Products

“After a couple of weeks, I found myself standing outside the voids in the middle of the night listening for human activity, for any sign of life at all. Voids are flats that have been vacated, that will never be lived in again. But there never were any signs of life. Only the wind whistling through vacant interiors.”

In a condemned tower block in Glasgow, residents slowly trickle away until a young man is left alone with only the angels and devils in his mind for company. Stumbling from one surreal situation to the next, he encounters others on the margins of society, finding friendship and camaraderie wherever it is offered, grappling with who he is and what shape his future might take.

The Voids is an unsparing story of modern-day Britain, told with brilliant flashes of humor and humanity.

“Reading The Voids is a sensory experience. There is never a word too much, it never lingers. There is tragedy but no melodrama. O’Connor’s lightness of touch, the pace, economy, characters… are all perfect, all harmonious, poetic, but unadorned, even in the blackest of moments. Part of me is still in that high rise or watching the sunlight through the fire exit door at The Satellite. It is beautiful and perfect. I want to say this is a book God would like.” —Paul Buchanan, The Blue Nile

How do you start a journey when the roads are blocked? Who can you trust in a country where the Nazi regime has only just fallen?

“This is the story of the liberation of four Dutch political prisoners at the end of World War II, and about their trek home to Holland…” So, modestly, begins this firsthand account of the adventures of three women and one man in the hellish aftermath of the war in Europe. Awakened from the nightmare of prison camp, freed from the fear of the firing squad that had haunted each of them since capture, the four compatriots find that they must still navigate horror itself without food, without papers, without funds. Virtues are all that remain in their possession, and it is these—nobility, friendship, honor, strength, pride in their bloody but unbowed humanity–that guide them home. This is a tale of bravery that will make you care deeply about its protagonists, and weep tears of wonder at their heroism.

Long overshadowed by the national obsession with the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, the breathtaking story of what really happened on the Western Front has finally been brought into the bright light of day.

The Anzacs’ Western Front campaign had a greater impact than Gallipoli in almost every respect: five times more soldiers served and were killed there, more than five times as many battles took place — and it was there that an astounding 53 Victoria Crosses were awarded to Australians. The diggers serving on the Western Front also helped win the war, but it was at an almost unfathomable cost.

Using hundreds of brutally honest and extraordinary eyewitness accounts, The Western Front Diaries reproduces private diaries, letters, postcards, and photographs to reveal what it was really like at the Front, battle by bloody battle.

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

Panic, depression, sorrow, guilt, disgrace, obsession, sleeplessness, low confidence, loneliness, agoraphobia…The international bestseller Hope and Help for Your Nerves, first published in 1962 and still in print, has helped tens of millions of people to overcome all of these, and continues to do so. Yet even as letters and phone calls from readers around the world flooded in, thanking her for helping to improve—and in some cases to save—their lives, Dr Claire Weekes was dismissed as underqualified and overly populist by the psychiatric establishment. Just who was this woman?

Claire Weekes was driven by a restless and unconventional mind that saw her become the first woman to earn a Doctor of Science degree at Australia’s oldest university, win global plaudits for her research into evolution, and take a turn as a travel agent, before embarking on a career in medicine. But it was a mistaken diagnosis of tuberculosis that would set her heart racing and push her towards integrating all she’d learned into a practical treatment for anxiety—a tried-and-true method now seen as state-of-the-art 30 years after her death. This book is the first to tell her remarkable story.

The jaw-dropping story of Instagram influencer and wellness scammer Belle Gibson, whose cancer diagnosis and cure was all a lie.

NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES STARRING KAITLYN DEVER

Entrepreneur. Inspiration. Guru. Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson shot to fame after she convinced the world she had cured her terminal brain cancer with just a healthy diet. But there was one problem: she lied—she'd never had cancer.

Gibson, a high school dropout and teenage mother, built a global business in less than eighteen months that vaulted her to fame and fortune. She had 200,000 Instagram followers from Melbourne to Los Angeles to London, international book deals, and a best-selling smartphone app, having fooled both Penguin Books and Apple. She was a digital-age celebrity, a one-woman cult, a hero of the “wellness” world, and an inspiration to many.

Written by the two journalists who assiduously uncovered the details of Gibson’s lies, The Woman Who Fooled the World unravels the mystery and motivation behind this deception. It follows the public reaction to the scandal, which included headlines in Time magazine and Gibson being named as a top-ten villain of the year by The Washington Post.

The Woman Who Fooled the World also explores the lure of alternative cancer treatments, the cottage industry flourishing behind the wellness movement, and the rise of social media. It documents not only Gibson’s folly but the devastating impact this con had on hers fans and on people suffering from cancer.

A remarkable memoir detailing a heroic and unswerving commitment to renew the severely degraded land on Wooleen, a massive pastoral property in Western Australia’s southern rangelands.

The outback conjures many images that the Australian psyche is built upon. Its grand vistas of sweeping dusty plains and its evocation of a tough pioneering spirit form the foundation of our prosperous culture. But these romantic visions often hide the stark environmental, economic, and social problems that have inadvertently been left in the wake of our collective past.

Through retelling the struggle of his family amid droughts, financial ruin, depression, and death, David Pollock exposes the modern-day realities of managing a remote outback station. Forced by a sense of moral responsibility, he set out on an uncharted course to restore the 153,000 hectares of degraded leasehold land that he felt he was obliged to manage on behalf of the Australian people. Then, just at the point when that course seemed certain to fail, the project was saved by the generosity and faith of everyday Australians.

This is an urgent story of political irresponsibility, bureaucratic obstinacy, industrial monopolization, and, above all, ecological illiteracy in a vast segment of the Australian continent. It is a familiar story of overexploitation. Yet it is also a story of the extraordinary ability of the natural environment to repair itself, given the chance.

After over a decade of his hard-won insights, Pollock outlines in The Wooleen Way a specific and comprehensive plan to reverse the ecological damage done to the pastoral resource since European colonization. He also emphasizes the economic and social necessity of carrying it out, and of curbing the conquering human spirit so that it aligns with the subtle power of the natural landscape.

