Home

Carlton Recommends: Books

Bloods A Rover
James Ellroy

$49.95 (Hardcover book / Alfred A Knopf )

Political noir as only James Ellroy can write it. The incendiary standalone sequel to American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand—a massive tale of corruption and retribution, conspiracy and cover-up.

It is summer, 1968... More »

Hypothermia
Arnaldur Indridason

$35.00 (Trade paperback / Harvill )

The latest thrilling instalment in Indridason's CWA Gold Dagger Award-winning Reykjavik Murder Mystery series.

One cold autumn night, a woman is found hanging from a beam in her summer cottage by Lake Thingvellir. At fir... More »


Love And Summer
William Trevor

$45.00 (Hardcover book / Viking )

It's summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn't go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs Connulty's funeral. Florian Kilderry could... More »

Review

A Gate At The Stairs
Lorrie Moore

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Faber )

In her dazzling new novel - her first in over a decade - Laurie Moore turns her eye on the anxiety and disconnection of modern America.

With America quietly gearing up for war in the Middle east, twenty-year-old Tassie K... More »

Review

Too Much Happiness
Alice Munro

$45.00$39.95 (Hardcover book / Chatto & Windus )

A brilliant, compelling new collection from one of the world's greatest living short-story writers, and winner of the Man Booker International Prize 2009.

Brilliantly paced, lit with sparks of danger and underlying menac... More »

Review

Legend Of A Suicide
David Vann

$24.95 (Paperback book / Penguin Group Uk )

Roy is still young when his father, a failed dentist and hapless fisherman, puts a .44 magnum to his head and kills himself on the deck of his beloved boat. Throughout his life, Roy returns to that moment, gripped by its... More »

Review

Juliet, Naked
Nick Hornby

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Viking )

Annie and Duncan are a mid-thirties couple who have reached a fork in the road, realising their shared interest in the reclusive musician Tucker Crowe (in Duncan's case, an obsession as well as an academic career) is not... More »

Review

Father's Day
Tony Birch

$24.95 (Paperback book / Hunter House Pub )

‘To make stories look and sound so heartbreakingly real you need an unflinching eye and a compassionate ear and Tony Birch knows just what details are going to go straight to his reader’s heart. Loss, memory, and the inv... More »

Review

Barley Patch
Gerald Murnane

$27.95 (Paperback book / Giramondo Publishing )

Barley Patch is Gerald Murnane’s first published book of fiction since 1995. It is a meditation on fiction and Murnane’s own dedication to writing, and an examination of the relation between memory, image and lived exper... More »

Review

The Essence Of The Thing
Madeleine St John

$29.95 (Trade paperback / Text Publishing )

Haunting and hilarious: a novel about the things women do to hold onto love, and about what men do to escape it.

Nicola should never have stepped out to buy that pack of cigarettes because the man she discovers in her li... More »

Review

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest
Stieg Larsson

$32.95$27.95 (Trade paperback / Quercus )

Lisbeth Salander is plotting her revenge - against the men who tried to kill her, and against the government institutions that nearly destroyed her life. But it is not going to be a straightforward campaign. After taking... More »

Review

The Water's Edge
Karin Fossum

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Harvill )

Inspector Sejer must track down a sinister figure who fled from the scene of a terrible crime

Walking through the woods one warm September day, Reinhardt and Kristine Ris pass a man who is in a state of agitation. Unusua... More »

Review

The Portrait
Willem Jan Otten

$27.95 (Paperback book / Scribe Publications )

This is a short and extremely powerful new novel from one of Holland's greatest living writers. Reminiscent of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, it is narrated by a canvas, a key eye-witness and participant in an... More »

Review

Faber And Faber: Eighty Years Of Book Cover Design
Joseph Connolly

$49.99 (Trade paperback / Faber )

An impassioned guide and love letter to the designers, artists and authors at the heart of Faber's design story.

Joseph Connolly - book collector, antiquarian dealer, and acclaimed novelist - has compiled an impassioned ... More »


Mark Strizic: Melbourne, Marvellous To Modern
Emma Matthews

$95.00 (Hardcover book / Thames And Hudson )

This magnificent collection of photographs arose from the creativity of a young photographer and his adoption of his new home town, Melbourne. His pictures were taken at a time when the Victorian elegance of the city onc... More »

Review

Ice Cold
Andrea Maria Schenkel

$24.95 (Hardcover book / Murdoch Books )

A phenomenal success in Germany, Ice Cold is another chilling novel from the award-winning author of The Murder Farm.

