Scribe Publications Pty Ltd

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.

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.

'What a spectacular story’ Phoebe Bridgers

A buoyant and heartwarming celebration of individuality, identity, and dressing to suit yourself!

It’s almost Frankie’s birthday and everything is ready—except for something to wear. All of her party dresses feel wrong. Her family tries to help, but it’s no good.

What Frankie longs for is a suit. A spectacular suit …

Can Frankie find the outfit of her dreams?

• The perfect gift for birthday parties, crafters, and children who don’t identify with traditional gender roles
• Wonderful conversation starter for teachers and librarians to explore gender and identity with age-relevant material from #ownvoice creators
• Would suit fans of Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love and When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff and Kaylani Juanita

Following on from Doodle Cat Wears A Cape, writer Kat Patrick and illustrator Lauren Farell have created another hilarious tale featuring the irreverent bright red squiggle who loves just about everything.

A cinematic journey through the Seoul subway that masterfully portrays the many unique lives we travel alongside whenever we take the train. A poetic translation of the bestselling Korean picture book.

SIX STARRED REVIEWS

★ “Lucky readers, climb aboard: extraordinary explorations await.” —Shelf Awareness

★ “I Am the Subway makes for an unforgettable journey.” —Bookpage

★ “[S]ensitive, closely observed portraits.” —Publishers Weekly

★ “A contemplative, poignant rendering of everyday journeys.” —Kirkus Reviews

★ “[B]eautiful and unusual.” —Youth Services Book Review

★ “Bewitching.” —Foreword

Accompanied by the constant, rumbling ba-dum ba-dum of its passage through the city, the subway has stories to tell. Between sunrise and sunset, it welcomes and farewells people, and holds them—along with their joys, hopes, fears, and memories—in its embrace.

Originally published in Korean and brought to English-speaking audiences with the help of renowned translator Deborah Smith (The Vegetarian), I Am the Subway vividly reflects the shared humanity that can be found in crowded metropolitan cities.

• A wonderful gift for parents, carers, and grandparents of train-loving children
• Perfect for teachers and librarians looking for books that share global experiences and lives from an own-voice perspective
• Great for fans of Next Stop Grand Central Station by Maira Kalman, Subway by Christopher Neiman, and Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña and Christian Robertson

Howl is a masterfully told and exquisitely drawn story of a young girl’s way of expressing and resolving big feelings.

Maggie has had a very bad day.

First of all, the sun was the wrong shape, in a sky that was too blue. The spaghetti was too long, and her pajamas were the wrong kind of pajama.

Then Maggie begins to have wolfish thoughts ...

Izzy loved her island. But most of all, she loved Frank the seagull.

Izzy and Frank spend blue-sky-sunny days and gray-cloud-rainy days roaming and playing by the sea.

But when Izzy has to leave her lighthouse and island life behind to move to the city, she also has to say goodbye to Frank.

The city is crowded and noisy, and Izzy misses the sand and the sea.

Can Izzy find a place for herself in her new home? And will she ever see Frank again?

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.

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.

Arno and His Horse is a beautifully written rhyming text, matched with exquisite illustrations, that explores love, memory, loss, and the power objects can hold.

Arno had a horse,
it was brown and it was black.
He took it with him everywhere,
but did he bring it back?

When Arno loses his precious toy horse, all the kids in town help him to look for it. They look everywhere, but will Arno ever see his horse again?

A touching story about memory, dreams, and the mysterious ways we feel connected to those we love.

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!

Celebrates the myriad ways for kids to be smart—being empathic, artistic, athletic, and inquisitive.

A tender, funny, and exquisitely illustrated picture book celebrating all the unique and wonderful qualities that make children who they are.

With heartwarming rhyming text all about knowing what makes you special, All the Ways to Be Smart is a wonderful introduction to conversations about self-esteem.

A hilarious tale of friendship and fun where Doodle Cat learns that sometimes kindness is the most important superpower of all.

He can perform all kinds of superhero acts, like catching humans when they fall from trees and firing furballs at top speed. But will Doodle Cat’s superpowers work when his friend is sad? Maybe he’ll have to try something new.

Filled with Doodle Cat’s signature exuberance and joy…

‘A man’s eye is accommodative, like his heart.’

Samuel Browne’s wife has left him suddenly after three years of marriage. She invites him to ‘go and live a better life without me’. He must start again, and alone.

And so it is that Sam finds himself deep in the English countryside in a cold but characterful old house, remote and encircled by hills, in the employment and company of an older, wiser man — a man as fond of mystery as he is of enlightenment. What is the purpose of the seemingly hopeless task set for Sam in the house’s ancient library? What is the secret of the unused room? And where does a life lose its way or gain its meaning?

