He by Murray Bail

$28.00 AUD

Category: Australian

And in the middle in khaki shorts, dusty knees, is he. Aged twelve he already has a certain earnestness, the solemnity, trying to comprehend what is incomprehensible, 'he wouldn't know what day it is'. An elusive, elliptical, often beautiful thread of recollections and observations, He. is not autobiogr aphy, or even memoir, but an almost anonymous portrait of a figure passing through time and circumstances. It begins with boyhood, in suburban Adelaide after the war. As the narrator remembers the years the focus shifts forward to the recent past and back again, often within the same paragraph, mirroring the randomness of memory. Through these vignettes and fragments we glimpse moments and lives—of parents, teachers, wives, and others; in Bombay of the 1960s, London of the 1970s, Melbourne and Sydney. He. is by Murray Bail, the acclaimed author of such classic novels as Homesickness and Eucalyptus. 'One of the most remarkable of the generation of Australian fiction writers that includes Peter Carey and came to first maturity 25 or so years ago.' The Age 'One of Australia's most original and imaginative writers.' Canberra Times 'Murray Bail ranks as one of three indisputably world-class Australian novelists now practicing.' The New York Times Book Review ...Show more

My Year of Living Vulnerably by Rick Morton

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

From Rick Morton, the author of the bestselling, critically acclaimed memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt comes a dazzlingly brilliant book about love, trauma and recovery, My Year of Living Vulnerably. 'Wonderfully readable and wide-ranging exploration of the visible and invisible touchstones of our liv es ... this is nourishing reading for our lonely, frightening and fraught times. Part self-help book, part treatise on the importance of love, kindness and forgiveness ... Morton is a national treasure and we need more like him.' Books+Publishing In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, bestselling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the course of twelve months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably. It's a book about love. What love is, how we see it, what forms it takes, how we practice it in our lives, what it means to us, and how we really, really can't live without it, even if, like Rick for many years, we think we can. As he says: 'People think they want cars - and they do, to get to jobs and appointments in cities and regions where public transport has failed them. But what gets them into those cars, out of the house, out of bed for God's sake, is love.' 'Read this investigation because it will remind you of how optimism and love work together. Read it because your heart has been broken somewhere along the line and you need to know how to mend. Read this book because Rick Morton is the bloke we all need in our life to show us it is going to be okay.' Readings 'Wryly comic, hard-thought and deeply-felt ... It is a heartbreaking book, but a beguiling and necessary one. And a work far wiser than the modesty of its author would allow.' The Saturday Paper ...Show more

You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War by Elizabeth Becker

$33.00 AUD

Category: Australian

The never-before-told story of three women who courageously reported from the frontlines of the Vietnam War. One spent twenty-three days in captivity. Another jumped off planes to get the perfect aerial shot. The other reported from war-torn slums and villages. Catherine Leroy, Frankie Fitzgerald and Ka te Webb were the first female frontline journalists in the history of the US war reporting. Over the course of the Vietnam War they challenged the rules imposed on them, all in an effort to get the story straight. Using the stories of these three women, Elizabeth Becker traces in Vietnam from the Tet Offensive to the revolution in Cambodia to the American defeat and aftermath. Kate Webb, an Australian reporter was captured by the Vietcong only to continue her fearless reporting after her release. American Frankie Fitzgerald's powerful coverage earned her bylines in The New Yorker, and she became the first female war reporter for the magazine. And at only twenty-two, the French Catherine Leroy was one of the only female photographers in Vietnam. In You Don't Belong Here, Becker tells the story of how three women forged a place for themselves and for generations of female reporters to come. ...Show more

Life At The Palace: A Necklace of Anecdotes by Joy Jobbins

$24.95 AUD

Category: Australian

Beyond Climate Grief: A journey of love, snow, fire and an enchanted beer can by Jonica Newby

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian

How do we find courage when climate change overwhelms us emotionally?In this magical, often funny and deeply moving personal story, award-winning science reporter Jonica Newby explores how to navigate the emotional turmoil of climate change.After researching what global warming will do to the snow count ry she loves, Newby plummeted into a state of profound climate grief. And if she was struggling, she wondered, how was everyone else coping? What should parents tell their anxious kids? How might we all live our best lives under the weight of this fearsome knowledge? Then reality outstripped imagination as her family was swept up in the apocalyptic 2020 fires.Featuring illuminating conversations with singer–songwriter Missy Higgins, comedians Charlie Pickering and Craig Reucassel and business leader Mike Cannon-Brookes, practical advice from psychological and scientific experts, incredible accounts from everyday heroes, plus inspiring stories from the climate strike kids,Beyond Climate Grief provides guidance and emotional sustenance to help shore up courage for the uncertainties ahead.It reminds us of the love, beauty and wonder in the world, even amidst disaster. And how we all have a touch of epic hero in us. ...Show more