‘These are stories to move the heart profoundly; to elicit gratitude for all that we have; powerful stories to make us determined to speak out and take action against prejudice or hateful gossip; stories to encourage a vigorous, constructive questioning of authority; stories to remind us always that the price of liberty is, indeed, eternal vigilance, by all the people, on behalf of all the people.’ — from the foreword, by Caroline Jones, AO

Accurate numbers can never be known, but it is estimated that more than one million children under the age of 16 perished during the Holocaust. For the children who survived, what they saw and heard, and what they lost, remains an indelible trauma that affects them in profound and unspeakable ways.

In 1987 in Sydney, a number of child survivors formed a group so that they could meet in a safe environment to share their stories and begin to process their grief. Later, the group began creative writing sessions.

For many, finding ways to remember was the beginning of a painful reintegration of their sense of self — a realisation that they were, in fact, child survivors of the Holocaust. In telling their stories, there was relief to be found in finally connecting their memories with context and meaning, and in having them validated. In the process, many found themselves remembering more and more details, and the stories grew and grew into a broad picture of life before, during, and after the Second World War, from Paris to Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vilno, and Shanghai.

In this indescribably moving collection, 30 members of the group share their unfathomable experiences of loss, and the stories of their ultimate endurance.

A black comedy, set in suburbia, about one woman’s struggle to be free.

When Winona Dalloway begins her day—in the peaceful early hours before her children, that “tiny tornado of little hands and feet”, wake up—she doesn’t know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.

On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices—a mind both wild and precise.

And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …

“Winona is a compelling character, full of life and humor, and Miranda Darling draws you into her life so thoroughly that Thunderhead becomes a powerful and gripping experience of the insidious and subtle effects of coercive control.” —Midwest Book Review

A brilliant work of feminist fiction, this sharp, powerful novel follows one woman’s struggle to free herself from the confines of contemporary domesticity.

When Winona Dalloway begins her day—in the peaceful early hours before her children, that “tiny tornado of little hands and feet”, wake up—she doesn’t know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed.

On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices—a mind both wild and precise.

And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …

Winner of the 2020 Australian National Biography Award and the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction Award.

The oddly compelling story of a man regarded as Australia’s worst prime minister.

William McMahon was a significant, if widely derided and disliked, figure in Australian politics in the second half of the twentieth century. This biography tells the story of his life, his career, and his doomed attempts to recast views of his much-maligned time as Australia’s prime minister.

After a long ministerial career under Menzies, McMahon became treasurer under Harold Holt, and fought a fierce, bitter war over protectionism with John McEwen. Following Holt’s death in 1967, McEwen had his revenge by vetoing McMahon’s candidature for the Liberal Party’s leadership, and thus paved the way for John Gorton to become prime minister. But almost three years later, amid acrimony and division, McMahon would topple Gorton and fulfill his life’s ambition to become Australia’s prime minister.

In office, McMahon worked furiously to enact an agenda that grappled with the profound changes reshaping Australia. He withdrew combat forces from Vietnam, legislated for Commonwealth government involvement in childcare, established the National Urban and Regional Development Authority and the first Department of the Environment, began phasing out the means test on pensions, sought to control foreign investments, and accelerated the timetable for the independence of Papua New Guinea. But his failures would overshadow his successes, and by the time of the 1972 election McMahon would lead a divided, tired, and rancorous party to defeat. 

A man whose life was coloured by tragedy, comedy, persistence, courage, farce, and failure, McMahon’s story has never been told at length. The Life and Stories of William McMahon fills that gap, using deep archival research and extensive interviews with McMahon’s contemporaries and colleagues. It is a tour de force - an authoritative and colourful account of a unique politician and a vital period in Australia’s history.

Winner of the 2020 National Biography Award and the 2020 NSW Premier’s Non-Fiction Award.

The oddly compelling story of a man regarded as Australia’s worst prime minister.

William McMahon was a significant, if widely derided and disliked, figure in Australian politics in the second half of the twentieth century. This biography tells the story of his life, his career, and his doomed attempts to recast views of his much-maligned time as Australia’s prime minister.

After a long ministerial career under Menzies, McMahon became treasurer under Harold Holt, and fought a fierce, bitter war over protectionism with John McEwen. Following Holt’s death in 1967, McEwen had his revenge by vetoing McMahon’s candidature for the Liberal Party’s leadership, and thus paved the way for John Gorton to become prime minister. But almost three years later, amid acrimony and division, McMahon would topple Gorton and fulfill his life’s ambition to become Australia’s prime minister.

In office, McMahon worked furiously to enact an agenda that grappled with the profound changes reshaping Australia. He withdrew combat forces from Vietnam, legislated for Commonwealth government involvement in childcare, established the National Urban and Regional Development Authority and the first Department of the Environment, began phasing out the means test on pensions, sought to control foreign investments, and accelerated the timetable for the independence of Papua New Guinea. But his failures would overshadow his successes, and by the time of the 1972 election McMahon would lead a divided, tired, and rancorous party to defeat. 

A man whose life was coloured by tragedy, comedy, persistence, courage, farce, and failure, McMahon’s story has never been told at length. Tiberius with a Telephone fills that gap, using deep archival research and extensive interviews with McMahon’s contemporaries and colleagues. It is a tour de force — an authoritative and colourful account of a unique politician and a vital period in Australia’s history.

A darkly comic sequel to Tokyo Vice that is equal parts history lesson, true-crime exposé, and memoir.

It’s 2008, and it’s been a while since Jake Adelstein was the only gaijin crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun. The global economy is in shambles, Jake is off the police beat but still chain-smoking clove cigarettes, and Tadamasa Goto, the most powerful boss in the Japanese organized crime world, has been banished from the yakuza, giving Adelstein one less enemy to worry about—for the time being. But as he puts his life back together, he discovers that he may be no match for his greatest enemy—himself.

And Adelstein has a different gig these days: due diligence work, or using his investigative skills to dig up information on entities whose bosses would prefer that some things stay hidden.

