Abbey's Advocate

'I only ever asked you for one thing,' my father said, a quiver in his voice. 'Just this one thing.' It was as though I had smashed the Ten Commandments.

'Oh father,' I cried, grovelling at his ankles while my mother and siblings looked on. 'The one thing you asked of me - is everything.' Bani Adam has known all his life what was expected of him. To marry the right kind of girl. To make the House of Adam proud.

But Bani wanted more than this - he wanted to make his own choices. Being the first in his Australian Muslim family to go to university, he could see a different way.

Years later, Bani will write his story to his son, Kahlil. Telling him of the choices that were made on Bani's behalf and those that he made for himself. Of the hurt he caused and the heartache he carries. Of the mistakes he made and the lessons he learned.

In this moving and timely novel, Michael Mohammed Ahmad balances the complexities of modern love with the demands of family, tradition and faith. The Other Half of You is the powerful, insightful and unforgettable new novel from the Miles Franklin shortlisted author of The Lebs.

PRAISE FOR THE LEBS

WINNER NSW Premier's Literary Awards Multicultural NSW Award 2019
SHORTLISTED Miles Franklin Literary Award 2019

'an open-eyed and highly charismatic novel broiling with fight, tenderness and ambition' Big Issue 'wonderfully vivid and compelling . . . utterly authentic' Books+Publishing

The boys from back home stand beside the bed, watching her bleed onto the white sheet. 'He only said to scare her,' one of them says.

The boys from back home stand beside the bed, watching her bleed onto the white sheet. 'He only said to scare her,' one of them says.

Sidney is happily married to her firefighter husband and thinking about having a child, but her life has been marred by psychotic breakdowns. Haunted by memories of Dean Cola - the teenage crush who is an essential piece of the puzzle that is her past - she returns to the town where she grew up. Something unthinkable happened there, but is she strong enough to face it?

A compelling portrait of mental illness, memory, and the ways that the years when we 'come of age' can be twisted into trauma.

'Sensitive yet unflinching.' -Anne Buist, author of The Long Shadow and Two Steps Onward 'A heart-shaking and unputdownable novel about perception. About the multitude of dangers in people and in words, the complexity of memory and trauma, and the depths of truth in emotion.' -Angela Meyer, author of A Superior Spectre 'A vivid and compelling novel of character, community, and the past. With exquisitely rendered psychological subtlety and an unflinching gaze, it peels back the layers of memory, trauma, and time; at its centre is the wonderful Sidney, broken but resilient, and her unwavering drive to uncover the truth that will set her free.' -Lucy Treloar, author of Wolfe Island

'A stunning romantic comedy ... fun, warm and perceptive' Jessie Stephens Elodie Cheesman's joyous debut is a modern take on the age-old decision between following your head or your heart in the search for love.

There's an algorithm for everything else, so why not love?

When 24-year-old lawyer Romy learns that she is at her 'optimal stopping point' (the mathematically designated point at which one should select the next 'best person' who comes along in order to have the best chance at happily ever after), she knows it's time to get serious about her love life.

Ruthlessly rational, with a belief in data over destiny, Romy knows that reliability and consistency are dependable options, while passion and lust are transitory and only bring pain and disillusionment.

That's why sensible Hans the engineer is the right choice, as opposed to graphic designer James who exhibits the kind of behaviour that has got her into trouble before. Isn't he?

PRAISE FOR LOVE, IN THEORY 'Cheesman plays with love's biggest questions, like: Is finding a life partner chaos? Or could there be an underlying logic? A hopeful, feel-good read, Love, in Theory perfectly captures the beauty - and occasional horror - of dating in the modern age.' - Jessie Stephens, author of Heartsick

What might drive a mother to do the unthinkable?

What could drive a mother to do the unthinkable?

Before- Emma Cormac married into a perfect life but now she's barely coping. Inside a brand new, palatial home, her three young children need more than she can give. Clem, a wilful four year old, is intent on mimicking her grandmother; the formidable matriarch Pat Cormac. Arthur is almost three and still won't speak. At least baby Robbie is perfect. He's the future of the family. So why can't Emma hold him without wanting to scream? Beyond their gleaming windows, a lake vista is evaporating. The birds have mostly disappeared, too. All over Shorehaven, the Cormac family buys up land to develop into cheap housing for people they openly scorn.

After- The summers have grown even fiercer and the Cormac name doesn't mean what it used to. Arthur has taken it abroad, far from a family unable to understand him. Clem is a young artist who turns obsessively to the same dark subject. Pat doesn't even know what legacy means now. Not since the ground started sinking beneath her. Meanwhile, a nameless woman has been released from state care. She sticks to her twelve-step program, recites her affirmations, works one day at a time on a humble life devoid of ambition or redemption. How can she have an after when baby Robbie doesn't?

Sarah is a smart, young lawyer living in Bondi when she falls head over heels. Daniel is handsome, passionate and is part of the kind of large, chaotically loving family Sarah longed for as an only child. When Daniel introduces her to a charismatic young couple, rabbi Menachem Lev and his wife, Chani, despite herself, Sarah is drawn in by the vibrant community at the beachside synagogue.

By the time the couple move to the Jamison Valley, where Menachem and Chani have established a community of believers, Sarah can't imagine life without the joy, purpose and love she's discovered.

Four years on, youthful passion has given way to something darker. The community will celebrate its first wedding, between the beautiful convert, Avital, and a much older divorcee, but no one seems to be able to give a clear explanation of where Rebecca, his ex-wife, has gone. In the lead up to the wedding a series of terrifying truths emerges that rock Sarah's world and cause her to question everything - her faith, her marriage, and her future.

Set in Poland on the eve of the Second World War, Secrets My Father Kept is the gripping story of a young woman determined to uncover the truth behind her mother's disappearance and the dark secret from her father's past.

Secrets My Father Kept is a captivating novel about love, sacrifice, secrets and resilience, as the clock inexorably ticks down to a devastating world war.

It's February 1939. As the F hrer edges towards an invasion of Poland, total war looms in Europe.

However in Krakow, seventeen-year-old Marie Karska's primary concern is the unexplained disappearance of her mother fifteen years ago, and her father Dominik's unbreakable silence on the matter. Even his wife's name is a secret he guards closely.

Dominik, a well-respected and innovative doctor at the local hospital, has devoted his life to caring for his only daughter. Yet a black fear haunts him - over the questionable act he committed to keep Marie safe. And with German troops now marching to the border, he needs to find her a husband. One who will protect her when he no longer can...

But Marie has already met the man she wants to marry- her childhood friend Ben. She's determined that his Jewish faith won't stand in the way of their future together. And nor will her father's refusal to explain the past stop her from unpicking his darkest secret. . .

A novel that punches you in the heart: the powerful, unbearably moving and ultimately uplifting story of twin brothers, Jon and Eden, as they grow up and begin to understand what it is to be men, and what it takes to knit a fractured family back together.

This is a story about love.

Love for nine-year-old twins Jon and Eden Hardacre is simple. Their mum, the creek that they swim in, each other - this is the love that they trust, love as clear and pure as sunlight, as honey, as water. But then there's a terrible accident. And in its wake, they develop a desperation - a yearning - to outgrow tragedy. They get older, compete with each other, fall in love with the same girl, and begin to realise that their lives - and who they love - demand something more. Something deeper. Richer.

Heart-hammeringly original, intense and deeply moving, We Were Not Men is a powerhouse novel about all the various faces that love shows us and how sometimes, distracted by life, ambition or attraction, we take it for granted until it's too late - or almost too late. An unforgettable novel about the difference between getting older and growing up, from an astonishing new and original voice, pulsing with grief, hope and love.

It is a revelation.

'A gut-punching, soul-restoring exploration of brotherhood and human bonds that bend but do not break. You'll dive in at the deep end and you won't want to stop swimming in Campbell Mattinson's words.' Trent Dalton 'Mattinson charts the rough terrain of grief with a tender, huge-hearted story of rivalry and love.' Mark Brandi

A vivid, immersive, historical saga from beloved Australian author Suzanne McCourt.

Henryk reached out to embrace him, formally, awkwardly. How rarely they'd touched since childhood, thought Adi, as he sank against his brother. How clumsy their love was.

Brothers Henryk and Adam Radecki's relationship is one of fraught love and jealously. Henryk, unhappily married, becomes a rich and successful industrialist, while Adi, a devoted vet, finds and loses love. Their bond is tested throughout their lives, from the 1920s, against the background of Poland's tragic and tumultuous relationship with Russia, through war, revolution and invasion, until 1954 in the Snowy Mountains of Australia.

Adi's wife and son are at the heart of this riveting tale, in which family secrets threaten to tear lives apart. Caught up in momentous events, each character reminds us of our power to survive extraordinary times, of the moral choices we make and the dramatic turns our lives can take.

Beautifully written, full of the detail of everyday life, its joys and suffering, The Tulip Tree is engrossing historical fiction at its best, a profoundly moving story of love, sacrifice and loyalty.

Internationally bestselling husband-and-wife writing team Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist are back with another smart, romantic adventure Three years after life got in the way of their long-distance relationship, Californian artist Zoe and English engineer Martin have an unexpected opportunity to reunite- a second chance to follow in the footsteps of pilgrims in Europe.

This time, they won't be walking the famous Camino de Santiago to north-west Spain but the less-travelled Chemin d'Assise and Via Francigena to Rome, along the mountainous paths from rural France.

And rather than each setting off solo, they will accompany Zoe's old friend Camille-who, despite her life-threatening illness, insists she will walk the whole sixteen hundred kilometres to seek an audience with the Pope-and her not-so-ex-husband, Gilbert, who sees the trip as a gourmet tour.

Then Bernhard, Martin's young nemesis from the previous trek, shows up, along with Martin's daughter, Sarah, who is having a quarter-life crisis and doesn't exactly hit it off with Zoe...

Two Steps Onward is the wise, witty and wine-filled follow-up to Two Steps Forward, Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist's bestselling novel about walking the Camino. it's about helping the people you love, and knowing when to let go. Figuring out what you really want in life. And seizing your chances, before it's too late.

'With Teeth is a wonderfully sticky novel about motherhood, partnership, sex and love. Kristen Arnett lets her characters have the run of the place, and it's delicious fun to watch them do, say, and think things they'll regret' Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here If she's being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best - driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school - while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie's life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behaviour, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son's hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess - and the possibility that it will never be clean again.

Blending the warmth and wit of Arnett's breakout hit, Mostly Dead Things, with a candid take on queer family dynamics, With Teeth is a thought-provoking portrait of the delicate fabric of family - and the many ways it can be torn apart.

How far would you go to save someone you love? And what if that someone was ... not exactly human?

Guy Schermerhorn, brilliant young professor of psychology and disciple of the pioneering Dr Moncrieff, is making a name for himself on the talk show circuit with an unusual protege in tow: a chimp by the name of Sam. Sam lives in Guy's apartment, wears diapers and neckties, devours pizza and Macdonalds - and, through Guy's careful training, can communicate through sign language.

But living with Sam is wreaking havoc on Guy's personal life, and when shy, meek undergraduate Aimee Villard volunteers to take on babysitting for him, he can't believe his luck. Aimee and Sam have an immediate rapport, and before Guy knows it she's moved in, proudly devoting herself to Sam's care and Guy's project.

Aimee has never known purpose and happiness like this; but when Guy's funding is imperilled, and Sam is taken away by the sinister Moncrief, her world falls apart. Aimee discovers just how far she'll go to, and just what she'll risk, to be united with the chimp she's come to love so much.

A COSMOPOLITAN, BBC, STYLIST, DAILY MAIL, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING and GUARDIAN BEST BOOK PICK FOR 2021!

'Astounding. Heart-breaking but hopeful, and a fresh new voice' PANDORA SYKES 'Moving and beautifully written' LIBBY PAGE 'Made me laugh and cry in equal measure' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING 'A book that deserves to be a huge hit' STYLIST 'The literary equivalent of gold dust' BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH 'An incredible debut novel. Kirsty Capes is one to watch' RED THE MUST-READ DEBUT OF THE YEAR - OUT NOW!

Sometimes it's easy to fall between the cracks...

At 3.04 p.m. on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she's pregnant.

She could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless.

She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand.

She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks.

Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come without conditions.

But this isn't a love story...

Praise for Careless:

'Vivid, bold and beautifully observed' ABBIE GREAVES, author of The Silent Treatment 'Moving and beautifully-written - a voice and a story that needs to be heard' LIBBY PAGE, author of The Lido 'A story of every day, that is never told. Uplifting and simultaneously heart-breaking' ANSTEY HARRIS, author of The Truths and Triumphs of Grace Atherton 'A thought-provoking and compelling coming-of-age story, with a fearless and funny protagonist in Bess' RICHARD ROPER, author of Something to Live For 'Real, raw, heart-wrenching and so wonderfully written. A truly honest coming-of-age story. I laughed, cried, squirmed and couldn't stop reading' JESSICA RYN, author of The Extraordinary Hope of Dawn Brightside 'Heroic and powerful, but also tender; this is such an important novel' CHARLOTTE MENDELSON, author of Daughters of Jerusalem 'The literary equivalent of gold dust' BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH 'So good I'm lying in a tepid bath because my 15 minutes reading turned into 45. What a voice!' AMY BEASHEL, author of The Sky is Mine Such an elegant and empathic book, with characters I feel I've known forever. A portrait of how it feels to be young, brazen and terrified' JESSICA MOOR, author of Keeper

'READING THIS TERRIFIC, ORWELLIAN NOVEL YOU ALMOST HOLD YOUR BREATH' Bel Mooney An alternative history with a strong feminist twist, perfect for fans of Robert Harris' Fatherland, Christina Dalcher's Vox and the dystopian novels of Margaret Atwood.

'A TRIUMPH' Amanda Craig 'CONVINCING AND GRIPPING' Elizabeth Buchan 'BRILLIANTLY IMAGINED' Clare Chambers 'TERRIFIC HEROINE' Adele Geras 'VIVIDLY IMAGINED' Nicci French To control the past, they edited history. To control the future, they edited literature.

London, 1953, Coronation year - but not the Coronation of Elizabeth II.

Thirteen years have passed since a Grand Alliance between Great Britain and Germany was formalized. George VI and his family have been murdered and Edward VIII rules as King. Yet, in practice, all power is vested in Alfred Rosenberg, Britain's Protector. The role and status of women is Rosenberg's particular interest.

Rose Ransom belongs to the elite caste of women and works at the Ministry of Culture, rewriting literature to correct the views of the past. But now she has been given a special task.

Outbreaks of insurgency have been seen across the country; graffiti daubed on public buildings. Disturbingly, the graffiti is made up of lines from forbidden works, subversive words from the voices of women. Suspicion has fallen on Widowland, the run-down slums where childless women over fifty have been banished. These women are known to be mutinous, for they have nothing to lose.

Before the Leader arrives for the Coronation ceremony of King Edward and Queen Wallis, Rose must infiltrate Widowland to find the source of this rebellion and ensure that it is quashed.

'THE MOST IMPORTANT FEMINIST NOVEL IN DECADES' Jane Harris 'A VERY SMART REIMAGINED HISTORY' Henry Porter 'BRIMMING WITH CRACKLING DETAIL, A GRIPPING THRILLER' Miranda Carter

From the international bestselling author of Room.

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with an unfamiliar Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

'The year's most buzzed-about debut' i 'Original, funny and utterly unexpected, this is a 2021 essential read' Stylist 'You will turn page after page after page in your eagerness to unravel this unique tale' Oyinkan Braithwaite, New York Times Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and the micro-aggressions, she's thrilled when Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They've only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events cause Nella to become Public Enemy Number One and Hazel, the Office Darling.

Then the notes begin to appear on Nella's desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.

It's hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realises that there is a lot more at stake than her career.

Dark, funny and furiously entertaining, The Other Black Girl will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.

