To My Country by Ben Lawson; Bruce Whatley (Illustrator)

$29.99 AUD

Category: General

On January 10, Ben touched the hearts of Australians with the reading of his poem To My Country in response to the Australian bushfires. This gorgeous 4 colour book combines Ben's heartfelt words with stunning illustrations by Bruce Whatley.  

Melt by Lisa Walker

$27.50 AUD

Category: General

Antarctica is getting hotter ...Summer Wright, hippie turned TV production assistant, organises her life down to the minute. And when her project-management-guru boyfriend, Adrian, proposes marriage - right on schedule - she will reach the peak of The Cone of Certainty. At least, that's the plan - until adventure-show queen Cougar Gale intervenes. Suddenly Summer is impersonating Cougar in Antarctica: learning glaciology and climate science on the fly, building a secret igloo, improvising scripts based on Dynasty, and above all trying not to be revealed as an impostor.Summer finds it particularly hard to fool climate scientist Lucas Nilsson, who is babysitting the production crew. But Lucas is more focused on Adrian's client Nathan Hornby - the science minister who thinks "climate science is crap" - and rumours of faked climate data.With Adrian unexpectedly in Antarctica too, can Summer use her extreme project management skills to get Project Adrian back on track and make a success of "Cougar on Ice"? Was Lucas involved in the sudden disappearance of Minister Hornby during a blizzard? And what is The Krill Question anyway?Antarctica - it gives you perspective ... ...Show more

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

In this blinding debut, Robert Jones Jr. blends the lyricism of Toni Morrison with the vivid prose of Zora Neale Hurston to characterise the forceful, enduring bond of love, and what happens when brutality threatens the purest form of serenity. The Halifax plantation is known as Empty by the slaves who work it under the pitiless gaze of its overseers and its owner, Massa Paul. Two young enslaved men, Samuel and Isaiah dwell among the animals they keep in the barn, helping out in the fields when their day is done. But the barn is their haven, a space of radiance and love - away from the blistering sun and the cruelty of the toubabs - where they can be alone together. But, Amos - a fellow slave - has begun to direct suspicion towards the two men and their refusal to bend. Their flickering glances, unspoken words and wilful intention, revealing a truth that threatens to rock the stability of the plantation. And preaching the words of Massa Paul's gospel, he betrays them. The culminating pages of The Prophets summon a choral voice of those who have suffered in silence, with blistering humanity, as the day of reckoning arrives at the Halifax plantation. Love, in all its permutations, is the discovery at the heart of Robert Jones Jr's breathtaking debut, The Prophets.   ...Show more

The Last Good Man by Thomas McMullan

$29.99 AUD

Category: General

'An extraordinary and disquieting work of imagination, and as original as any novel I've read in recent memory' ROB DOYLE Duncan Peck has travelled alone to Dartmoor in search of his cousin. He has come from the city, where the fires are always burning. In his cousin's village, Peck finds a place with tea rooms and barley fields, a church and a schoolhouse. Out here, the people live an honest life - and if there's any trouble, they have a way to settle it. They sit in the shadow of a vast wall, inscribed with strange messages. Anyone can write on the wall, anonymously, about their neighbours, about any wrongdoing that might hurt the community. Then comes the reckoning. The stranger from the city causes a stir. He has not been there long before the village wakes up to the most unspeakable accusation; sentences daubed on the wall that will detonate the darkest of secrets. A troubling, uncanny book about fear and atonement, responsibility and justice, and the violence of writing in public spaces, The Last Good Man dares to ask: what hope can we place in words once extinction is in the air?   ...Show more

Infinite Splendours by Sofie Laguna

$32.99 AUD

Category: General | Reading Level: very good

A bold new literary novel from the author of the award-winning The Eye of the Sheep and The Choke. Lawrence Loman is a bright, caring, curious boy with a gift for painting. He lives at home with his mother and younger brother, and the future is laid out before him, full of promise. But when he is ten, a n experience of betrayal takes it all away, and Lawrence is left to deal with the devastating aftermath. As he grows into a man, how will he make sense of what he has suffered? He cannot rewrite history, but must he be condemned to repeat it? Lawrence finds meaning in the best way he knows. By surrendering himself to art and nature, he creates beauty - beauty made all the more astonishing and soulful for the deprivation that gives rise to it. Infinite Splendours is an extraordinary novel, incandescent with love and compassion, rich in colour and character. The power and virtuosity of Laguna's writing make it impossible for us to look away; and by being seen, Lawrence is redeemed. And we, as readers, have had our minds and hearts opened in ways we can't forget.   ...Show more