The underworld isn’t what it used to be. Underneath layers of paperwork, corporations are thinly veiled fronts for the yakuza. Pachinko parlors are a hidden battleground between disenfranchised Korean Japanese and North Korean extortion plots. TEPCO, the electric power corporation keeping the lights on for all of Tokyo, scrambles to hide its willful oversights that ultimately led to the 2011 Fukushima meltdown. And the Japanese government shows levels of corruption that make the yakuza look like philanthropists in comparison. All this is punctuated by personal tragedies no one could have seen coming.

In this ambitious and riveting work, Jake Adelstein explores what it’s like when you’re in too deep to distinguish the story you chase from the life you live.

The follow-up to bestselling All the Ways to be Smart by Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys.

Good or bad, the things you do
are all a part of being you —
of learning how to take your boat
on stormy seas and stay afloat.

From the creators of All the Ways To Be Smart comes a message of hope: hard days come and go, but love is with us always. A healing and uplifting tribute to learning and growing — to making mistakes and making amends.

• The perfect gift for children embarking on new challenges
• A wonderful educational tool for teachers and librarians helping children process big changes and big emotions
• Just right for fans of I am Human by Susan Verde & Peter H. Reynolds and The Bad Seed by Jory John and Pete Oswald.

The riveting inside story of a journalist investigating the shocking cold-case murder of a bookseller.

“The whole place seems cold, and he feels a terrible sense of dread. He calls out, but gets no reply. Taking a knife from the cutlery drawer, he unlocks the back door as an escape route. Then he sees her on the floor. Her eyes and mouth are open, and there is blood everywhere. He’s too late.”

After a strange phone call with his ex-wife, John James had sensed something was wrong and raced over to her house. As he stood in her bedroom doorway, transfixed by the sight of her body, the killer was almost certainly just a breath away, hiding behind the door. Had John walked in, he could have been the next victim. Instead, he left to call the police. The culprit escaped, taking with him the secret of a shocking murder that has shown no sign of being solved for nearly 40 years—until now.

Based on the international #1 podcast, Trace re-examines the 1980 murder of Maria James—the single mother of two sons, one with a disability—revealing abuse in the Catholic Church, cult activities, and claims of incompetence and corruption at the highest levels. Investigating possible conspiracies and uncovering fresh evidence, Rachael Brown's riveting investigation has won multiple media awards and may lead to the reopening of this chilling case.

Donald Trump is the Thing-that-should-not-be.

The man lives, quite literally, in a building serviced by a golden elevator. Somehow, he presented himself as the scourge of the elites. For decades, he built a persona based on the most conspicuous consumption and the crassest of excess—and then he won the presidency on an anti-establishment ticket. The unlikely rise of Donald J. Trump exemplifies the political paradox of the twenty-first century.

In this new Gilded Age, the contrast between the haves and the have-nots could not be starker. The world’s eight richest billionaires control as much wealth as the poorest half of the planet—a disparity of wealth and political power unknown in any previous period. Yet not only have progressives failed to make gains in circumstances that should, on paper, favor egalitarianism and social justice, the angry populism that’s prospered explicitly targets ideas associated with the left—and none more so than so-called ‘political correctness’.

If Trump—and others like Trump—can turn hostility to PC into a winning slogan, how should the left respond? In the face of a vicious new bigotry, should progressives double-down on identity politics and gender theory? Must they abandon political correctness and everything associated with it to reconnect with a working class they’ve alienated? Or is there, perhaps, another way entirely?

In Trigger Warnings, Jeff Sparrow excavates the development of a powerful new vocabulary against progressive causes. From the Days of Rage to Gamergate, from the New Left to the alt-right, he traces changing attitudes to democracy and trauma, symbolism and liberation, in an exhilarating history of ideas and movements. Challenging progressive and conservative orthodoxies alike, Trigger Warnings is a bracing polemic and a persuasive case for a new kind of politics.

An authoritative resource for understanding the nature of mental illnesses and for pointing the way to treatment, written by two eminent mental health professionals with almost a century of academic achievement and clinical experience between them.

Many of us take our mental health for granted. But we can feel overwhelmed when confronted by mental illness in ourselves, a family member, or a friend. Troubled Minds is an invaluable guide for anyone whose life has been touched by mental ill-health and who wants to understand and deal effectively with it.

It serves as an ideal introduction to common mental illnesses, developmental disorders, and neurological variations that can lead to distress such as autism, anorexia nervosa, anxiety, depression, alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and dementia. Innovative chapters cover mental health problems of children and adolescents, and how we have the potential to promote our own mental health and wellbeing.

Bloch and Haslam tell illuminating stories of people they have treated, discuss public figures who have wrestled with mental ill-health, and share their personal experiences. Their book is informed by the latest research, warmed by lived experience and empathy, and seasoned by the insights of philosophers, writers, and artists.

Troubled Minds is essential reading for anyone who seeks deeper psychological insights to help deal with the challenges of contemporary life. It is a balanced and accessible account of a subject that is of profound significance in everyone’s life.

A poetic new essay collection in which the symbols of Renaissance-era tarot brush up against life in a changing world.

In 2018, author Jessica Friedmann bought her first deck of tarot cards, a facsimile copy of the Tarot de Marseille. This 15th-century deck, with its unfamiliar images, sparked a deep immersion in the art, symbols, myths, and misrepresentations of Renaissance-era tarot.

Over the years that followed, and as tarot became a part of her daily rhythm, Friedmann’s life in rural Australia was touched by floods and by drought, by bushfires and the pandemic, creating an environment in which the only constant was change.

Twenty-Two Impressions: Notes from the Major Arcana uses the Tarot de Marseille as a touchstone for these years, blending historical research, art history, and critical insights with personal reflections. In these essays, Friedmann demonstrates how the cards of the Major Arcana can be used as a lens through which to examine the unexpectedness—and subtle beauty—of 21st-century life.

An original graphic novel based on the IVF stories of its husband-and-wife authors and the 1-in-50 couples around the world like them.

Conrad and Joanne met in their final year of university and have been virtually inseparable since then. For a while, it felt like they had all the time in the world. Yet now, when they are finally ready to have kids, they find that getting pregnant isn’t always so easy.