It's Munich in the 1930s. Young women are being raped and brutally murdered. They are disappearing on ... More »

Review

The Price Of Love
Peter Robinson

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Hodder Headline )

When DCI Alan Banks arrived in Eastvale his life was every bit as much of a mess as it is now. But he is holding an envelope that could change everything he understood about the events that sent him north twenty years ag... More »

Review

My Wonderful World Of Fashion: Book For Drawing Creating Dreaming
Nina Chakrabarti

$35.00 (Paperback book / Laurence King )

An interactive colouring book for fashionistas of all ages, My Wonderful World of Fashion is packed with beautiful and sophisticated illustrations specially created by the leading fashion-illustrator Nina Chakrabarti. Th... More »

Review

Censoring: An Iranian Love Story
Shahriar Mandanipour

$29.99 (Trade paperback / Little Brown )

Truly original, Censoring an Iranian Love Story is an incredibly imaginative yet always charming love story set in contemporary Iran that crackles with wit, verve and social comment: Sara falls in love with Dara through ... More »

Review

If The Dead Rise Not
Philip Kerr

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Quercus )

As Berlin prepares for the 1936 Olympic Games, Bernie Gunther is caught between violently opposing factions in a story that comes full circle in 1950s Cuba.

Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin's Criminal... More »

Review

Paradise Updated
Mic Looby

$29.95 (Paperback book / Affirm )

There are precious few places still untouched by tourism. Paradise Lost? Chance would be a fine thing. More like Paradise Packaged, Marketed and Sold in Easy-to-Enjoy Portions. And if there’s money to be made shining lig... More »

Review

My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic
Charles Saatchi

$14.95 (Paperback book / )

This book brings together the answers to almost 200 questions Charles Saatchi, the world's most influential art collector of the last thirty years, has been asked by journalists and visitors to his gallery. Whether the q... More »

Review

Summertime
J.M. Coetzee

$39.95 (Hardcover book / Alfred A Knopf )

Completing the majestic trilogy of fictionalised memoir begun with Boyhood and Youth.

A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972 - 1977 w... More »

Review

The Melbourne Design Guide 2009/2010
Viviane Stappmanns (Ed)

$40.00 (Paperback book / Hardie Grant )

Offering an insight to the inner workings of Melbourne’s design community, this little big book is the friend you’ve always wanted to have. Lovingly compiled after many months of research, the new Melbourne Design Gu... More »


Hijack Reality: Deptford X: A 'How to' Guide to Organize a Really Top Notch Art Festival
Bob and Roberta Smith

$45.00 (Paperback book / )

The past decade has seen a massive growth in arts festivals, to the point where almost no city would be without one yet few have had the impact of Deptford X. Many of the hottest names in the contemporary art world inclu... More »

Review

Vitamin 3-D: New Perspective In Sculpture And Installation

$120.00 (Hardcover book / )

An up-to-the-minute survey of contemporary sculpture and installation featuring 117 artists.

Phaidon editors, with an introduction by Anne Ellegood More »

  • The definitive book on contemporary sculpture and installation art from...
Review

Between Stations
Kim Cheng Boey

$27.99 (Paperback book / Giramondo Publishing )

Between Stations is a collection of personal essays exploring notions of home and belonging, and where they may lie for a migrant writer, shuttling between the stations of the old and adopted country, the past and presen... More »

Review

Unparalleled Sorrow
Barry Dickins

$29.95 (Paperback book / Hardie Grant )

"I can't remember going to bed the night before my first ECT. Or giving my permission or my wife giving her consent, but she did and for my part I was so confused I would've agreed to be shot at point-blank range by a fi... More »

Review

The Tower
Michael Duffy

$29.99 (Trade paperback / Allen & Unwin )

It's going to be the biggest skyscraper in the world. One rainy night a young woman falls from an unfinished upper storey, landing on a police car. Detectives Jon McIver and Nicholas Troy think it will be a pretty simple... More »

Review

Lennox
Craig Russell

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Arena )

Sensational writing, deft use of humour and page-turning action combine to make this a must-read novel. In a world full of books with bland narrative voices and lazy plotting Lennox fairly sizzles. An unforgettable read.... More »

Review

Rain Gods
James Lee Burke

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Orion )

Texas Sheriff Hackberry Holland is a former ACLU attorney and Korean War prisoner and the cousin of none other than beloved Burke character Billy Bob Holland. Running from a traumatic and chequered past to become sheriff... More »

Review

The House In Via Manno
Milena Agus

$24.95 (Paperback book / Scribe Publications )

Translated by Brigid Maher.

