men and people of every color and religion, one that wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change.

With These Truths, Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.

70 illustrations

The century spanning the wars of the roses and the reigns of the Tudor kings was a volatile time of battle and bloodshed, execution and unexpected illness. Life could be nasty, brutish and short. Some met their end in battle, others were dragged to the block, losing everything for daring to aspire to the throne. Some were lost in mysterious circumstances, like Edward V, the elder of the Princes in the Tower. But the majority of these young men died in their teens, on the brink of manhood. They represent the lost paths of history, the fascinating what-ifs of the houses of York and Tudor. They also diverted the route of dynastic inheritance, with all the complicated implications that could bring, passing power into some unlikely hands. This book examines ten such figures in detail, using their lives to build a narrative of this savage century. AUTHOR: Amy Licence is a best-selling author and historian with seventeen books to her name. She has written for The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Huffington Post, BBC History Magazine and writes historical fiction. She appeared in Philippa Gregory's BBC2 documentary The Real White Queen and Her Rivals in 2013 and Yesterday Channel's Private Lives of the Tudors in 2016. 16 b/w illustrations

He fought Napoleon's army and survived.

He was sent to the gallows and escaped the noose.

Now he is in chains and on his way to the other side of the world. What happens next will become one of the most remarkable survival stories in history.

The 19th century has just begun. The world is at war. England, ruled by a mad king, is exiling thousands of criminals to an old land that has become its newest dumping ground.

One of those prisoners is William Buckley, barely 21, a former soldier sentenced to life for stealing two small pieces of cloth. He's a giant for his times. But it's not just his towering frame that sets him apart. It's his desire for freedom that will make his story so unique - even in an era famous for outrageous acts of bravery and heroism.

On a moonlit night Buckley escapes and disappears into the Australian bush. Discovered and adopted by an aboriginal tribe who regard him as a ghost, he is initiated into their rich and complex culture. Given up for dead by his white captors, he will not be seen again for more than 30 years until he emerges one day...carrying a spear, dressed in animal skins and having forgotten the English language.

Buckley's Chance is a profound journey into a turning point in history where cultures clash, bitter rivals go to war and the body count mounts.

It's also the story of a man who refuses to be held down.

A man prepared to defy all odds and take a chance.

Buckley's chance.

Charles Booth's landmark survey of life in late-19th-century London, published for the first time in one volume.

In the late 19th century, Charles Booth's landmark social and economic survey found that 35% of Londoners were living in abject poverty. Between 1886 and 1903, Booth's team of social investigators interviewed Londoners from all walks of life, recording their comments, together with their own unrestrained remarks and statistical information, in 450 notebooks. Their findings formed the basis of Booth's colour-coded social mapping (from vicious and semi-criminal to wealthy) and his Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People of London. Organized into 12 geographical sections, Charles Booth's London Poverty Maps presents the meticulously hand-coloured preparatory and final printed social mapping of London. Accompanying the colour-coded maps are selected reproductions of pages from the original notebooks, containing anecdotes related by Londoners of every trade, class, creed and nationality together with observations by Booth's interviewers that reveal much about their social class and moral views. An introduction by Mary S. Morgan clarifies the aims and methodology of Booth's survey, and six themed essays by experts in the field contextualize the survey's findings, illustrated by evocative period photographs.

Completing the re-evaluation of Booth's seminal social survey are newly rendered infographics presenting the raw statistics relating to living conditions,employment status and poverty levels for each geographical section of London.

After the Second World War, Germany was an international pariah. Today, it has become a beacon of the Western world. But what makes this extraordinary nation tick?

On Germany tells the story of a country reborn, from defeat in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the painstaking reunification of 'the two Germanies', and the Republic's return to the world stage as an economic colossus and European leader. Giles MacDonogh restores these momentous events of world history to their German context, from the food and drink that accompanied them to the deep-rooted provincialism behind the national story.

Full of vivid and often whimsical vignettes of German life, this is a Germanophile's homage to the culture and people of a country he has known for decades.

This volume offers an introduction to the life and work of the 3rd-century-AD Greco-Roman senator and historian Cassius Dio, whose work, although imperfectly preserved in 80 books, is of fundamental importance to our understanding of Roman history. It is said that Dio is not one of the best ancient historians and his Roman history, due to its sheer size, is often imprecise and superficial in its analysis. It has also been assumed that there was no political agenda behind the work, and that Dio's principal value to us is as a reliable copyist, who mediated the works of other, and better sources.

This introduction to his life and work offers a different picture. Here, Dio is presented through his Greek cultural lens as a politician with a clear vision for how Roman politics and government should be organized. Carefully selected examples will be the starting points for fresh critical analysis of Dio's work and its legacy, both in antiquity and through to the Enlightenment.

The book assumes no familiarity with Cassius Dio, his writing or context. All text will be translated and suggested further reading will point readers towards avenues for more detailed study.

Women must quit their jobs when they marry. They are barred from trade unions and universities. Their husbands can legally rape them. And they are not allowed to vote.

This could be the reality in Australia today - if it weren't for the many women who, over more than a century of activism, fought for change.

In this passionate and timely account, Emily Maguire charts a course through the history of Australian feminism - from the First Wave to the Fourth, from suffragists to Riot Grrrls, from equal pay to #metoo. Along the way, she pays tribute to those who've spoken up and taken action in the face of ridicule, dismissal and violence.

This Is What a Feminist Looks Like shows us how we got to where we are today - and reminds us that some battles must be fought over and over again.

THE TOP 2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Enchanting' Sunday Times 'Driven by curiosity, freighted with mystery and tempered by chance, wonders gleam from every page' Melissa Harrison 'Brilliant. No one has looked at these odd corners since Sherlock Holmes' Sunday Telegraph 'The very best books that deal with the past are love letters to their subject, and the very best of those are about subjects that love their authors in return. Such books are very rare, but this is one' Ian Mortimer 'Fascinating. There is nothing that Maiklem does not know about the history of the river or the thingyness of things' Guardian 'A treasure. One of the best books I've read in years' Tracy Borman Mudlark (/`mAdla;k/) noun A person who scavenges for usable debris in the mud of a river or harbour Lara Maiklem has scoured the banks of the Thames for over fifteen years, in pursuit of the objects that the river unearths: from Neolithic flints to Roman hair pins, medieval buckles to Tudor buttons, Georgian clay pipes to Victorian toys. These objects tell her about London and its lost ways of life.

Moving from the river's tidal origins in the west of the city to the point where it meets the sea in the east, Mudlarking is a search for urban solitude and history on the River Thames, which Lara calls the longest archaeological site in England.

As she has discovered, it is often the tiniest objects that tell the greatest stories.

Who are the English? Their language and culture have had an impact on the modern world out of all proportion to the size of their homeland. But what do we really understand about their ancestry? Traditionally they have been seen as the descendants of those Germanic peoples who poured into Britain after the Roman legions departed, today known as the Anglo-Saxons. Alternative interpretations have questioned this picture, or suggested complications. At last, the astonishing progress made in extracting and analysing ancient DNA means that theories can be tested empirically, shedding new light on the movement and migrations of peoples in the past.

Skilfully and accessibly blending together results from this cutting-edge DNA technology with new research from archaeology and linguistics, Jean Manco reveals a long and adventurous journey before a word of English was spoken. Going beyond a narrow focus on the Anglo-Saxon period, she probes into the deep origins of the Germani and their kin, and extends the story to the language of Shakespeare, taken to the first British colony in America. The result is an exciting new history of the English people, and a ground-breaking analysis of their development.

For word nerds, language loons, and grammar geeks, an impassioned and informative literary leap into the wonders of the Greek language. Here are nine ways Greek can transform your relationship to time and to those around you, nine reflections on the language of Sappho, Plato, and Thucydides, and its relevance to our lives today, nine chapters that will leave readers with a new passion for a very old language, nine epic reasons to love Greek.

The Ingenious Language is a love song dedicated to the language of history's greatest poets, philosophers, adventurers, lovers, adulterers, and generals. Greek, as Marcolongo explains in her buoyant and entertaining prose, is unsurpassed in its beauty and expressivity, but it can also offer us a way seeing the world and our place in it in new ways. She takes readers on an astonishing journey, at the end of which, while it may still be Greek to you, you'll have nine reasons to be glad it is.

No batteries or prior knowledge of Greek required!

This is a book for all Australians.

Since the Uluru Statement from the Heart was formed in 2017, Thomas Mayor has travelled around the country to promote its vision of a better future for Indigenous Australians. He's visited communities big and small, often with the Uluru Statement canvas rolled up in a tube under his arm.

Through the story of his own journey and interviews with 20 key people, Thomas taps into a deep sense of our shared humanity. The voices within these chapters make clear what the Uluru Statement is and why it is so important. And Thomas hopes you will be moved to join them, along with the growing movement of Australians who want to see substantive constitutional change.

Thomas believes that we will only find the heart of our nation when the First peoples - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders - are recognised with a representative Voice enshrined in the Australian Constitution.

'Thomas's compelling work is full of Australian Indigenous voices that should be heard. Read this book, listen to them, and take action.' - Danny Glover, actor and humanitarian

The White Horse at Uffington is an icon of the English landscape - a sleek, almost abstract figure 120 yards long which was carved into the green turf of the spectacular chalk scarp of the North Wessex Downs in the early first millennium bc. For centuries antiquarians, travellers and local people speculated about the age of the Horse, who created it and why. Was it a memorial to King Alfred the Great's victory over the heathen Danes, an emblem of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers or a prehistoric banner, announcing the territory of a British tribe? Or was the Horse an actor in an elaborate prehistoric ritual, drawing the sun across the sky? The rich history of this ancient figure and its surroundings can help us understand how people have created and lived in the Downland landscape, which has inspired artists, poets and writers including Eric Ravilious, John Betjeman and J.R.R. Tolkien. The White Horse itself is most remarkable because it is still here. People have cared for it and curated it for centuries, even millennia. In that time the meaning of the Horse has changed, yet it has remained a symbol of continuity and is a myth for modern times.

When the towers fell on September 11, 2001, nowhere were the reverberations more powerfully felt than at Langley. Almost overnight, an intelligence organization converted itself into a weaponized warfighting machine, one that raised questions about how far America would go to pursue al-Qa'eda. Now, nearly two decades later, ex-CIA executive and media pundit Philip Mudd comes forward with a never-before-told account of the 9/11 story, one that illuminates the profound impact that enhanced interrogation techniques and other initiatives known internally as The Program took on those who administered them. With unprecedented access to officials at the highest levels-including Director George Tenet-Mudd goes beyond the 2014 Senate report to show us what life was really like at the CIA prisons and why interrogators were forced to make decisions that they still ponder today. As troubling as it is revelatory, Black Site shows us the tragedy and triumph of the CIA during its most difficult hour.