A Highlight for 2021 from: Guardian * TIME * Independent * Evening Standard * BBC * Stylist * Irish Times * i * Harper's Bazaar * Washington Post * Fortune * Entertainment Weekly * The Sun 'A stunning debut' Sunday Times 'Riveting, fearless and vividly original' Emily St. John Mandel 'Filled with twists both unsettling and unexpected' TIME

A laugh-out-loud political and sexual satire about the Chinese Cultural Revolution, by the acclaimed author of Serve The People!

Hard Like Water is a brilliant satire about love and revolution- a thrilling story about an erotic affair during China's Cultural Revolution.

In revolutionary struggle, if you don't defeat your enemy, your enemy will defeat you...

On his return to his hometown-and his wife-to aid the Cultural Revolution, soldier Aijun sees a young woman wandering barefoot along the railway tracks in the late-afternoon sun. Her name is Hongmei. From this moment on, an 'unspeakably beautiful flower' blooms in Aijun's heart. Aijun and Hongmei hurl themselves into the town's revolutionary struggle, spending their days and nights stamping out feudalism, writing pamphlets and attending rallies- they are the engines of history. But soon their sexual and revolutionary fervour begin to merge and a crazed new love explodes between them.

The party bosses are impressed by the ardour of the pair's work. Emboldened, the couple build a 'tunnel of love'-to further the revolution, of course, but also to connect their homes and create a 'nuptial chamber' for their secret rendezvous. But when Hongmei's husband finds them there one evening, and the young couple are arrested for framing a comrade, their dreams of a life together begin to fall apart.

In the spirit of Serve the People!, Yan Lianke's sparkling first novel in English, Hard Like Water is a thoroughly entertaining tale of sexual infatuation and revolutionary zeal, a universal human drama about the nature of political power, the danger of hubris, and the freewheeling momentum of love and sexual desire-from one of China's greatest contemporary writers.

In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy.

Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. Desperate to rediscover the success of her first novel, the one by which all her other work has been judged, she attempts to return to the page - ignoring the strained relationship with her best friend, the increasing phone calls from her editor, demanding the final book of her contract, and the growing fear that the end of her career is imminent.

And then Gilly appears.

A young woman claiming a connection from back home, one that Frankie can't quite seem to recall, Gilly seems determined for the two women to become fast friends. Frankie finds herself equally irritated and amused by the strange young woman before her - but there's something about her that continues to give Frankie pause, that makes her wonder just how much of what Gilly tells her is actually the truth.

Those around Frankie are quick to dismiss her concerns, citing her recent fragile state and what took place that night at the Savoy. So too do they dismiss Frankie's claims that someone is occupying the other half of the palazzo, which has supposedly stood empty since after the war. But Frankie has caught Gilly in numerous lies, has seen the lights across the way, has heard the footsteps too-and what's more, knows she isn't mad.

Set in the days before and after the 1966 flood - the worst ever experienced by the city of Venice - the trajectory of the disaster that forever altered the city mirrors Frankie's own inner turmoil as she struggles to make sense of what is and is not the truth, ultimately culminating in a tragedy that leaves her questioning her own role and responsibility - as well as her sanity.

From the hugely popular 44 Scotland Street series comes the latest adventures of Bertie and his family and friends.

The winds of change are blowing through Scotland Street. Though Bertie is getting older, he can't resist an adventure to escape his domineering mother, and Bruce, ever the navel-gazer, will have to bring his best self to navigate the complexities of the pas de deux. While Alexander McCall Smith's delightfully warm and witty comedy takes some surprising turns, the improbable adventures of this quirky cast of Scots will affirm the heart and joy in Edinburgh's New Town.

A Promise of Ankles is the fourteenth installment of this beloved series.

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don't exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can't imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there's certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there's this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August's day when she needed it most. August's subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there's one big problem: Jane doesn't just look like an old school punk rocker. She's literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it's time to start believing in some things, after all.

Casey McQuiston's One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.

'Absolutely breathtaking' - Christy Lefteri, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo.

We all have something to tell those we have lost . . .

On a windy hill in Japan, in a garden overlooking the sea stands a disused phone box. For years, people have travelled to visit the phone box, to pick up the receiver and speak into the wind: to pass their messages to loved ones no longer with us.

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she is plunged into despair and wonders how she will ever carry on. One day she hears of the phone box, and decides to make her own pilgrimage there, to speak once more to the people she loved the most. But when you have lost everything, the right words can be the hardest thing to find . . .

Then she meets Takeshi, a bereaved husband whose own daughter has stopped talking in the wake of their loss. What happens next will warm your heart, even when it feels as though it is breaking . . .

The Phone Box at the Edge of the World is an unforgettable story of the depths of grief, the lightness of love and the human longing to keep the people who are no longer with us close to our hearts.

'A beautiful novel; tender, laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply moving' - Louise O'Neill 'Astonishing. Louise Nealon is a ridiculously talented writer' - Stacey Halls Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies.

This world is Debbie's normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve's eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy's drinking gets worse. Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety.

A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you've taken it with you, Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who's taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood.

They'll search the world to find her.

From the Sunday Times number one bestselling author Lucinda Riley, The Missing Sister is the seventh instalment in the multimillion-copy epic series The Seven Sisters.

The six D'Apliese sisters have each been on their own incredible journey to discover their heritage, but they still have one question left unanswered: who and where is the seventh sister?

They only have one clue - an image of a star-shaped emerald ring. The search to find the missing sister will take them across the globe - from New Zealand to Canada, England, France and Ireland - uniting them all in their mission to complete their family at last.

In doing so, they will slowly unearth a story of love, strength and sacrifice that began almost one hundred years ago, as other brave young women risk everything to change the world around them.

PRAISE FOR THE SEVEN SISTERS SERIES 'The Seven Sisters series is heart-wrenching, uplifting and utterly enthralling' Lucy Foley 'Delicious reading' Daily Mail 'A compelling novel on an epic scale' Sunday Express 'Atmospheric, heart-rending and multi-layered' Grazia 'Addictive storytelling with a moving, emotional heart' Dinah Jefferies

'[Her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama 'Marilynne Robinson is one of the greatest writers of our time' Sunday Times 'Jack is the fourth in Robinson's luminous, profound Gilead series and perhaps the best yet' Observer Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the American National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the final in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.

Jack tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the loved and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa, a drunkard and a ne'er-do-well. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African-American high school teacher, also a preacher's child, with a discriminating mind, a generous spirit and an independent will. Their fraught, beautiful story is one of Robinson's greatest achievements.

The Cassandra of American letters. -New York Times When her father dies, Kay Wilkinson can't cry. Over ten years, Alzheimer's had steadily eroded this erudite man. Surely one's own father passing should never come as such a relief?

Both healthy and vital medical professionals in their early fifties, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many of their elderly NHS patients in similar states of decay. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes a modest proposal: they should agree to commit suicide together once they've both turned eighty. When their deal is sealed in 1991, the spouses are blithely looking forward to another three decades together.

But then they turn eighty.

By turns hilarious and touching, playful and grave, Should We Stay or Should We Go portrays twelve parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril, from a purgatorial Cuckoo's-Nest-style retirement home to the discovery of a cure for ageing, from cryogenic preservation to the unexpected pleasures of dementia.

Weaving in a host of contemporary issues - Brexit, mass migration, the coronavirus - Lionel Shriver has pulled off a rollicking page-turner in which we never have to mourn deceased characters, because they'll be alive and kicking in the very next chapter.

What if Hillary hadn't married Bill? RODHAM is the latest addictive Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller from the acclaimed author of AMERICAN WIFE, perfect for summer reading.

'This addictive novel is the SLIDING DOORS of American politics. Gripping' Stylist 'Startlingly good. One of my favourite writers' KATE ATKINSON

'Awfully opinionated for a girl' is what they call Hillary as she grows up in her Chicago suburb.

Smart, diligent, and a bit plain, that's the general consensus. Then Hillary goes to college, and her star rises. At Yale Law School, she continues to be a leader - and catches the eye of driven, handsome and charismatic Bill. But when he asks her to marry him, Hillary gives him a firm No.

How might things have turned out for them, for America, for the world itself, if Hillary Rodham had really turned down Bill Clinton?

With her sharp but always compassionate eye, Sittenfeld explores the loneliness, moral ambivalence and iron determination that characterise the quest for high office, as well as the painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world ruled by men

'A lot of fun. A wonderful sad dream of what might have happened' Guardian 'It ends up being a love letter to a type- the female intellectual, who is given none of the licence of her less talented male peers. At the end, I found myself saying Oh My God' Observer 'An explosive new book' Grazia

'A raging, funny and fierce thriller with a protagonist whose life force, against extraordinary odds - always in the gaze and sometimes the grasp of predatory, abusive men - is a thing of wonder' Financial Times 'Joan is an unforgettable anti-heroine. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking about her' Elizabeth Day I drove myself out of New York City where a man shot himself in front of me. He was a gluttonous man and when his blood came out it looked like the blood of a pig.

That's a cruel thing to think, I know. He did it in a restaurant where I was having dinner with another man, another married man.

Do you see how this is going? But I wasn't always that way.

I am depraved. I hope you like me.

MEET JOAN: SUMMER 2021 A 2021 Highlight for: Guardian - Sunday Express - Independent - New Statesman - Evening Standard - Cosmopolitan - Red - Grazia - Daily Mail - Daily Express - The Week - Irish Times - i - The Sun 'Like a series of grenades exploding' Marian Keyes

Set on the eve of the financial crash of 2008, Barcelona Dreaming is made up of three stories that are linked by time and place, and also by the moving, unexpected interactions of a rich cast of characters.

The stories are narrated, in turn, by an English woman who runs a gift shop, an alcoholic jazz pianist, and a translator tormented by unrequited love, all of whose lives will be changed forever. Underpinning the novel, and casting a long shadow, is a crime committed against a young Moroccan immigrant.

Exploring themes of addiction, racism, celebrity, immigration, and self-delusion, and fuelled by a longing for the unattainable and a nostalgia for what is about to be lost, Barcelona Dreaming is a love letter to one of the world's most beautiful cities and a powerful and poignant fable for our uncertain times.

'Utterly beautiful ... filled with hope' Joanna Cannon

'The sheer joy in Sarah Winman's storytelling is completely infectious.' Graham Norton

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From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster.

We just need to know what the heart's capable of, Evelyn.

And do you know what it's capable of?

I do. Grace and fury.

1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.

Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.

These two unlikely people find kindred spirits in each other and Evelyn's talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses' mind that will shape the trajectory of his life - and of those who love him - for the next four decades.

Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London's East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful, richly-peopled novel about beauty, love, family and fate.

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'Four course nourishment for all Winman fans' Patrick Gale

'Readers will want to prolong the pleasure of Sarah Winman's beautiful novel Still Life as long as possible. It is a book to get lost in, the kind of story that bolsters the heart and soul. I loved it.' Donal Ryan

'Extraordinary . . . my book of the year' Liz Nugent

'A beautifully intimate portrait that celebrates the courage and resilience of the human spirit.' Jane Harper, author of The Survivors 'Historical fiction of the highest order ... An engrossing, deeply-satisfying read, one of the year's outstanding, not-to-be missed debuts. ' Melissa Ashley, author of The Birdman's Wife 'A powerful and elegantly wrought story of women's resistance. This is required reading for our times.' Myfanwy Jones, author of Leap '. . . a gripping, meticulously researched novel, and a nuanced, poetic and deeply serious exploration of the difference that individual choices can make in a society crumbling physically and morally. Wright recreates occupied Paris with immediacy and with melancholy tenderness . . . This is a book to savour and treasure.' Lee Kofman, author of Imperfect May, 1940: After a bitter tragedy, young Australian woman Lucie and her French mother Yvonne are forced to leave home and seek help from the only family they have left-Lucie's uncle, Gerard.

As the Second World War engulfs Europe, the two women find themselves trapped in German-occupied Paris, sharing a cramped apartment with the authoritarian Gerard and his extremist views.

Drawing upon her artistic talents, Lucie risks her own safety to engage in small acts of defiance against the occupying forces and the collaborationist French regime, where the authorities reward French citizens for denouncing so-called 'traitors' in their community.

Faced with the escalating brutality of anti-Jewish measures, and the indifference of so many of her fellow Parisians, Lucie must decide how far she will go to defend the rights of others.

From the bestselling author Ken Follett, The Evening and the Morning is a historical epic that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.

A TIME OF CONFLICT It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages, and England faces attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Life is hard, and those with power wield it harshly, bending justice according to their will - often in conflict with the king. With his grip on the country fragile and with no clear rule of law, chaos and bloodshed reign.

THREE LIVES INTERTWINED Into this uncertain world three people come to the fore: a young boatbuilder, who dreams of a better future when a devastating Viking raid shatters the life that he and the woman he loves hoped for; a Norman noblewoman, who follows her beloved husband across the sea to a new land only to find her life there shockingly different; and a capable monk at Shiring Abbey, who dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a centre of learning admired throughout Europe.

THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE Now, with England at the dawn of the Middle Ages, these three people will each come into dangerous conflict with a ruthless bishop, who will do anything to increase his wealth and power, in an epic tale of ambition and rivalry, death and birth, and love and hate.

Thirty years ago we were introduced to Kingsbridge in The Pillars of the Earth, and now in this masterful prequel international bestseller Ken Follett will take us on a journey into a rich past, which will end where his masterpiece begins.

AD 105: Dacia. Centurion Flavius Ferox commands an isolated fort beyond the Danube. First in a new adventure trilogy set on the frontier of the Roman Empire.

From bestselling historian Adrian Goldsworthy, a profoundly authentic, action-packed adventure set on Rome's Danubian frontier.

AD 105: DACIA The Dacian kingdom and Rome are at peace, but no one thinks that it will last. Sent to command an isolated fort beyond the Danube, centurion Flavius Ferox can sense that war is coming, but also knows that enemies may be closer to home.

Many of the Brigantes under his command are former rebels and convicts, as likely to kill him as obey an order. And then there is Hadrian, the emperor's cousin, and a man with plans of his own...

Gritty, gripping and profoundly authentic, The Fort is the first book in a brand new trilogy set in the Roman empire from bestselling historian Adrian Goldsworthy.

Reviews for the Vindolanda Trilogy:

'No one knows the Roman army better than Adrian Goldsworthy, and no one writes more convincing Roman fiction' Harry Sidebottom 'An authentic, enjoyable read' The Times 'Gritty and realistic ... Goldsworthy's characters are authentically ancient and his descriptions of Roman Briton ring true' Daily Telegraph (Sydney)

West Yorkshire, 1904. When newly graduated nurse Ruby May takes a position looking after the children of Charles and Lilian England, a wealthy couple from a powerful dynasty of mill owners, she hopes it will be the fresh start she needs. But as she adapts to life at the isolated Hardcastle House, it becomes clear there's something not quite right about the beautiful, mysterious Mrs England.

Ostracised by the servants and feeling increasingly uneasy, Ruby is forced to confront her own demons in order to prevent history from repeating itself. After all, there's no such thing as the perfect family - and she should know.

Simmering with slow-burning menace, Mrs England is a portrait of an Edwardian marriage, weaving an enthralling story of men and women, power and control, courage, truth and the very darkest deception. Set against the atmospheric landscape of West Yorkshire, Stacey Halls' third novel proves her one of the most exciting and compelling new storytellers of our times.

'The new Hilary Mantel' - Cosmopolitan

'Stunning' Oprah Magazine 'A storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance' Kirkus For readers of WASHINGTON BLACK, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD and DAYS WITHOUT END.

In the dying days of the American Civil War, newly freed brothers Landry and Prentiss find themselves cast into the world without a penny to their names. Forced to hide out in the woods near their former Georgia plantation, they're soon discovered by the land's owner, George Walker, a man still reeling from the loss of his son in the war.