The combe is home to a truth born of fraud, a building made of light, and a family wrecked by recklessness: loss and love reverberate around the house and around the novel, providing pleasure, pain and purpose. Combe Hall is a house designed to honour and to enthral. And this very fine debut novel does exactly the same.

A vivid and enchanting novel by one of South Korea’s foremost writers, in a haunting reminder to be careful what we throw away.

Seoul. On the outskirts of South Korea’s glittering metropolis is a place few people know about: a vast landfill site called Flower Island. Home to those driven from the city by poverty, is it here that 14-year-old Bugeye and his mother arrive, following his father’s internment in a government “re-education camp”.

Living in a shack and supporting himself by weeding recyclables out of the refuse, at first Bugeye’s life on Flower Island is hard. But then one night he notices mysterious lights around the landfill. And when the ancient spirits that still inhabit the island’s landscape reveal themselves to him, Bugeye's luck begins to change—but can it last?

Vibrant and enchanting, Familiar Things depicts a society on the edge of dizzying economic and social change, and is a haunting reminder to us all to be careful of what we throw away.

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.

In the spirited tradition of Louis Theroux, Jeff Sparrow sets out to explore the relationship between porn and censorship, and what it reveals about our social values.

From the internet revolution to raunch culture, Sparrow’s quest takes him through contemporary Australia: the sparkly booths of Sexpo; grimy adult cinemas; the loud, pro-virginity rallies of Pentecostal youth groups; and the depths of the Australian desert, where the Intervention has led to prohibitive restrictions in Indigenous communities.

Along the way, Sparrow interviews some key figures, from religious lobbyists and porn stars to feminist activists, convicted pornographers, and those on the censorship board — who spend their days watching porn to evaluate what ‘the average person’ would think of it. Through their stories, he uncovers the hypocrisies and blind spots in a system that seeks to encapsulate the community’s views, but endorses cultural and social prejudices in doing so.

In a time of fervour and moral panic, when old divisions between Right and Left are breaking down, Money Shot probes the contradictions of our relationship to sex and censure, excess and folly, erotica and vice. By turns moving, enlightening, and terrifically funny, it will show you a new side to the debate about censorship — whatever your views.

As the Iron Curtain starts to fray, a young man falls under the spell of a charismatic outsider

The lyrical, bestselling German Book Prize winner.

It is 1989, and a young literature student named Ed, fleeing unspeakable tragedy, travels to the Baltic island of Hiddensee. Long shrouded in myth, the island is a notorious destination for hippies, idealists, and those at odds with the East German state.

On the island, Ed stumbles upon the Klausner, Hiddensee’s most popular restaurant, and ends up washing dishes there, despite his lack of papers. Although he is keen to remain on the sidelines, Ed feels drawn towards the charismatic Kruso, unofficial leader of the seasonal workers.

Everyone dances to Kruso’s tune. He is on a mission — but to what end, and at what cost? Ed finds himself drawn ever deeper into the island’s rituals, and ever more in need of Kruso’s acceptance and affection. As the wave of history washes over the German Democratic Republic, the friends’ grip on reality loosens and life on the island will never be the same.

The third instalment in Jonathan King’s acclaimed World War 1 centennial trilogy

‘In the history of the world there never was a greater victory than that which was achieved in Palestine.’ — Prime Minister Billy Hughes addressing the Australian Parliament in 1919.

Culminating with the cavalry charge at Beersheba on 31 October 1917, Palestine Diaries is the story of Australia’s Light Horsemen of World War I, told in their own brutally honest words — day by day, battle after bloody battle.

One hundred years after that now-legendary battle — widely considered the last great cavalry charge — Dr. Jonathan King argues that the breathtaking achievement of the 4th Light Horse Brigade should become the cornerstone of our national identity.

The soldiers in these pages were the first to achieve incredible victories for their new nation — ahead of the Western Front, and unlike the defeats of Gallipoli. These young Australians helped demolish the centuries-old Ottoman Empire by driving the Turks from the strategic Suez Canal across the Sinai, and up through Palestine, Jordan, and Syria to be first into the enemy stronghold of Damascus — a victory that would not only change the course of the war, but would also plant the seeds of the modern Middle Eastern conflicts.

Published together here, many for the first time, are the diaries, letters, and photos of those brave young men, whose service and sacrifice helped shape a nation.

Planet Earth needs its own lawyer. James Thornton is that lawyer.