Where are the tombs of Alexander the Great or Cleopatra? Both rulers were buried in Egypt, but their tombs have never been found despite years of intensive research and excavation. Yet we have tantalizing clues. Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt describes the quest for these and other great `missing' tombs - those we know existed, but which have not yet been identified. It also discusses key moments of discovery that have yielded astonishing finds and created the archetypal image of the archaeologist poised at the threshold of a tomb left untouched for millennia.

In this gripping account, Chris Naunton explains the mysteries of the missing tombs and presents all the evidence, skilfully unravelling the tangled threads surrounding the burials of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten and his son Tutankhamun, and the burial place of Imhotep, architect of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, among others. Could other such tombs lie undiscovered in the Valley of the Kings? In fact, the Valley almost certainly does guard hidden treasures. Amazing finds of unsuspected tombs continue to occur there and elsewhere in Egypt, making headlines worldwide - all are covered in this book.

As well as immersing the reader, step by step, in the action of the search and the thrill of discovery, the book also explores the reasons why tombs remain such a central part of both the popular perception of Egyptology and the continuing allure of ancient Egypt.

In early 1461, a seventeen-year-old boy won a battle on a freezing morning in the Welsh marches, and claimed the crown of England as Edward IV, first king of the usurping house of York. The country was in need of a new hero. Magnetic, narcissistic, Edward found himself on the throne, and alongside him his two younger brothers- the unstable, petulant George, Duke of Clarence, and the boy who would emerge from his shadow, Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

Charismatic, able and ambitious, the brothers would become the figureheads of a spectacular ruling dynasty, one that laid the foundations for a renewal of English royal power. Yet a web of grudges and resentments grew between them, generating a destructive sequence of conspiracy, rebellion, deposition, fratricide, usurpation and regicide. The house of York's brutal end came on 22 August 1485 at Bosworth Field, with the death of the youngest brother, now Richard III, at the hands of a new usurper, Henry Tudor.

The house of York should have been the dynasty that the Tudors became. Its tragedy was that it devoured itself.

Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics since Boris Yeltsin relinquished the presidency in his favour in May 2000. He served two terms as president, before himself relinquishing the post to his prime minister, Dimitri Medvedev, only to return to presidential power for a third time in 2012.

Putin's rule, whether as president or prime minister, has been marked by a steady increase in domestic repression and international assertiveness. Despite this, there have been signs of liberal growth and Putin - and Russia - now faces a far from certain future.

In Kremlin Winter, Robert Service, acclaimed biographer of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky and one of our finest historians of modern Russia, brings his deep understanding of that country to bear on the man who leads it. He reveals a premier who cannot take his supremacy for granted, yet is determined to impose his will not only on his closest associates but on society at large. It is a riveting insight into power politics as Russia faces a blizzard of difficulties both at home and abroad.

How to Draw a Map is a fascinating meditation on the centuries-old art of map-making, from the first astronomical maps to the sophisticated GPS guides of today.

Maps have influenced humanity in many unexpected ways: life, death, sexual reproduction, espionage, war and peace. How to Draw a Map traces the story of mapmaking - cartography - from the first scratchings on the cave wall to the detailed high-tech 'navigator'. This is the story of human conceptions, often misconceptions, of our world. It is also a very personal story about a mapmaker's journey through life - the exciting new perspectives and the occasional misadventures.

Over the last 5,000 years societies and empires have risen and fallen; most, if not all, attempt to record their own visions of our world. In the 15th century, Europeans developed a global reach with their oceanic ships, exploring outward into the world, revealing new possibilities, peoples and opportunities. Mapmakers recorded this journey, revealing to us a window into past triumphs and disasters. The story continues into our own day when diplomats carve up our globe, presenting what we now see as the 'modern' world.

In How to Draw a Map, father and son cartographers Alexander and Malcolm Swanston demonstrate the skill, creativity and care involved in the timeless art of creating maps - and what these artefacts reveal about the legion of mapmakers who went before us.

Between December 1943 and August 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ignited the Cold War, a superpower rivalry that would dominate the world over half a century, by building an atomic bomb and excluding their Russian allies. Peter Watson tells the pulse-pounding story of how two atomic physicists tried to counter this in two very different ways. While Niels Bohr sought to convince President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to share their nuclear knowledge with Joseph Stalin, nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs, a German Communist emigre to Britain, was leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets in a rival attempt to ensure parity between the superpowers. Neither succeeded in preventing the World War II allies from unleashing the atom bomb on the world.

Fallout proves that the atomic bomb was not needed, and was made as a result of a series of flawed decisions. The Americans did not tell the UK that the atomic research was compromised by Soviet spies; the British did not tell the Americans that in 1943 they knew for sure that Germany did not have a nuclear bomb program. Neither country admitted to the scientists developing the bomb that it would never be used to counter the (non-existent) German nuclear threat. Had the scientists known, many of them would have refused to complete work on the bomb.

This story shows how politicians fatally failed to understand the nature of atomic science and, in so doing, exposed the world needlessly to great danger, a danger that is still very much with us.

From the dawn of history to the death of Cleopatra, ancient Egypt was home to larger-than-life personalities. Across one hundred lives, Toby Wilkinson explores the true character and diversity of human experience in the ancient world's greatest civilization. Some of those profiled are famous: pharaohs and queens such as Akhenaten, Nefertiti, Ramesses II and Tiye. Others are lesser known but equally engaging: Imhotep, architect of the first pyramid; Perniankhu, the court dwarf; and the royal sculptor Bak. Equally illuminating are the lives of commoners, so rarely given their own voice: ordinary men and women who include a doctor, a dentist, a housewife, a musician - and a serial criminal.

The success story of the British royal family can be laid at the door of Prince Albert, who, after his death in 1861, turned into a man who could do no wrong. His statues were to be seen all over the Empire. Albert Halls, Albert Squares, Albert Streets filled every English-speaking town, and many of the towns in India.

In this exhaustively researched and definitive biography, A. N. Wilson reveals Prince Albert to be a man of prodigious gifts. Not only was he politically astute, he had administrative gifts which could have made him a great general. He was scientifically informed. He understood, and was enthused by, modern technology. He was a knowledgeable art collector. He was a musician and composer. He was the father of a family.

Between them, Victoria and Albert rescued the British monarchy from grave crisis and established the kind of country Britain would become over the next century. Prince Albert is a towering achievement by a writer at the height of his powers.

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER THE OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT.

'Fear is a meticulously researched account of a White House and a president in financial, legal and personal disorder...essential reading...' Daily Mail 'I think you've always been fair.' President Donald J. Trump, in a call to Bob Woodward, August 14, 2018 'The sheer weight of anecdotes depicts a man with no empathy and a pathological capacity for lying.' Financial Times 'Fear depicts a White House awash in dysfunction, where the Lord of the Flies is the closest thing to an owner's manual.' The Guardian 'Though his books are often sensational, he is the opposite of sensationalist . . . He's Washington's chronicler in chief.' Nick Bryant, BBC 'Horribly fascinating. Strongly recommended. If you can bear it.' Richard Dawkins 'He is the master and I'd trust him over politicians of either party any day of the week.' New York Times 'Woodward is truth's gold standard.' Washington Post With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump's White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence.

Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president's first years in office.

'Napoleon is an out-and-out masterpiece and a joy to read' Sir Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad A landmark new biography that presents the man behind the many myths. The first writer in English to go back to the original European sources, Adam Zamoyski's portrait of Napoleon is historical biography at its finest.

Napoleon inspires passionately held and often conflicting visions. Was he a god-like genius, Romantic avatar, megalomaniac monster, compulsive warmonger or just a nasty little dictator?

While he displayed elements of these traits at certain times, Napoleon was none of these things. He was a man and, as Adam Zamoyski presents him in this landmark biography, a rather ordinary one at that. He exhibited some extraordinary qualities during some phases of his life but it is hard to credit genius to a general who presided over the worst (and self-inflicted) disaster in military history and who single-handedly destroyed the great enterprise he and others had toiled so hard to construct. A brilliant tactician, he was no strategist.

But nor was Napoleon an evil monster. He could be selfish and violent but there is no evidence of him wishing to inflict suffering gratuitously. His motives were mostly praiseworthy and his ambition no greater than that of contemporaries such as Alexander I of Russia, Wellington, Nelson and many more. What made his ambition exceptional was the scope it was accorded by circumstance.

Adam Zamoyski strips away the lacquer of prejudice and places Napoleon the man within the context of his times. In the 1790s, a young Napoleon entered a world at war, a bitter struggle for supremacy and survival with leaders motivated by a quest for power and by self-interest. He did not start this war but it dominated his life and continued, with one brief interruption, until his final defeat in 1815.

Based on primary sources in many European languages, and beautifully illustrated with portraits done only from life, this magnificent book examines how Napoleone Buonaparte, the boy from Corsica, became 'Napoleon'; how he achieved what he did, and how it came about that he undid it. It does not justify or condemn but seeks instead to understand Napoleon's extraordinary trajectory.

The Top Ten Sunday Times Bestseller 'Everyone needs to read this book as an act of digital self-defense.' - Naomi Klein, Author of No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything and No is Not Enough The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called surveillance capitalism, and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control us.

The heady optimism of the Internet's early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. Profits now depend not only on predicting our behaviour but modifying it too. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape our values and define our future?

Shoshana Zuboff shows that we are at a crossroads. We still have the power to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and what we decide now will shape the rest of the century. Our choices: allow technology to enrich the few and impoverish the many, or harness it and distribute its benefits.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deeply-reasoned examination of the threat of unprecedented power free from democratic oversight. As it explores this new capitalism's impact on society, politics, business, and technology, it exposes the struggles that will decide both the next chapter of capitalism and the meaning of information civilization. Most critically, it shows how we can protect ourselves and our communities and ensure we are the masters of the digital rather than its slaves.

Could there be a civilization on a mote of dust? How much of your fate have you made? Who cleans the universe?

Through more than fifty Koans - pleasingly paradoxical vignettes following the ancient Zen tradition - leading physicist Anthony Aguirre takes the reader across the world from Japan to Italy, and through ideas spanning the age, breadth and depth of the Universe. Using these beguiling Koans and a flair for explaining complex science, Aguirre covers cosmic questions that scientific giants from Aristotle to Galileo to Heisenberg have grappled with, from the meaning of quantum theory and the nature of time to the origin of multiple universes.

Playful and enlightening, Cosmological Koans explores the strange hinterland between the deep structure of the physical world and our personal experience of it, giving us what Einstein himself called the most beautiful and deepest experience anyone can have- a sense of the mysterious.

In this mind-bending book, award-winning neuroscientist Henning Beck explains why perfectionism is pointless ---- and argues that mistakes, missteps and flaws are the keys to success.