Zerilli-Marimò Prize for Italian Fiction 2008

‘But what do we really know about other people?’

In this magical, jewel-like novel, a young Sardinian woman explores the life of her Nonna — ... More »

Review

Dancing Backwards
Salley Vickers

$27.99 (Trade paperback / Fourth Estate )

Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edw... More »

Let The Great World Spin
Colum McCann

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Bloomsbury )

Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction.

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterio... More »

Review

A True History Of The Hula Hoop
Judith Lanigan

$24.95 (Trade paperback / Picador )

A beguiling and utterly original debut novel about two women born centuries apart but joined by the spirit of adventure and a quest for true love.

Catherine is a hula-hooping performance artist, a talented and independen... More »

Review

Document Z
Andrew Croome

$23.99 (Paperback book / Allen & Unwin )

A masterful, taut and atmospheric novel of political espionage and intrigue, telling the story of the Petrov defection during the Cold War of the 1950s. Winner of the 2008 The Australian/Vogel Literary Award.

Evdokia kne... More »

Review

Bloke
Bruce Pascoe

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Viking )

Jim Bloke's your typical Aussie, sort of. Being an orphan he's done it tough in the past, but he knows how to take care of himself and he has an affinity with life's important things. So when he takes a job as a sea-urch... More »

Review

After The Fire, A Still Small Voice
Evie Wyld

$32.95$27.95 (Trade paperback / Vintage )

Following the breakdown of a turbulent relationship, Frank moves from Canberra to a shack on the east coast once owned by his grandparents. There, among the sugar cane and sand dunes, he struggles to rebuild his life.

Fo... More »

Review

The Housekeeper And The Professor
Yoko Ogawa

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Harvill )

The eagerly awaited novel from the author of The Diving Pool.

He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury some seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes... More »

Review

Up From The Mission: Selected Writings
Noel Pearson

$34.95 (Trade paperback / Black Inc )

Up from the Mission charts the life and thoughts of Noel Pearson, from his early days as a native title lawyer to his position today as one of Australia’s most influential figures.

This is writing of great passion and ... More »

Review

A Deadly Trade
Michael Stanley

$32.99 (Paperback book / Headline )

Goodluck Tinubu, an ex-Zimbabwean who has taught in Botswana for many years, is viciously murdered in his tent at the Jackalberry bush camp, situated on an isolated peninsula in northern Botswana. Peter Sithole, allegedl... More »

Review

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Wells Tower

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Granta )

Startling, savagely funny stories from a highly original new voice.

A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the sweat-smudged footprint on the inside of his windscreen doesn't match her own. Teenage... More »

Review

Green Design
Marcus Fairs

$49.95 (Hardcover book / Carlton Books )

No extra details available for this item. More »

One Thousand New Eco Designs And Where To Find Them
Rebecca Proctor

$55.00 (Paperback book / Laurence King Publishing )

As we become only too aware of the damage man has caused to the planet, more of us want to furnish and decorate our homes with products that do not harm the environment. But being sensitive to the environment does not me... More »


The Scarecrow
Michael Connelly

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Allen & Unwin )

Crime reporter Jack McEvoy, who made his career when he broke the story of The Poet, is onto another story that will bring him face to face with evil in this gripping new thriller from the international #1 bestselling Mi... More »

Review

Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009
Nicolas Bourriaud

$59.95 (Paperback book / Tate Gallery )

Few books introduce a word into the language; this is an example of one that does. The term ‘Altermodern’ is an entirely new one, coined by leading critical theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud as the title for Tate’s ... More »

Review

Brother, I'm Dying
Edwidge Danticat

$29.95 (Trade paperback / Scribe Publications )

From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart — her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.