When the brothers begin to live and work on George's farm, the tentative bonds of trust and union begin to blossom between the strangers. But this sanctuary survives on a knife's edge, and it isn't long before the inhabitants of the nearby town of Old Ox react with fury at the alliances being formed only a few miles away . . .

Readers have been swept away by The Sweetness of Water:

'Such a powerful, magnificent book; I urge you to read it. The comparisons with Colson Whitehead are justified' ***** 'A staggering debut and a story that stays with you' ***** 'Thought-provoking and moving . . . a gripping and compelling novel that exposes flaws, mixed emotions and imperfect relationships, and yet it holds on with determination and hope. It fully deserves a 5-star rating' ***** 'Outstanding . . . A book that deserves widespread recognition and a wide audience' *****

The Sunday Times bestselling sequel to Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, the stunning conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy.

A Guardian Book of the Year * A Times Book of the Year * A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year * A Sunday Times Book of the Year * A New Statesman Book of the Year * A Spectator Book of the Year Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020 Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2020 'Mantel has taken us to the dark heart of history...and what a show' The Times 'If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?' England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

Sunday Times Bestseller (08/03/2020)

The action-packed and gripping new adventure by number one bestselling author, Wilbur Smith, about one man's quest for revenge.

'The right of the cat over the mouse, of the strong over the weak. The natural law of existence.' Mungo St John, A Falcon Flies The son of a wealthy plantation owner and a doting mother, Mungo St John is accustomed to the wealth and luxuries his privilege has afforded him. That is until he returns from university to discover his family ruined, his inheritance stolen and his childhood sweetheart, Camilla, taken by the conniving Chester Marion. Fuelled by anger, and love, Mungo swears vengeance and devotes his life to saving Camilla - and destroying Chester.

Camilla, trapped in New Orleans, powerless to her position as a kept slave and suffering at the hands of Chester's brutish behaviour, must learn to do whatever it takes to survive.

As Mungo battles his own fate and misfortune to achieve the revenge that drives him, and regain his power in the world, he must question what it takes for a man to survive when he has nothing, and what he is willing to do in order to get what he wants.

When Mariam married her childhood sweetheart in a fairytale Sydney wedding, her father Kamalle dreamed of a beautiful future for his family. When the young couple and their baby daughter went on an overseas holiday, he couldn't have been happier. But a dark secret was lurking on the horizon. They would not be coming home.

Mariam disappeared. Months later, Kamalle was informed by the Australian government that his daughter had been coerced into Syria. He later learnt that she had been forced at gunpoint, by her husband, across the border into Syria and into the clutches of ISIS. When her husband was killed, Mariam was forced to marry another ISIS fighter, with whom she had another child. When he was killed she was forced to marry again; she was trapped. But since the defeat of ISIS, instead of being brought home, Mariam and her three young children have been demonised as 'foreign fighters', forced to languish in refugee camps while their home country refuses to repatriate them.

Kamalle has been working with international agency Save the Children for over two years trying to bring home his daughter and grandkids, who have been abandoned amongst the 20 Australian adults and 47 children. Interacting with law enforcement and government agencies in Australia, he was told that keeping quiet would be in their best interests. That has achieved nothing. Now he tells his story.

Long before Ruhi fell pregnant, she knew she was never going to be the 'good Indian daughter' her parents demanded. But when the discovery that she is having a girl sends her into a slump of disappointment, it becomes clear she's getting weighed down by emotional baggage that needs to be unpacked, quickly.

So Ruhi sets herself a mission to deal with the potholes in her past before her baby is born. Delving into her youth in suburban Melbourne, she draws a heartrending yet often hilarious picture of a family in crisis, struggling to connect across generational, cultural and personal divides. Sifting through her own shattered self-esteem, Ruhi confronts the abuse threaded through her childhood. How can she hold on to the family and culture she has known and loved her whole life, when they are the reason for her scars?

Good Indian Daughter is a brutally honest yet brilliantly funny memoir for anyone who's ever felt like a let-down.

One teacher. One school. One year.

Brendan James Murray has been a high school teacher for more than ten years. In that time he has seen hundreds of kids move through the same hallways and classrooms - boisterous, angry, shy, big-hearted, awkward - all of them on the journey to adulthood.

In The School, he paints an astonishingly vivid portrait of a single school year, perfectly capturing the highs and lows of being a teenager, as well as the fire, passion and occasional heartbreak of being their teacher. Hilarious, heartfelt and true, it is a timeless story of a teacher and his classes, a must-read for any parent, and a tribute to the art of teaching.

'In this eloquently written book Brendan James Murray has captured the good, the bad, the unjust and the fabulously inspirational about one year in a high school. It is raw, real and accurate story that lands on hope and deep gratitue for the exceptional teacher who teach with heart and soul.' - Maggie Dent, author of From Boys to Men

'By the second page you care, and from the fourth you are absolutely hooked. Murray wades into the nightmare lives that many Australian kids inhabit in our unjust and unequal society. He reminds us how schools and caring teachers can provide the only chance of a life that some kids have. A very moving book.' - Steve Biddulph, author of Fully Human

'I immediately want to give this book to every teacher I know. An outstanding work of non-fiction storytelling, Murray gives a voice to one of the most important yet undervalued professions in the modern world: teaching. Stunningly written, moving, and full of perspective-changing insights, The School is ultimately a story we should all pay attention to.' - Jessie Stephens, author of Heartsick

John O'Halloran was a country boy from Tamworth, NSW, who was called up for national service not long after the start of the Vietnam War. As a tough and determined 21-year-old, he guided 6 RAR's B Company 5 Platoon through some of the biggest conflicts of the war, including Operation Hobart and the Battle of Long Tan. But he faced his hardest military challenge at Operation Bribie, leading a fixed bayonet charge against a deadly Viet Cong jungle stronghold.

The Platoon Commander is an unmissable and devastating first-hand account of the realities and brutalities of war, and especially this war fought in jungles, not trenches, which would go on to bitterly divide Australians. O'Halloran's sense of duty and strong character carried him and his men through fierce battles and uncertainty. His sense of humour kept him going through the years afterwards. His indomitable spirit inspired the men of 5 Platoon to fight against the odds to achieve the mission - no matter how treacherous - and even away from the action and in the many years since O'Halloran kept the respect of his men.

Now regarded by many of his peers as a national treasure, John Patrick Joseph O'Halloran has been quoted in almost every important book written about Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, yet has never told his own remarkable story. Until now.

'A dynamic portrait of a true creative partnership and a vital chapter in Australian literary culture.' Caroline Baum, author of Only When Dymphna Stella Rees - named after family friends Dymphna Cusack and Stella Miles Franklin - finds bundles of love letters buried in her parents' archive, she is intrigued by the discovery.

Leslie Rees and Coralie Clarke Rees were a power couple of the Australian literary scene in the mid-twentieth century. They took their shared dream of being writers from Perth to London and launched themselves in Fleet Street, interviewing some of the century's literary greats, including James Joyce, AA Milne, and George Bernard Shaw.

After settling in Sydney in the 1930s, they embraced the city's vibrant arts scene and established prolific careers. Leslie became an award-winning children's book author and the ABC's national drama editor, while Coralie was one of the country's first female broadcasters. They influenced the development of an authentically Australian arts culture and included among their friends Mary Gilmore, Ruth Park, D'Arcy Niland, Mary Durack and Vance and Nettie Palmer. Their partnership and legacy are fully examined here for the first time.

Drawn from personal notebooks, letters and original transcripts, A Paper Inheritance is the engrossing story of what drove this literary couple to prominence and is a celebration of their love and their passion for words.

Sinead Stubbins has always known that there was a better version of herself lying just outside of her grasp. That if she listened to the right song or won the right (any) award or knew about whisky or followed the right Instagram psychologist or drank kombucha, ever, or enacted the correct 70-step Korean skincare regime, she would become her 'best self'.

In My Defence, I Have No Defence raises the white flag on trying to live up to impossible standards. Wild and funny and wickedly relatable, it is one woman's reckoning with her complete inability to self-improve and a hilarious reprieve for anyone who has ever struggled to be better. This is the comfort read of the year from Australia's most exciting new comedy writer.

The renowned biographer's definitive portrait of a literary titan 'Superlative... definitive and genuinely gripping' SUNDAY TIMES 'Utterly engrossing' EVENING STANDARD 'Compulsively readable... Beautifully written... Definitive' OBSERVER Appointed by Philip Roth and granted complete access and independence, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the post-war literary scene.

Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain. Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-twenty-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of post-war American culture.

*A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, EVENING STANDARD AND NEW STATESMAN*

A vividly rendered and empathetic exploration of how two of the greatest poets of the 20th century-Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton-became bitter rivals and, eventually, friends.

Introduced at a workshop in Boston University led by the acclaimed and famous poet Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton formed a friendship that would soon evolve into a fierce rivalry, colored by jealousy and respect in equal terms.

In the years that followed, these two women would not only become iconic figures in literature, but also lead curiously parallel lives haunted by mental illness, suicide attempts, self-doubt, and difficult personal relationships. With weekly martini meetings at the Ritz to discuss everything from sex to suicide, theirs was a relationship as complex and subversive as their poetry.

Based on in-depth research and unprecedented archival access, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz is a remarkable and unforgettable look at two legendary poets and how their work has turned them into lasting and beloved cultural figures.

'A simply astonishing achievement. The quality, depth, emotional power and terrifying honesty of Alan Davies's story-telling take the breath away' Stephen Fry 'This hugely affecting book is brave, insightful and, at times, funny about things it is hard to be funny about' Jo Brand The story of a life built on sand. In the rain.

In this compelling memoir, comedian and actor Alan Davies recalls his boyhood with vivid insight and devastating humour. Shifting between his 1970s upbringing and his life today, Davies moves poignantly from innocence to experience to the clarity of hindsight, always with a keen sense of the absurd.

From sibling dynamics, to his voiceless, misunderstood progression through school, sexuality and humiliating 'accidents', Davies inhabits his younger mind with spectacular accuracy, sharply evoking an era when Green Shield Stamps, Bob-a-Job week and Whizzer & Chips loomed large, a bus fare was 2p - and children had little power in the face of adult motivation. Here, there are often exquisitely tender recollections of the mother he lost at six years old, of a bereaved family struggling to find its way, and the kicks and confusion of adolescence.

Through even the joyous and innocent memories, the pain of Davies's lifelong grief and profound betrayal is unfiltered, searing and beautifully articulated. Just Ignore Him is not only an autobiography, it is a testament to a survivor's resilience and courage.

Tender, moving, heartfelt and warm (and sporadically scandalous and outrageous too), these are the private messages between people in love. Yet they are also correspondence between the rulers of nations.

From Henry VIII's lovelorn notes to Anne Boleyn and George IV's impassioned notes to his secret wife, to Queen Victoria's tender letters to Prince Albert and Edward VIII's extraordinary correspondence with Wallis Simpson - these letters depict romantic love from its budding passion to the comfort and understanding of a long union (and occasionally beyond to resentment and recrimination), all set against the background of great affairs of state, wars and the strictures of royal duty.

Here is a chance to glimpse behind the pomp and ceremony, the carefully curated images of royal splendour and decorum, to see the passions, hopes, jealousies and loneliness of kings and queens throughout history. By turns tender, moving, heartfelt and warm (and sporadically scandalous and outrageous too), these are the private messages between people in love. Yet they are also correspondence between the rulers of nations, whose actions (and passions) changed the course of history, for good and bad.

This morning I received your dear, dear letter of the 21st. How happy do you make me with your love! Oh! my Angel Albert, I am quite enchanted with it! I do not deserve such love! Never, never did I think I could be loved so much. Queen Victoria to Prince Albert (28 November 1839)

A profoundly moving story of how love, courage and determination brought a family back from the brink This is the story of a happy family whose life suddenly fell apart, never to be the same again. Of two devoted parents plunged into a waking nightmare as their eleven-year-old daughter stopped speaking and eating, and her younger sister struggled to cope.

This crisis was not theirs alone- they were burned-out people on a burned-out planet.

Our House is on Fire is the story of how one family found ways to strengthen, heal, and gain courage from the love they had for each other - and for the living world. It is a parable of hope and determination in an emergency that affects us all.

'A wonderfully assured and utterly riveting biography that captures not only the much-maligned Machiavelli, but also the spirit of his time and place. A monumental achievement.' - Jessie Childs, author of God's Traitors.

'A notorious fiend', 'generally odious', 'he seems hideous, and so he is.' Thanks to the invidious reputation of his most famous work, The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli exerts a unique hold over the popular imagination. But was Machiavelli as sinister as he is often thought to be? Might he not have been an infinitely more sympathetic figure, prone to political missteps, professional failures and personal dramas?

Alexander Lee reveals the man behind the myth, following him from cradle to grave, from his father's penury and the abuse he suffered at a teacher's hands, to his marriage and his many affairs (with both men and women), to his political triumphs and, ultimately, his fall from grace and exile. In doing so, Lee uncovers hitherto unobserved connections between Machiavelli's life and thought. He also reveals the world through which Machiavelli moved: from the great halls of Renaissance Florence to the court of the Borgia pope, Alexander VI, from the dungeons of the Stinche prison to the Rucellai gardens, where he would begin work on some of his last great works.

As much a portrait of an age as of a uniquely engaging man, Lee's gripping and definitive biography takes the reader into Machiavelli's world - and his work - more completely than ever before.

Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy is a major biography of one of the most important and inspirational leaders of the twenty-first century, based on interviews with the New Zealand Prime Minister herself.

Jacinda Ardern was swept into office in 2017, with a wave of popular adulation dubbed 'Jacindamania'. Her victory seemed heroic: in less than three months, she rose from deputy leader of the opposition, to the highest office in her nation. Few in politics would have believed it possible; fewer still would have guessed at her resolve and compassionate leadership, which, in the wake of the horrific Christchurch mosque shootings of March 2019 and the struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic, brought her international acclaim and a second term.

Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy carefully explores the influences - personal, social, political and emotional - that have shaped Ardern. Acclaimed peace activist and journalist Supriya Vani and writer Carl A Harte build their narrative through Vani's personal interviews with Ardern, as well as the prime minister's public statements and speeches and the words of those who know her. We visit the places, meet the people and understand the events that propelled the daughter of a small-town Mormon policeman into a committed social democrat, a passionate Labour Party politician, and a model modern leader.

The witty and perceptive diaries kept by Cecil Beaton's authorised biographer during his many fascinating encounters with extraordinary - often legendary - characters in his search for the real Cecil Beaton.

Hugo Vickers's life took a dramatic turn in 1979 when the legendary Sir Cecil Beaton invited him to be his authorised biographer. The excitement of working with the famous photographer was dashed only days later when Cecil Beaton died. But the journey had begun - Vickers was entrusted with Beaton's papers, diaries and, most importantly, access to his friends and contemporaries. The resulting book, first published in 1985, was a bestseller.

In Malice in Wonderland, Vickers shares excerpts from his personal diaries kept during this period. For five years, Vickers travelled the world and talked to some of the most fascinating and important social and cultural figures of the time, including royalty such as the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, film stars such as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Julie Andrews, writers such as Truman Capote, and photographers such as Irving Penn and Horst. And not only Beaton's friends - Vickers sought out the enemies too, notably Irene Selznick. He was taken under the wings of Lady Diana Cooper, Clarissa Avon and Diana Vreeland.

Drawn into Beaton's world and accepted by its members, Vickers the emerging biographer also began his own personal adventure. The outsider became the insider - Beaton's friends became his friends. Malice in Wonderland is a fascinating portrait of a now disappeared world, and vividly and sensitively portrays some of its most fascinating characters as we travel with Vickers on his quest.

The traditional image of a political assassin is a lone wolf with a gun, aimed squarely at the head of those they wish to kill. But while there has been enormous speculation on what lay behind notorious individual political assassinations - from Gaius Julius Caesar to John F. Kennedy - the phenomenon itself has scarcely been examined as a special category of political violence, one not motivated by personal gain or vengeance.