Remember that time you messed up simple maths or forgot the name of your favourite song? What if someone told you that our brain freezes are actually secret weapons, proof of our superiority to computers and AI? In Scatterbrain, we learn that boredom awakens the muse, distractions spark creativity and misjudging time creates valuable memories, among the many other benefits of our faulty minds. Combining cutting-edge science with brain-boosting advice and rivetting real-life stories, Henning Beck takes us on a fascinating adventure through human memory (one that we'll all remember differently!).

`The brain is a messy, faulty wonder, and if we could all agree that perfection is not the mind's ultimate goal, we would be much better off. Henning Beck shows us how to appreciate our imperfect brains - and is fine with readers straying from the page from time to time!' - Ylva Ostby, author of Diving for Seahorses

'At last, a user's guide for your brain, with plenty of fresh science and lots of surprises.' - Robyn Williams, presenter of The Science Show `An instructive celebration of the flawed, chaotic wonder that is the human brain.' - Bianca Nogrady, Science Journalist and Editor of The Best Australian Science Writing 2019

`In an era of continuous self-optimization, Scatterbrain by German neuroscientist Dr Henning Beck offers novel insights on our often self-defeating pursuit of perfection, and provides a roadmap to more creative thinking and better decision-making to realise one's full potential. A must-read!' - Sandra Navidi, Founder and CEO of BeyondGlobal and best-selling author of $uperHubs

In the bestselling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe.

Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body- A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.

A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this book will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again.

ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ---- So many of us feed wild birds, and for years we’ve been told, don’t. I know it has long been the stance of many ornithological societies, and I always followed that advice - but when the neighbourhood magpie lands on your verandah and warbles for a bit of food, who is going to resist? This sensible, thoroughly researched, easy-to-follow guide is written by a scientist for the layperson who gets an inordinate amount of pleasure out of providing morsels for ‘their’ birds. It suggests the right foodstuffs (sorry, no more bread for the ducks in the park!) covers all-important hygiene, discusses why we need to talk about feeding, habitats and ethical questions. This is a must for anyone who wants simple, practical, reliable advice – a long overdue and welcome book.  Lindy Jones

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Feeding the Birds at Your Table is designed to provide detailed, comprehensive advice and suggestions for people wishing to feed wild birds in Australia from their own backyards and balconies.

Millions of Australians feed wild birds in their gardens. Yet there is currently little information or advice on offer to tell them how to do this properly. This book provides the first readily available source of reliable information relevant to Australia. What's more, it is written by an expert who feeds birds himself.

Including profiles on different types of Australian urban birds, what to feed them and the types of feeders to use, it also has advice on how to create a bird-friendly garden. Feeding the Birds at Your Table offers sensible and practical suggestions so feeding doesn't only benefit us, but benefits the birds themselves.

`At last, a sensible, science-based guide to safely feeding wild birds in Australia.' - Paul Sullivan, CEO, BirdLife Australia

Some Australian native birds become childhood sweethearts and court for years before they get 'married'. Others divorce because of personality clashes and different skill levels. Many negotiate their parenting duties. But how do these personal life events link to long-lasting bonds, long life-spans and exceptional overall intelligence?

Professor Gisela Kaplan, an eminent voice in animal behaviour, and particularly bird behaviour, draws on the latest insights in the evolution of particular cognitive and social abilities. She uncovers motivations and attractions in partner choice that are far more complex than was once believed. She shows how humans and birds may be more alike in attachment and mating behaviour than we think - despite the enormous evolutionary distance between us.

Based on a wealth of original research and complemented by illustrations and colour photographs, Bird Bonds is a valuable resource and a beguiling insight into the world of the birds around us.

The fight for a green world is the fight of our lives. And with On Fire, Naomi Klein gives us the ammunition to do it.

In frank, personal terms, she shows us how the only way forward out of a polluted world of our own making is only through policy reform - a concrete set of actions to combat the mounting threat of total environmental catastrophe. What's needed, she argues, is something with radical verve and guaranteed protections- in other words, a New Deal.

On Fire finds Klein at her most canny and prophetic, and the stakes of our imperiled global situation higher than ever before. In wide-ranging essays reporting from varying stages of ecological crisis - from prescient clarion calls from years ago to our panicked present - Klein wakes us up from our environmental sleepwalk and sets us on a course of potent, necessary action.

Let Lonely Planet take you further than ever before with the world's first and only travel guide to the Universe. Developed with the latest data from NASA, we take you from our home on Earth and out into the far reaches of the solar system, then into our neighbouring stars and planetary systems, and finally into the rest of our galaxy and the Universe.

This fascinating journey will help you explore space as you would the world with a Lonely Planet guide. Unique to these pages are wonderful comparisons of Earth with the other worlds of our solar system and even those exoplanets orbiting other stars.

You'll discover as much as we know about our celestial neighbourhood, and our place in it. In addition to planets and moons, get to know our Sun, explore the asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt, and learn what lays beyond, in interstellar space. Outside our solar system, travel to some of the notable neighbouring stars, stellar systems and exoplanets we've discovered. You'll understand how we search for planets where life might exist and the stars they orbit.

Finally, discover the edge of the observable Universe. Get to know the structure of the Milky Way as well as an orientation to neighbouring galaxies like the Andromeda Galaxy which is visible from Earth. Then explore other galactic formations and learn about galactic clusters and superclusters. By the end of the book, you'll have a sense for the structure of the entire Universe as well as some of the big questions we still have as we ponder our place in it.

About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, on mobile, video and in 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more.

Join the galactic conversation on the biggest issues in the universe, from the 'most popular scientist in the world' 'Don't fear change. Don't fear failure. The only thing to fear is loss of ambition. But if you've got plenty of that, then you have nothing to fear at all' - Neil deGrasse Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguably the most influential, acclaimed scientist on the planet. As director of the Hayden Planetarium, and host of Cosmos and StarTalk, he has dedicated his life to exploring and explaining the mysteries of the universe.

Every year, he receives thousands of letters - from students to prisoners, scientists to priests. Some seek advice, others yearn for inspiration; some are full of despair, others burst with wonder. But they are all searching for understanding, meaning and truth.

His replies are by turns wise, funny, and mind-blowing. In this, his most personal book by far, he covers everything from God to the history of science, from aliens to death. He bares his soul - his passions, his doubts, his hopes. The big theme is everywhere in these pages- what is our place in the universe?

The result is an awe-inspiring read and an intimate portal into an incredible mind, which reveals the power of the universe to start conversations and inspire curiosity in all of us.

This annual gem (produced each year since 1991) continues to take the Australian stargazer on a wondrous journey of the night sky. This critically acclaimed work, produced by three well known experts in the field, takes a unique approach to explaining and identifying the Sun, Moon, planets and constellations; it is simply the best publication of its type in the world.

Are we alone in the Universe? Where did the Moon come from? How do we know what stars are made of? Could there really be a future in asteroid mining?

In Cosmic Chronicles, Fred Watson - Australia's Astronomer-at-Large and bestselling author - explores the hottest topics in space science and astronomy.

Watson presents the most up-to-date knowledge on everything from light echoing around the cosmos, the mechanics of black holes and how to navigate the hidden delights of nightfall, to the most profound questions facing humankind. With mind-bending stories from the frontiers of science, Cosmic Chronicles is an expert's view of what we know and how we know it.

'Despite the complexity of the Universe, you feel as though you've always been part of unravelling its mysteries as you read Fred Watson's entertaining new book. You will explore its history, spot things in the night sky you've never noticed before, and if you're hoping for a wild new travel adventure, you'll learn how to go to space without contaminating the cosmos with pesky earthly microbes. Bonus!' - Amanda Bauer, head of education and public outreach, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope 'Fred Watson's new book, Cosmic Chronicles: A user's guide to the Universe, is a superb romp through the historical, cultural and scientific astronomical phenomena that surround us every day. Fred is a national treasure for his witty and incisive descriptions of science, fun and interesting to all. The book spans medieval astronomers to NASA deep space missions and even includes Goldilocks and The Terminator (revealed as serene and even romantic). Enjoy!' - Col. Pamela A. Melroy, USAF (ret.), former NASA Astronaut 'Full of science and wonder, this book will leave you looking upwards.' - Richard Glover, ABC Radio 'Watson sifts and orders a most extensive range of material, then makes it all readily understandable...

This book genuinely deserves a readership spanning all ages and many levels of prior expertise.' - Mark Thomas, Canberra Times 'This is a great read! Twenty chapters, each a self-contained gem, exploring today's hot topics in astronomy and space research. It is, of course, right up-to-date and, like his broadcasts, both clear and entertaining. A great way to get up to speed with developments in astronomy such as gravitational waves and fast radio bursts. Highly recommended!' - Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Chancellor of the University of Dundee and Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford

Do you eat too much sugar? What proportion of your country are immigrants? What does it cost to raise a child? How much tax do the rich pay? Are we more ignorant than we used to be?

Take a minute to answer these questions. No matter how educated you are, this book suggests you are likely to be very wrong indeed. Informed by exclusive research across 40 countries, conducted by global polling firm Ipsos, The Perils of Perception investigates why we don't know basic facts about the world around us. Using the latest research into the media and decision science, this book will transform the way you engage with the world.

488 Rules for Life is not a self-help book, because it's not you who needs help, it's other people. Whether they're walking and texting, asphyxiating you on public transport with their noxious perfume cloud, or leaving one useless square of toilet paper on the roll, a lot of people just don't know the rules.

But thanks to Kitty Flanagan's comprehensive guide to modern behaviour, our world will soon be a much better place. A place where people don't ruin the fruit salad by putting banana in it, where your co-workers respect your olfactory system and don't reheat their fish curry in the office microwave, and where middle-aged men don't have ponytails.

What started as a joke on Kitty Flanagan's popular segment on ABC TV's The Weekly is now a quintessential reference book with the power to change society (or at least make it a bit less irritating). What people are saying about this book:


"You're welcome everyone." - Kitty Flanagan

"Thank god for me." - Kitty Flanagan

"I'd rather be sad and lonely, but right." - Kitty Flanagan

"There's not actually 488 rules in here, but it sure feels like it." - Kitty Flanagan

'A beautifully reasoned book about our own unreasonableness' Robin Ince Why did revolutionary China consider the sparrow an 'animal of capitalism' - and what happened when they tried to wipe them out? With a cast of murderous popes, snake-oil salesmen and superstitious pigeons, find out why flawed logic puts us all at risk, and how critical thinking can save the world.

It may seem a big claim, but knowing how to think clearly and critically has literally helped save the world. In September 1983, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union's early warning system showed five US missiles heading towards the country. Stanislaw Petrov knew his duty: he was to inform Moscow that nuclear war had begun, so that they could launch an immediate and devastating response. Instead, he made a call to say the system was faulty. He'd assessed the situation and reasoned that an error was more likely than such a limited attack.