From the... More »

Review

The Angel's Game
Carlos Ruiz Zafón

$34.95 (Trade paperback / Text Publishing )

I took the envelope and examined it. It was closed with a wax seal on which I could make out a winged silhouette. An angel. Apart from that the only other thing visible was my name, neatly written in scarlet ink, in a fi... More »

Review

The Music Room
William Fiennes

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Picador )

When William Fiennes was a small boy, his parents inherited an extraordinary home: a castle full of history, secrets and strange artefacts, the perfect hunting ground for child with a brimming imagination. The family set... More »

Review

Die For You
Lisa Unger

$32.95$27.95 (Trade paperback / Bantam Press )

Isabel and Marcus Raines are the perfect couple. She is a well known novelist; he is a brilliant inventor of high-tech games and they have been happily married for five years. But one morning, Marcus says he loves her, l... More »


Midnight Fugue: A Dalziel & Pascoe Novel
Reginald Hill

$32.99$27.95 (Trade paperback / Harper Collins )

Yorkshire′s criminals have long feared the Fat arm of the law‚ in the shape of Chief Superintendent Andy Dalziel. Sadly for them‚ Dalziel′s proximity to a terrorist blast put‚ if anything‚ further fire in his belly.... More »

Review

My Driver
Maggie Gee

$29.95 (Paperback book / University Of W Australia )

Vanessa Henman, a brittle middle-aged British writer, is attending a Pan-African Writers’ Conference in Uganda. She decides to pay her former cleaner, Mary Tendo, a surprise visit. But Mary, now the Executive Housekeeper... More »

Review

Why She Loves Him
Wendy James

$24.95 (Paperback book / University Of W Australia )

 New Writing SERIES

Why She Loves Him

Wendy James , 9781921401190, UWA Press, May 2009, 240pp, PB , 198x129mm Availability: Plenty Price: AUD$24.95 (AUD$22.68 ex-tax) Booksellers Discount Code: General

These are tales... More »

Review

Brooklyn
Colm Tóibín

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Picador )

Young Eilis Lacey dreams of life beyond the confines of her tiny Irish village, but unlike her beautiful sister, Rose, Eilis gifts are of a more practical nature: she has a head for numbers, and is a loving and dutiful d... More »

Review

Lucky Kunst: The Story Of YBA
Gregor Muir

$39.95 (Paperback book / Aurum Press )

These days artists like Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin are big business and major celebrities. But Gregor Muir knew them at the start of their careers - before people even talked about a movement called YBA. His unique memo... More »

Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition
Martha Copper & Henry Chalfant

$59.95 (Hardcover book / Thames And Hudson )

In 1984, photographers Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant captured the imagination of a generation with Subway Art, a groundbreaking book documenting the work of graffiti writers who illegally painted subway cars in New Yo... More »


The Way We Live With The Things We Love
Stafford Cliff

$59.95 (Hardcover book / Thames And Hudson )

New in the bestselling ‘Way We Live’ series is this visually thrilling exploration of the way people around the world live with the things they love. Divided into seven main sections, the book showcases Gilles de Chabane... More »

And So It Went: New Thoughts In A Year Of Change
Bob Ellis

$35.00 (Trade paperback / Viking )

From the suicide bombing of Glasgow Airport and the flooding of England to the horse flu and the Chinese earthquake and the Bhutto assassination, from the rise of Turnbull and Rudd to the slow disintegration of Howard, R... More »

Review

The Preacher
Camilla Lackberg

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Harper Collins )

In the fishing community of Fjallbacka‚ life is remote‚ peaceful − and for some‚ tragically short.

Foul play was always suspected in the disappearance twenty years ago of two young holidaymakers in the area. Now ... More »

Review

Jeff In Venice, Death In Varanasi
Geoff Dyer

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Text Publishing )

A wildly original novel of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning.

Every two years the international art world descends on Venice for the opening of the Biennale. Among them is Jeff Atman-a jaded and dissolute journal... More »

Review

The Thoughtful Dresser
Linda Grant

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Virago )

'A good handbag makes the outfit. Only the rich can afford cheap shoes. The only thing worse than being skint is looking as if you're skint.' For centuries, an interest in clothes has been dismissed as the trivial pursui... More »

Review

Jasper Jones
Craig Silvey

$29.99 (Trade paperback / Allen & Unwin )

Winner of the 2009 Indie Book of the Year award.