Ahead of them lies a difficult, expensive, and emotional journey into the world of assisted fertility, where each “successful” implantation is followed by a two-week wait to see if the pregnancy takes. Join Joanne and Conrad, their friends, their family, their coworkers, and a stream of expert medical practitioners as they experience the highs and the lows, the tears and the laughter in this sensitive but unflinching portrayal of the hope and heartbreak offered to so many by modern medicine.

Full of beautiful and heartfelt artwork, this book will be a hit in any graphic health collection.

A beautiful tale celebrating the invisible, protective, omnipresent love love between parents and children.

From this award-winning creative duo comes a stunning celebration of the joy and comfort that love can bring—wherever we roam in the big, wild world.

No matter what challenges children may face, they can always rely on the love umbrella above them.

It’s okay for men to make bad art. There’s no price on their head for doing it … Nothing for men is pre-determined, except their chance at great success.

Los Angeles, 1978.

When Romy, a gifted young artist in the male-dominated art scene of 1970s California, dies in suspicious circumstances, it is not long before her art-star husband Billy finds a replacement.

Paz, fresh out of art school in New York, returns to California to take her place. But she is haunted by Romy, who is everywhere: in the photos and notebooks and art strewn around the house, and in the eyes of the baby she left behind.

As Paz attempts to claim her creative life, strange things begin to happen. Photographs move, noises reverberate through the house, people start to question what really happened the night Romy died, and then a postcard in her handwriting arrives. As Paz becomes increasingly obsessed with the woman she has replaced, a disturbing picture begins to emerge, driving her deep into the desert—the site of Romy’s final artwork—to uncover the truth.

At once an exquisite exploration of creativity and an atmospheric page-turner, Utopia is a book that takes hold of you and will leave you altered.

Available in English for the first time, here is David Vogel’s previously unknown novel that had literary Israel abuzz when it was published in 2012, almost one hundred years after the author started working on it.

David Vogel has long been regarded as a leading figure in modern Hebrew literature, and his work has been compared to that of Joseph Roth, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka. Vogel was thought to have written only a single novel: his masterpiece, Married Life, which was published to great acclaim in 1929. Yet he had been working on another novel, which was only discovered recently.

Set in the early 1900s, Viennese Romance tells the story of Michael Rost, an eighteen-year-old Jewish youth who travels to Vienna, hungry for experience. There, he forms passing relationships with everyone who crosses his path — prostitutes, revolutionaries, paupers, army officers, and rich men alike. When a shady businessman takes the penniless Rost under his wing, he rents a room in the home of an affluent bourgeois family. He is seduced by the lady of the house while her husband is away on business, and shortly after begins an affair with her sixteen-year-old daughter as well. This love triangle threatens to destroy the entire family.

With a foreword that explains how this lost novel came to light, Viennese Romance is a seminal work that explores the conflicts faced by many Jewish intellectuals in early twentieth-century Europe. A compelling portrait of a decadent society, it also lays bare the obsessive–destructive nature of love.

Inspired by a real event, this is the story of a woman and a city that were violated.

It is 2014. There is euphoria in Brazil, especially in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The World Cup is about to take place, and the 2016 Olympics are in sight. It is a time of hope and of frenzied construction.

Júlia is a partner with an architecture firm that is planning projects for the future Vila Olímpica. During a break from one of these meetings at the town hall, Júlia goes for a run in Alto da Boa Vista. Suddenly, someone puts a revolver to her head, takes her to a secluded spot, and rapes her. Left abandoned in the woods, she drags herself home, where her boyfriend and some family members wait for her.

Vista Chinesa brings light and shadow to a city whose stunning beauty cannot conceal the most serious human and political problems. This is a novel that turns a tragic, real chapter in the story of a woman into great literature.

In November 1916, just a few years after Federation and while Australia was at war in Europe, Hazel Hood, the beautiful 18-year-old daughter of a Riverina grazier, went to a local dance and never came home. Her mysterious disappearance caused a sensation in the district around the pioneer settlement of Wakool Crossing, near the Victoria–New South Wales border.

The mystery further intensified when, a week later, Hazel’s body — still clothed in her white party dress — was recovered from the Wakool river with a mark of violence upon her head, and her silk scarf tied tightly around her neck. Her disappearance was reported in major daily newspapers as far afield as Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, but the mystery of what happened to her was never fully explained.

As a child in the Mallee in the 1950s, Mike Richards was told the story of Hazel Hood’s tragic disappearance by his grandmother, Hazel’s elder sister, who firmly believed she had been murdered. Now, almost 100 years after her death, the author takes us with him as he seeks to unravel the mystery and reveal the truth about what happened to Hazel Hood — an unassuming, fun-loving, and caring girl, and a favourite in the district.

‘Essentially, it comes down to the fact that a very large portion of Americans are crazier than shithouse rats and are being led by a gang of pathological misfits, most of whom are preachers and politicians.’

In 2004, at the age of 58, writer Joe Bageant sensed that the internet could give him editorial freedom. Without having to deal with gatekeepers, he began writing about what he was really thinking, and started submitting his essays to left-of-centre websites.

Joe’s essays soon gained a wide following for his forceful style, his sense of humour, and his willingness to discuss the American white underclass — a taboo topic for the mainstream media. Joe called himself a ‘redneck socialist’, and he initially thought most of his readers would be very much like himself. So he was pleasantly surprised when the emails started filling his inbox. There were indeed many letters from men about Joe’s age who had escaped rural poverty. But there were also emails from younger men and women readers, from affluent people who agreed that the political and economic system needed an overhaul, from readers in dozens of countries expressing thanks for an alternative view of American life, and from working-class Americans in all parts of the country.

Joe Bageant died in March 2011, having published 89 essays online. The 25 essays presented in Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball have been selected by Ken Smith, who managed Joe’s website and disseminated his work to the wider media and to Joe’s dedicated fans and followers.

WINNER OF THE 2023 AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR NONFICTION

To essay means to try, to endeavor, to attempt—and to risk failure. For Kim Mahood, it is both a form of writing and an approach to life.