We may not have to save the planet from nuclear annihilation, of course, but our ability to think critically has never been more important. In a world where fake news, mistrust of experts, prejudice and ignorance all too often hold sway, we can all too easily be misled over issues such as vaccinations, climate change or conspiracy theories. We live in an era where access to all the knowledge in the world is at our fingertips, yet that also means misinformation and falsehoods can spread further and faster than ever before.

In The Irrational Ape, David Robert Grimes shows how we can be lured into making critical mistakes or drawing false conclusions, and how to avoid such errors. Given the power of modern science and the way that movements can unite to protest a cause via social media, we are in dangerous times. But fortunately, we can learn from our mistakes, and by critical thinking and scientific method we can discover how to apply these techniques to everything from deciding what insurance to buy to averting global disaster. This book, packed with fascinating case studies and examples, helps ensure we are ready for the modern world.

'It's time for all of us to join together to ask science for some new choices and for more information about what happens to us with the choices we have. We shouldn't have to change who we are to protect ourselves from pregnancy, and we should know enough about how our own bodies work to recognize that this is exactly what we're doing when we go on the birth control pill' Hormonal contraception is something most women will use at some point during their lifetime. But the reach of the pill goes far beyond the small number of targeted effects we take it for. It affects almost every system in our body.

Column inches and anecdotal conversations prove there are many questions about the pill and its effects, yet until now we have known very little about it, in part because research on our brains and our bodies was conducted almost exclusively on men. In this trailblazing book, expert psychologist Dr Hill reveals the latest science on the Pill, and how it's changing women and the world for better and for worse. Did you know that the Pill not only creates a different version of yourself, but can change your brain, remove a key feature of your stress response, potentially increase your risk of depression and even have the ability to fundamentally change your mate selection?

HOW THE PILL CHANGES EVERYTHING will open your eyes to all this and more, putting you in position of power so that you can understand the risks, weigh up the costs and make smarter, more informed choices about your health and hormones.

A must-have gift book for any dog and ice cream lover, Dogs vs. Ice Cream is a hilarious collection of priceless reactions when cute canines sample our favourite frozen treat. Celebrity dog photographer Diana Lundin provides a fantastic and unforgettable collection of images, from pit bulls to Yorkies, from Doberman pinschers to springer spaniels, boxers, dalmatians, poodles, and every breed you can think of who might like a scoop of ice cream!

'Of all the things on display in my home, this photo book is by far the most popular with everybody! No one can keep their hands off of it when they first see it. Diana is a genius, and the way she captured my dog, Thunder, makes my heart smile with joy!' - Kristin Chenoweth, Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress, singer, and bestselling author 'Required viewing for fans of man's best friend, Dogs vs. Ice Cream is a crowd-pleasing addition to any coffee table collection - that is, if you can ever put it down!' - Foreword Reviews

Adam Mansbach famously gave voice to two of parenting's primal struggles in Go the F**k to Sleep and You Have to F**king Eat-the unrivalled pair of New York Times best sellers that ushered in a new era of radical honesty in humour books for parents. But what could possibly be left?

Parents-new, old, expectant-of multiple children already knew the answer and Adam discovered it for himself by having two more kids, less than two years apart. F**k, Now There Are Two of You is a loving monologue about the new addition to the family, addressed to a big sibling and shot through with Adam's trademark profane truth-telling. Gorgeously illustrated and full of unspoken sentiments channelled directly from the brains of parents worldwide, F**k, Now There Are Two of You articulates all the fears and frustrations attendant to the simple, maths-defying fact that two is a million more kids than one.

As you probably know by now, you shouldn't read it to a child.

There is no Australian future - sunlit or shadowed - in which China will not be central. ALLAN GYNGELL The seventh issue of Australian Foreign Affairs explores Australia's status as the most China-dependent country in the developed world, and the potential risks this poses to its future prosperity and security.

China Dependence examines how Australia should respond to the emerging economic and diplomatic challenges as its trade - for the first time - is heavily reliant on a country that is not a close ally or partner.

Allan Gyngell calls on Australia to dial back its hysteria as it navigates ties with China.

Margaret Simons explores whether Australia's universities are banking unsustainably on Chinese students.

Richard McGregor considers Australia's trade dependence on China and the dangers of economic coercion.

David Uren probes ASIO's expanding role in monitoring foreign investment and asks if Australia's fears are trumping opportunities.

Ben Bohane reports from Bougainville in the lead-up to its historic referendum on independence.

Melissa Conley Tyler proposes a new funding model to reinvigorate the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

David Kilcullen offers a US perspective on Australia's defence vulnerabilities and capabilities.

PLUS Correspondence on AFA6- Our Sphere of Influence from Jonathan Pryke, Wesley Morgan, Sandra Tarte and more.

A Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick and a New York Times bestseller '[An] impressive debut...

Couples searching for ways to better manage their families and achieve a balance of domestic work will benefit from Rodsky's actionable strategy' - Publishers Weekly 'A must read for every busy woman out there' - PopSugar's Best Books of Fall Making lunches, paying bills, remembering birthdays, renewing the car insurance - are you fed up with being the 'she-fault' parent responsible for the bulk of this unpaid, invisible and time-consuming work?

Organisational specialist Eve Rodsky realised that simply identifying the issue of unequal labour on the home front wasn't enough - she needed a solution to this universal problem. Fair Play is the result: a time- and anxiety-saving system that offers couples a completely new way to share the domestic and emotional load at home. Drawing on 500 interviews with men and women, Eve has figured out what the invisible work in a family actually is and shows you how to get it all done efficiently. With its fun, game-like format, four easy-to-follow rules and 100 household tasks for you to share, Fair Play will help you prioritise what's important to your family and help you work out who should take the lead on everything from the laundry to homework to dinner.

With your home life re-balanced and your relationship reignited, you'll have time to develop the skills and passions that keep you interested and interesting.

A riveting collection from Australia's finest and most instantly recognisable political cartoonist.

This first and long-awaited collection throws us into the grotesque, malformed, and subterranean world that is Rowe's vision of politics now. Enter at your own risk.

Featuring all the madness and downright stupidity of the past five years, Rowe's freakish burlesque includes the usual suspects- Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison, and Bill Shorten, as well as a host of minor monstrosities who you would rather forget lest they haunt your dreams.

Rowe is one of the few Australian cartoonists who pay close attention to international affairs. There are cartoons on China, Europe, the UK, and the slow-motion train wreck of Brexit, wars in the Middle East, terror, and the rise of authoritarians.

And, of course, Donald Trump. No cartoonist in the world, and that includes those from the US, has laid bare the Donald and his debauched administration with such devastating insight and wit.

If the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom, then David Rowe is indeed a wise man, for beneath the outrageous gothic menagerie of Rowe's imagination is a fierce intelligence and ethical sense combined with superb artistry.

This essential collection - edited by Russ Radcliffe, compiler of the bestselling Best Australian Political Cartoons, and introduced by Laura Tingle, one of Australia's most respected journalists - features David Rowe's finest political cartoons, caricatures, and sketches from the past five years.

Behold the 300 Ugliest Words in the English Language!

J. R. R. Tolkien once said that cellar door is the most beautiful phrase in the English language; since then it has received quite a bit of attention from poets and linguists. But what of the ugly words? This delightfully humorous volume celebrates the words that make people gag and cover their ears. Too long have these atrocious utterances gone unrecognized, nay, shunned from society. No longer! The Illustrated Compendium of Ugly English Words pays homage to the 300 worst words in existence, such as:

Amazeballs (noun): The public's opinion on this word can be perfectly encapsulated by a recent Slate article titled Who coined amazeballs and why do they hate humanity?

Chunky (adjective): Chunky (meaning lumpy ) is a word so vile, it can make even the most pleasant image sound disgusting. Let's try. Chunky flower. Chunky chocolate milk. Chunky Jonathan Van Ness. See? Moist (adjective): Slightly or moderately wet; damp; the linguistic equivalent of stepping in a lukewarm puddle in socks and feeling the water ooze between your toes with every step thereafter. Rural (adjective): Meaning of the countryside, rural's definition is not actually gross. Its foulness stems more from its pronunciation, which forces the speaker to make a noise akin to the grunt of a zombie.

Worm (noun): Any type of burrowing, elongated invertebrate with a soft, limbless body. (Is that a description of a real creature or a monster from a nightmare video game? Hard to say.) What makes these words ugly? It's the nature of the word's meaning, the pre-existing association the reader has with the word, or the sound and look of the word-or all three! The Illustrated Compendium of Ugly English Words catalogues the ugliness from A to Z, along with each word's pronunciation guide, definition, and origin, plus quotes demonstrating usage. Illustrations on nearly every page of this hardcover make it both a hilarious reference book and the ideal gift for anyone who can't stand the sound of words like acrid, panties, gubernatorial, ointment, and squirt.

More than anything, though, this compendium can be used as a reminder that, despite all of our differences, deep down we all share the same hopes, the same dreams, and the same primal hatred for the terms that make us go, Ugh, why would you even say that?!

Proceed at your own risk!

An undercover investigation into the synthetic-drug epidemic. A new group of chemicals is radically transforming the recreational-drug landscape. Known as novel psychoactive substances (NPS), they range from so-called 'legal highs' like Spice, to synthetic opioids - most famously, the deadly fentanyl.

Designed to replicate the effects of established drugs like cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, and heroin, NPS are synthesised in laboratories. They are cheap to produce and easy to transport. They are also extremely potent and often deadly. Originally developed for medicinal purposes, and then hijacked by rogue chemists, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, these chemicals' effects can be impossible to predict. What we do know is that they have triggered the biggest drug epidemic that America has ever seen, and which is now spreading internationally.

In Fentanyl, Inc., award-winning journalist Ben Westhoff goes undercover to investigate the shadowy world of synthetic drugs - becoming, in the process, the first journalist to infiltrate a Chinese fentanyl lab. He tracks down the drug baron in New Zealand who unintentionally helped to start the synthetic-drug revolution; prowls St. Louis streets with a former fentanyl dealer to understand how the epidemic started; and chronicles the lives of addicts and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug-awareness organisers in the US and Europe. Fentanyl, Inc. is essential reading on a global calamity we are only just beginning to understand.