Reading the Seasons: Books Holding Life and Friendship Together by Germaine Leece, Sonya Tsakalakis

$33.00 AUD

Category: Australian

It's an old cliché that books 'transport you'; but as any avid reader will tell you, there's far more to them than that. Alongside comfort and retreat, books offer insight into ourselves and others; they tell us how the world is, was or might be; they are windows into other worlds, whose meanings resona te through the ages. It's this multiplicity that is at the heart of bibliotherapy, the ancient practice of reading for therapeutic effect.Reading the Seasons charts the evolution of a friendship through candid letters between bibliotherapists Germaine Leece and Sonya Tsakalakis. Ignited by a shared love of reading, of finding a book for every occasion, every emotion - both for themselves and for their clients - their conversations soon confront life's ups and downs. The authors they reach for range from Stephen King to Javier Marias, Helen Garner to Maggie O'Farrell, as they reflect upon loss, change, parenting, careers, simple pleasures, travel, successes, fears and uncertainty. Reading the Seasons not only offers an entryway to new titles but affirms the power of books to console, heal and hold us together as friends and as individuals. ...Show more

Max by Alex Miller

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian

An astonishing, moving tribute to Alex's friend, Max Blatt, that is at once a meditation on memory itself, on friendship and a reminder to the reader that history belongs to humanity. 'This book so beautifully evokes the power of places in shaping our consciousness and perception…As readers of Alex Mill er, we feel ourselves to be in the presence of a great heart and a penetrating sensibility, and in the thrall of one of our nation's most beloved writers.' Tom Griffiths, Emeritus Professor of History, ANU 'Max tells of Alex Miller's search - in turns fearful and elated - for the elusive past of Max Blatt, a man he loves, who loved him and who taught him that he must write with love. Miller discovers that he is also searching for a defining part of himself, formed by his relation to Max Blatt, but whose significance will remain obscure until he finds Max, complete, in his history. With Max, Miller the novelist has written a wonderful work of non-fiction, as fine as the best of his novels. Always a truth-seeker, he has rendered himself vulnerable, unprotected by the liberties permitted to fiction. Max is perhaps his most moving book, a poignant expression of piety, true to his mentor's injunction to write with love.' Raimond Gaita, award-winning author of Romulus, My Father I began to see that whatever I might write about Max, discover about him, piece together with those old shards of memory, it would be his influence on the friendships of the living that would frame his story in the present. According to your 1939 Gestapo file, you adopted the cover names Landau and Maxim. The name your mother and father gave you was Moses. We knew you as Max. You had worked in secret. From an early age you concealed yourself - like the grey box beetle in the final country of your exile, maturing on its journey out of sight beneath the bark of the tree. You risked death every day. And when at last the struggle became hopeless, you escaped the hell and found a haven in China first, and then Australia, where you became one of those refugees who, in their final place of exile, chose not death but silence and obscurity. Alex Miller followed the faint trail of Max Blatt's early life for five years. Max's story unfolded, slowly at first, from the Melbourne Holocaust Centre's records then to Berlin's Federal Archives. From Berlin, Miller travelled to Max's old home town of Wroclaw in Poland. And finally in Israel with Max's niece, Liat Shoham, and her brother Yossi Blatt, at Liat's home in the moshav Shadmot Dvora in the Lower Galilee, the circle of friendship was closed and the mystery of Max's legendary silence was unmasked.  'A wonderful book. It is a story that needs to be heard.' Jay Winter, Charles J. Stille Professor of History, Yale University ...Show more

The Time of Our Lives: Growing Older Well by Robert Dessaix

$33.00 AUD

Category: Australian

At the height of his powers in this remarkable (and often witty) book, Robert Dessaix addresses these increasingly urgent questions in inimitable prose and comes up with some surprising answers. From Java to Hobart via Berlin, Dessaix invites us to eavesdrop on his intimate, no-nonsense conversations ab out ageing with friends and chance acquaintances. Reflecting on time, religion, painting, dancing and even grandchildren, Dessaix takes us on an enlivening journey across the landscape of growing older. Riffing on writers and thinkers from Plato to Eva Hoffman, he homes in on the crucial importance of a rich inner life. The Time of Our Lives is a wise and timely exploration of not just the challenges but also the many possibilities of old age.   ...Show more

Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing by David Leser

$30.00 AUD

Category: Australian

One of the most talked-about and widely praised articles of our time becomes the water-cooler book of the #MeToo era.