Now, in Day of the Assassins, acclaimed historian Michael Burleigh explores the many facets of political assassination, explaining the role of historical precedent, why it is more frequent in certain types of society than others and asking if assassination can either bring about change, or prevent it, and whether, like a contagious disease, political murder can be catching. Focusing chiefly on the last century and a half, Burleigh takes readers to the Congo, India, Iran, Laos, Rwanda and South Africa and revisits notable assassinations in Europe, Russia, Israel and the United States.

Throughout, the assassins themselves are at the centre of the narrative, whether they were cool, well-trained professional killers, like the agents of the NKVD or the KGB, or men motivated by the politicization of their private miseries. Even some of those who were demonstrably mad had method in the madness and acted for comprehensible political motives.

Combining human drama, questions of political morality and the sheer randomness of events, Day of the Assassins is a riveting insight into the politics of violence.

An evocative narrative of the many tragedies that fell upon those who were forced to serve time in Port Arthur, one of the most remote and feared convict locations in Australia.

Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a significant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead; and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines.

Convict-era Port Arthur will for the first time provide a comprehensive history of Port Arthur, its horrors and its changing role over a fifty-year period. In gripping detail, using the experiences and words of the convicts, soldiers and administrators who spent time there, David W. Cameron brings to life these deeply miserable days.

What is it about Brittany that makes it such a favourite destination for the British? To answer this question, Bretons and Britons explores the long history of the Bretons, from the time of the first farmers around 5400 BC to the present, and the very close relationship they have had with their British neighbours throughout this time. More than simply a history of a people, Bretons and Britons is also the author's homage to a country and a people he has come to admire over decades of engagement. Underlying the story throughout is the tale of the Bretons' fierce struggle to maintain their distinctive identity. As a peninsula people living on a westerly excrescence of Europe they were surrounded on three sides by the sea, which gave them some protection from outside interference, but their landward border was constantly threatened - not only by succeeding waves of Romans, Franks, and Vikings, but also by the growing power of the French state. It was the sea that gave the Bretons strength and helped them in their struggle for independence. They shared in the culture of Atlantic-facing Europe, and from the eighteenth century, when a fascination for the Celts was beginning to sweep Europe, they were able to present themselves as the direct successors of the ancient Celts along with the Cornish, Welsh, Scots, and Irish. This gave them a new strength and a new pride. It is this spirit that is still very much alive today.

We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.

On 26 May 2017, after a historic process of consultation, the Uluru Statement from the Heart was read out. This clear and urgent call for reform to the community from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples asked for the establishment of a First Nations Voice to Parliament protected in the constitution and a process of agreement-making and truth-telling. Voice. Treaty. Truth.

What was the journey to this point? What do Australians need to know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart? And how can these reforms be achieved?

Everything You Need to Know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart, written by Megan Davis and George Williams, two of Australia's best-known constitutional experts, is essential reading on how our Constitution was drafted, what the 1967 referendum achieved, and the lead-up and response to the Uluru Statement. Importantly, it explains how the Uluru Statement offers change that will benefit the whole nation.

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From an acclaimed British author, a sharply focused, riveting account - told from inside the White House - of the crucial days, hours, and moments when the Watergate conspiracy consumed, and ultimately toppled, a president.

From an acclaimed British author, a sharply focused, riveting account - told from inside the White House - of the crucial days, hours, and moments when the Watergate conspiracy consumed, and ultimately toppled, a president.

In January 1973, Richard Nixon was inaugurated after winning re-election in a historic landslide. But by April his presidency had fallen apart as the Watergate scandal metastasised into what White House counsel John Dean called 'a full-blown cancer'. King Richard is the intimate, utterly absorbing narrative of the tension-packed hundred days when the Watergate burglars and their handlers in the administration turned on one another, revealing their direct connection to the White House.

Drawing on thousands of hours of newly released taped recordings, Michael Dobbs takes us into the very heart of the conspiracy, recreating these dramatic events in unprecedentedly vivid detail. He captures the growing paranoia of the principal players, and their desperate attempts to deflect blame, as the noose tightened around them and the daily pressures became increasingly unbearable. At the centre of this spellbinding drama is Nixon himself, a man whose strengths - particularly his determination to win at all costs - were also his fatal flaws. Structured like a classical tragedy with a uniquely American twist, this is an epic and deeply human story of ambition, power, and betrayal.

'The unraveling of Richard Nixon's presidency plays out in intimate detail in this vivid recreation of a key period in the Watergate scandal ... An indelible study of a political antihero.' STARRED REVIEW -Publishers Weekly 'Michael Dobbs is a master at narrative history. By focusing on the most critical 100 days of Watergate, and by sticking closely to the written and spoken record, Dobbs is able to bring to life the tragedy of Richard Nixon in a way no one else has. A truly gripping read and a moving portrait.' -Evan Thomas, author of Being Nixon 'Spellbinding ... Masterful ... The author delivers an intimate, engrossing picture of Nixon as a visionary man 'obsessed with privacy and solitude,' an affectionate husband and father, and a gut-fighting outsider mystified by power and all its trappings, styling himself as a kind of blend of Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Disraeli, and Charles de Gaulle. A riveting portrait of ambition, hubris, betrayal, and the downfall of an American president.' STARRED REVIEW -Kirkus Reviews

Francis I (1494-1547) was inconstant, amorous, hot-headed and flawed. Arguably he was also the most significant king that France ever had.

A contemporary of Henry VIII of England, Francis saw himself as the first Renaissance king. A courageous and heroic warrior, he was also a keen aesthete, an accomplished diplomat and an energetic ruler who turned his country into a force to be reckoned with. Bestselling historian Leonie Frieda's comprehensive and sympathetic account explores the life of the most human of all Renaissance monarchs - and the most enigmatic.

This is popular WW2 history at its heart-stopping best, fuelled by an incredible new story During WW2, a group of Jewish refugees (intellectuals, writers, artists and athletes - most from Germany and Austria) escaped to Britain and were interned as 'enemy aliens'. In 1942, they were selected and trained to form a special unit of commandoes who would be sent back into Europe to play a significant role in the final battles against the Nazis.

Based on original archival research, interviews and a cache of newly discovered sources, this is a book brimming with camaraderie, heroism and high-octane storytelling, as it tells the dramatic story of the X-Troop men who helped to defeat the Nazis and liberate the concentration camps where their families had either been killed or imprisoned.

The definitive biography and assessment of the wily and formidable prince who unexpectedly became monarch-the most infamous king in British history The reign of Richard III, the last Yorkist king and the final monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, marked a turning point in British history. But despite his lasting legacy, Richard only ruled as king for the final two years of his life. While much attention has been given to his short reign, Michael Hicks explores the whole of Richard's fascinating life and traces the unfolding of his character and career from his early years as the son of a duke to his violent death at the battle of Bosworth.

Hicks explores how Richard-villainized for his imprisonment and probable killing of the princes-applied his experience to overcome numerous setbacks and adversaries. Richard proves a complex, conflicted individual whose Machiavellian tact and strategic foresight won him a kingdom. He was a reformer who planned big changes, but lost the opportunity to fulfill them and to retain his crown.

By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. During forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Overnight, almost a hundred thousand Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed. This is the story of what they did next.

Former FBI Agent Ralph Hope uses critical insider knowledge and access to Stasi records to track and expose ex-officers working everywhere from the Russian energy sector to the police and even the government department tasked with prosecuting Stasi crimes. He examines why the key players have never been called to account and, in doing so, asks whether we have really learned from the past at all. He highlights a man who continued to fight the Stasi for thirty years after the Wall fell, and reveals a truth that many don't want spoken.

The Grey Men comes as an urgent warning from the past at a time when governments the world over are building an unprecedented network of surveillance over their citizens.

The major rediscovery of a forgotten masterpiece in the mould of Alone in Berlin and Stoner - the literary memoir of a youth in Nazi Germany.

In 1965 the German journalist Horst Kr ger attended the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt, where 22 former camp guards were put on trial for the systematic murder of over 1 million men, women and children. Twenty years after the end of the war, this was the first time that the German people were confronted with the horrific details of the Holocaust executed by 'ordinary men' still living in their midst.

The trial sent Kr ger back to his childhood in the 1930s, in an attempt to understand 'how it really was, that incomprehensible time'. He had grown up in a Berlin suburb, among a community of decent, lower-middle-class homeowners. This was not the world of torch-lit processions and endless ranks of marching SA men. Here, people lived ordinary, non-political lives, believed in God and obeyed the law, but were gradually seduced and intoxicated by the promises of Nazism. He had been, Kr ger realised, 'the typical child of innocuous Germans who were never Nazis, and without whom the Nazis would never have been able to do their work'.

This world of respectability, order and duty began to crumble when tragedy struck. Kr ger's older sister decided to take her own life, leaving the parents struggling to come to terms with the inexplicable. The author's teenage rebellion, his desire to escape the stifling conformity of family life, made him join an anti-Nazi resistance group. He narrowly escaped imprisonment only to be sent to war as Hitler embarked on the conquest of Europe. Step by step, a family that had fallen under the spell of Nazism was being destroyed by it.

Written in accomplished prose of lingering beauty, The Broken House is a moving coming-of-age story that provides an unforgettable portrait of life under the Nazis. Yet the book's themes also chime with our own times - how the promise of an 'era of greatness' by a populist leader intoxicates an entire nation, how thin is the veneer of civilisation, and what makes one person a collaborator and another a resister.

Those people who were betrayed were not innocent people. They were no better nor worse than I am. It's all part of the intelligence world. If the man who turned me in came to my house today, I'd invite him to sit down and have a cup of tea.

George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a Senior Officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain. Yet he was also one of the least known double agents, and remained unrepentant.

In 1961, Blake was sentenced to forty-two years imprisonment for betraying to the KGB all of the Western operations in which he was involved, and the names of hundreds of British agents working behind the Iron Curtain. This was the longest sentence for espionage ever to have been handed down by a British court.

On the surface, Blake was a charming, intelligent and engaging man, and most importantly, a seemingly committed patriot. Underneath, a ruthlessly efficient mole and key player in the infamous 'Berlin Tunnel' operation. This illuminating biography tracks Blake from humble beginnings as a teenage courier for the Dutch underground during the Second World War, to the sensational prison-break from Wormwood Scrubs that inspired Hitchcock to write screenplay.

Through a combination of personal interviews, research and unique access to Stasi records, journalist Simon Kuper unravels who Blake truly was, what he was capable of, and why he did it.

Australia was a grim place during the Great Depression. Bettiing was inexpensive entertainment for the masses, but outlawed, police were forced to pit themselves against their public who flouted the law. Mendelssohn Bartholdy Miller was a young office called to this duty, but discovered a world of .corruption. He was ostracised, shunned and considered a ''rat'' for refusing to take part. This is a story of one man's battle against the odds to hold to the truth he knew about police corruption in an era of SP betting suppression that led to three Royal Commissions that rocked the State. It is also a tale of opportunites seized by gangsters, murderers and thugs in an era where crime flourished.

The definitive history of the Western Front - from the acclaimed author of the bestselling Passchendaele In the annals of military history, the Western Front stands as asymbol of the folly of war. However, bestselling historian Nick Lloyd reveals that the story is notone of pointlessness and stupidity, of generals being unthinking donkeys .

Drawing upon the latest scholarship, wrongly overlooked accounts and archival material, Lloyd explains the achievements that have been obscured by legends of mud, blood and futility. He recreates the decision-making and experiences of the war as it was and redefines our understanding of this monumental tragedy.

The incredible story behind the greatest female spy in history from one of Britain's best historians, now in paperback Ursula Kuczynski Burton was a spymaster, saboteur, bomb-maker and secret agent. Codenamed 'Agent Sonya', her story has never been told - until now.

Born to a German Jewish family, as Ursula grew, so did the Nazis' power. As a fanatical opponent of the fascism that ravaged her homeland, Ursula was drawn to communism as a young woman, motivated by the promise of a fair and peaceful society.

From planning an assassination attempt on Hitler in Switzerland, to spying on the Japanese in Manchuria, to preventing nuclear war (or so she believed) by stealing the science of atomic weaponry from Britain to give to Moscow, Ursula conducted some of the most dangerous espionage operations of the twentieth century.

In Agent Sonya, Britain's most acclaimed historian Ben Macintyre delivers an exhilarating tale that's as fast-paced as any fiction. It is the incredible story of one spy's life, a life that would alter the course of history . . .

In 1858, fourteen-year-old French cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier was aboard the trader Saint-Paul when it was wrecked off the eastern tip of New Guinea.

Scrambling into a longboat, Narcisse and the other survivors crossed almost 1000 kilometres of the Coral Sea before reaching the shores of Far North Queensland. If not for the local Aboriginal people, Narcisse would have perished. For seventeen years he lived with them, growing to manhood and participating fully in their Uutaalnganu world. Then, in 1875, his life was again turned upside down.

Drawing from firsthand interviews with Narcisse after his return to France and other contemporary accounts of exploration and survival, and documenting the spread of European settlement in Queensland and the brutal frontier wars that followed, Robert Macklin weaves an unforgettable tale of a young man caught between two cultures in a time of transformation and upheaval.

'Brilliantly recapturing the febrile atmosphere of Berlin in the first four years after the Second World War, Giles Milton reminds us what an excellent story-teller he is' - Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny

Berlin was in ruins when Soviet forces fought their way towards the Reichstag in the spring of 1945. Streets were choked with rubble, power supplies severed and the population close to starvation. The arrival of the Soviet army heralded yet greater terrors: the city's civilians were to suffer rape, looting and horrific violence. Worse still, they faced a future with neither certainty nor hope.

Berlin's fate had been sealed four months earlier at the Yalta Conference. The city, along with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the victorious powers - British, American, French and Soviet. On paper, it seemed a pragmatic solution; in reality, it fired the starting gun for the Cold War.

As soon as the four powers were no longer united by the common purpose of defeating Germany, they reverted to their pre-war hostility and suspicion. Rival systems, rival ideologies and rival personalities ensured that Berlin became an explosive battleground. The ruins of this once-great city were soon awash with spies, gangsters and black-marketeers, all of whom sought to profit from the disarray.

For the next four years, a handful of charismatic but flawed individuals - British, American and Soviet - fought an intensely personal battle over the future of Germany, Europe and the entire free world.

CHECKMATE IN BERLIN tells this exhilarating, high-stakes tale of grit, skullduggery, and raw power. From the high politics of Yalta to the desperate scramble to break the Soviet stranglehold of Berlin with the greatest aerial operation in history, this is the epic story of the first battle of the Cold War and how it shaped the modern world.

Australia and its formation - through the distorted view of a rum bottle.

Could the Rum Rebellion have been averted if Major Johnston wasn't hungover?

Would the Eureka Stockade have been different if the rebels weren't pissed?

How were prisoners to get drunk if Macquarie closed the only pub in the goal?

And why should sailors under fourteen be deprived of their sixteen shots of rum per day?

These are just some of the questions raised in Matt Murphy's account of Australia's colonial history. Brimming with detailed research and irreverent character sketches, Rum looks at not just how much was drunk in colonial Australia (a lot!), but also the lengths people went to get their hands on it, the futile efforts of the early governors to control it, and the often disastrous and/or absurd consequences of its consumption.

Those consequences aren't just in our past. Murphy goes beyond foundation stories to look at the legacy our love affair with alcohol has created, from binge drinking to lockout laws and from prohibition to urinating on the parliamentary carpet.

So here's to Rum, for making bad decisions look like a good idea at the time.

In 264 BC, a Roman army was poised to cross from southern Italy into Sicily. They couldn't know that this crossing would be Rome's first step on its journey from local republic to vast and powerful empire.

At the beginning of the three dramatic centuries that make up this book's narrative, Rome had no emperor and limited global influence; by the book's end, Hadrian was set to pass into history as one of the greatest emperors, whose territories stretched from England to Turkey.