In these finely observed and probing essays, award-winning artist and writer Kim Mahood invites us to accompany her on the road and into the remote places of Australia where she is engaged in long-established collaborations of mapping, storytelling, and placemaking. Celebrated as one of the few Australian writers who both lives within and can articulate the complexities and tensions that arise in the spaces between Aboriginal and settler Australia, Mahood writes passionately and eloquently about the things that capture her senses and demand her attention—art, country, people, and writing. Her compelling evocation of desert landscapes and tender, wry observations of cross-cultural relationships describe people, places, and ways of living that are familiar to her but still strange to most non-Indigenous Australians.

At once a testament to personal freedom and a powerful argument for Indigenous self-determination, Wandering with Intent demonstrates, with candor, humor, and hope, how necessary and precious it is for each of us to choose how to live.

A bold and playful celebration of movement, energy, pattern, color and shape!

In a world oversaturated with beautiful photos (hello Instagram!) and imagery (hello 'Golden Age of Illustration'!) we sometimes forget the power that photos can have for our children. Seeing photographs of other kids in action promotes empathy, acknowledges the diversity of our community and encourages PLAY!

Discover the joy of learning shapes through playful movement and vibrant photography.

Watch This! transforms learning into a vibrant adventure. Can you make a circle with your arms? Or a triangle with your fingers? Work together to make a rectangle or even a pyramid.

This captivating board book blends education with fun, promoting kinetic learning where children use their bodies to explore and understand different shapes. It’s a method that not only fosters physical activity but also helps develop essential gross motor skills. By moving and positioning their bodies to create shapes, kids gain a better grasp of spatial relationships, geometric concepts, size, and patterns, all crucial for early math skills and foundational for future learning.

Combining playful activities with significant educational benefits, this board book is perfect for fostering early learning and physical activity in young children.

Bold and Playful: Celebrates movement, energy, pattern, color, and shape, tailored especially for the youngest readers.

Engaging Photography: A group of children twist, bend, and stretch to create various shapes, photographed against vibrant backgrounds.

Hands-On Learning: Encourages children to explore shapes using their bodies, fostering creativity and physical activity.

Perfect for Little Hands: Durable and sturdy, ideal for toddlers and young children.

Ideal for

• Families with young children who enjoy interactive and educational play.
• Parents and educators looking to support early learning and motor skill development.
• Classrooms and daycare centers seeking fun, collaborative group activities.
  

“In this inviting concept book, children use their bodies to make different shapes. Eye-catching photographs showcase gross motor skills in action. A kinetic celebration of body and mind.”
– School Library Journal

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a sharp decline in respect for human rights and the international rule of law. The legal conventions of the new realpolitik seem to owe more to Guantanamo than Geneva.

Australia has tarnished its reputation in the field of human rights, through its support for illegal warfare, its failure to honour international conventions, its refusal to defend its citizens against secret rendition and illegal detention, and its introduction of secretive anti-sedition legislation and draconian anti-terror laws.

In Watching Brief, noted lawyer and human rights advocate Julian Burnside articulates a sensitive and intelligent defence of the rights of asylum-seekers and refugees, and the importance of protecting human rights and maintaining the rule of law. He also explains the foundations of many of the key tenets of civil society, and takes us on a fascinating tour of some of the world’s most famous trials, where the outcome has often turned on prejudice, complacency, chance, or (more promisingly) the tenacity of supporters and the skill of advocates. Julian Burnside also looks at the impact of significant recent cases — including those involving David Hicks, Jack Thomas, and Van Nguyen — on contemporary Australian society.

Watching Brief is a powerful and timely meditation on justice, law, human rights, and ethics, and ultimately on what constitutes a decent human society. It is also an impassioned and eloquent appeal for vigilance in an age of terror — when ‘national security’ is being used as an excuse to trample democratic principles, respect for the law, and human rights.

Noted barrister and human-rights advocate Julian Burnside explains the origins of the Australian legal system, looks at the way it operates in practice, and points out ways in which it does and doesn’t run true to its ultimate purposes. Watching Out is a beacon of legal liberalism in an intemperate age.

‘When put to the test, most people have difficulty identifying what justice is, especially when there is tension between proper process and a desired result. Due process is inherent in our conception of justice. But bad process can yield the right result, just as good process can produce the wrong result. The legal system is designed to produce justice. We call it the justice system — sometimes un-selfconsciously, sometimes with bitter irony. It is designed to produce justice according to law. Whether it achieves that goal is not the subject of general agreement.’

In Watching Out, a successor volume to his best-selling Watching Brief, noted barrister and human-rights advocate Julian Burnside explains the origins of our legal system, looks at the way it operates in practice, and points out ways in which it does and doesn’t run true to its ultimate purposes.

He examines fundamental legal principles, such as the presumption of innocence, explains why good barristers defend bad people, and sets out legal remedies for wrongs done to individuals and groups.

The law’s reach is immense, and so is the territory this book covers. Legal aid, class actions, assisted dying, counter-terrorism, unjust verdicts, and the treatment of asylum-seekers are some of the contentious subjects dealt with here. There is also a compelling chapter on the plight of people who are bereft of legal remedies, living on the margins of society, and shocking examples of hate mail that Burnside’s defence of refugees has provoked.

Rich with fascinating case studies, and eloquent in its defence of civil society, Watching Out is a beacon of legal liberalism in an intemperate age.

A mesmerizing novel by the author of Rainbirds and The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida about a young man trying to escape his past in Japan.

When Shouji Arai crosses one of his company’s most powerful clients, he must leave Akakawa immediately or risk his life. But his girlfriend Youko is nowhere to be found.

Haunted by dreams of drowning and the words of a fortune teller who warned him away from three women with water in their names, he travels to Tokyo, where he tries in vain to track Youko down. But Shouji soon realises that not everything Youko told him about herself was true. Who is the real woman he once lived with and loved, and where could she be hiding?

Watersong is a spellbinding novel of loves lost and recovered, of secrets never spoken, and of how our pasts shape our futures.

These are the last adult witnesses—in their own words.

When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he quickly began to realise his dream of a racially superior nation free of ‘inferior’ groups. His goal included the eradication of European Jewry, a plan that would ultimately claim six million lives. By 1945, almost two in three European Jews were dead. So were millions of other victims of Nazism.