Lapsed by Monica Dux

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Losing your religion is harder than it looks ... From devout ten-year-old performing the part of Jesus in a primary school play to blaspheming, undergraduate atheist, Monica Dux and her attitude to the Catholic Church changed profoundly over a decade. Another ten years and she'd calmed right down. Now she was just 'lapsed'. Then, on a family trip to Rome, her young daughter suddenly expressed a desire to be baptised. Monica found herself re-examining her own childhood and how Catholicism had shaped her. Was Catholicism really out of her system or was it in her blood for life? In Lapsed, Monica sets out to find the answer. Her investigations lead her to test a miracle cure in Lourdes and to steal from a church. She visits the grave of a headless Saint who claimed to be married to Christ (and wore a wedding ring made of his foreskin to prove it), and speaks to cannon lawyers, abuse survivors and even a nun who insists that the Virgin Mary starts her car every morning. She ponders the big questions, such as would Jesus really make a great dinner party guest or would he end up calling Einstein a blasphemer? And, far more seriously, given what she now knows about clerical abuse and its extent, is it enough to turn her back on the Church, or did she have a deeper, more enduring obligation? With the wry humour of David Sedaris and the razor-sharp observations of Nora Ephron, Lapsed is the story of one woman's attempt to exorcise her religious upbringing, and to answer the question, is Catholicism like a blood group and, if so, is it possible to get a total transfusion? 'It made me laugh, cry and swear.' Jane Caro   ...Show more

Mary's Last Dance by Mary Li

$35.00 AUD

Category: Australian

'I can vividly remember the last steps of the last ballet, walking off the stage led by a mother and knowing the decision I had to make. That was my last dance.' Mary Li (nee McKendry) is an international ballet star and a mother like no other. She became a household name when her husband Li Cunxin publ ished his bestselling memoir, Mao's Last Dancer- but that book told only half the story. Growing up in a rambunctious family in Rockhampton, Mary discovered an extraordinary early passion for ballet. It saw her move to London at age sixteen, to study at the Royal Ballet School and dance at the London Festival Ballet with the likes of Nureyev, and later to Houston Ballet, where as Principal Dancer she fell in love with the acclaimed Chinese ballet dancer Li Cunxin. The couple became the darlings of the dance world, and were happier than they could have imagined at the arrival of their firstborn daughter, Sophie. Then right at the height of her international career, Mary seemingly disappeared from view, leaving the fans aghast. What could have happened to cause a woman so committed, so talented, to give it all away in a heartbeat? Now, almost twenty years on, fans finally get their answer about what happened next to this inspiring family, and learn why it is Mary's turn to tell a truly remarkable tale. Mary's Last Dance is a powerful and uplifting memoir about chasing an impossible dream, and sacrificing one's own ambition for the love of a child. It is a moving and unforgettable story of passion, dedication and devotion - and the highly anticipated sequel to one of the world's most beloved books.   ...Show more

Car Crash: A Memoir by Lech Blaine

$33.00 AUD

Category: Australian

Lech Blaine was just seventeen when he was in a crash that killed his best friends and changed his life. On an evening in 2009, seven teenage boys piled into a car to go to a party. They never arrived. The driver - who was not drunk or high - made a routine error and then overcorrected. The vehicle flew off the road. One passenger died on impact. Others were flung from the car. Lech walked away uninjured. In the aftermath, two more died in hospital and one was left disabled, in an incident that convulsed their rural community. Crippled by guilt, Lech turned to social media, cultivating a persona as the ultimate 'grateful survivor'. Over time, he spiralled into risk-taking and depression. His public bravado fell away as he tried to accept how an accident - one wretched error of youth and inexperience - had changed the trajectory of so many lives. How do we grieve in an age of social media? How does tragedy shape a community? And how does a boy on the cusp of manhood develop a sense of self when his world has exploded? This stunning memoir pulls no punches. It marks Lech Blaine as a writer to watch.   ...Show more