Who will stop the planet from committing ecological suicide? The UN? Governments? Activists? Corporations? Engineers? Scientists? Whoever, environmental laws need to be enforceable and enforced. Step forward a fresh breed of passionately purposeful environmental lawyers. They provide new rules to legislatures, see that they are enforced, and keep us informed.

At the head of this new legal army stands James Thornton, who takes governments to court, and wins. And his client is the Earth.

With Client Earth, we travel from Alaska to China, from Poland to Ghana, to see how citizens can use public-interest law to protect their planet. 1970s America saw lawyers first band together to battle for the environment. This book tracks that phenomenon from its origins and out across the globe. Lawyers who take the Earth as their client are exceptional and inspirational. They give us back our hope.

Marie King is fifty-nine, recently divorced, and has lived a rather conventional life on Sydney’s affluent north shore. Now her three children have moved out, the family home is to be sold, and with it will go her beloved garden.

On a drunken whim, Marie gets a tattoo — an act that gives way to an unexpected friendship with her tattoo artist, Rhys. Before long, Rhys has introduced Marie to a side of the city that clashes with her staid north-shore milieu. Her children are mortified by their mother’s transformation, but have their own challenges to deal with: workplace politics; love affairs old and new; and, of course, the real-estate market.

Written with Fiona McGregor’s incisive wit and keen eye, Indelible Ink uses one family as a microcosm for the changes operating in society at large. In its piercing examination of the way we live now, it is truly a novel for our times.

Members of the last generation of inmates and staff return to the now-forgotten prison to tell the true and brutal story of Pentridge before developers bury it forever.

Rupert Mann has worked with the past all his life, and is interested in how we use, forget, and celebrate it today. This priceless work, completed over five years, is an attempt to hear the voices of the last generation who lived and worked at Pentridge Prison, now the only ones who can tell the tale before the site is redeveloped and its true history is lost.

Within the forgotten and decaying walls of this once shining fortress, fifteen people returned to their memories and to Pentridge — many for the first time since being released or having retired up to 60 years before — to bear witness to its end and to be photographed amongst the decay as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

They include former prisoners, such as Jack Charles, Billy Longley, and Ray Mooney; former staff, such as Peter Norden and Pat Merlo; musicians who played there, such as Paul Kelly; and Brian Morley, a legal witness to Ronald Ryan's execution in 1967.

Pentridge was, for 146 years, a concentrated crossroads of disparate song lines and an integral if unwanted part of Melbourne’s identity. In its cells, corridors, and halls can be found the remnants of an endless litany of love, hate, loss, and discovery, friendship and conflict, political dealings and petty squabbles. There is no betrayal, affirmation, or epiphany that has not occurred there. And during all those years, life was messily split between jailer and prisoner by bluestone and iron. This is their collective story.

More information about Rupert's work and the book can be found here

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.

An unforgettable story from one of Brazil’s most accomplished and original new voices, this is a profoundly moving portrait of a young woman finding her way back into life.

From one of Granta’s Best Young Brazilian Novelists comes a startling and powerful story about returning to one’s origins in order to move forward.

In Rio de Janeiro, a woman suffering from a mysterious illness, which is eroding her body and mind, decides to accept a challenge from her grandfather: to take the key to the house where he grew up—in the Turkish city of Smyrna—and open the door.

As she embarks on this pilgrimage, she begins to write of her progress. The writing soon becomes an exploration of her family’s legacy of displacement in Europe, told in several narrative strands. Sifting through family stories—her grandfather’s migration from Turkey to Brazil, her parents’ exile in Portugal under the Brazilian military dictatorship, her mother’s death, and her own love affair with a violent man—she traces her family’s history in a journey to make sense of the past and to understand her place in it.

With an epic sweep of time and place—traversing Brazil, Turkey, and Portugal—this is a profoundly moving portrait of a young woman finding her way back into life. Spare, heartfelt, and evocative, The House in Smyrna is an unforgettable story from one of the most accomplished and original new voices in Brazil.

A beautiful celebratory tribute to the powers of one of our most undervalued skills. 

‘What you are doing right now is, cosmically speaking, against the odds.’

As young children, we are taught to read, but soon go on to forget just how miraculous a process it is, this turning of scratches and dots into understanding, unease and inspiration. Perhaps we need to stop and remember, stop and learn again how to read better.

Damon Young shows us how to do exactly this, walking alongside some of the greatest readers who light a path for us — Borges, Plato, Woolf. Young reads passionately, selectively, surprisingly — from superhero noir to speculative realism, from Heidegger to Heinlein — and shows his reader how cultivating their inner critic can expand their own lives as well as the lives of those on the pages of the books they love.