For those who survived, liberation came with the enormous weight of guilt and memory as they began the second part of their lives, often in faraway places such as Australia, which would become home to one of the world’s highest per capita communities of Holocaust survivors.

Now the last of those adult survivors have reached an age once considered unattainable. They outlasted Nazism, and today, in their tenth and eleventh decades, have outlived most of their contemporaries. Eighteen of these Australians, originally from all over Europe, tell what it is like to have endured those years, and how they lived long after them.

“A profound diagnosis and wake-up call.”
—Ralph Gerstenberg, Deutschlandfunk Kultur Book Review

Political economist Maja Göpel delivers the tools we need to build the world we want to live in

Humanity is undergoing a massive process of transformation, and the way we live is about to change in a fundamental way.

In recent times, we’ve lived so hard on the earth, that the environment, the economy, politics, society, and technology are crumbling. There have always been great transformations in history, triggered by humans. Structural change is not an imposition, but an opportunity. It is time that we — each of us individually, but also society as a whole — allowed ourselves to think anew, to dream, and to ask two related, radical questions: Who do we want to be, and how do we want to live?

In We Can Do Better, Maja Göpel explains how we can understand such complex developments and use this knowledge to achieve a better world.

Australian Vietnam vet Barry Heard draws on his own experiences as a young conscript, along with those of his comrades, to look back at life before, during, and after the Vietnam War. The result is a sympathetic vision of a group of young men who were sent off to war completely unprepared for the emotional and psychological impact it would have on them. It is also a vivid and searingly honest portrayal of the author’s post-war, slow-motion breakdown, and how he dealt with it.

Well Done, Those Men attempts to make sense of what Vietnam did to the soldiers who fought there. It deals with the comic absurdity of their military training and the horror of the war they fought, and is unforgettably moving in recounting what happened to Barry and his comrades when they returned home.

As we now know, most Vietnam vets had to deal with a community that shunned them, and with their own depression, trauma, and guilt. Barry Heard’s sensitive account of his long journey home from Vietnam is a tribute to his mates, and an inspiring story of a life reclaimed.

“I chose the jagged rocks, the broken bones, the spattered brains. I chose beauty. I'd choose it again.”

Luna Lewis is white. But her friends aren’t, nor are her brothers, nor her one-time Princess of Indonesia–finalist stepmother. After transforming from pudgy preteen to ‘exotic’ beauty, Luna reinvents herself as ‘Luna Lu’ and takes her ticket out of the most isolated city on earth. However, as her international modeling career approaches its expiration date, Luna must grapple with what she’s sacrificed—and who she’s become—in her mission to conquer the world.

Featuring an intersecting cast of glamor-hungry public schoolgirls, WAGs, mining heiresses, backpacker-barmaids, and cosmetic nurses, West Girls is a novel-in-stories that examines beauty, race, class divisions, and social mobility in Australia’s richest state. It’s also a devastating catalog of the myriad, inventive ways in which women love and hurt one another.

The first major anthology by parents with disabilities.

How does a father who is blind take his child to the park? How is a mother with dwarfism treated when she walks her child down the street? How do Deaf parents know when their baby cries in the night?

When writer and musician Eliza Hull was pregnant with her first child, like most parents-to-be she was a mix of excited and nervous. But as a person with a disability, there were added complexities. She wondered: Will the pregnancy be too hard? Will people judge me? Will I cope with the demands of parenting? More than 15 percent of people worldwide live with a disability, and many of them are also parents. And yet their stories are rarely shared, their experiences almost never reflected in parenting literature.

In We’ve Got This, parents around the world who identify as Deaf, disabled, or chronically ill discuss the highs and lows of their parenting journeys and reveal that the greatest obstacles lie in other people’s attitudes. The result is a moving, revelatory, and empowering anthology that tackles ableism head-on. As Rebekah Taussig writes, ‘Parenthood can tangle with grief and loss. Disability can include joy and abundance. And goddammit — disabled parents exist.’

According to current thinking, anyone who fails to succeed must have something wrong with them. The pressure to achieve and be happy is taking a heavy toll, resulting in a warped view of the self, disorientation, and despair. People are lonelier than ever before. Today’s pay-for-performance mentality is turning institutions such as schools, universities, and hospitals into businesses — even individuals are being made to think of themselves as one-person enterprises. Love is increasingly hard to find, and we struggle to lead meaningful lives.

In What about Me?, Paul Verhaeghe’s main concern is how social change has led to this psychic crisis and altered the way we think about ourselves. He investigates the effects of 30 years of neoliberalism, free-market forces, privatisation, and the relationship between our engineered society and individual identity. It turns out that who we are is, as always, determined by the context in which we live.

From his clinical experience as a psychotherapist, Verhaeghe shows the profound impact that social change is having on mental health, even affecting the nature of the disorders from which we suffer. But his book ends on a note of cautious optimism. Can we once again become masters of our fate?

A follow-up to the author's prescient bestseller, first published in 1982, that alerted the public to the likely impacts of information technologies and the emergence of a post-industrial society.

When Sleepers, Wake! was released in Australia, it immediately became influential around the world: it was read by Deng Xiaoping and Bill Gates; was published in China, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden; and led to the author being the first Australian minister invited to address a G-7 summit meeting, held in Canada in 1985

Now its author, the polymath and former politician Barry Jones, turns his attention to what has happened since—especially to politics, health, and our climate in the digital age—and to the challenges faced by increasingly fragile democracies and public institutions.

Jones sees climate change as the greatest problem of our time, but political leaders have proved incapable of dealing with complex, long-term issues of such magnitude. The Trump phenomenon overturns the whole concept of critical thinking and analysis. Meanwhile, technologies such as the smartphone and the ubiquity of social media have reinforced the realm of the personal. This has weakened our sense of, or empathy with, ‘the other’, the remote, and the unfamiliar, and all but destroyed our sense of community, of being members of broad, inclusive groups. The COVID-19 threat, which was immediate, and personal, showed that some leaders could respond courageously, while others denied the evidence.

In the post-truth era, politicians invent ‘facts’ and ignore or deny the obvious, while business and the media are obsessed with marketing and consumption for the short term. What Is to Be Done is a long-awaited work from Jones on the challenges of modernity and what must be done to meet them.