In David Potter's masterful history of this period, we trace the process of cultural, political and civic transformation which led to the creation of a monarchy and the acquisition of territory, via wars with Hannibal, the destruction of Carthage, Augustan Empire-building and Hadrian's famous wall, all of which contributed to the most successful multi-cultural state in the history of Europe. This is a lively, scholarly approach to an essential era.

The wartime adventures of the legendary SOE agent Harry Ree, told in his own words A school teacher at the start of the war, Harry Ree renounced his former pacifism with the fall of France in 1940. He was deployed into a secret branch of the British army and parachuted into central France in April 1943.

Harry showed a particular talent for winning the confidence of local resisters, and guided them in a series of dramatic sabotage operations, before getting into a hand-to-hand fight with an armed German officer, from which he was lucky to escape.

This might seem like a romantic story of heroism and derring-do, but Harry Ree's own war writings, superbly edited and contextualized by his son, the philosopher Jonathan Ree, are far more nuanced, shot through with doubts, regrets, and grief.

For centuries the city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1833 it was discovered in Afghanistan by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Charles Masson, deserter, traveller, pilgrim, doctor, archaeologist, spy, and eventually one of the most respected scholars in Asia, and the greatest of nineteenth-century travellers.

On the way into one of history's most extraordinary stories, he would take tea with kings, travel with holy men and become the master of a hundred disguises; he would see things no westerner had glimpsed before and few have glimpsed since. He would spy for the East India Company and be suspected of spying for Russia at the same time, for this was the era of the Great Game, when imperial powers confronted each other in these staggeringly beautiful lands. Masson discovered tens of thousands of pieces of Afghan history, including the 2,000 year old Bimaran golden casket, which has upon it the earliest known face of the Buddha. He would be offered his own kingdom; he would change the world, and the world would destroy him.

This is a wild journey through nineteenth-century India and Afghanistan, with impeccably researched storytelling that shows us a world of espionage and dreamers, ne'er-do-wells and opportunists, extreme violence both personal and military, and boundless hope. At the edge of empire, amid the deserts and the mountains, it is the story of an obsession passed down the centuries.

The gripping story of how the end of the Roman Empire was the beginning of the modern world The fall of the Roman Empire has long been considered one of the greatest disasters in history. But in this groundbreaking book, Walter Scheidel argues that Rome's dramatic collapse was actually the best thing that ever happened, clearing the path for Eur

An authoritative study of pre-colonial Australia that dismantles and reframes popular narratives of First Nations land management and food production Australians' understanding of Aboriginal society prior to the British invasion from 1788 has been transformed since the publication of Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu in 2014. It argued that classical Aboriginal society was more sophisticated than Australians had been led to believe because it resembled more closely the farming communities of Europe.

In Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe ask why Australians have been so receptive to the notion that farming represents an advance from hunting and gathering. Drawing on the knowledge of Aboriginal elders, previously not included within this discussion, and decades of anthropological scholarship, Sutton and Walshe provide extensive evidence to support their argument that classical Aboriginal society was a hunter-gatherer society and as sophisticated as the traditional European farming methods.

Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? asks Australians to develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of Aboriginal society and culture.

A compelling yet tragic portrait of one of the most important, yet least understood, spies of the early Cold War. This is the dramatic, untold true story of Goleniewski's dealings in espionage and skulduggery.

Spring 1958- a mysterious individual believed to be high up in the Polish secret service began passing Soviet secrets to the West.

His name was Michal Goleniewski and he remains one of the most important, least known and most misunderstood spies of the Cold War. Even his death is shrouded in mystery and he has been written out of the history of Cold War espionage - until now.

Tim Tate draws on a wealth of previously-unpublished primary source documents to tell the dramatic true story of the best spy the west ever lost and how Goleniewski exposed hundreds of KGB agents operating undercover in the West; from George Blake and the 'Portland Spy Ring', to a senior Swedish Air Force and NATO officer and a traitor inside the Israeli government. The information he produced devastated intelligence services on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Bringing together love and loyalty, courage and treachery, betrayal, greed and, ultimately, insanity, Tim Tate tells the extraordinary true story of one of the most significant spies of the Cold War.

Acclaim for The Spy Who Was Left Out in the Cold- 'Totally gripping . . . a masterpiece. Tate lifts the lid on one of the most important and complex spies of the Cold War, who passed secrets to the West and finally unmasked traitor George Blake.' HELEN FRY, author of MI9- A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two 'A wonderful and at times mind-boggling account of a bizarre and almost forgotten spy - right up to the time when he's living undercover in Queens, New York and claiming to be the last of the Romanoffs.' SIMON KUPER, author of The Happy Traitor 'A highly readable and thoroughly researched account of one of the Cold War's most intriguing and tragic spy stories.' OWEN MATTHEWS, author of An Impeccable Spy

'A real triumph, beautifully written, with many wonderful stories of the Savoy.' Lady Anne Glenconner, author of Lady in Waiting 'An elegantly crafted, yet spritely and sparkling book, perfectly befitting its subject.' - Ophelia Field, author of The Favourite In three generations, the D'Oyly Carte family pioneered the luxury hotel and the modern theatre, propelled Gilbert and Sullivan to lasting stardom, made Oscar Wilde a transatlantic celebrity, inspired a P. G. Wodehouse series, and popularised early jazz, electric lights and Art Deco.

Following the history of the iconic Savoy Hotel through three generations of the D'Oyly Carte family, The Secret Life of the Savoy revives an extroardinary cultural legacy.

For The Gondoliers-themed birthday dinner, the hotel obligingly flooded the courtyard to conjure the Grand Canal of Venice. Dinner was served on a silk-lined floating gondola, real swans were swimming in the water, and as a final flourish, a baby elephant borrowed from London Zoo pulled a five-foot high birthday cake.

The untold story of an adventure that shaped history by confirming the shape of the world By knowing the shape of our earth we can create maps, survive the oceans, follow rivers, navigate the skies, and travel across the globe. This is the story of our world, of how we discovered what no one thought possible - the shape of the earth.

A thrilling and page-turning account of the first major expedition by data gatherers and qualified observers to interior Peru, to discover the shape and magnitude of the earth. Until humanity discovered this it would be impossible to produce accurate maps and sea charts, without which thousands of lives would be lost, and exact locations of cities, roads and rivers would never be known. This fascinating and dramatic story weaves scientific rigour, egos, funding crises and betrayal with sea voyages, jungles and volcanoes.

A whip-smart, entertaining exploration of the geometry that underlies our world, from the bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong How should a democracy choose its representatives? How does Covid-19 spread? How do computers teach themselves chess, and why is chess easier for them than analyzing a sentence? What should your kids study in school if they really want to learn to think? All of these are questions about geometry. Seriously!

Jordan Ellenberg reveals the mathematics behind some of the most important scientific, political and philosophical conundrums we face. The word 'geometry', from the Greek, means 'measuring the world'. If anything, geometry doesn't just measure the world, it explains it. Shape shows us how.

The extraordinary story of the scientific expeditions that ushered in the era of relativity In 1919, British scientists led expeditions to Brazil and Africa to test Albert Einstein's new theory of general relativity in what became the century's most celebrated scientific experiment. The result ushered in a new era and made Einstein a celebrity b

A lyrical celebration of birdsong against the backdrop of the global pandemic A lyrical celebration of birdsong, and the rekindling of a deep passion for nature.

At this time of year, blackbirds never simply fly- instead, like reluctantly retired officers, they're always 'on manoeuvres', and it's easy to see from their constant agitation that for them every flower bed is a bunker, every shed a redoubt and every hedge-bottom a potential place of ambush As the world went silent in lockdown, something else happened; for the first time, many of us started becoming more aware of the spring sounds of the birds around us. Birdsong in a Time of Silence is a lyrical, uplifting reflection on these sounds and what they mean to us.

From a portrait of the blackbird - most prominent and articulate of the early spring singers - to explorations of how birds sing, the science behind their choice of song and nest-sites, and the varied meanings that people have brought to and taken from birdsong, this book ultimately shows that natural history and human history cannot be separated. It is the story of a collective reawakening brought on by the strangest of springs.

The forgotten garden which inspired Charles Darwin becomes the modern-day setting for an exploration of memory, family, and the legacy of genius.

The forgotten garden which inspired Charles Darwin becomes the modern-day setting for an exploration of memory, family, and the legacy of genius.

Darwin never stopped thinking about the garden at his childhood home, The Mount. It was here, under the tutelage of his green-fingered mother and sisters, that he first examined the reproductive life of flowers, collected birds' eggs, and began the experiments that would lead to his theory of evolution.

A century and a half later, with one small child in tow and another on the way, Jude Piesse finds herself living next door to this secret garden. Two acres of the original site remain, now resplendent with overgrown ashes, sycamores, and hollies. The carefully tended beds and circular flower garden are buried under suburban housing; the hothouses where the Darwins and their skilful gardeners grew pineapples are long gone. Walking the pathways with her new baby, Piesse starts to discover what impact the garden and the people who tended it had on Darwin's work.

Blending biography, nature writing, and memoir, The Ghost in the Garden traces the origins of the theory of evolution and uncovers the lost histories that inspired it, ultimately evoking the interconnectedness of all things.

'A fascinating and very personal book in which Darwin's relationship to his family's garden reflects directly on his visionary understanding of the natural world in its entirety. A delight!' Julia Blackburn, author of Thin Paths Praise for British Settler Emigration in Print, 1832-1877- 'This sensitivity to migration and transnational encounter is one of the most rewarding legacies of postcolonial criticism. I particularly recommend ... Jude Piesse's British Settler Emigration in Print, 1832-1877.' -Talia Schaffer, SEL- Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

One of the foremost researchers in human metabolism reveals the hidden foundations of biological life and health Why do so many diets lead to more weight gain? Do more active people have faster metabolisms? Is exercise essential for weight loss?

Over the past twenty years, evolutionary biologist Herman Pontzer has conducted ground-breaking studies across a range of settings, including pioneering fieldwork with Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania.

This book draws on his eye-opening research to show how, contrary to received wisdom, exercise does not increase our metabolism. Instead, we burn calories within a very narrow range- nearly 3,000 calories per day, no matter our activity level.

By taking a closer look at what happens to the energy we consume, Pontzer explores the ways in which metabolism controls every aspect of our health - from fertility to immune function - and reveals the truth about the dynamic system that sustains us. Filled with facts and memorable anecdotes, Burn will change the way you think about food, exercise and life.

Australia is home to more than 240 species of frogs, many of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

The Photographic Field Guide to Australian Frogs provides readers with the tools to confidently identify 242 species and five recognised subspecies. It includes detailed information on the distribution, habitat preferences and call of each frog species, as well as fully illustrated keys to genera to assist with identification. Multiple photographs of each species show variation in colour and pattern as well as features used for identification such as thigh colouration, skin texture, belly colour and patterning, eye colour and extent of webbing between the toes.

With a strong focus on illustrating variation and key diagnostic features, this guide will enable frog enthusiasts, environmental professionals and research scientists to identify Australian frog species with a high level of confidence.

'Hugely readable and entertaining' JIM AL-KHALILI A compulsively readable account of the extraordinary people, battling internal demons and external adversaries, who discovered the laws of thermodynamics and the science of heat, and brought about a scientific revolution. Einstein's Fridge tells the story of how scientists uncovered the least known and yet most consequential of all the sciences, and learned to harness the power of heat and ice.

The laws of thermodynamics govern everything from the behaviour of atoms to that of living cells, from the engines that power our world to the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Not only that, but thermodynamics explains why we must eat and breathe, how the lights come on, and ultimately how the universe will end. The people who decoded its laws came from every branch of the sciences - they were engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, cosmologists and mathematicians.

Their discoveries, set over two hundred years, kick-started the industrial revolution, changed the course of world wars and informed modern understanding of black holes. This book captures the thrill of discovery and the power of revolutionary science to change the world forever.

Bestselling author and forester Peter Wohlleben reveals the hidden interactions between humans and trees, and how reconnecting with the natural world is the key to our survival.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees comes a powerful return to the forest, where trees have heartbeats and roots are like brains that extend underground. Where the colour green calms us, and the forest sharpens our senses.

In The Heartbeat of Trees, renowned forester Peter Wohlleben draws on new scientific discoveries to show how humans are deeply connected to the natural world. In an era of mobile phone addiction, climate change and urban life, many of us fear we've lost our connection to nature, but Wohlleben is convinced that age-old ties linking humans to the forest remain alive and intact.

Drawing on science and cutting-edge research, The Heartbeat of Trees reveals the profound interactions humans can have with nature, exploring the language of the forest, the consciousness of plants and the eroding boundary between flora and fauna.

A perfect book to take with you into the woods, The Heartbeat of Trees shares how to see, feel, smell, hear and even taste the forest.

Is mathematics a discovery or an invention? Do numbers truly exist? What sort of reality do formulas describe?

The complexity of mathematics - its abstract rules and obscure symbols - can seem very distant from the everyday. There are those things that are real and present, it is supposed, and then there are mathematical concepts- creations of our mind, mysterious tools for those unengaged with the world. Yet, from its most remote history and deepest purpose, mathematics has served not just as a way to understand and order, but also as a foundation for the reality it describes.

In this elegant book, mathematician and philosopher Paolo Zellini offers a brief cultural and intellectual history of mathematics, ranging widely from the paradoxes of ancient Greece to the sacred altars of India, from Mesopotamian calculus to our own contemporary obsession with algorithms. Masterful and illuminating, The Mathematics of the Gods and the Algorithms of Men transforms our understanding of mathematical thinking, showing that it is inextricably linked with the philosophical and the religious as well as the mundane - and, indeed, with our own very human experience of the universe.

A mother of small children trusts her 'gut feeling' and it saves her life. A young dad is able to grieve for his lost baby - using a song.

What if there were parts of our minds that we never use, but if awakened, could make us so much happier, connected and alive? What if awakening those parts could bring peace to the conflicts and struggles we all go through?

From the cutting edge, where therapy meets neuroscience, Steve Biddulph explores the new concept of 'supersense' - the feelings beneath our feelings - which can guide us to a more awake and free way of living every minute of our lives. And the Four Storey Mansion, a way of using your mind that can be taught to a five-year-old, but can also help the most damaged adult.

In Fully Human, Steve Biddulph draws on deeply personal stories from his own life, as well as those of his clients, and from the frontiers of thinking about how the brain works with the body and the wisdom of the 'wild creature' inside all of us.

At the peak of a lifetime's work, one of the world's best-known psychotherapists and educators shows how you can be more alive, more connected. More Fully Human.

'An essential guide to what makes us human ... Steve's writing is clear and beautiful, his descriptions accurate, our interior world gently laid bare.' Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Child and Adolescent Psychologist From the bestselling Australian author of Raising Boys.

Praise for Fully Human 'I loved this book and found it enormously helpful.' - Rosie Batty AO 'Steve is back, to help us do better at being in this world.' - Rachel Ward AM

A better way to think about foreign influence and the nation's future In 2014, Chinese president Xi Jinping said there was an 'ocean of goodwill' between our country and his. Since then, that ocean has shown dramatic signs of freezing over. Australia is in the grip of a China panic. How did we get here, and what's the way out?

In this brilliant book, David Brophy takes apart Australia's China debate - its strange alliances and diplomatic failures. Justified criticism of China has too often given way to paranoia and exaggeration. While the xenophobic right hovers in the wings, some of the loudest voices decrying Chinese subversion come, unexpectedly, from the left. They call for new security laws, increased scrutiny of Chinese Australians and, if necessary, military force - a prescription for a sharp rightward turn in Australian politics.

In China Panic, Brophy offers a progressive alternative. Instead of punitive moves and chest-beating that will only make Australia more like China, we need solutions and strategies that strengthen Australian democracy.

An incisive and deeply practical essay from the acclaimed author of Don't Touch My Hair Stop the denial Stop the false equivalencies Interrogate whiteness Interrogate capitalism Denounce the white Saviour Abandon guilt We need to talk about racial injustice in a new way- one that builds on the revolutionary ideas of the past and forges new connections.