'This is an exceptionally useful and well-timed book. I hope anyone concerned about this era's new addiction epidemic will read it and put its messages to use. Ben Westhoff very skilfully combines pharmacology, politics, law enforcement, and gripping international intrigue in his account of America's number-one public health problem. I hope Fentanyl, Inc is widely read and influential.' -James Fallows, award-winning journalist and author of China Airborne
'Through his courageous reporting, Ben Westhoff takes us to the heart of the problem. In Fentanyl Inc., he shines a light on the human wreckage and damage caused by the most powerful and dangerous of the opioids, fentanyl, and its derivatives. He shows us how addiction, mislabeling, purposefully or mistakenly mixed drugs lead to tragic ends. The drug is often created out of factories operating with the permission of the Chinese government. To solve this epidemic, we must understand it. Make no mistake; the fentanyl problem is a global issue. Fentanyl Inc., is a must-read, pulling the curtain back and showing us how this human tragedy occurs and how insidious and addictive a drug can be.' -Katherine Tobin, PhD, Former Member of the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission

Kill Bills! is the bible for saving thousands of dollars on your major household bills. From power bills to telco, mortgage, insurance, credit cards, petrol and groceries, it describes the 9 Insider Tricks You Need to Win the War on Household Bills.

You'll start saving straight away thanks to simple strategies with names like `The De Niro', `The Mystery-Shopper', `The Elizabeth Taylor' and `The Red Dog'. Backed by the team of money-saving experts at One Big Switch, Joel Gibson has gathered 7 years of shortcuts, hacks and loopholes - all so you don't have to.

In a hurry? There's a step-by-step guide to saving over $1000 in an afternoon. Got a big power bill or insurance renewal?

Kill Bills! will help you take the power - and the dollars - back with in-depth chapters on 9 of the major household bills and how those industries work. Want to become a fully-fledged money-saving black belt? Read this book from cover to cover and it will arm you with everything you need to kick some serious household bill backside!

Blackmail, police raids, hidden fortunes, death threats and a billion dollar offshore trust. This is the thrilling, stranger-than-fiction story of Craig Wright, the Australian who controversially claims to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive inventor of Bitcoin and the underpinning technology that is proving as disruptive as the web was 25 years ago. BEHIND THE MASK spans continents and features a cast of characters ranging from a libertarian femme fatale to a fugitive Canadian gambling tycoon. It follows Wright from his humble beginnings in dirt-poor Queensland to besuited guru trying to recover his reputation and control over the cryptocurrency stage, squaring up to multiple enemies.

Painstakingly researched by two international journalists, BEHIND THE MASK is the secret history of Bitcoin, which, it turns out, is as much about betrayal and human weakness as it is about a world-changing technology.

Shortlisted for the 2019 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year.

'A landmark book....

A massively reported deep dive into the unparalleled corporate industrial giant Koch Industries....

This impressively researched and well-rendered book also serves as a biography of Charles Koch, with Leonard providing an evenhanded treatment of the tycoon. Leonard's work is on par with Steve Coll's Private Empire and even Ida Tarbell's enduring classic The History of the Standard Oil Company.' Kirkus Reviews 'Leonard's superb investigations and even-handed, clear-eyed reportage stand out....

American capitalism at its most successful and domineering is at the center of this sweeping history of a much-vilified company.' Publishers Weekly 'Leonard's intricately developed and extensively researched history of the Koch empire is a colossal corporate biography that sheds important light on this closely guarded enterprise while simultaneously scrutinizing the nefarious underpinnings of American economic policies and practices.' Booklist 'This page-turning expose reveals the full extent of the Koch brothers' influence on American capitalism.' Book Riot 'If you want a crash course in the evolution of postmodern capitalism over the last five decades read Kochland....

Leonard's study is exhaustive and engaging.' New York Journal of Books The annual revenue of Koch Industries is bigger than that of Google, Goldman Sachs and Kraft Foods combined. But very few people have ever heard of Koch Industries because the billionaire Koch brothers want it that way. Now, in Kochland, Christopher Leonard has managed what no other journalist has done before: to tell the explosive inside story of how the largest private company in the world became that big. In doing so, Leonard also tells the epic tale of the evolution of corporate America over the last half-century, in all its glory and rapaciousness.

Koch is everywhere. It controls the fertilisers at the foundation of our food system. It controls the synthetics that make our diapers and carpets. It controls the chemicals that make our bottles and pipes. It controls the building materials that make our homes and offices. And it controls much of the Wall Street trading in all of these commodities. It makes money at every end of almost every deal.

For five decades, CEO Charles Koch has kept Koch Industries quietly operating behind a veil of secrecy, with a view toward very, very long-term profits. When Wall Street came calling twenty years ago, trying to take Koch public, Charles Koch said no. He's a genius businessman: patient with profits, able to learn from his mistakes, determined that his employees develop an almost a worshipful dedication to free-market ruthlessness, and a master disrupter. We think of disruption as something that happens in Silicon Valley, but this book will upend your understanding of what disruption really is.

Charles Koch's business acumen has made him and his brother David (Koch Industries' co-owner) together richer than Bill Gates. But there's a dark side to their story. If you want to understand how we killed the unions in this country, how we widened the income divide, how we stalled progress on climate change and how corporate America bought the influence industry, all you have to do is read this book.

Seven years in the making, Kochland reads like a true-life thriller, with larger-than-life characters driving the battles on every page. The book tells the ambitious tale of how one private company consolidated power over half a century - and how in doing so, transformed capitalism into something that feels so deeply alienating to many Americans today.

In the tradition of Phil Knight's SHOE DOG comes the incredible untold story of how Netflix went from concept to company - all revealed by co-founder and first CEO Marc Randolph.

Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. These were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997 when Marc Randolph had an idea.

It was a simple thought - leveraging the internet to rent movies - and was just one of many more proposals, like personalised baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning.

But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair - with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO - founded a company.

Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable but the twenty-first century's most disruptive start-up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when they pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts and determination can change the world - even with an idea that many think will never work.

What emerges, however, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success?

From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, THAT WILL NEVER WORK is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.

`Essential reading' EVENING STANDARD, BOOK OF THE WEEK `Elegant and readable' THE TIMES `A whistlestop tour' OBSERVER Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Ceausescu, Mengistu of Ethiopia and Duvalier of Haiti.

No dictator can rule through fear and violence alone. Naked power can be grabbed and held temporarily, but it never suffices in the long term. A tyrant who can compel his own people to acclaim him will last longer. The paradox of the modern dictator is that he must create the illusion of popular support. Throughout the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of people were condemned to enthusiasm, obliged to hail their leaders even as they were herded down the road to serfdom.

In How to Be a Dictator, Frank Dikoetter returns to eight of the most chillingly effective personality cults of the twentieth century. From carefully choreographed parades to the deliberate cultivation of a shroud of mystery through iron censorship, these dictators ceaselessly worked on their own image and encouraged the population at large to glorify them. At a time when democracy is in retreat, are we seeing a revival of the same techniques among some of today's world leaders?

This timely study, told with great narrative verve, examines how a cult takes hold, grows, and sustains itself. It places the cult of personality where it belongs, at the very heart of tyranny.

Currently in Bill Gates's bookbag and FT Books of 2018 Increasingly, the demands of identity direct the world's politics. Nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, gender: these categories have overtaken broader, inclusive ideas of who we are. We have built walls rather than bridges. The result: increasing in anti-immigrant sentiment, rioting on college campuses, and the return of open white supremacy to our politics.

In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American and global institutions were in a state of decay, as the state was captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatens to destabilise the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to 'the people', who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.

Identity is an urgent and necessary book: a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continual conflict.

Peter Adamson presents a lively introduction to six hundred years of European philosophy, from the beginning of the ninth century to the end of the fourteenth century. The medieval period is one of the richest in the history of philosophy, yet one of the least widely known. Adamson introduces us to some of the greatest thinkers of the Western intellectual tradition, including Peter Abelard, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Roger Bacon. And the medieval period was notable for the emergence of great women thinkers, including Hildegard of Bingen, Marguerite Porete, and Julian of Norwich. Original ideas and arguments were developed in every branch of philosophy during this period - not just philosophy of religion and theology, but metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language, moral and political theory, psychology, and the foundations of mathematics and natural science.

In this witty and mischievous book, philosopher Peter Cave dissects the most controversial disputes today and uses philosophical argument to reveal that many issues are less straightforward than we'd like to believe. Leaving no sacred cow standing, Cave uses ingenious stories and examples to challenge our most strongly held assumptions. Is democracy inherently a good thing? What is the basis of so-called human rights? Is discrimination always bad? Are we morally obliged to accept refugees?

In an age of identity politics and so-called 'fake news', this book is an essential resource for reinvigorating genuine public debate - and an entertaining challenge to accepted wisdom.

An illuminating exploration of the Bible and many of our most contentious contemporary issues Many people today claim that their positions on various issues are grounded in biblical values, and they use scriptural passages to support their claims. But the Bible was written over the course of several hundred years and contains contradictory positions on many issues. The Bible seldom provides simple answers; it more often shows the complexity of moral problems. Can we really speak of biblical values ?

In this eye-opening book, one of the world's leading biblical scholars argues that when we read the Bible with care, we are often surprised by what we find. Examining what the Bible actually says on a number of key themes, John Collins covers a vast array of topics, including the right to life, gender, the role of women, the environment, slavery and liberation, violence and zeal, and social justice. With clarity and authority, he invites us to dramatically reimagine the basis for biblical ethics in the world today.

A compelling account of Christianity's Jewish beginnings, from one of the world's leading scholars of ancient religion How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus's prophecy- The Kingdom of God is at hand! -they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians.

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group's hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement's midcentury missions, to the city's fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.

All Roads Lead to Rome, as the famous saying goes. The sites and events throughout the ancient world provided Romans with a rich tapestry to weave the stories of their past. Rome itself was a melting pot of peoples from across the Mediterranean and beyond, each bringing their myths and legends of heroes and heroines, gods and goddesses. Whether for aristocrats dressing up for banquet, or bloodthirsty audiences in the amphitheatres thrilled to watch condemned criminals forced to enact the roles of mythological creatures, Roman myths formed the backdrop to the rituals and customs of everyday life.

Offering a fresh approach to Roman mythology, each site begins with a brief, evocative description of the location and landscape, followed by its associated myths and stories, as well as any rituals performed there in antiquity. Drawing on the great works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch, Ovid, Horace and Virgil, and with maps, illustrations and a gazetteer giving practical information about the sites today, this is a fresh look at a subject of great fascination.

In an intriguing and entertaining journey, this book uncovers the fascinating background to one of the biggest festive seasons. From the ancient ceremonies celebrating Midwinter to festivals of Sol Invictus, and from Constantine's establishment of a Christian festival to medieval 'misrule', the time around the solstice has long been an opportunity for people to come together and rejoice. These festive traditions have developed in many directions around the world. This book tells the fuller story behind the sparkle and the merriment, and shows why, despite all the modern commercialism, Christmas has survived and still has meaning for us today.

Books are impractical companions and housemates: they are heavy when you are travelling, and in the home take up a lot of space, are hard to keep clean, and harbour insects. It is not a matter of the physical book, it is the deep emotional connection that stretches back to my early years. Living without them is unimaginable.