What happens when the person you’ve built your entire life on is suddenly gone?

This question lies at the heart of Jente Posthuma’s deceptively simple What I’d Rather Not Think About. The narrator is a twin whose brother has recently taken his own life. She looks back on their childhood, and tells of their adult lives: how her brother tried to find happiness, but lost himself in various men and the Bhagwan movement, though never completely.

In brief, precise vignettes, full of gentle melancholy and surprising humor, Posthuma tells the story of a depressive brother, viewed from the perspective of the sister who both loves and resents her twin, struggles to understand him, and misses him terribly.

For the first time in human history, most people in developed countries are able to publish their news and thoughts to the world within a few minutes of deciding to do so. Meanwhile, the big industrial-scale media organisations are in decline, and at the same time there is a new blog, website, or social-media presence almost every hour.

This book takes the temperature of this emerging sector of news media, with a collection of contributions by new-media entrepreneurs from a variety of backgrounds — journalism, IT innovation, social activism, and community work. They talk about connecting with their audiences, and what just might be a new kind of news ecosystem in which everyone gets to play.

What’s Next in Journalism? is edited by journalist and media commentator Margaret Simons, who has also written the introduction. The contributors include Tim Burrowes (from Mumbrella), Eyal Halamish (OurSay), Wendy Harmer (The Hoopla), Matthew Landauer (OpenAustralia), Renai LeMay (Delimiter), Giles Parkinson (RenewEconomy), Karen Poh (Meld Magazine), Melissa Sweet (Croakey), and Chris Were (Newsflock).

When do you become an adult? What does it mean to grow up? And what are the experiences that propel us forward—or keep us stuck?

As we get older, we pass many milestones, but for some of us it can feel as if adulthood is always just out of reach.

Journalist and psychotherapist-in-training Moya Sarner goes on a journey into what growing up really involves, and how we do it again and again throughout our lives. She draws on case studies, as well as her training, and theories of child psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and more, to explore what it means to be a “grown up” and how we can meet the challenges and opportunities of every stage of our lives.

A tour de force about the impact of war on one family over the twentieth century.

Working at the Australian War Memorial for many years, Michael McKernan had heard and written about many stories of war. For him, war was never about the big picture; it always came down to the individual. Yet little did he know when he met his future wife in 1989 that her father would soon be telling him, over many leisurely afternoons, his own story, of being made a slave to the Nazis in the Second World War, and its unforeseeable consequences.

One of these consequences was that Mychajlo Stawyskyj’s son Joe would grow up in Australia in time to be sent to fight in Vietnam, where he would become one of that war’s worst casualties.

Drawing on his authoritative grasp of twentieth-century history, and in particular military and social history, Michael McKernan pieces together the disrupted lives of his father-in-law and brother-in-law, creating a compelling narrative of general interest, as well as an unforgettable story about the cost of war to one Australian family.

A gorgeously illustrated, warm and practical book of tips and wisdom to guide you through tough times.

This is a self-care manual for the days when you feel alone—the days when you worry that you’re too weird or broken or unfixable to be normal. With compassion, humor, and honesty, Jill offers signposts to help you find the path back to yourself.

Whether you’re having a bad day, or a run of bad days that seems never-ending, When You’re Not OK is an emotional first-aid kit for your body, mind, and soul, written by someone who’s been there too.

Elvi has two moms at her house, but Nicholas wants to know which one is her real mom. “They’re both my mom,” she says. Poignant, but written with a light and humorous touch, this beautifully illustrated story captures what lies at the heart of family life—love.

“Elvi, which one is your mom?”
“They’re both my mom.”
“But which one’s your real mom?”

When Nicholas wants to know which of Elvi’s two moms is her real mom, she gives him lots of clues. Her real mum is a circus performer, and a pirate, and she even teaches spiders the art of web. 

But Nicholas still can’t work it out! Luckily, Elvi knows just how to explain it to her friend. . .

This beautifully illustrated story celebrates nontraditional families and captures exactly what lies at the heart of family life—love.

WINNER OF THE 2024-5 ALABAMA SCHOOL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION'S YELLOWHAMMER BOOK AWARD FOR PICTURE BOOK
WINNER OF THE 2024-5 VERMONT YOUTH BOOK AWARD'S RED CLOVER AWARD
WINNER OF THE 2024 ABDA BEST DESIGNED CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOK AND BOOK OF THE YEAR
A 2024 White Raven selection
A dPICTUS 100 Outstanding Picture Books selection for 2024
Shortlisted for the 2024 World Illustration Awards

Fergus lives down in the deepest, darkest sea and is scared of just one thing … the light! Fresh and funny narrative non-fiction from the award-winning Anna McGregor.

From award-winning creator Anna McGregor (author of Anemone is Not the Enemy) comes this hilarious tale of the deepest of sea creatures. Seamlessly combining humor, narrative, and non-fiction, McGregor introduces young readers to the wonders of the ocean’s ‘midnight zone’, where no sunlight at all is able to penetrate. We meet Fergus as he hides from a parade of sea-creatures that use bioluminescence to find their way in the dark. At least, we think he is hiding … or is it something else entirely?

This book is ideal for:

• Educators and librarians looking for humorous stories to use as a launching pad for further non-fiction investigation into the ocean environment;
• Parents and carers looking to combine narrative and non-fiction to entertain and educate their children simultaneously;
• Kids who just want funny books!

From highly respected microbiologist and the creator of the YouTube sensation “Dumb Ways to Die,” comes this exploration of the immune system, what keeps it running, and how germs are destroyed…

So how come we’re not dead yet? In this lively and accessible book, Idan Ben-Barak tells us why. He explores the immune system and what keeps it running, how germs are destroyed, and why we develop immunities to certain disease-causing agents. He also examines the role of antibiotics and vaccines, and looks at what the future holds for our collective chances of not being dead.

This is entertaining and thoughtful science writing to inspire the student interested in a career in medicine or immunology, or to inform the reader who just wants to understand more about their body while having a laugh along the way.

Can knowledge heal chronic pain? The ultimate, science-driven guide to understanding chronic pain.