In this robust and nuanced examination of race, class and capitalism, Emma Dabiri draws on years of academic study and lived experience, as well as personal reflections on a year like no other. With intellectual rigour, wit and clarity, Dabiri articulates a powerful vision for meaningful and lasting change.

'Newsrooms were these crazy universities, full of experts on the strangest things, people with real understanding and experience of things that mattered, places where you could ask anybody anything, though you might get your head bitten off if you interrupted someone on deadline. You've also got company, noise, yahooing and jokes. I discovered I'm made for that kind of place.' - David Marr

Newsrooms, the engine rooms of reporting, have shrunk. A generation of journalists has borne witness to seismic changes in the media. Sharing stories from more than 50 Australian journalists - including Amanda Meade, David Marr and Flip Prior - Upheaval reveals the highs and the lows of those who were there to see it all.

They show us life inside frenetic and vibrant newsrooms at the peak of their influence, and the difficulties of adapting to ever-accelerating news cycles with fewer resources. Some left journalism altogether while others stayed in the media - or sought to reinvent it. Normally the ones telling other people's stories, in Upheaval journalists share the rawness of losing their own job or watching others lose theirs. They reveal their anxieties and hopes for the industry's future and their commitment to reporting news that matters.

'In Upheaval journalists do something they normally avoid. They turn the spotlight on themselves and their industry. They narrate a brutal transition at a critical moment in the media. This oral history documents the culture of Australian journalism before the internet - extemporising, sexist, booze-fuelled and brash - and reveals the private pain of the digital dislocation for many journalism lifers who had to reshape their professional identities. Upheaval puts readers in the newsroom as the rivers of gold dried up.' - Katharine Murphy

'Essential reading for those who care about journalism and its struggle to survive. This book captures the essence of what it is to be a reporter amid tectonic shifts in the media and in the world that we strive to make sense of for our audiences. Anyone who follows the news and politics will be absorbed by Upheaval.' - Nick McKenzie

A fully revised and updated edition of the ground-breaking national bestseller.

There are many factors affecting a child's personality and the adult they become, but the least understood is birth order.

Why is it that children in a family can share the same gene pool, a similar socio-economic environment and experience similar parenting styles yet have fundamentally different personalities, interests and even different careers as adults? Birth order! The implications for parents, teachers and adults involved with children are many.

First published in 2003 to great acclaim, this fully revised and updated edition seeks to increase the reader's understanding of birth order theory, including the impact of a child's broader social environment and the rise of the standard two-child family, where the second-born is simultaneously the last-born. It will enable you to delve a little deeper and look for the constellation of positions within a family, giving you a clearer picture of your own quirks and ambitions, along with those of your siblings, children, partner, workmates, friends and colleagues.

Addressing multiple births, children with a disability, genetic engineering, blended families, gender balance, only children and birth-order balance in the workplace, parenting expert and father of three Michael Grose challenges parents to raise each child differently according to his or her birth order.

Learn how the Australian government used the guise of national interest to forge a false account of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975 led to a prolonged conflict, severe human rights abuses and a large loss of life. From 1975 to 1983 the Indonesian military's campaign of 'encirclement and annihilation' destroyed rural food resources, creating the famine that took most of the lives lost during the occupation. The Australian governments of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser presented themselves as advocates for human rights and the international rule of law, while viewing relations with Indonesia as key to their foreign policy objectives. These positions came into conflict due to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.

Based upon an extensive study of Australian foreign affairs archives, as well as interviews, A Narrative of Denial demonstrates how the Australian government responded to the conflict by propagating a version of events that denied the reality of the catastrophe occurring in East Timor. It worked to protect the Suharto regime internationally, thereby allowing it to continue its repression relatively unhindered. This remarkable story will unsettle existing perceptions of how Australia operates in world affairs.

A powerful guide to the psychology of race and how to overcome racial trauma using self-care.

Surviving isn't enough- this is how you can thrive.

Over the past 15 years, anti-racist psychologist Guilaine Kinouani has contributed writing and run workshops on how racism affects both physical and mental health. Based on her findings, she has devised tried and tested psychological strategies. Her mission is to help thousands to find peace with this book. Living While Black gives voice to the diverse experiences of Black people around the world and uses case studies and exclusive research to offer expert guidance on how to- set boundaries and process microaggressions; protect children from racism; navigate the dating world; identify and celebrate the wins.

Kinouani empowers Black readers to adopt self-care routines that improve day-to-day wellness to help them thrive not just survive and find hope - or even joy - in the face of adversity. This is also a vital resource for allies who wish to understand the impact of racism and how they can help.

'Debate done with absolute verve, with eloquence and generosity' CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS, author of Damascus

'Fascinating, eye-opening . . . a sharp wake-up call' FLEX MAMI / LILLIAN AHENKAN, authors of The Success Experiment

'Thoughtful, surprising and exquisitely written. Bri Lee once again challenges us to confront the structures that shape, and restrict, our understanding of the world.' MADDISON CONNAUGHTON, editor of The Saturday Paper

In 2018 Bri Lee's brilliant young friend Damian is named a Rhodes Scholar, an apex of academic achievement. When she goes to visit him and takes a tour of Oxford and Rhodes House, she begins questioning her belief in a system she has previously revered, as she learns the truth behind what Virginia Woolf described almost a century earlier as the 'stream of gold and silver' that flows through elite institutions and dictates decisions about who deserves to be educated there. The question that forms in her mind drives the following two years of conversations and investigations: who gets to be smart?

Interrogating the adage, 'knowledge is power', and calling institutional prejudice to account, Bri once again dives into her own privilege and presumptions to bring us the stark and confronting results. Far from offering any 'equality of opportunity', Australia's education system exacerbates social stratification. The questions Bri asks of politics and society have their answers laid bare in the responses to the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, COVID-19, and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

There is little doubt that the world is in desperate need of care; however, despite the overwhelming global problems that face us, we can find ourselves caring too much, while at the same time caring too little. By spending so much time and energy caring about the big problems of the world, we've lost sight of what smaller, personal acts of care can look like and just how powerful these small acts can be.

Care: The radical art of taking time explores what it means to care in smaller ways - for ourselves, our loved ones and our communities - and discovers that caring doesn't need to cost us our wellbeing, happiness or relationships. That making simple changes to how we live, spending more time in nature, putting down our devices and connecting with each other face-to-face, finding awe and wonder in the world around us and remembering how to play, will have ripple effects that reach far beyond our own corner of the planet.

With unwavering compassion and understanding, Brooke McAlary takes us on a journey to rediscover the small pleasures that create large ripples, reminding us that no one needs to shoulder the burden of doing it all by themselves - we only need to cast our eyes forward and start small, with care.

In the wake of the pandemic, will we see a new politics of social security and concern for the future?

Australia faces recession. In the wake of the pandemic, will we see a new politics of care and fear, of social security and concern for the future? In this original essay, George Megalogenis explains what we know about recessions and unemployment and how governments should respond. He explores the gender and generational aspects of job losses, and the fate of higher education - what happened to the clever country? He considers the state of the federation and, as Australia is forced to make its own luck, asks- what future for a divided nation?

From the UK's foremost literary psychoanalyst, a dazzling new book on the universal urge to change our lives.

We live in a world in which we are invited to change - to become our best selves, through politics, or fitness, or diet, or therapy.

We change all the time - growing older and older - and how we think about change changes over time too.

We want to think of our lives as progress myths - as narratives of positive personal growth - at the same time as we inevitably age and suffer setbacks.

So there are the stories we tell about change, and there are the changes we actually make - and they don't always go, or come, together . . .

This sparkling book is about that fact.

Could the courts really order the death of your innocent baby? Was there an illegal immigrant who couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat? Are unelected judges truly enemies of the people?

Most of us think the law is only relevant to criminals, if we even think of it at all. But the law touches every area of our lives: from intimate family matters to the biggest issues in our society.

Our unfamiliarity is dangerous because it makes us vulnerable to media spin, political lies and the kind of misinformation that frequently comes from loud-mouthed amateurs and those with vested interests. This 'fake law' allows the powerful and the ignorant to corrupt justice without our knowledge - worse, we risk letting them make us complicit.

Thankfully, the Secret Barrister is back to reveal the stupidity, malice and incompetence behind many of the biggest legal stories of recent years. In Fake Law, the Secret Barrister debunks the lies and builds a defence against the abuse of our law, our rights and our democracy that is as entertaining as it is vital.

In this paradigm-shifting book from acclaimed Harvard Medical School doctor and one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people on earth, Dr. David Sinclair reveals that everything we think we know about ageing is wrong, and shares the surprising, scientifically-proven methods that can help readers live younger, longer. For decades, the medical community has looked to a variety of reasons for why we age, and the consensus is that no one dies of old age; they die of age-related diseases. That's because ageing is not a disease - it is inevitable. But what if everything you think you know about ageing is wrong? What if ageing is a disease? And that disease is curable. In THE EVOLUTION OF AGEING, Dr. David Sinclair, one of the world's foremost authorities on genetics and ageing, argues just that. He has dedicated his life's work to chasing more than a longer lifespan - he wants to enable people to live longer, healthier, and disease-free well into our hundreds. In this book, he reveals a bold new theory of ageing, one that pinpoints a root cause of ageing that lies in an ancient genetic survival circuit. This genetic trick - a circuit designed to halt reproduction in order to repair damage to the genome -has enabled earth's early microcosms to survive and evolve into more advanced organisms. But this same survival circuit is the reason we age: as genetic damage accumulates over our lifespans from UV rays, environmental toxins, and unhealthy diets, our genome is overwhelmed, causing gray hair, wrinkles, achy joints, heart issues, dementia, and, ultimately, death. But genes aren't our destiny; we have more control over them than we've been taught to believe. We can't change our DNA, but we can harness the power of the epigenome to realise the true potential of our genes. Drawing on his cutting-edge findings at the forefront of medical research, Dr. Sinclair will provide a scientifically-proven roadmap to reverse the genetic clock by activating our vitality genes, so we can live younger longer. Readers will discover how a few simple lifestyle changes - like intermittent fasting, avoiding too much animal protein, limiting sugar, avoiding x-rays, exercising with the right intensity, and even trying cold therapy - can activate our vitality genes. Dr. Sinclair ends the book with a look to the near future, exploring what the world might look like - and what will need to change - when we are all living well to 120 or more. Dr. Sinclair takes what we have long accepted as the limits of human potential and mortality and turns them into choices. LIFESPAN is destined to be the biggest book on genes, biology, and longevity of this decade.

A revelatory model that explains how we buy, sell, work and live.

For over a century, anthropologists have immersed themselves in unfamiliar cultures, uncovering the hidden rituals that govern how people act. Now, a new generation of anthropologists are using these methods in a different context - to illuminate the behaviour of businesses and consumers around the globe.

In Anthro-Vision, Gillian Tett - bestselling author, Financial Times journalist, and anthropology PhD - reveals how anthropology can make sense of the corporate world. She outlines how anthropology helps explain consumer behaviour - revealing the 'webs of meaning' that underpin our shopping habits, and unpicking the subtle cultural shifts driving the rise of green business. She explores how anthropology can shed light on the workplace, identifying the hidden tribes within the office, and pinpointing which rituals are binding together a team. And she shows how we can all use anthropology in our own lives, too- helping us make better decisions, navigate risk - even work out what our peers are really thinking.

Along the way, Tett draws on stories from Tajik villages and Amazon warehouses, Japanese classrooms and Wall Street trading floors, all to reveal the power of anthropology in action.

The result is a wholly new way to understand human behaviour. In a short-sighted world, we can all learn to see clearly - using the power of Anthro-Vision.

The ultimate millennial money guide, from the creator of Australia's #1 finance podcast Through her phenomenally popular and award-winning podcast, She's on the Money, Victoria Devine has built an empowered and supportive community of women finding their way to financial freedom.

Honest, relatable, non-judgemental and motivating, Victoria is a financial adviser who knows what millennial life is really like and where we can get stuck with money stuff. (Did someone say 'Afterpay'...?) So, to help you hit your money goals without skimping on brunch, she's put all her expert advice into this accessible guide that will set you up for a healthy and happy future.

Learn how to be more secure, independent and informed with your money - with clear steps on how to budget, clear debts, build savings, start investing, buy property and much more. And along with all the practical information, Victoria will guide you through the sometimes-tricky psychology surrounding money so you can establish the values, habits and confidence that will help you build your wealth long-term.

Just like the podcast, the book is full of real-life money stories from members of the She's on the Money community who candidly share their experiences, wins and lessons learned to inspire others to turn their stories around, too. And with templates and activities throughout, plus a twelve-month plan to get you started, you can immediately put Victoria's recommendations into action in your own life.

You are not alone on your financial journey, and with the money principles in this book you'll go further than you ever thought possible.

These days, more and more people are looking to stay in the workforce longer and are seeking satisfying, fulfilling jobs. How to Get a Good Job After 50 is a step-by-step guide to finding and winning the sort of job older employees want to have!

In clear, practical chapters, job search expert Rupert French shows you how to adopt a pro-active, 'self-employed' approach that builds self-esteem and promotes a time-efficient, self-managed job search program.

Learn how to:

* concentrate on no more than two or three job leads at any one time * use proven marketing techniques to win good jobs * write resumes that grab the employer's interest in the first few sentences * find jobs before they are advertised * build an effective job search network * use social media to support your job search * effectively prepare for a job interview * rebuild confidence and beat age discrimination.

Older workers are vital to the workplace; they have skills, reliability and a sense of responsibility that can only be gained through experience. How to Get a Good Job After 50 explains how to demonstrate these qualities to prospective employers, turning your age into an advantage. Covering all aspects of the job search, this is the essential guide to taking control of your career with expertise and confidence. If you want to be sure of your ability to get a good job quickly, let this book be your guide.

The Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller 'Tim Harford could well be Britain's Malcolm Gladwell' Alex Bellos, author of Alex's Adventures in Numberland 'If you aren't in love with stats before reading this book, you will be by the time you're done. Powerful, persuasive, and in these truth-defying times, indispensable' Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women In How to Make the World Add Up, Tim Harford draws on his experience as both an economist and presenter of the BBC's radio show 'More or Less' to take us deep into the world of disinformation and obfuscation, bad research and misplaced motivation to find those priceless jewels of data and analysis that make communicating with numbers so rewarding. Through vivid storytelling he reveals how we can evaluate the claims that surround us with confidence, curiosity and a healthy level of scepticism. It is a must-read for anyone who cares about understanding the world around them.

'Tim Harford is our most likeable champion of reason and rigour . . . clear, clever and always highly readable' The Times, Books of the Year 'Fascinating and enjoyable' Bill Bryson 'Now more than ever we need a book like this' Stephen Fry 'Wise, humane and, above all, illuminating. Nobody is better on statistics and numbers - and how to make sense of them' Matthew Syed 'One of the most wonderful collections of stories that I have read in a long time . . . fascinating.' Steven Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics 'Wise and useful . . . such a delight' Financial Times 'What should we do when someone makes a claim that they say is based on data? This wise book, distilled from years of experience, gives us the ten commandments, from first examining our feelings, to finally having the humility to admit we may be wrong. Priceless' Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter

An essential money-saving resource for every Australian who pays tax - updated for the 2021-2022 tax year.

101 Ways to Save Money on Your Tax - Legally! is the tax guide every Australian should own. Step-by-step instructions from Adrian Raftery, aka Mr. Taxman, will show you how to leverage every available deduction to lower your tax bill and keep more of your hard-earned money. Thoroughly updated for the 2021-2022 tax year, this new edition gives you the latest information on changes to the tax codes.