The past century has witnessed a revolution.

Less than a hundred years ago, the average Western life expectancy was 40; now it is 80. And there is no end in sight: the first person who will reach 135 has already been born. It’s the most radical change in our society since industrialisation, and naturally it raises many questions.

What do longer life spans mean for the way we organise our societies? How can people best prepare themselves for living considerably longer? Does it help to eat less, or to take hormones, vitamins, or minerals? And what can we learn from old people who remain full of vitality, despite illness and infirmity?

Growing Older without Feeling Old is the definitive book on a key issue for the 21st century, written by one of the world’s leading experts in geriatric medicine. Combining medical, biological, economic, and sociological insights, Rudi Westendorp explores the causes of the ageing revolution and explains how we can greet it with confidence and enjoy leading longer, healthier, and more productive lives than ever before.

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.

‘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.

The Secret Lives of Men is an exceptional collection by one of Australia’s leading writers.

In these thirteen short stories, Georgia Blain examines human nature in all its richness: our motivations, our desires and our shortcomings. The men in these tales frequently linger at the edges — their longings and failures exerting a subterranean pull on the women in their lives. In ‘The Secret Lives of Men’, a woman revisits her hometown and learns a long-held secret about her first boyfriend. In ‘The Bad Dog Park’, a man’s devotion to his dog ultimately forces him to confront his true hopes and fears. And in ‘The Other Side of the River’, we watch as a woman makes a snap decision about her life’s future direction, with devastating consequences for her family. Written in Blain’s trademark unadorned yet powerful prose, these stories resonate long after they are finished.

From a small backyard workshop on the outskirts of Melbourne, Maton Guitars has grown into a truly inspiring Australian success story.

In 1946, Bill May crafted a guitar in his Melbourne garage that he wanted the world to hear and to play. In a matter of years, it was in the hands of Elvis Presley on film. Later, a Maton played the riff that defined a generation on the Rolling Stones' 'Gimme Shelter'. Today, Maton are an essential part of music culture in Australia and around the world.

This is not only a book for guitar lovers — it's an intimate family history and an essential part of Australian music history. Compiling over ten years of research, and over two years in production, this book is as well-crafted and family-owned as Maton guitars themselves.

Go behind-the-scenes to meet the artisan guitar makers. Read the stories behind the songs created with Maton guitars. And go backstage to meet the bands and musicians that have, with a Maton in hand, shaped our musical world.

Packed full of interviews with the greats — from jazz legend George Golla to guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel; from Archie Roach, and The Wiggles, to Daniel Johns, Paul Kelly, and Josh Homme, and many more ...

Published to coincide with Maton's 70th anniversary, The Music That Maton Made is a comprehensive, full-colour tribute to a home-grown guitar range that has been embraced by famous musicians and guitar enthusiasts around the world.

Natural Farming carries a simple but widely overlooked message: healthy soil makes healthy plants, which in turn make healthy animals and healthy people. The book explores the consequences in the soil of applications of superphosphate and other artificial fertilizers over decades, and explains soil chemistry in terms that every farmer can understand. It describes the exact role of each mineral and vitamin, both in the soil and in the body. And it explains how to prevent expensive disease outbreaks and minimize the use of costly artificial sprays and fertilizers.

The prescriptions are simple and can be applied to any farming enterprise market gardens, orchards, broadacre crops and pasture to restore the natural balance and fertility of the land, improve soil health, and increase productivity. The book is enlivened with accounts of spectacular successes in regenerating degraded land and curing animals that, in many cases, had been given up for dead.

Natural Farming is an essential handbook for any farmer, with detailed information on:

• understanding a soil analysis
• establishment and management of pasture
• treatment of compacted soil and erosion
• alternatives to artificial fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides
• the significance of weeds
• strategies for drought
• diagnosis of diseases and deficiencies in stock
• remedies for common diseases, including Johne's disease and immune-system disorders
• rearing orphan animals.

Natural Farming equips the farmer to get the best from the land using environmentally sustainable methods that save time, expense, and worry—and to supply the rising global demand for pure food.

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?

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.

On a calm afternoon in March 2011, a force-nine earthquake jolted the Pacific Ocean seabed east of Japan. Forty minutes later, a tsunami 21 metres high crashed onto the coast of Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate prefectures. Towns collapsed, villages were destroyed, and 16,000 people were swept away. The earthquake and tsunami also resulted in another terrifying calamity — explosions and meltdowns at a nuclear plant near the city of Fukushima.