Paul Biegler—a science journalist and former doctor—has interviewed the world’s leading pain experts, along with people who have weathered their own chronic pain battles.

Chronic pain is the single biggest cause of suffering. And yet, pain that persists for more than three months is often unrelated to any physical injury. So why does it still hurt?

From neuroplasticity, to sensitized nervous systems, and associative learning—Dr. Biegler’s journey through pain clinics and studies debunks common myths about pain treatments and explores the pivotal recent brain science that explains why a nervous system holds on to pain pathways, and how to retrain the brain and the body.

Discover what we can learn from the leading pain doctors and the pain clinics that offer no pain medications but still have excellent (and fast) results.

Why Does It Still Hurt? is a must-read for anyone with chronic pain who wants cutting-edge knowledge and help to live pain-free.

A revelatory and original contribution to our understanding of the role of religion in society and politics.

India’s leading public intellectual, Shashi Tharoor, lays out Hinduism's origins and its key philosophical concepts, major texts and everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremism and unequivocal in his belief that what makes India a distinctive nation with a unique culture will be imperiled if Hindu “fundamentalists”—the proponents of “Hindutva," or politicized Hinduism—seize the high ground. In his view, it is precisely because Hindus form the majority that India has survived as a plural, secular democracy.

A book that will be read and debated now and in the future, Why I Am a Hindu, written in Tharoor's captivating prose, is a profound re-examination of Hinduism, one of the world's oldest and greatest religious traditions.

A revelatory and original contribution to our understanding of the role of religion in society and politics.

India’s leading public intellectual, Shashi Tharoor, lays out Hinduism's origins and its key philosophical concepts, major texts and everyday Hindu beliefs and practices, from worship to pilgrimage to caste. He is unsparing in his criticism of extremism and unequivocal in his belief that what makes India a distinctive nation with a unique culture will be imperiled if Hindu “fundamentalists”—the proponents of “Hindutva," or politicized Hinduism—seize the high ground. In his view, it is precisely because Hindus form the majority that India has survived as a plural, secular democracy.

A book that will be read and debated now and in the future, Why I Am a Hindu, written in Tharoor's captivating prose, is a profound re-examination of Hinduism, one of the world's oldest and greatest religious traditions.

Sometimes we find what we’re looking for in the most unexpected places—for Wren, this means a little corner of quiet.

Wren just wants a bit of peace and quiet. What he gets is the noisiest baby sister you could ever imagine! But when Wren runs away to the country, he discovers that maybe peace and quiet isn’t all he needs…

With bright, modern illustrations from rising star Sophie Beer (Love Makes a Family and Kindness Makes Us Strong) and a powerfully simple story, any child (and any parent!) who’s ever had to deal with a noisy sibling will love Wren.

An award-winning true-crime story about a fugitive on the run, told from his point of view. Winner of the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award for Nonfiction.

Callous murderer, outlaw hero or victim of the system? The subject of Andrew Hankinson’s book defies all such labels.

After killing his ex-girlfriend’s new lover, shooting her in the stomach, and blinding a policeman, Raoul Moat disappeared into the woods of Northern England, evading discovery for seven days. Moat captured the public imagination; he soon had an online following. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself.

Drawing on extensive research—including many hours of tapes Moat recorded whilst he was at large—Hankinson tells Moat’s story using Moat’s own words, and those of the welfare agencies which engaged with him. The result is an unprecedented examination of violent breakdown; an electrifying nonfiction narrative in the tradition of Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer.

“From schoolboy socialist to boy publisher to mogul on the make: Young Rupert offers a revelatory glimpse of Murdoch becoming Murdoch."—Jeff Sparrow, author of No Way But This: in search of Paul Robeson

For half a century, the Murdoch media empire and its polarizing patriarch have swept across the globe, shaking up markets and democracies in their wake. But how did it all start?

In September 1953, 22-year-old Rupert Murdoch landed in Adelaide, South Australia. Fresh from Oxford with a radical reputation, the young and brash son of Sir Keith Murdoch had arrived to fulfill his father’s dying wish: for Rupert to live a “useful altruistic and full life” in the media.

For decades, Sir Keith had been a giant of the Australian press, but his final years were spent bitterly fending off rivals and would-be successors. When the dust settled on his father’s estate, Rupert was left with the Adelaide-based News Ltd and its afternoon paper The News—a minor player in a small, parochial city.

But even this inheritance was soon under siege, as the left-wing “Boy Publisher” stared down his father’s old colleagues at the city’s paper of record, The Advertiser, and a conservative establishment kept in power by a decades-old gerrymander.

Led by Rupert’s friend, ally, and editor-in-chief Rohan Rivett, the fledgling Murdoch press began a seven-year campaign of circulation wars, expansion, and courtroom battles that divided the city and would lay the foundations for a global empire—if Rupert and Rohan didn’t end up in custody first.

Drawing on unpublished archival material and new reportage, Young Rupert pieces together a paper trail of succession, sedition, and power—and a fascinating time capsule of Australian media on the cusp of an extraordinary ascension.

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter
The seasons come and go, bringing changes both welcome and unexpected

Miki Sakamoto has spent a lifetime tending her garden and reflecting on its mysteries. Why do primulas bloom in snow? Do the trees really ‘talk’ to one another? What are the black birds saying today? And is there a mindful way to deal with an aphid infestation?

From rising early to walk barefoot on the grass each morning, to afternoons and evenings spent sipping tea in her gazebo or watching fireflies as she recalls her childhood in Japan, in Zen in the Garden Sakamoto shares observations from a life spent in contemplation—and cultivation—of nature.

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter
The seasons come and go, bringing changes both welcome and unexpected

Miki Sakamoto has spent a lifetime tending her garden and reflecting on its mysteries. Why do primulas bloom in snow? Do the trees really ‘talk’ to one another? What are the black birds saying today? And is there a mindful way to deal with an aphid infestation?

From rising early to walk barefoot on the grass each morning, to afternoons and evenings spent sipping tea in her gazebo or watching fireflies as she recalls her childhood in Japan, in Zen in the Garden Sakamoto shares observations from a life spent in contemplation—and cultivation—of nature.