These collected essays share a joyous and plaintive glimpse into the reading and writing life of novelist, editor and teacher of creative writing Debra Adelaide.

Every book I have read becomes part of me, and discarding any is like tearing out a page from my own life.

With immediate wit and intimacy, Adelaide explores what shapes us as readers, how books inform, console and broaden our senses of self, and the constant conversation of authors and readers with the rest of their libraries. Drawing from her experiences in the publishing industry, the academic world, her own life and the literary and critical communities, she paints a vibrant portrait of a life lived in and by books, perfect for any student, bibliophile, editor, or simply: reader.

PRAISE FOR THE INNOCENT READER 'In an act of generosity, Adelaide offers readers a deeper understanding of how the unconscious shapes, filters and connects ideas through a lifelong love affair with books. She has given me sharper lenses through which to focus more closely on what is on the page and how it got there.' CAROLINE BAUM 'The complex transaction between writer and reader unfolds, in these vivid and generous personal essays, to produce a hymn to the uncanny power of fiction.' CARMEL BIRD 'A passion for books is threaded through every part of Debra Adelaide's life, as writer, teacher and mother. She's an unpretentious but discerning reader, a rigorous and amusing guide, a generous and confiding friend, a 'literary autodidact' who demonstrates that reading is both an appetite and a muscle. I devoured these essays, spiced with the detail of Debra's personal experience, and felt again the pure hunger for books I had as a child. The Innocent Reader has the power to ignite a love of stories and sentences, and is a trove of wisdom for readers, writers and students who want to sharpen their skills.' SUSAN WYNDHAM 'An indispensable guide for every student of creative writing, an ideal companion for the avid reader. A book full of insights as helpful to the seasoned professional writer as to the novice starting out. The Innocent Reader is also a sort of companion to the body of work of one of our most treasured writers, wherein the author gives away more of herself than ever before, through books both read and written, with friends in the business of reading and writing. Debra Adelaide's reflections are at once warm-hearted and steely, and throw light not just on her own work, but also our literary culture as a whole.' FIONA McGREGOR

An anthology of classical literature, both non-fiction and fiction, bringing together one hundred stories from the rich diversity of the literary canon of ancient Greece and Rome.

Daisy Dunn offers a deeply researched collection of stories reflecting the eclectic richness and depth of the classical literary canon. Striking a balance between the 'classic classic' (such as Dryden's translation of the Aeneid ) and the less familiar or expected, Of Gods and Men ranges from the epic poetry of Homer to the histories of Arrian and Diodorus Siculus and the sprawling Theogony of Hesiod; from the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides to the biographies of Suetonius and Plutarch and the pen portraits of Theophrastus; and from the comedies of Plautus to the the fictions of Petronius and Apuleius.

Of Gods and Men is embellished by translations from writers as diverse as Queen Elizabeth I (Boethius), Percy Bysshe Shelley (Plato), Walter Pater (Apuleius's Golden Ass ), Lawrence of Arabia (Homer's Odyssey ), Louis MacNeice (Aeschylus's Agamemnon ) and Ted Hughes (Ovid's Pygmalion ), as well as a number of accomplished translations by Daisy herself.

William Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays, 154 sonnets and a handful of longer poems and you can discover them all here. Each page of Shakespeare for Every Day of the Year contains an extract of his genius - a soliloquy, poem, quote or scene matched to the date. The introductory paragraphs serve as a window into the work, time and life of the greatest writer in the English language.

This beautiful gift anthology is perfect for reading or sharing and brings you Shakespeare's best-known and best-loved classics alongside less well-worn extracts. With Allie Esiri's entertaining and insightful thoughts on each entry, this book will fill your year with wonder, laughter, wisdom and wit.

Clive James is a life-long admirer of the work of Philip Larkin. Somewhere Becoming Rain gathers all of James's writing on this towering literary figure of the twentieth century, together with extra material now published for the first time.

The greatness of Larkin's poetry continues to be obscured by the opprobrium attaching to his personal life and his private opinions. James writes about Larkin's poems, his novels, his jazz and literary criticism; he also considers the two major biographies, Larkin's letters and even his portrayal on stage in order to chart the extreme and, he argues, largely misguided equivocations about Larkin's reputation in the years since his death.

Through this joyous and perceptive book, Larkin's genius is delineated and celebrated. James argues that Larkin's poems, adored by discriminating readers for over half a century, could only have been the product of his reticent, diffident, flawed, and all-too-human personality.

Erudite and entertaining in equal measure, Somewhere Becoming Rain is a love letter from one of the world's best living writers to one of its most cherished poets.

'Rundell is the real deal, a writer of boundless gifts and extraordinary imaginative power whose novels will be read, cherished and reread long after most so-called serious novels are forgotten' Observer Katherine Rundell - Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and prize-winning author of five novels for children - explores how children's books ignite, and can re-ignite, the imagination; how children's fiction, with its unabashed emotion and playfulness, can awaken old hungers and create new perspectives on the world. This delightful and persuasive essay is for adult readers.

VOICES OF HISTORY celebrates the great speeches of world history and cultural life. In this exuberant collection, acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore takes us on a journey from ancient times to the twenty-first century: some speeches are heroic and inspiring; some diabolical and atrocious; some are exquisite and poignant; others cruel and chilling. The speakers themselves vary from empresses and conquerors to rock stars, novelists and sportsmen, dreamers and killers, from Churchill and Elizabeth I to Stalin and Genghis Khan, and from Michelle Obama and Cleopatra to Bob Dylan, Nehru and Muhammad Ali.

All human drama is here: from the carnage of battlefields to the theatre of courtrooms, from table-talk to audiences of millions, from desperate last stands to orations of triumph, from noble calls for liberation to genocidal rants, from foolish delusions and strange confessions to defiant resistance and heartbreaking farewells, VOICES OF HISTORY spans centuries, continents and cultures. In the accessible and gripping style of a master storyteller, Montefiore shows why these seventy speeches are essential reading, and how they enlighten our past, enrich our present and inspire - and hold warnings for - our future.

Peter Temple started publishing novels late, when he was fifty, but then he got cracking. He wrote nine novels in thirteen years. Along the way he wrote screenplays, stories, dozens of reviews.

When Temple died in March 2018 there was an unfinished Jack Irish novel in his drawer. It is included in The Red Hand, and it reveals the master at the peak of his powers. The Red Hand also includes the screenplay of Valentine's Day, an improbably delightful story about an ailing country football club, which in 2007 was adapted for television by the ABC. Also included are his short fiction, his reflections on the Australian idiom, a handful of autobiographical fragments, and a selection of his brilliant book reviews.

Peter Temple held crime writing up to the light and, with his poet's ear and eye, made it his own incomparable thing.

'I was saying things in songs that female singers didn't really say back then. I wasn't submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up, yet I was very serious.' BRAVE, BEAUTIFUL AND BORN TO BE PUNK DEBBIE HARRY is a musician, actor, activist and the iconic face of New York City cool. As the front-woman of Blondie, she and the band forged a new sound that brought together the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae and hip-hop to create some of the most beloved pop songs of all time. As a muse, she collaborated with some of the boldest artists of the past four decades. The scope of Debbie Harry's impact on our culture has been matched only by her reticence to reveal her rich inner life - until now.

In an arresting mix of visceral, soulful storytelling and stunning visuals that includes never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan art installations, Face It upends the standard music memoir while delivering a truly prismatic portrait. With all the grit, grime, and glory recounted in intimate detail, Face It recreates the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie.

Following her path from glorious commercial success to heroin addiction, the near-death of partner Chris Stein, a heart-wrenching bankruptcy, and Blondie's break-up as a band to her multifaceted acting career in more than thirty films, a stunning solo career and the triumphant return of her band, and her tireless advocacy for the environment and LGBTQ rights, Face It is a cinematic story of a woman who made her own path, and set the standard for a generation of artists who followed in her footsteps - a memoir as dynamic as its subject.

In his first and only official autobiography, music icon Elton John reveals the truth about his extraordinary life, which is also the subject of the upcoming film Rocketman. The result is Me - the joyously funny, honest and moving story of the most enduringly successful singer/songwriter of all time.

Christened Reginald Dwight, he was a shy boy with Buddy Holly glasses who grew up in the London suburb of Pinner and dreamed of becoming a pop star. By the age of twenty-three, he was on his first tour of America, facing an astonished audience in his tight silver hotpants, bare legs and a T-shirt with ROCK AND ROLL emblazoned across it in sequins. Elton John had arrived and the music world would never be the same again.

His life has been full of drama, from the early rejection of his work with song-writing partner Bernie Taupin to spinning out of control as a chart-topping superstar; from half-heartedly trying to drown himself in his LA swimming pool to disco-dancing with the Queen; from friendships with John Lennon, Freddie Mercury and George Michael to setting up his AIDS Foundation. All the while, Elton was hiding a drug addiction that would grip him for over a decade.

In Me Elton also writes powerfully about getting clean and changing his life, about finding love with David Furnish and becoming a father. In a voice that is warm, humble and open, this is Elton on his music and his relationships, his passions and his mistakes. This is a story that will stay with you, by a living legend.

Quentin Tarantino is undoubtedly the cult filmmaker of our generation. From his early writing work on films such as True Romance and From Dusk Till Dawn, to the magnificent genre-defining Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, this bookreveals the director's inspiration, working methods and the breadth of his talent. A true cinephile, Tarantino is famed for his visually arresting approach and this book will feature images taken on set and behind the scenes. Packed with stunning pictures from the Kobal archives, this book explores the genesis of Tarantino's unique directorial style and provides insight into his inspirations and his frequent collaborations with favoured actors. This is the ultimate celebration of his work for any Tarantino fan.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids 'Magical' GUARDIAN 'A gripping tale of the search for meaning in times of turbulence - expressed with Smith's signature poetic flair' VOGUE 'Extraordinary ... A tense, teasing mix of reality and dream' Sunday Times 'A melancholy mood and poetic language distinguish Smith's third memoir' BBC 'Her willingness to look closely at life's closing chapters makes for a magical book' WASHINGTON POST, 'The 10 books to read in September' Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding signs, including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger's words, Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey. For Patti Smith - inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life's gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.

Smith melds the Western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from Southern California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places - this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment. But as Patti Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope of a better world.

Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith's signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.

Join internationally renowned fashion illustrator Megan Hess as she explores the timeless beauty and glamour of ten of France's best-loved designers in a stylish celebration of one of the world's favourite fashion destinations.

From the courts of Versailles to the cobbled streets of Paris, French fashion has always been the epitome of elegance. Whether it's Dior's New Look, Yves Saint Laurent's Le Smoking jacket or Chanel's little black dress, the masters of French fashion understand that clothing is more than a craft: it's an art form.