Fallout from Fukushima tells the story of Japan’s worst nuclear disaster, and the attempts to suppress, downplay, and obscure its consequences. Former diplomat Richard Broinowski travelled into the irradiated zone to speak to those affected and to find out why authorities delayed warning the public about the severity of the radiation. Combining interviews, research, and analysis, he reveals the extent of the disaster’s consequences: the ruinous compensation claims faced by electricity supplier TEPCO; the complete shutdown of Japan’s nuclear reactors; and the psychological impact on those who, unable to return to their farms and villages, may become permanent nuclear refugees.

In this illuminating and persuasive account, Broinowski puts this nuclear tragedy in context, tracing the path back through Tokyo, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl. Examining what the disaster will mean for the international nuclear industry, he explores why some countries are abandoning nuclear power, while others — including Australia, through its export of uranium — continue to put their faith in this dangerous technology.

From one of the most senior correspondents in the Canberra Press Gallery comes a rare account of life as a political insider.

Born in a small village in Cyprus, Niki Savva spent her childhood in Melbourne’s working-class suburbs — frontiers where locals were suspicious of olive oil, and Greek kids spoke Gringlish to their parents.

Only a few decades later, despite all the challenges of being a migrant woman in Australia, Savva had risen through the ranks of political journalism at The Australian, and had gone on to head the Canberra bureaus of both the Melbourne Herald Sun and The Age.

Then in 1997, family tragedy struck, and she was forced to reassess her career. In spite of her own Labor convictions, she became Liberal treasurer Peter Costello’s press secretary, a role that she kept for six years before moving on to join John Howard’s staff.

This is one of the few books about Australian political life written by an insider with decades of exposure to its major players. Hilarious, moving, and endlessly fascinating, Savva’s is a story that moves between countries, cultures, careers and, ultimately, political convictions.

Rainbow Pie is a coming-of-age memoir wrapped around a discussion of America’s most taboo subject — social class. Set between 1950 and 1963, Joe Bageant uses Maw, Pap, Ony Mae, and other members of his rambunctious Scots–Irish family to chronicle the often-heartbreaking post-war journey of 22 million rural Americans into the cities, where they became the foundation of a permanent white underclass.

Combining recollection, stories, accounts, remembrance, and analysis, the book offers an intimate look at what Americans lost in the massive and orchestrated post-war social and economic shift from an agricultural to an urban consumer society. Along the way, he also provides insights into how ‘the second and third generation of displaced agrarians’, as Gore Vidal described them, now fuel the discontent of America’s politically conservative, God-fearing, Obama-hating ‘red-staters’.

These are the gun-owning, uninsured, underemployed white tribes inhabiting America’s urban and suburban heartland: the ones who never got a slice of the pie during the good times, and the ones hit hardest by America’s bad times, and who hit back during election years. Their ‘tough work and tougher luck’ story stretches over generations, and Bageant tells it here with poignancy, indignation, and tinder-dry wit.

Desperately outnumbered and fighting in deeply inhospitable conditions, these Anzacs found themselves engaging in a long retreat through Greece, under constant air attack.

The campaign in Greece turned out to have uncanny parallels to the original Gallipoli operation: both were inspired by Winston Churchill, both were badly planned by British military leaders, and both ended in defeat and evacuation. Just as Gallipoli provided military academies the world over with lessons in how not to conduct a complex feat of arms, Churchill’s Greek adventure reinforced fundamental lessons in modern warfare — heavy tanks could not be stopped by men armed with rifles, and Stuka dive-bombers would not be deflected by promises of air support from London that were never honoured.

David Vogel has long been regarded as a leading figure of Hebrew literature, and his work has been compared to that of Joseph Roth, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka.

Married Life, which was first published in 1929, is Vogel’s magnum opus—a sweeping portrait of a doomed marriage and a doomed city. Set in Vienna, the novel tells of the relationship between the penniless writer Rudolf Gurdweill and Baroness Thea von Takow, who treats her husband with cruelty and disdain. In spite of this, Gurdweill struggles to find the will to leave his wife, even when the devoted Lotte Bondheim offers him the prospect of true happiness.

Yet this is no mere story of a love triangle. In astonishingly vivid detail, Vogel evokes the atmosphere of 1920s Vienna, taking us from fashionable cafés and aristocratic estates to the shoemaker’s workshop and the almshouse. With decadence and poverty existing side by side, Vienna is depicted as a city on the brink of collapse—a haunting prefigurement of the horrors to come.

With its rich, vital prose, and its profound insight into the human condition, Married Life is truly a modern classic.

From prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour. In ‘Laminex and Mirrors’, a young woman working as a cleaner in a hospital helps an elderly patient defy doctor’s orders. In ‘Cross-Country’, a jilted lover manages to misinterpret her ex’s new life. And in ‘Ashes’, a son accompanies his mother on a journey to scatter his father’s remains, while lifelong resentments simmer in the background. Cate Kennedy’s poignant short stories find the beauty and tragedy in illness and mortality, life and love.

‘I’m the binge-drinking health reporter. During the week, I write about Australia’s booze-soaked culture. At the weekends, I write myself off.’

Booze had dominated Jill Stark’s social life ever since she had her first sip of beer, at 13. She thought nothing could curb her love of big nights. And then came the hangover that changed everything. In the shadow of her 35th year, Jill made a decision: she would give up alcohol. But what would it mean to stop drinking in a world awash with booze?

This lively memoir charts Jill’s tumultuous year on the wagon, as she copes with the stress of the newsroom sober, tackles the dating scene on soda water, learns to watch the footy minus beer, and deals with censure from friends and colleagues, who tell her that a year without booze is ‘a year with no mates’.

In re-examining her habits, Jill also explores Australia’s love affair with alcohol, meeting alcopop-swigging teens who drink to fit in, beer-swilling blokes in a sporting culture backed by booze, and marketing bigwigs blamed for turning binge drinking into a way of life. And she tracks the history of this national obsession: from the idea that Australia’s new colonies were drowning in drink to the Anzac ethos that a beer builds mateship, and from the six o’clock swill that encouraged bingeing to the tangled weave of advertising, social pressure, and tradition that confronts drinkers today.

Will Jill make it through the year without booze? And if she does, will she go back to her old habits, or has she called last drinks? This is a funny, moving, and insightful exploration of why we drink, how we got here, and what happens when we turn off the tap.

At the stroke of midnight on 20 May 2002, the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became the first new nation of the 21st century. From that moment, those who fought for independence have faced a challenge even bigger than shaking off Indonesian occupation: running a country of their own.

Beloved Land picks up the story where world attention left off. Blending narrative history, travelogue, and personal reminiscences based on four years of living in the country, Gordon Peake shows the daunting hurdles that the people of Timor-Leste must overcome to build a nation from scratch, and how much the international community has to learn if it is to help rather than hinder the process. Family politics, squabbles, power struggles, old romances, and even older grudges are woven into life in this land of intrigue and rumours in the most remarkable ways.

Yet above all, Beloved Land is a story about the one million East Timorese who speak nearly 20 different languages, and who are exuberantly building their nation. Written with verve and deep affection, the book introduces a set of colourful Timorese and international characters, and brings them to life unforgettably.

Western nations are worried about the problems of an ageing population. But if we take into account the health trends in younger generations, we arrive at a frightening prediction: for the first time in history, we have produced a generation that may not outlive its parents.

Like a growing number of doctors throughout the developed world, general practitioner Carole Hungerford became concerned about these trends, and began to question a health industry based on a model of ‘curing disease’.

The result is Good Health in the 21st Century, an encyclopaedic health guide that provides an extraordinary amount of easily understood information and a radically different way of maintaining well-being. Rejecting the routine cocktails of medication, with their complicated interactions and side effects, Dr Hungerford shows how to provide a chance for minerals, vitamins, and essential fatty acids to do their health-giving work.

The subjects covered in Good Health in the 21st Century include asthma, arthritis, cancer, obesity, and cardiovascular disease; mental health and neurological disorders; hormone-replacement therapy and vaccination; and macronutrients and minerals, vitamins, and essential fatty acids.

This monumental work will be used by parents, patients, and doctors for years to come.

A powerful work of investigative journalism about a notorious cult based in Melbourne, Australia, that captured world-wide headlines.

The apocalyptic group The Family and their guru, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, captured international headlines throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Starting in Melbourne, Australia, their tentacles spread to Britain, Upstate New York, and Hawaii.

Hamilton-Byrne, who told some followers she was Jesus Christ returned in disguise, was glamorous and charismatic—and dangerous. She stole children through adoption scams and imprisoned them, bleaching their hair blonde to make them look like siblings and raising them as her own. In 1987, police swooped on The Family’s lakeside compound and rescued children who claimed they were part of Anne’s future master race, recounting terrible stories of near-starvation, emotional manipulation, and physical abuse. But Anne could not be found, sparking an international police hunt. After an extensive search, the FBI captured her in the Catskills, and helped bring her to trial.