Tax laws are constantly changing, but you don't have to pore over piles of legislation to file your tax accurately and completely - that's what Mr. Taxman is here for. Don't let yourself become one of the people who overpay, find out what you actually owe and prepare for even better savings next year. This guide removes the stress and confusion from tax season and helps you file on time with no mistakes. Whether an individual, married couple, investor, business owner or pensioner, this guide will help you:

understand how your taxes have changed for 2021-2022 reduce your tax bill, potentially by $100s or $1000s learn plenty of expert tips, avoid tax traps and find the answers to frequently-asked questions explore topics such as medical expenses, levies, shares, property, education, business and family expenses, superannuation and much more protect yourself from errors, audits, overpayments and other common problems.

When it's time to file your tax, turn to 101 Ways to Save Money on Your Tax - Legally! Maximise your deductions and get the best possible tax return. Don't pay more than you have to, Mr. Taxman is here to help.

In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world's economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope that it would make war impossible. In doing so, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of conflict and the motivation to keep fighting.

Troublingly, we are now seeing rising conflict at every level, from individuals on social media all the way up to stand-offs between nation states. The past decade has seen a new antagonism between the US and China; an inability to co-operate on global issues such as climate change or pandemic response; and a breakdown in the distinction between war and peace, as overseas troops are replaced by sanctions, cyberwar, and the threat of large migrant flows.

As a leading authority on international relations, Mark Leonard's work has taken him into many of the rooms where our futures are being decided at every level of society, from the Facebook HQ and facial recognition labs in China to meetings in presidential palaces and at remote military installations. In seeking to understand the ways that globalisation has broken its fundamental promise to make our world safer and more prosperous, Leonard explores how we might wrestle a more hopeful future from an age of unpeace.

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War but also the rise of a melancholic vision of history as a series of losses. For the political left, the cause lost was communism, and this trauma determined how leftists wrote the next chapter in their political struggle and how they have thought about their past since. Throughout the twentieth century, argues Left-Wing Melancholia, from classical Marxism to psychoanalysis to the advent of critical theory, a culture of defeat and its emotional overlay of melancholy have characterized the leftist understanding of the political in history and in theoretical critique.

Drawing on a vast and diverse archive in theory, testimony, and image and on such thinkers as Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and others, the intellectual historian Enzo Traverso explores the varying nature of left melancholy as it has manifested in a feeling of guilt for not sufficiently challenging authority, in a fear of surrendering in disarray and resignation, in mourning the human costs of the past, and in a sense of failure for not realizing utopian aspirations. Yet hidden within this melancholic tradition are the resources for a renewed challenge to prevailing regimes of historicity, a passion that has the power to reignite the dialectic of revolutionary thought.

Invaluable wisdom on living a good life from one of the Enlightenment's greatest philosophers

David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature-human nature in particular.

The Great Guide is an engaging and eye-opening account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life.

In this enthralling book, Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life. He follows Hume on his life's journey, literally walking in the great philosopher's footsteps as Baggini takes readers to the places that inspired Hume the most, from his family estate near the Scottish border to Paris, where, as an older man, he was warmly embraced by French society. Baggini shows how Hume put his philosophy into practice in a life that blended reason and passion, study and leisure, and relaxation and enjoyment.

The Great Guide includes 145 Humean maxims for living well, on topics ranging from the meaning of success and the value of travel, to friendship, facing death, identity, and the importance of leisure. This book shows how life is far richer with Hume as your guide.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year 'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry 'You should read Humankind. You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford 'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.

Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too.

In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world's most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram's Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think - and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society.

It is time for a new view of human nature.

Christianity is bound up with the very idea of the West: we cannot evade it even if we would like to. While many people no longer believe in Christianity, we cannot deny that it has left a deep imprint on Western thought. But how might we develop a philosophy of Christianity that is not a Christian philosophy? How can we take a view that is external to the traditions of apologetics and criticism? For there is a question that concerns us all here: are the coherences of Christianity still useful for thought, and especially for thought about existence?

To address this question, Francois Jullien considers Christianity as constituting a set of resources. Resources are available to all and can be used by those who discover and exploit them; they belong to no one. Christianity offers us resources inasmuch as we can draw some benefit from it, inasmuch as it can be the source of an effect, without our having to believe it or determine its truth in advance. Jullien reads the Gospels, and especially the Gospel of John, as he would read any other text, seeking to account for the text's coherence (rather than its 'meaning'), seeking to account for its pertinence (rather than its 'truth'), but without any need to adhere - the exploitation of resources demands no conversion. And in reading the Gospel of John in this way, we discover the fertile veins of a theory of existence.

This fresh and erudite reflection on Christianity will be of great value to anyone interested in religion and its relevance today.

The enormous rise in popularity in recent decades of the Camino, the ancient pilgrim path that stretches from France, across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, is part of a wider phenomenon being witnessed on other time-honoured pilgrim routes around the globe and across the faiths. But this is happening in a world that in many places is self-avowedly ever more sceptical, secular and scientific, with formal religious affiliation in steep decline. Why?

Some argue that tourism is the new religion, and that those who today walk in the footsteps of countless past generations of believers do so to enjoy the holiday experience, the escape from their everyday world, the health benefits of so much exercise, and the companionship, without seeking any sort of spiritual enlightenment. Yet by looking at a diverse range of pilgrimage sites that includes Rome, Jerusalem, Lalibela in Ethiopia, the Buddha Trail in northern India, Shikoku in Japan and the self-styled 'power place' of Machu Picchu in Peru, Peter Stanford draws on his own experience as a pilgrim to argue that something more complex and challenging is going on.

Financial crises, increasing inequality, climate change and worldwide pandemics are causing people to question the very foundations on which their post religion, twenty-first-century lives are built. This book considers how pilgrimage, with its long history, essential intertwining of arduous journey and openness to personal transformation, is providing the modern age with a means to take a longer, slower and hence more profound look at life, stretching all the way back to when the first pilgrim put one foot in front of another.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was the sixteenth emperor of Rome -- and by far the most powerful and wealthy man in the world. Yet he was also an intensely private person, with a rich interior life and deep reservoirs of personal insight. He collected his thoughts in notebooks, gems which have come to be called his Meditations. Never intended for publication, the work survived his death and has proved an inexhaustible source of wisdom and one of the most important Stoic texts of all time. In often passionate language, the entries range from essays to one-line aphorisms, and from profundity to bitterness.

Marcus wrote to console himself in the face of the shortness of life, the shoddiness of the world, and the challenges of being human. He asks the very same questions that every thinking person must ask themselves today: Does the universe have a moral purpose, and what is my role in it? What exactly is it to be a good person, and how do I get there? Life is short: what does that mean for me? How can I get to know myself better? Anyone who is puzzled by such questions or searching for answers will profit from this timeless book, which is both an important historical document and a personal spiritual diary.

This annotated edition will be the definitive translation of this classic and much-beloved text, with copious notes that will illuminate one of the greatest works of popular philosophy for new readers and enrich the understanding of even the most hardcore Stoic.

Timeless advice about how to use humor to win over any audience Can jokes win a hostile room, a hopeless argument, or even an election? You bet they can, according to Cicero, and he knew what he was talking about. One of Rome's greatest politicians, speakers, and lawyers, Cicero was also reputedly one of antiquity's funniest people. After he was

The final volume of Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee's essays on celebrated writers.

Late Essays is the last of three collections of literary criticism by J. M. Coetzee to be republished by Text. It includes essays on Flaubert and Goethe, Patrick White and Gerald Murnane. These are concise, accessible introductions to some of the world's greatest writers, by a contemporary master.

Successful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes's The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms are as likely to be created by chance as by design. A remarkable number of new words were coined whimsically, originally intended to troll or taunt. Knickers, for example, resulted from a hoax; big bang from an insult. Casual wisecracking produced software, crowdsource, and blog. More than a few resulted from happy accidents, such as typos, mistranslations, and mishearing (bigly and buttonhole), or from being taken entirely out of context (robotics). Neologizers (a Thomas Jefferson coinage) include not just scholars and writers but cartoonists, columnists, children's book authors. Wimp originated with a book series, as did goop, and nerd from a book by Dr. Seuss. Coinages are often contested, controversy swirling around such terms as gonzo, mojo, and booty call. Keyes considers all contenders, while also leading us through the fray between new word partisans, and those who resist them strenuously. He concludes with advice about how to make your own successful coinage. The Hidden History of Coined Words will appeal not just to word mavens but history buffs, trivia contesters, and anyone who loves the immersive power of language.

The great epic poem of Northern Europe, born deep in the heart of ancient Karelian forests Sharing its title with the poetic name for Finland - 'the land of heroes' - Kalevala is the soaring epic poem of the Finnish people. Born of an ancient tradition of folklore and song, Kalevala is a work rich in magic, cosmic mystery and myth, presenting a story of a people through the ages, from the dawn of creation. Sung by rural Finns since prehistoric times, and formally compiled by Elias L nnrot in the nineteenth century, it is a landmark of Finnish culture and it played a vital role in galvanizing Finland's national identity in the decades leading up to independence. And yet its tales of tragedy and triumph, adventure and ambition, hope, lust, death and birth, reach far beyond the region's borders, searching the heart of human existence.

A collection of the finest essays by the 'Best of the Booker' winner, following on from his much-acclaimed STEP ACROSS THIS LINE Languages of Truth offers Salman Rushdie's most piercingly analytical views yet on the evolution of literature and culture even as he takes us deep into his own exuberant and fearless imagination Salman Rushdie is celebrated as a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating deep truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing, prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word, and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.

Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie's own intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a deeply human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison mean to him, often by telling vivid, sometimes humorous stories of his own personal encounters with them, whether on the page or in person. He delves deeper than ever before into the nature of truth, revels in the vibrant malleability of language, and the creative lines that can join art and life, and he looks anew at migration, multiculturalism and censorship. The ideas, true stories, and arguments presented here are at once revelatory, funny, and eye-opening, enlivened on every page by Rushdie's signature wit and dazzling voice, making this volume a genuine pleasure to read.

A definitive volume expanded and updated to do justice to the four decade career of one of the most important cultural and intellectual thinkers of the 21st century The renowned literary and cultural critic and political thinker Edward Said was one of our era's most provocative and important thinkers. This comprehensive collection of his work, expanded from the earlier Edward Said Reader, now draws from across his entire four-decade career, including his posthumously published books, making it a definitive one-volume source.

The Selected Works includes key sections from all of Said's books, including his groundbreaking Orientalism; his memoir, Out of Place; and his last book, On Late Style. Whether writing of Zionism or Palestinian self-determination, Jane Austen or Yeats, or of music or the media, Said's uncompromising intelligence casts urgent light on every subject he undertakes. The Selected Works is a joy for the general reader and an indispensable resource for scholars in the many fields that his work has influenced and transformed.

How ancient skepticism can help you attain tranquility by learning to suspend judgment Along with Stoicism and Epicureanism, Skepticism is one of the three major schools of ancient Greek philosophy that claim to offer a way of living as well as thinking. How to Keep an Open Mind provides an unmatched introduction to skepticism by presenting a fr

An insightful biography of one of the world's greatest musicians, Bob Dylan, by bestselling author Paul Morley.

As one of the world's greatest musicians, Bob Dylan has enriched the American song tradition for over 50 years. With a talent that has been proven in the worlds of music, radio, art and poetry, Dylan is a man of many personas. From defying pop music conventions with protest songs such as The Times They Are a-Changin' to releasing three of the most influential rock albums of the 60s, he has not only extended the parameters of music genres but has also showed us the fluidity his craft. To mark Bob Dylan's 80th birthday and 60 illustrious years in the arts, this insightful biography by bestselling author Paul Morley will explore the many voices of the folk icon.

In The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock, Edward White explores the Hitchcock phenomenon?what defines it, how it was invented, what it reveals about the man at its core, and how its legacy continues to shape our cultural world. The book's twelve chapters illuminate different aspects of Hitchcock's life and work: ?

The Boy Who Couldn't Grow Up?; ?

The Murderer?; ?

The Auteur?; ?

The Womanizer?; ?

The Fat Man?; ?

The Dandy?; ?

The Family Man?; ?

The Voyeur?; ?

The Entertainer?; ?

The Pioneer?; ?

The Londoner?; ?

The Man of God.? Each of these angles reveals something fundamental about the man he was and the mythological creature he has become, presenting not just the life Hitchcock lived, but also the various versions of himself that he projected, and those projected on his behalf. White's portrayal illuminates a vital truth: Hitchcock was more than a Hollywood titan; he was the definitive modern artist, and his significance reaches far beyond the confines of cinema.

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life.' DAVID HOCKNEY Praise for Spring Cannot be Cancelled:

'This book is not so much a celebration of spring as a springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light. It is scholarly, thoughtful and provoking' The Times 'Lavishly illustrated... Gayford is a thoughtfully attentive critic with a capacious frame of reference' Guardian 'Hockney and Gayford's exchanges are infused with their deep knowledge of the history of art ... This is a charming book, and ideal for lockdown because it teaches you to look harder at the things around you' Lynn Barber,The Spectator 'Designed to underscore [Hockney's] original message of hope, and to further explore how art can gladden and invigorate ... meanders amiably from Rembrandt, to the pleasure principle, andouillette sausages and, naturally, to spring' Daily Telegraph On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art.

Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney's new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others.

We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live.

Admired for her distinctive ethereal paintings of incidental scenes The present moment: The art of Clarice Beckett sheds new light on the artist's spiritual impulses. It provides the reader with an outline of the international cultural trends that inspired her practice and shaped her visions of nature. Now regarded as one of Australia's most important and influential modernist painters, its richly detailed analysis and lavish colour reproductions reveal to the reader previously hidden dimensions of her life and art. Associated with a legendary story of neglect and rediscovery this book celebrates Clarice Beckett as a visionary mystic.

Featuring 65 masterworks from the collection of one of the world's pre-eminent art museums, European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York spans 500 years of European art and artists, from a time when creativity was closely controlled by the church and state to a period in which our contemporary idea of the creatively independent artist was born. Commencing in the 1420s, with an early Renaissance panel painting, and concluding in the early twentieth century, at the height of the post-impressionist movement, these highly acclaimed works represent the key artistic breakthroughs and innovations in painting that set the course of Western and much global art to the present day.

In this full-colour hardback edition produced to accompany the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art exhibition of the same name, Katharine Baetjer, Curator Emerita in the Department of European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Chris Saines CNZM, Director of QAGOMA, provide scholarly context for high-quality reproductions of magisterial works including Titian's poetic Venus and Adonis of the 1550s; Caravaggio's allegoric Musicians of c.1595; Rembrandt's painterly Flora of c.1654; and Vermeer's elaborate Allegory of the Catholic Faith of c.1670-72, together with a group of outstanding nineteenth-century paintings by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh.

European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is the perfect primer to European art of the period, serving to introduce readers to the greatest painters of the times and explaining their influence on the course of art history, and will be of great interest to a general audience as well as connoisseurs of international art history.

Featuring 65 masterworks from the collection of one of the world's pre-eminent art museums, European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York spans 500 years of European art and artists, from a time when creativity was closely controlled by the church and state to a period in which our contemporary idea of the creatively independent artist was born. Commencing in the 1420s, with an early Renaissance panel painting, and concluding in the early twentieth century, at the height of the post-impressionist movement, these highly acclaimed works represent the key artistic breakthroughs and innovations in painting that set the course of Western and much global art to the present day.

In this full-colour hardback edition produced to accompany the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art exhibition of the same name, Katharine Baetjer, Curator Emerita in the Department of European Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Chris Saines CNZM, Director of QAGOMA, provide scholarly context for high-quality reproductions of magisterial works including Titian's poetic Venus and Adonis of the 1550s; Caravaggio's allegoric Musicians of c.1595; Rembrandt's painterly Flora of c.1654; and Vermeer's elaborate Allegory of the Catholic Faith of c.1670-72, together with a group of outstanding nineteenth-century paintings by Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh.

European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York is the perfect primer to European art of the period, serving to introduce readers to the greatest painters of the times and explaining their influence on the course of art history, and will be of great interest to a general audience as well as connoisseurs of international art history.