Late on a hot summer night in the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleep-ou... More »

Review

Atlas Of Unknowns
Tania James

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Scribe Publications )

Tania James's poignant, funny, blazingly original debut novel is a story about sisterhood, the tantalising dream of America, and the secret histories and hilarious eccentricities of families everywhere.

 In the wake... More »

Review

The Redeemer
Jo Nesbo

$32.95 (Trade paperback / Harvill )

Guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat, Nesbø’s latest thriller sees Detective Harry Hole tracking a professional hit man bent on destruction.

One freezing night in Oslo Christmas shoppers gather to listen to... More »

Review

Reunion
Andrea Goldsmith

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Fourth Estate )

Old friendships are expected to maintain their shape despite distance‚ lovers‚ careers‚ new friends. But twenty years is a long time.

Ava is an internationally acclaimed novelist who carries with her a lifetime of ... More »

Review

American Rust
Philipp Meyer

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Allen & Unwin )

A heart-wrenching, unputdownable tale of redemption and survival in small-town America in the tradition of Richard Ford, Pete Dexter and Cormac McCarthy.

'A grimly powerful hybrid: provocative literary fiction crossed wi... More »

Review

Italian Shoes
Henning Mankell

$34.95 (Trade paperback / Harvill )

Once a successful surgeon, Frederick Welin now lives in self-imposed exile on an island in the Swedish archipelago. Nearly twelve years have passed since he was disgraced for attempting to cover up a tragic mishap on the... More »

Review

Breath
Tim Winton

$24.95 (Paperback book / Penguin Books )

Winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award

Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and ... More »

Review

Nocturnes
Kazuo Ishiguro

$29.99$29.95 (Trade paperback / Faber )

New from the Booker-Prize winning author of The Remains of the Day, When We Were Orphans and Never Let Me Go.

'It was our third time playing The Godfather theme since lunch ...' In a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro e... More »

Review

Book Of Clouds
Chloe Aridjis

$24.95 (Paperback book / Grove Press )

Book of Clouds is a haunting, masterfully wrought debut novel about a young woman adrift in Berlin, where a string of fateful encounters leads to romance, violence, and revelation. Having escaped her overbearing family a... More »

Review

In The Kitchen
Monica Ali

$32.95$14.95 (Trade paperback / Doubleday )

The new novel from the author of Brick Lane, In The Kitchen is a stunning novel set in the kitchen of a London hotel. The novel opens with a mysterious death in the cellars of a smart cosmopolitan hotel and over the cour... More »

Review

Dark Places
Gillian Flynn

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Weidenfeld And Nicolson )

The dark new thriller from the critically acclaimed Gillian Flynn. Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since ... More »

Review

The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters

$32.99 (Trade paperback / Virago )

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its mas... More »

Review

The Women In Black
Madeleine St John

$29.95 (Trade paperback / Text Publishing )

Written by a superb novelist of contemporary manners, The Women in Black is a fairytale which illuminates the extraordinariness of ordinary lives. The women in black are run off their feet, what with the Christmas rush a... More »

Review

The Secret Intensity Of Everyday Life
William Nicholson

$29.95 (Trade paperback / Murdoch Books )

Laura is content enough with her marriage and her children and her part-time job - until a long-ago lover comes back into her life. Unknown to Laura, every person in her Sussex village is living with their own unresolved... More »

Review

The Pleasures and Sorrows Of Work
Alain de Botton

$45.00 (Hardcover book / Hamish Hamilton )

We spend most of our waking lives at work — in occupations often chosen by our unthinking sixteen-year-old selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what it might mean for us.

Equally intrigued by wor... More »

Review

Ransom
David Malouf

$29.95$24.95 (Hardcover book / Vintage )

With learning worn lightly and in his own lyrical language, David Malouf revisits Homer's ILIAD. Focusing on the unbreakable bonds between men - Priam and Hector, Patroclus and Achilles, Priam and the cart-driver hired t... More »

Review
Copyright © 2010 Readings Pty Ltd. Site designed and developed by Inventive Labs.