How did such a notorious group come to flourish? How did Anne maintain a hold over her followers? The Family tells the strange and shocking story of one of the most bizarre cults in modern history.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS FOR NON-FICTION

This is a beautiful exploration of friendships and landscape and the complexities of black and white relations in contemporary Australia.

Imagine the document you have before you is not a book but a map. It is well-used, creased, and folded, so that when you open it, no matter how carefully, something tears and a line that is neither latitude nor longitude opens in the hidden geography of the place you are about to enter.

Since the publication of her prize-winning memoir, Craft for a Dry Lake, in 2000, writer and artist Kim Mahood has been returning to the Tanami desert country in far north-western Australia where, as a child, she lived with her family on a remote cattle station. The land is timeless, but much has changed: the station has been handed back to its traditional owners; the mining companies have arrived; and Aboriginal art has flourished.

Comedy and tragedy, familiarity and uncertainty are Mahood’s constant companions as she immerses herself in the life of a small community and in groundbreaking mapping projects. What emerges in Position Doubtful is a revelation of the significance of the land to its people—and of the burden of history.

Mahood is an artist of astonishing versatility. She works with words, with paint, with installations, and with performance art. Her writing about her own work and collaborations, and about the work of the desert artists, is profoundly enlightening, making palpable the link between artist and country.

This is a beautiful and intense exploration of friendships, landscape, and homecoming. Written with great energy and humour, Position Doubtful offers a unique portrait of the complexities of black and white relations in contemporary Australia.

PRAISE FOR KIM MAHOOD

“[Mahood] is a talented writer whose mastery of the language is absolute. The combination of an artist’s eye, a mapmaker’s precision, and a wordsmith’s playfulness makes for a work of captivating beauty…a significant and timely work.”
—The Weekend Australian

“An extraordinary excavation of the relationship, past and present, between settlers and indigenous Australians, deeply grounded in this alluring tract of desert, but with relevance for us all.”
—The Monthly

Film star. Singer. Athlete. Icon. Agitator. Martyr.

A compelling biography of Paul Robeson, a life marked by triumph and tragedy.

Paul Robeson was a brilliant student and champion athlete who abandoned a career in law to find worldwide fame as a performer and activist. He was undoubtedly the most famous African American of his time, perhaps, in the words of both Time magazine and W.E.B Dubois, “the best known American on earth.”

The son of a former slave, Robeson’s life took him to Hollywood via the Harlem Renaissance and London’s West End. While he stunned audiences with his performances of “Ol’ Man River” and Othello, he also championed social justice around the world, travelling from the coal-mining towns of Wales, to the frontiers of the Spanish Civil War, and to the Soviet Union.

Yet his hunger for justice was too keen for his times. “I am a radical,” he said, “and I am going to stay one until my people get free to walk the earth.” He confronted Harry S. Truman one-on-one in the White House; filed a petition with the U.N. accusing the U.S of genocide towards African Americans; and his stratospheric rise would reach its end in the courtroom of the McCarthy hearings. Today, Robeson is largely unknown, his legacy obscured by the forces of history that destroyed him.

Jeff Sparrow traces Robeson’s career, showing how his remarkable life tells the story of the twentieth century and illuminates today’s reality. From Black Lives Matter to Putin’s United Russia, Sparrow explores questions of race in America, political freedom in Moscow, and the legacy of communism in Europe. Part travelogue, part biography, it is a story of political ardor, heritage, and trauma—a luminous portrait of a man and an urgent reflection on the politics that define us now.

Controversially challenges the conventional wisdom that the Versailles Peace Treaty sowed the seeds for World War II.

The Versailles Peace Treaty, the pact between Germany and the Allies that ended World War I, has not enjoyed a positive reputation since its signing in June 1919. Conventional wisdom has it that the treaty’s requirements for massive reparation payments crippled the economy of the Weimar Republic and destabilized its political life. Ultimately, it is believed, the treaty prevented the seeds of democracy sown in the aftermath of the Great War from flourishing, and drove the German people into the arms of Adolf Hitler.

In this authoritative book, Jurgen Tampke disputes this commonplace view. He argues that Germany got away with its responsibility for World War I and its behavior during it; that the treaty was nowhere near as punitive as has been long felt; that the German hyperinflation of the 1920s was at least partly a deliberate policy to minimize the cost of paying reparations; and that World War II was a continuation of Germany’s longstanding war aims.

Available for the first time in English, here is an unforgettable novel about the desolation of Hitler’s post-war Germany.

Late April, 1945. The war is over, yet Dr Doll, a loner and “moderate pessimist”, lives in constant fear. By night, he is haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he is trapped—he, and the rest of Germany. More than anything, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collective guilt, but he is unable to right any wrongs, especially in his position as mayor of a small town in north-east Germany that has been occupied by the Red Army.