A delightful illustrated treasury of botanical facts and fancy Florapedia is an eclectic A-Z compendium of botanical lore. With more than 100 enticing entries-on topics ranging from achlorophyllous plants that use a fungus as an intermediary to obtain nutrients from other plants to zygomorphic flowers that admit only the most select pollinators-

In the Baltics, two worlds meet: the Baltic Sea joins Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, bringing culinary influences and cultural exchange. Food is author Zuza Zak's doorway to a deeper understanding of this region, its rich history, its culture and what makes it tick.

Her recipes explore new culinary horizons, are grounded in Baltic tradition and inspired by contemporary trends, making them modern, unique and easy to recreate at home. In addition to recipes and travel stories, there are snippets of poetry, literature, songs and proverbs, adding a rich layer that makes Amber & Rye a cultural reference point for travellers as well as a showcase for the vibrant new cuisine of the Baltic States.

Amber & Rye explores Baltic capitals, Vilnius, Tallinn and Riga, all three UNESCO World Heritage Sites, steeped in history and culture, guiding you around the cities, sharing stories and discovering a dynamic, new style of cooking.

Perfect for fans of Olia Hercules (Mamushka, Kaukasis), Regula Ysewijn (Pride and Pudding, Oats in the North) and Durkhanai Ayubi's Parwana.

It is such a joy to finally see a cookbook on beautiful Baltic cuisine, done with so much sensitivity and respect by Zuza Zak, one of my favourite authors. It is making me pine to travel to the region more than ever. Before I can do that, I will enjoy reading and cooking from this wonderful book. Olia Hercules

A collection of writings of Lucie Duff Gordon, notable for their humour, outrage at the ruling Ottomans, and many personal stories from the people around her.

In 1862, Lucie Duff Gordon left her husband and three children in England and settled in Egypt, where she remained for the rest of her short life. Seeking respite from her tuberculosis in the dry air, she moved into a ramshackle house above a temple in Luxor, and soon became an indispensable member of the community. Setting up a hospital in her home, she welcomed all - from slaves to local leaders.

Her humane, open-minded voice shines across the centuries through these letters - witty, life-affirming, joyous, self-deprecating and utterly enchanted by her Arab neighbours.

'... reveals a woman of courage, humour and passion.' - Kathleen Frank 'She inherited from her father the judicial mind, and her fine conscience brought it to bear on herself as well as on the world... Hers was the charity which is perceptive and all-embracing' - George Meredith '... singularly captivating and vigorous.' - Edinburgh Review

Discover hundreds of the most interesting and memorable art experiences from around the world!

Amazing Art Adventures offers us art and culture as an experience both within and beyond the gallery, opening a door to unexpected adventures - art fairs, festivals, installations, art trails, galleries, art islands, monuments, sculpture parks and museums. Aimed at all of us who travel to learn about new places and cultures, the book gathers together hundreds of unforgettable art experiences around the world, acting as an inspirational travel guide for anyone interested in art.

From the Lightning Field in New Mexico to an art island in Japan, expert guide Yolanda Zappaterra leads us on a comprehensive, worldwide tour of bucket list destinations for every season. Divided into sections by continent, the book is a thrilling cultural journey, an insider's guide to the visual arts that suggests different ways to experience art beyond the usual galleries and institutions, leads readers to art in unusual places, creates trails that will give insights into the lives of famous artists as well as putting the spotlight on more interesting and unknown works in well known museums. Through more than 300 entries, plus photographs and maps, the book expands our understanding and appreciation of the world's art in exciting new ways.

* Uncover a Chagall masterpiece in a tiny Kentish church * Follow a land art map of North America from the Spiral Jetty and Lightning Fields to Seven Magic Mountains and the Star Axis * Trip the light fantastic at the Atelier des Lumieres in Paris * Delight in the sinuous curves of Oscar Niemeyer's MAC in Rio de Janeiro * Lay your head in a very arty bed at the aha Shakaland Hotel & Zulu Cultural Village * Be dazzled by recycled ceramics at the Rock Garden of Chandigarh in northern India * Exercise body and mind with a walk along London's Art Line * Be blown away by Tacoma's Museum of Glass * Trek into the Brazilian rainforest for art in the jungle at the Inhotim Art Museum * Sample big cheeses in Switzerland at Art Basel * Cross the Seto Inland Sea to land at the art island of Naoshima in Japan * Walk among the gods and monsters of Niki de Saint Phalle's Tuscan Tarot Garden * Commune with a unicorn at the Met Cloisters in New York * See the seeds of Africa's future art scene in a former grain silo at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art in Cape Town * Enter a field of light in Uluru, Australia

The rockin' story of two new friends, one arts fiasco and a whole lot of music.

Without music, the world is just blah. That's my take on life, anyway.

Mum says rock is the only music worth listening to, but I think everyone should find their own beat.

When I hear that Principal Keiren plans to cut all of the arts classes at Watterson Primary, there's no way me and my new mate Flynn are gonna let that happen. We're dragging our secret Broadway appreciation society into the spotlight.

It's time for Watterson- The Musical!

You are covered in microbes - tiny living things so small that you can't see them without a microscope.

Me, Microbes & I is full of fascinating and entertaining information about microbes, and provides young readers with a simple and fun guide to how things like bacteria and viruses work in the body. It is packed with handy tips on how to stay healthy, from enjoying fermented foods to taking care of your immune system, and also provides information on how to stop the spread of nasty viruses - including how to cough like a vampire, and the best way to wash your hands.

Age range 0 to 9 Summer is the season for ripening wild cherries, tatas, wild currants, canygong The canygong fruits taste like salty strawberries.

In this delightful children's picture book, Aunty Patsy Cameron generously shares the stories and traditions from her family's seasonal island life in Tasmania. With evocative text and stunning illustrations, Sea Country lets the reader know when to pick ripe wild cherries, when the moon (mutton) birds fly home and how the nautilus shells smell like the deepest oceans.

Aunty Patsy Cameron, who is a descendant of the Pairebeenne Trawlwoolway clan in Tasmania, weaves a cultural homage to life on Flinder's Island, with stories of collecting shells, fishing in wooden dinghies with long oars, and watching clouds snake their way down Mt Munro. Alongside this tender story, Lisa Kennedy reveals the love and connection to sea and Country through her intricate collages and delicate illustrations that sing country alive.

Teachers' notes available here

When Perry steps into a crumbling ruin while on holiday in France, he is not expecting to be transported back 1700 years to Roman times. While he hunts desperately for a way home, he must blend in as a slave - even if it means eating mice for dinner!

Gradually, Perry is caught up in the fascinating world of grand Villa Rubia and a life he could never have imagined. But when he makes a new friend, he thinks he might already know her terrible fate.

Perry is faced with an impossible choice: to find his way home or stay and guard his friend's life - and risk being trapped in the past forever...

From the creators of Hippopposites, Rhymoceros, and Llamaphones comes a new board book about comparatives In this oversize board book, young readers will learn about comparative adjectives via a very humorous parrot-from noisy and noisier, to messy and messier, to happy and happier when it finally finds a friend. As with the previous books in the series, Comparrotives features surprising touch-and-feel novelty elements throughout-making the comparatives concept easy and fun to learn.

Can a list save a life?

Xander Maze loves lists, and his grandmother is #1 on his list of People I Love Most in the World. But now that Nanna has stage 4 cancer, can a new list of 100 Remarkable Feats really save her?

Particularly when his list contains difficult things like #2 Make a Friend and #3 Make a Best Friend - plus #10 Kiss a Girl (preferably Ally Collins, the girl of Xander's dreams).

Funny, moving and with a protagonist you can't help but fall in love with, 100 Remarkable Feats of Xander Maze is a book about:

1. Never accepting the unacceptable 2. The power of lists 3. One boy's unconditional love for his nanna PRAISE This coming-of-age, pay-it-forward rom-com is filled with moments of poignancy for the reader.' - Michael Earp, Books + Publishing

A heartbreaking story about finding yourself and your people, from the bestselling author of If I Stay, a major film starring Chloe Grace Moretz. For fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, John Green and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

'I got this whole-body feeling . . . it was like a message from future me to present me, telling me that in some way we weren't just bound to happen, that we had, in some sense, already happened. It felt . . . inevitable.' So far, the inevitable hasn't worked out so well for Aaron Stein.

While his friends have gone to college and moved on with their lives, Aaron's been left behind in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, running a failing bookshop with his dad, Ira. What he needs is a lucky break, the good kind of inevitable.

And then he meets Hannah. Incredible Hannah - magical, musical, brave and clever. Could she be the answer? And could they - their relationship, their meeting - possibly be the inevitable Aaron's been waiting for?

A heartfelt story of one girl's determination to save her beloved home and the lyrical companion tale to The Heartsong of Wonder Quinn.

When Melodie Rose is abandoned on the doorstep of Direleafe Hall, she realises she must be a ghost. Strangely, she is not sad. With the three other ghostly girls who haunt the school and a gloomy crow on her shoulder, Melodie has never felt more at peace. Finally there is a place for her to call home.

So when a lady in white arrives with plans to flatten her beloved school, Melodie Rose must act fast to save all she holds dear. But what can one powerless ghost do?

The Ballad of Melodie Rose is a life-affirming tale of belonging, being brave and being seen.

Justice Jones, super-smart super-sleuth, is back for her third spine-tingling adventure! For fans of Robin Stevens, Katherine Woodfine and Enid Blyton.

Justice and her friends are third years now and there's an intriguing new girl in Barnowls. Letitia has never been to school before and doesn't care for the rules - and the teachers don't seem to mind! She decides that Justice is her particular friend, much to Stella and Dorothy's distress. But Letitia just isn't the kind of girl you say no to.

Then, after a midnight feast in the barn, and a terrifying ghost-sighting in the garden, a girl disappears. Soon ransom notes appear, and they're torn from the pages of a crime novel.

Where is the schoolgirl and who has taken her? It will take all of Justice's sleuthing to unravel this mystery!

From the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Five Feet Apart comes a gripping new romance, perfect for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

Two girls, one list and twelve chances to fall in love this summer . . .

Emily's always been lucky.

Well, technically her mum was the lucky one, and since she died, Emily's started to feel like her luck's run out. So when Emily finds her mum's senior-year bucket list, she finds twelve ways to feel close to her again. But if she wants to check everything off, she'll need help - help in the form of Blake.

As Blake and Emily work through the list, the girls' bond deepens. Emily is starting to feel lucky again, but she's faced with the question: can she accept this new part of herself, the part her mum never even knew existed?

A captivating, heartfelt love story about learning who you are, and who you love, when the person you've always shared yourself with is gone.

From the author of the bestselling Walking with the Seasons in Kakadu comes this rich and fascinating book bringing together First Nations Australian knowledge and history with Western science. The first of a proposed series of three titles, with the two possible future titles to focus on the rock country and floodplains.

Age range 9+ These are my stories from a dry remote place, where growing up was very different for what children know today.

Kunyi June Anne McInerney was just four years old when she and three of her siblings were taken from their family to the Oodnadatta Children's Home in South Australia in the 1960s.

Through an extraordinary collection of over 60 paintings, accompanied by stories, Kunyi presents a rare chronicle of what life was like for her and the other Children's Home kids who became her family.

Her paintings are a healing trove of memories that reveal the loneliness, fear and courage of the Stolen Generation children who were torn from family and loved ones. From bible lessons to sucking bone marrow and collecting bush fruits, the escapades, adventures and sorrows of the children are painted with warmth, humour and unflinching honesty.

Kunyi's story is one of healing and reconciliation. She is telling it so that the lives of the children at Oodnadatta Children's Home will not be forgotten. This is a collection of tender and honest stories that will educate children on our nation's history and remind adult readers of the real impact of the Stolen Generations.

What if memories never die? An evocative Australian YA novel about family, place, and how history has a way of weaving itself into our present.

What if memories never die?

When fifteen-year-old Will is sent away to stay with his grandparents in rural New South Wales, he finds the isolated farm strangely familiar; except the memories he's channelling are not his own. But whose are they? And why does his grandfather share the same haunting link?

As two stories unfold, nearly 200 years apart, two boys exiled to what feels like the end of the earth struggle to find their identities and voices in the face of abandonment and tragedy.

A page-turning YA novel that explores the darker moments of our convict past and how they resonate today.

The first book for children from one of Australia's most beloved authors.

Trees tell stories about places. Australia has some of the tallest, oldest, fattest and most unusual trees in the world. They have changed over thousands of years, adapting to this continent's deserts, mountains, and coasts. Many have found clever ways of dealing with drought and fire.

Their leaves, flowers and seeds are food for birds, insects and mammals. Old trees have lots of hollows, which make good homes for possums, sugar gliders, birds and bees. But trees aren't just important for other animals, we need them too. What trees breathe out, we breathe in. They are a vital part of the Earth's ecosystems.

When you first stand in a forest, the trees all seem the same. But if you look more closely, they are each a little different, like people. This book is a love song to Australian trees, from the red ironbark to the grey gum, the Moreton Bay fig to the Queensland bottle tree.

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The new children's book from No. 1 bestselling author David Walliams - a deliciously daft Tall Story of a child who had everything, but still wanted more. Illustrated by artistic genius, Tony Ross. Meet the Meeks!

Myrtle Meek has everything she could possibly want. But everything isn't enough. She wants more, more, MORE! When Myrtle declares she wants a FING, there's only one problem... What is a FING?

Mr and Mrs Meek will do anything to keep their darling daughter happy, even visit the spooky library vaults to delve into the dusty pages of the mysterious Monsterpedia. Their desperate quest leads to the depths of the jungliest jungle where the rarest creatures can be found. But will they ever find a FING?

An explosively funny, totally surreal Tall Story about two perfectly nice parents and their unbelievably monstrous daughter from the phenomenal bestselling author David Walliams.

Prepare to be AmAZed! on this wild ride through Australia's biodiversity from A to Z!

Go on an amazing scientific journey through 100 topics inspired by the specimens and stories from CSIRO's National Research Collections Australia. This book is filled with fabulous facts about plants, animals, microbes and the scientists who study them.

Find out how new species get their names and discover an orchid that grows underground, identify a fly that looks like a bee, and explore strange fish that live in the deep sea.

AmAZed! CSIRO's A to Z of Biodiversity covers Australia's natural wonders and impressive discoveries for each letter of the alphabet, accompanied by engaging photos and illustrations. Get ready to encounter the Lost Shark, the phenomena of sea sparkle and zombie worms!

Reading level varies from child to child, but we recommend this book for ages 6-12.

Growing up on a farm in country Victoria, all Rachel wants is to help people. When war comes, she travels to distant Europe and the Middle East, working tirelessly to care for wounded and sick soldiers from the battlefields of Gallipoli and the Western Front.

Inspired by the life of Rachel Pratt, a World War I Australian army nurse who was awarded the Military Medal for bravery, this is an incredible story of bravery and sacrifice.

A stand-out new YA romance from the number 1 bestselling author of Everything, Everything - this is Dirty Dancing with a supernatural twist.

Evie is disillusioned about love ever since her dad left her mum for another woman - she's even throwing out her beloved romance novel collection.

When she's given a copy of a book called Instructions for Dancing, and follows a note inside to a dilapidated dance studio, she discovers she has a strange and unwelcome gift. When a couple kisses in front of her, she can see their whole relationship play out - from the moment they first catch each other's eye to the last bitter moments of their break-up.

For Evie, it confirms everything she thinks she knows about love - that it doesn't last.

But at the dance studio she meets X - tall, dreadlocked, fascinating - and they start to learn to dance, together. Can X help break the spell that Evie is under? Can he change Evie's mind about love?

Praise for Nicola Yoon- 'Gorgeous and lyrical' New York Times 'Powerful, lovely, heart-wrenching' Jennifer Niven 'This extraordinary first novel about love so strong it might kill us is too good to feel like a debut' Jodi Picoult