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan

$27.99 AUD

$32.99 (15% off)

Category: General

The Living Sea of Waking Dreams is an ember storm of a novel. This is Booker Prize-winning novelist Richard Flanagan at his most moving-and astonishing-best.In a world of perennial fire and growing extinctions, Anna's aged mother is dying-if her three children would just allow it. Condemned by their pit y to living she increasingly escapes through her hospital window into visions of horror and delight.When Anna's finger vanishes and a few months later her knee disappears, Anna too feels the pull of the window. She begins to see that all around her others are similarly vanishing, but no one else notices. All Anna can do is keep her mother alive. But the window keeps opening wider, taking Anna and the reader ever deeper into a strangely beautiful story about hope and love and orange-bellied parrots. ...Show more

Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

On a visit to her childhood home in rural Malaysia, Durga faces a reckoning. Stuck with her sharp-tongued grandmother in the rising heat, both women must untangle the truth from the myth of their family's past. What happened to Durga's mother after she gave birth? Why did so many of their family members disappear during the war? And who is to blame for the childhood tragedy that haunts Durga?Fragile Monsters traces one family's story from 1920 to the present day, unravelling a thrilling tale of love, betrayal and redemption against the backdrop of natural disasters and fallen empires. Written in vivid technicolour, with an electric daughter-grandmother relationship at its heart, this is a stunning debut novel about what happens when secrets fester through the generations.   ...Show more

Out of Darkness, Shining Light - A Novel by Petina Gappah

$19.99 AUD

Category: General

Prize-winning author Petina Gappah's tale of Dr Livingstone's epic journey through nineteenth-century Africa is'incredible' (Yaa Gyasi), 'powerful' (Jesmyn Ward), and 'beautiful' (Anthony Doerr).

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

A powerful new novel set in a divided Naples by Elena Ferrante, the beloved best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend. Giovanna's pretty face has changed: it's turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Into which mirror must she look to find her self and save herself? She is searching for a new face in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, which professes to be a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves between these two cities, disoriented by the fact that, whether high or low, the city seems to offer no answer and no escape. ...Show more

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

Spiky, sharp, intriguingly dark and tender, full of pathos, fury and wit, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason is a dazzling, distinctive novel from a boldly talented writer. For fans of Sally Rooney, Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Fleabag. This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wr ong with her but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going. Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it. By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.   ...Show more

The Weight of Love by Hilary Fannin

$32.99 AUD

Category: General | Reading Level: very good

'This is heartache for grown ups. The Weight of Love pulls you in and does not let go.' ANNE ENRIGHT 'Beautiful and painful, exquisitely written, shot through with nostalgia for our earlier selves.' MARIAN KEYES London, 1996. Robin and Ruth meet in the staff room of an East London school. Robin, despera te for a real connection, instantly falls in love. Ruth, recently bereaved and fragile, is tentative. When Robin introduces Ruth to his childhood friend, Joseph, a tortured and talented artist, their attraction is instant. Powerless, Robin watches on as the girl he loves and his best friend begin a passionate and turbulent affair. Dublin 2017. Robin and Ruth are married and have a son, Sid, who is about to emigrate to Berlin. Theirs is a marriage haunted by the ghost of Joseph and as the distance between them grows, Robin makes a choice that could have potentially devastating consequences. The Weight of Love is a beautiful exploration of how we manage life when the notes and beats of our existence, so carefully arranged, begin to slip off the stave. An intimate and moving account of the intricacies of marriage and the myriad ways in which we can love and be loved. 'Delicate, powerful, hypnotic.' DONAL RYAN ...Show more

Normal People by Sally Rooney

$19.99 AUD

Category: General | Reading Level: good

A universal story of love, friendship, and growing up. At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marian ne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers-one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship. Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards Winner of the Costa Novel Award " Rooney] has been hailed as the first great millennial novelist for her stories of love and late capitalism... she writes] some of the best dialogue I've read."--The New Yorker   ...Show more