Dr Doll flees for Berlin, where he finds escape in a morphine addiction: each dose is a “small death”. He tries to make his way in the chaos of a city torn apart by war, accompanied by his young wife, who shares his addiction. Fighting to save two lives, he tentatively begins to believe in a better future.

A police procedural, a meditation on suffering and an exploration into the human condition.

In 2004, the body of a young Perth woman was found on the grounds of a primary school. Her name was Rebecca Ryle. The killing would mystify investigators, lawyers, and psychologists—and profoundly rearrange the life of the victim's family.

It would also involve the author's family, because his brother knew the man charged with the murder. For years, the two had circled each other suspiciously, in a world of violence, drugs, and rotten aspirations.

A Murder Without Motive is a police procedural, a meditation on suffering, and an exploration of how the different parts of the justice system make sense of the senseless. It is also a unique memoir: a mapping of the suburbs that the author grew up in, and a revelation of the dangerous underbelly of adolescent ennui.

WINNER OF THE 2017 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION

WINNER OF THE 2016 UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND FICTION BOOK AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 STELLA PRIZE

A stunning, award-winning novel about the complexities of family relationships, and ultimately, what it means to be alive.

Outside, the rain continues unceasing; silver sheets sluicing down, the trees and shrubs soaking and bedraggled, the earth sodden, puddles overflowing, torrents coursing onwards, as the darkness slowly softens with the dawn.

Ester is a family therapist with an appointment book that catalogues the anxieties of the middle class: loneliness, relationships, death. She spends her days helping others find happiness, but her own family relationships are tense and frayed. Estranged from both her sister, April, and her ex-husband, Lawrence, Ester wants to fall in love again. Meanwhile, April is struggling through her own directionless life; Lawrence’s reckless past decisions are catching up with him; and Ester and April's mother, Hilary, is about to make a choice that will profoundly affect them all.

Taking place largely over one rainy day in Sydney, and rendered with the evocative and powerful prose Blain is known for, Between a Wolf and a Dog is a celebration of the best in all of us—our capacity to live in the face of ordinary sorrows, and to draw strength from the transformative power of art. Ultimately, it is a joyous tribute to the beauty of being alive.

PRAISE FOR GEORGIA BLAIN

“[An] elegant, intelligent and affecting novel from a writer at the height of her powers.”
—The Saturday Paper

“Like all her novels, Between a Wolf and a Dog explores the often unarticulated complexities of the intersection of the personal and the political with exquisite grace and intelligence.”
—Australian Book Review

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION

An electrifying short story collection about the wives, lovers, and mistresses of history’s most notorious men.

A schoolgirl catches the eye of the future leader of Nazi Germany. An aspiring playwright writes to a convicted serial killer, seeking inspiration. A pair of childhood sweethearts reunite to commit rape and murder. A devoted Mormon wife follows her husband into the wilderness after he declares himself a prophet.

The twelve stories in The Love of a Bad Man imagine the lives of real women, all of whom were the lovers, wives, or mistresses of various “bad” men in history. Beautifully observed, fascinating, and at times horrifying, the stories interrogate power, the nature of obsession, and the lengths some women will go to for the men they love.

PRAISE FOR LAURA ELIZABETH WOOLLETT

“Like Helen Garner, Laura Woollett is impelled to explore the darkest corners of the human heart, the savage cognitive distortions of love; to understand and empathise with the monstrous, rather than to instinctively recoil or judge…Woollett's pitch-perfect command of narrative voice, period, and psychology creates 12 tales to fascinate and unnerve.”
—The Age

“The Love of a Bad Man imagines the inner lives of historical figures who committed crimes all in the name of love…The stories treat death with a gothic inevitability and explore human darkness with a light touch.”
—The Guardian

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.

Now a major film, distributed by Artificial Eye.

A tense and compelling literary thriller set in Berlin.

One afternoon, near the site of the Berlin Wall, backpacker Clare meets charismatic local Andi. There is an instant attraction, and when Andi invites her to stay, Clare thinks she may finally have found somewhere to call home.

But when Clare wakes up in Andi’s apartment, she discovers that the door is locked. And it soon becomes clear that he has no intention of letting her go. Clare begins to wonder if it’s really love that Andi is searching for—or something else altogether.

Berlin Syndrome is a closely observed and gripping psychological thriller that shifts between Andi’s and Clare’s perspectives, revealing the power of obsession, the fluidity of truth, and the kaleidoscopic nature of human relationships.