Megan Hess's love for French style sparked her career in fashion illustration. In these pages, she unspools the threads of ten legendary designers - Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent, Lanvin, Givenchy, Chloe, Balmain, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Celine - to discover the origins of haute couture, pret-a-porter and everything chic.

Accompanied by Megan's exquisite illustrations of current and archival collections, Elegance: The Beauty of French Fashion tells the story of how France's iconic fashion houses have influenced the very fabric of design.

The Art of Looking Up surveys 40 spectacular ceilings around the globe that have been graced by the brushes of artists including Michelangelo, Marc Chagall and Cy Twombly. From the floating women and lotus flowers of the Senso-ji Temple in Japan, first painted in the year 645, through to the religious iconography that adorns places of worship from Vienna to Istanbul, all the way to bold displays like that in the lobby of Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, this book takes you on a tour of the extraordinary artworks that demand an alternative viewpoint. Art History expert Catherine McCormack guides readers through the stories behind the artworks - their conception, execution, and the artists that visualised them. In many cases, these artworks also make bold but controlled political, religious or cultural statements, revealing much about the society and times in which they were created. First and foremost, this is a visual feast, but also a desirable art book that challenges readers to seek out fine art in more unusual places and question the statements they may be making.

Examining the body language displayed in works of art is a whole new way of looking at art. The gestures portrayed can reflect the mores of a particular period in history, the customs of a certain culture or a fashion in artistic styles. Exploring these with masterful subtlety, celebrated artist and anthropologist Desmond Morris uncovers fascinating insights about changing social attitudes and conventions through history and around the world, finding surprising similarities as well as now rarely used gestures.

Morris selects a number of key gestures, such as the handshake, the pointed foot, or the glove-slap, and groups them by the message they are intended to convey, such as Greetings, Status and Threats. He discusses the previously unconsidered symbolism behind these. What is understood as a gang sign today may have borne a more enigmatic meaning for Botticelli. And what did Napoleon's hidden hand really mean? Postures: Body Language in Art uniquely combines the author's expertise in both art and social science, so that even the most familiar paintings are suddenly seen in a new light.

'Fascinating . . . The history of the world through the eye of a needle . . . I recommend this book to anyone' THE SPECTATOR 'A charming, absorbing and history that takes us on a journey from the silk roads to sportswear, from ruffs to spacesuits . . . I devoured this quietly feminist book' SUNDAY TIMES 'Joyful and beautiful' NATURE 'Will make you rethink your relationship with fabric' ELLE DECORATION All textiles begin with a twist. From colourful 30,000-year old threads found on the floor of a Georgian cave to what the linen wrappings of Tutankhamun's mummy actually meant; from the Silk Roads to the woollen sails that helped the Vikings reach America 700 years before Columbus; from the lace ruffs that infuriated the puritans to the Indian calicoes and chintzes that powered the Industrial Revolution, our continuing reinvention of cloth tells fascinating stories of human ingenuity.

When we talk of lives hanging by a thread, being interwoven, or part of the social fabric, we are part of a tradition that stretches back many thousands of years. Fabric has allowed us to achieve extraordinary things and survive in unlikely places, and this book shows you how -- and why.

With a cast that includes Chinese empresses, Richard the Lionheart and Bing Crosby, Kassia St Clair takes us on the run with escaped slaves, climbing the slopes of Everest and moonwalking with astronauts. Running like a bright line through history, THE GOLDEN THREAD offers an unforgettable adventure through our past, present and future.

BOOK 3 OF THE #1 BESTSELLING LOW-CARB DIET The CSIRO Low-Carb Diet has proved phenomenally successful in helping Australians lose weight and transform their health through a low-carb eating plan in combination with regular exercise.

Due to popular demand, this new book contains over 100 brand new, low-carb-friendly recipes that can be cooked in 20 minutes or less, making it easier than ever to incorporate this way of eating into a busy lifestyle. It includes:

* an update on the science * answers to all your FAQs * two weekly meal plans with shopping lists * plenty of ideas for meal builders, drinks and snacks This is a fully researched approach to better eating and improved health from Australia's peak science organisation.

Australia's bestselling cookbook author and most trusted home cook, Donna Hay, returns with a beautiful new cookbook that you'll want to use every night of the week.

There are endless arguments out there for bringing more vegetables to your table - your own wellbeing, your budget, our environment, the list goes on. Whatever your personal reason, there's one that I think is universal - FLAVOUR. Gone are the days where a sad salad or soft steamed carrots were our only options. These recipes use vegetables in a whole new way, adding so much life to your weekly routine. Who knew broccoli (in my mind the superfood of all vegetables) could make such a delicious pizza base, flat-bread or tart shell? Often for lunch, or even a snack, I'll bake my super-green falafels in the oven and my studio team love them. As for my boys? Their current weeknight request is my crunchy raw pad thai - so yum.

Inside Week Light, you'll find all these ideas and so much more. It's essentially my week in food, in a book - super-quick, family-friendly, fuss-free meals made REAL. Vegetables are at the forefront of nearly every recipe, with a few meat options thrown in, and there are lots of my all-time classics re-worked to include more goodness. This book is about using food to refuel and re-energise, while nurturing ourselves with flavour. Happy cooking!

More than 60,000 species of trees are found in an amazing variety of forms, sizes and habitats. Every tree has its own story and here are over 60, selected for their particular resonance and connection with humankind and representing most of the world's major zones and ecologies. In portraits that combine vivid cultural and historical narrative with a firm scientific grounding, the authors reveal the details of trees from around the world, both familiar and strange. We use timbers for building and creating, have discovered which tree fruits and seeds taste delicious, and which can kill or cure us, and which species can add colour and spirituality to our lives - from the timber of mahogany to the delights of chocolate and pomegranate, from the medicinal tea tree to the deadly manchineel, and from fragrant frankincense to the highly prized dragon's blood tree.

Artists and botanists alike have been inspired by trees for centuries, and a varied and beautiful range of images from the unrivalled archive at Kew illustrate the stories, to create this enlightening and enchanting book.

The most prestigious food guide in Australia, now brought to you by Simon & Schuster Australia.

The 2020 edition of this acclaimed national guide - the home of the hats - reviews 500 restaurants around Australia and awards the best eateries from Darwin to Hobart, Melbourne to Perth, and Sydney to Brisbane.

The Age Good Food Guide was launched in 1979 and The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide followed five years later. With the addition of The Brisbane Times, The Canberra Times and WA Today, the Good Food Guide is Australia's most trusted restaurant guide, compiled and edited by respected, independent critics. Reviewers arrive unannounced, pay for their own meals and are stringent judges, looking at service, ambiance, the X factor and, of course, the food.

Hats are awarded to the best of the best. To achieve a hat is a pinnacle of a chef's career and a restaurant's history, and the term `hatted' has become part of the Australian lexicon.

Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 700 of the strangest and most curious places in the world. The second edition, revised and updated with 20% new material, reveals more hidden wonders. Among them: The Glowing Termite Mounds of Emas Brazil, The secretive FBI Spy House in Washington DC, the spooky Pirate Cemetery in Madagascar, and in Whitehorse, Canada, the The World's Largest Weathervane.

Created by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras (the founders of Atlas Obscura) and Ella Morton, Atlas Obscura revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvellous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book to enter anywhere, and will be as appealing to the armchair traveller as the die-hard adventurer.

From Austin to Bogota, Vienna to Wellington, discover the best day and weekend trips within three hours of 60 of Lonely Planet's favourite cities. With sights, activities and hidden gems - all built around themes like art & culture, the outdoors, and food & drink - you'll find amazing ideas for your next city escape or long stopover, as well as new experiences to enjoy near where you live.

Most of the 60 cities in this book could fill a lifetime with new experiences, but a short journey by either train, bus or car opens a world beyond to explore. In Three Hours From we hope to inspire you to look beyond the city limits for your next adventure. Whether you're in Delhi, Vancouver, Brisbane or Rome, and whether you live there, work there, are on vacation or are simply passing through with a day to kill, we encourage you to widen your net.

Just an hour and 40 minutes from Cape Town you can spy breaching whales from the cliff path at Hermanus; within two hours of Manhattan you can be surfing at Rockaway Beach; and near Beijing you can choose between rafting a scenic gorge, visiting Jin-era temples or hiking along the Great Wall.

Each of the 60 cities is presented with a map of the surrounding area, pinpointed with up to 18 of the most exciting things to do within three hours travel time. These are colour-coded by theme so you can easily find what you're interested in - be that outdoor pursuits, arts and culture, history, festivals and events, film and music, or food and drink.

Special sections include Africa's best beach towns, Japan's best onsen retreats, the best food & drink tours in North America, Europe's finest off-the-beaten-track wineries, Oceania's most fascinating indigenous experiences, and the top wildlife watching destinations in Latin America.

About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, on mobile, video and in 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more.

This annual bestseller ranks the hottest, must-visit countries, regions, cities and best value destinations for 2020. Drawing on the knowledge and passion of Lonely Planet's staff, authors and online community, we present a year's worth of inspiration to take you out of the ordinary and into the unforgettable.

As self-confessed travel geeks, we regularly ask ourselves: where are the best places in the world to visit right now? It's a very hotly contested topic at Lonely Planet and generates more discussion than any other. Best in Travel is our definitive answer.

We also reveal how well-planned, sustainable travel can be a force for good: for the environment, for local people and for yourself - and include ways to help lower your carbon footprint and protect the areas you visit on your travels.

Inside Best in Travel 2020, you'll discover:

The top 10 countries, regions, cities and best value destinations The best new openings The best new places to stay The best new food experiences The best sustainable trips for families How to minimise your carbon footprint How to help local communities and businesses How to give back on your travels Hiking for meditation About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, on mobile, video and in 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more.

Not just an island continent, Australia is a continent of islands. With over 8,000, it has more than the entire Caribbean. Join seasoned traveller Tony Wheeler on a journey around the Australian coast and beyond to discover the stunning natural features, unique wildlife and chequered histories of Australia's remarkable (and remarkably diverse) islets, cays, atolls and archipelagos. Find out why the Whitsundays should have been called the Whitmondays, encounter Australia's only known pirate, witness mutiny and murder on the Bounty and Batavia, meet giant lizards and friendly quokkas, and discover rich Indigenous cultures. Whether you're an intrepid explorer, a simple sun-seeker or an armchair tourist, Islands of Australia will have you itching to visit.

Age range 5 to 12 Remember - beauty comes from within...

Way back, before once-upon-a-time, there was the Dreamtime when all the birds were white. One of those white birds was a crow called Waan.

One day a big storm came through and a magnificent rainbow appeared. When the birds passed through the rainbow, one by one, their feathers took on its beautiful colours.

Waan flew through the rainbow too and his feathers became a beautiful red and orange. But Waan was jealous of the other birds. He wanted to be more beautifully coloured than anyone. So Waan hatched a cunning plan.

But things did not go the way Waan wanted...

This tale of a prince, a beautiful swan princess and an evil sorcerer begins in a woodland clearing far, far away. It is Prince Siegfried's 21st birthday. He is playing games with his friends when his mother, the Queen, arrives to tell him he needs to stop having fun and start looking after the kingdom. Prince Siegfried dreams of running away.

He follows an enchanting flock of swans to a clearing by a lake, where four of the little cygnets begin to dance. The most beautiful swan transforms into the Princess Odette, who tells him that she has been cursed to turn into a swan by day and return to her natural form at night by the evil sorcerer Von Rothbart. As the prince and Odette dance, they begin to fall in love.

The story follows Prince Siegfried as he attends his birthday party, is tricked into proposing to Von Rothbart's daughter Odile and returns to the lake to battle the evil sorcerer. Will the prince be reunited with his swan princess?

As you and your little one journey through the magical scenes, you will press the buttons to hear 10 excerpts from the ballet's music. At the back of the book, find a short biography of the composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, with details about his composition of Swan Lake. Next to this, you can replay the musical excerpts and, for each of them, read a discussion of the instruments, rhythms and musical techniques that make them so powerful. A glossary defines musical terms.

The Story Orchestra series brings classical music to life for children through gorgeously illustrated retellings of classic ballet stories paired with 10-second sound clips of orchestras playing from their musical scores.

All aboard! From the fastest to the longest, the oldest to the newest, through tunnels, across bridges and up mountainsides, take a fascinating ride through the world of trains in this brilliant new book from illustrator James Gulliver Hancock.

In this follow-up to How Cities Work and How Airports Work, young readers travel through history and around the world to find out everything they ever wanted to know about trains. Unfold pages and lift flaps to reveal bustling stations, old steam locomotives fuelled with coal, and high-speed trains zooming across Japan at almost 400 miles per hour!

And that's not all. See how trains reach the top of mountains, transport people under cities, and work beneath the sea. And don't forget to dress up - we'll take you on some luxurious journeys including the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok, and The Ghan, which runs all the way across Australia!

How Trains Work is jam-packed with amazing facts and awesome illustrations, and was created in consultation with Anthony Coulls, Senior Curator of Rail Transport & Technology, National Railway Museum, UK.

About Lonely Planet Kids: Lonely Planet Kids - an imprint of the world's leading travel authority Lonely Planet - published its first book in 2011. Over the past 45 years, Lonely Planet has grown a dedicated global community of travellers, many of whom are now sharing a passion for exploration with their children. Lonely Planet Kids educates and encourages young readers at home and in school to learn about the world with engaging books on culture, sociology, geography, nature, history, space and more. We want to inspire the next generation of global citizens and help kids and their parents to approach life in a way that makes every day an adventure. Come explore!

Another brilliantly funny, rhyming read-aloud picture book, jam-packed with cute puppies and silliness, from the bestselling, multi-award-winning creators of OI FROG!

Dog is looking after some puppies. Quite a few puppies, actually, and none of them will sit! Not even on guppies, like they're supposed to! They're getting a little out of hand - but luckily Frog's got a cunning plan . . .

The laughter never ends with Oi Frog and Friends Praise for OI FROG!:

'An absolute treat.' - Daily Mail 'Everyone will love it.' - Guardian Oi Frog and Friends is a Top Ten Bestselling series which has sold 1.2 million copies to date. OI DOG! won the 2017 Laugh Out Loud Awards (among others), and OI GOAT! was the number one bestselling 2018 World Book Day Book. OI FROG! won a Silver Award at the Nielsen Bookscan Awards 2019, and OI DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS! was shortlisted for the Children's Book of the Year at the British Book Awards 2019.

Age range 3 to 9 A short-tailed shearwater flies from the edge of the Southern Ocean to the rim of the Arctic Circle - and back - every year. This remarkable 30,000 kilometre journey is driven by seabird law.

Instinct and community will guide her. A wingspan the size of a child's outstretched arms will support her.

But first, she must catch the wind...

Based on birds that live on Griffith Island, near Port Fairy, Victoria, Windcatcher is a tale of migration, conservation and survival that begins with one small bird called Hope.

Teachers' notes available here.

Australia is big, but so is Mr Chicken. He can't wait to go everywhere, see everything and meet everyone.

Luckily, a helpful marsupial from Tourist Information helps Mr Chicken organise his hectic itinerary.

This book is dedicated to the many children, teachers and librarians Leigh Hobbs met as the 2016-2017 Australian Children's Laureate.

Collect all of Mr Chicken's adventures: Mr Chicken Goes to Paris, Mr Chicken Lands on London and Mr Chicken Arriva a Roma.

A stunningly presented modern-day fable from world-renowned talent Oliver Jeffers.

There was once a man who believed he owned everything and set out to survey what was his.

You are mine, Fausto said to the flower, the sheep and the mountain, and they bowed before him. But they were not enough for Fausto, so he conquered a boat and set out to sea...

Working for the first time in traditional lithography, world-renowned talent, Oliver Jeffers, combines spectacular art with powerful prose, hand set using traditional lead type, to create a poignant modern-day fable to touch the hearts of adults and children alike.

Welcome to the amazing world of flags! Did you know that each flag is actually a picture that sends a message to everyone who sees it?

In The Flag Book, Lonely Planet Kids introduces you to the flags of every country in the world, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and tells you what their design, colours, and images represent, along with lots of other incredible facts.

What's the only country that doesn't have a rectangular flag? Why does Hawaii's state flag feature the UK's Union Jack in one corner? And what do the 13 stripes of the USA's Star Spangled Banner represent? You'll find out the answer to all these and much, much more.

We'll then show you the other fascinating ways flags are used throughout the world. Learn the International Code of Flag Symbols to communicate with ships at sea; read about flags used in sports, like Formula 1's chequered flag; marvel at flags commemorating world records and incredible human achievements; and peer with a microscope at the planet's smallest flag, which is no wider than a human hair.

But that's not all! Travel back in time to the Golden Age of Piracy and have your timbers shivered by the bloodthirsty flags of `Black Bart' Roberts and his fellow pirates sailing the Caribbean.

Chapters include:

What are flags for? Speaking in flag Flag designs Coats of arms Pirate flags Ships and aeroplane flags The world's oldest flags Semaphore flags Flag record breakers Flag tales Sports flags International flags About Lonely Planet Kids: Lonely Planet Kids - an imprint of the world's leading travel authority Lonely Planet - published its first book in 2011. Over the past 45 years, Lonely Planet has grown a dedicated global community of travellers, many of whom are now sharing a passion for exploration with their children. Lonely Planet Kids educates and encourages young readers at home and in school to learn about the world with engaging books on culture, sociology, geography, nature, history, space and more. We want to inspire the next generation of global citizens and help kids and their parents to approach life in a way that makes every day an adventure. Come explore!

Join travellers Cat and Bird as they explore the world in this fun search-and-find book. With every turn of the page, there's a new busy city scene to discover - a colourful carnival in Rio, a funfair in Paris, a treasure-filled souk in Morocco.

Our intrepid duo have spent all year planning their amazing trip: a city-hopping tour around the globe! They've packed their bags and are ready to go, but they need your help...

In each city there are all kinds of things to spot, from tasty festival food and traditional hats to a famous landmark, a unique souvenir and a local animal or two. You'll need to hunt high and low, peep inside buildings and search among the crowds. And don't forget to look for Cat and Bird in every city too.

About Lonely Planet Kids: Lonely Planet Kids - an imprint of the world's leading travel authority Lonely Planet - published its first book in 2011. Over the past 45 years, Lonely Planet has grown a dedicated global community of travellers, many of whom are now sharing a passion for exploration with their children. Lonely Planet Kids educates and encourages young readers at home and in school to learn about the world with engaging books on culture, sociology, geography, nature, history, space and more. We want to inspire the next generation of global citizens and help kids and their parents to approach life in a way that makes every day an adventure. Come explore!

Take a journey into the unknown and discover the planet's wildest and most wonderful sights. Paddle through the eerie glowworm caves of New Zealand, ride with the wild horses of the Namib desert, swing off the end of the world in Ecuador, and be amazed at hundreds more wonders you never knew existed!

This travel companion for the incurably curious is your guide to finding the world's most amazing secret places. So grab your compass and let's get started as you explore the far corners of our world. Start your adventure in the west at Hawaii's Pineapple Garden Maze, before travelling along the line of longitude to Vanuatu's underwater post office.

Get ready to bungee jump off a road to nowhere in the Brazilian jungle, or lose yourself in the world's largest maze. Whether deep underwater in a prehistoric grotto or high on a cliff at the tip of a rock troll's tongue, afloat on waters as pink as a rose or swimming with pigs on a sandy beach, adventure awaits around every corner.

About Lonely Planet Kids: Lonely Planet Kids - an imprint of the world's leading travel authority Lonely Planet - published its first book in 2011. Over the past 45 years, Lonely Planet has grown a dedicated global community of travellers, many of whom are now sharing a passion for exploration with their children. Lonely Planet Kids educates and encourages young readers at home and in school to learn about the world with engaging books on culture, sociology, geography, nature, history, space and more. We want to inspire the next generation of global citizens and help kids and their parents to approach life in a way that makes every day an adventure. Come explore!

Age range 5 to 12 Do you know what a tree hollow is?

To you and me, a tree hollow is just a hole, cavity or tunnel in a tree or branch. But to an animal, that hollow may be a bedroom, hiding place, nursery or shelter. It is the ultimate tree house! Come and take a peek inside the amazing world of tree hollows and discover more than 340 species of incredible Australian animals that call hollows home. With colour photos of glorious gliders, darting dunnarts, minute microbats and many more, this book is full of fun facts about animals that use tree hollows as places for resting, nesting or hiding.

Find out how hollows are created, why they are threatened, and meet scientists who spend their time hollow-hunting. There are also plenty of tips on how you can spot hollows yourself, help to protect the environment and encourage habitat for hollow-dependent animals.

Teachers' notes available here.

Age range 3+ Summer is here. Put your school shoes away, The long, lazy days can begin.

Mangoes and magpies, municipal pools...

Take a deep breath and dive in.

The bestselling creators of Alphabetical Sydney and Numerical Street are back with their new picture book, Summer Time - a stunning tribute to an Australian summer.

'Summer Time, Hilary Bell and Antonia Pesenti's third picture book collaboration, explores ideas of time within the grand nostalgic mythology of Australian summer...

The rhyming verse is rich and evocative, making good use of both rhythm and imagery...

Pesenti's pleasing collage-style illustrations complement Bell's linguistic portraits; a colour palette both bright and gentle evokes the harsh Australian light and the haze of memory.' - Books + Publishing Teachers' Notes available here