NSW Premier’s Awards Shortlists 2012
House of Sticks
$29.95 – Paperback / Scribe Publications
Bonnie, never domestically inclined, has given up her life as a musician to become a stay-at-home mother to three small children. She tells herself she has no regrets, but sometimes the isolation and endless drudgery are... Buy or find out more→
All I Ever Wanted
$19.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
Read our Q&A with Vikki Wakefield about All I Ever Wanted. Mim knows what she wants, and where... Buy or find out more→
The Little Refugee
$24.99 – Hardback / Allen & Unwin
Giant waves crashed down on our little boat. I was terrified but my mum hugged me tight and told me, 'Everything will be okay. Don't worry, it will be okay.' Anh Do nearly didn't make it to Australia. His entire family came close... Buy or find out more→
After Romulus
$26.99 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
‘People have often asked me how I survived my childhood reasonably sane. They think it was because my father and Hora loved me deeply and that I never doubted it. But as much as, perhaps more than that, it was the fact that I... Buy or find out more→
The Amateur Science of Love
$32.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
They say we fall in love. But really we fall in sickness. I lost appetite for food in those two nights with Tilda. My stomach was sunken in its wishbone cavity. Me, I was never sick, but I was sick now, the strangest... Buy or find out more→
Playground
$39.99 – Hardback / Allen & Unwin
We use the bush as our school and as our playground, says one of the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people whose voices combine in this anthology of true stories about childhood, compiled from a wide range of memoirs... Buy or find out more→
Amazing Grace An Adventure At Sea
$29.95 – Hardback / National Library of Australia
This is an exciting tale of the courage of 16-year-old Grace Bussell, an ordinary teenage girl who is thrust into an extraordinary situation when a steamship runs aground near her home on the south-west coast of Australia in 1876.... Buy or find out more→
Mr Big of Bankstown: The Scandalous Fitzpatrick and Browne Affair
$44.95 – Paperback / UWA Publishing
Corruption, violence and bribery, mixed with a healthy dose of larrikin charm, Mr Big of Bankstown has it all. In 1955, Raymond Fitzpatrick, a rough-hewn, ill-educated Sydney businessman known in the media as Mr Big of Bankstown,... Buy or find out more→
Sydney: The Making of a Public University
$39.99 – Hardback / Melbourne University Press
From its beginnings in 1850, the University of Sydney was created as an institution to suit the needs of New South Wales, not simply reflect England’s ancient universities. A founding principle was that academic merit alone... Buy or find out more→
Set in Stone: The Cell Block Theatre
$64.95 – Paperback / UNSW Press
Set in Stone is the fascinating story of how a derelict wing of Darlinghurst Gaol, home to Sydney's most notorious female criminals, became the Cell Block Theatre, the hub of Australia's avant-garde theatre, music and dance... Buy or find out more→
Hiroshima Nagasaki
$35.00 – Paperback / HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 100,000 instantly, mostly women, children and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of... Buy or find out more→
Ben Jonson: A Life
$47.95 – Hardback / Oxford University Press
* An accessible and generously illustrated biography of one of the great writers of the early modern period, whose eventful life hasn't been previously chartered in close detail * Provides the fullest picture of... Buy or find out more→
Indifferent Inclusion: Aboriginal People and the Australian Nation
$39.95 – Paperback / Aboriginal Studies Press
Russell McGregor is one of the foremost scholars in the field of Aboriginal history. The very title of the book breaks new ground because of the questions implicit in its approach…his perspective is genuinely fresh and... Buy or find out more→
Thrill Seekers
$24.95 – Paperback / Ransom Publishing
When his father dies, Brian promises to take care of his Mum and little brother Douggie, but that's a lot tougher than he thought it would be. Especially when Douggie takes to sculling casks of wine, smoking dope and doing drugs... Buy or find out more→
Past the Shallows
$26.99 – Paperback / Hachette Australia
Harry and Miles live with their father, an abalone fisherman, on the south-east coast of Tasmania. With their mum dead, they are left to look after themselves. When Miles isn't helping out on the boat they explore the coast and... Buy or find out more→
Violin Lessons
$23.99 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
A young boy plays the violin for his mother in Melbourne. Nina Simone sings 'Pirate Jenny' in a bar in Berlin. A fisherman plays a flute on the Mekong. And the strains of Paganini resonate in the forests of eastern Poland. From... Buy or find out more→
Moving Stories: An Intimate History of Four Women Across Two Countries
$64.95 – Paperback / UNSW Press
An exploration of the lives of four British women who migrated to Australia during the 1960s and 70s. Skillfully combining oral history and biography, it tells the life stories of Phyllis, Gwen, Joan and Dorothy, illuminating the... Buy or find out more→
The Enemy at Home: German Internees in World War I Australia
$59.95 – Paperback / UNSW Press
When nearly 7,000 people with German and Austrian heritage were detained by the Australian authorities following the outbreak of World War I, Paul Dubotzki, a talented Bavarian photographer, was among them. These unlikely... Buy or find out more→
Bungawitta
$12.99 – Paperback / Scholastic Australia
It's crunch time in Bungawitta. The land's as dry as a dead galah, there's no rain in sight, and only twelve people left in town. Nobody can make it rain. But a shower of money would help keep Bungawitta alive. And a festival... Buy or find out more→
Angel Creek
$16.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
In her new falling-down home, in her new street, in her new suburb, Jelly waits for high school to begin. She can only feel happy up in the branches of the old apricot tree and by the creek at the back of the house. One night,... Buy or find out more→
Maudie and Bear
$29.95 – Hardback / Little Hare
Winner of the CBCA Early Childhood Book of the Year 2011 Maudie's world revolves around Maudie. Bear's world also revolves around Maudie - he is as patient and solid as a rock. Maudie is so confident of... Buy or find out more→
For All Creatures
$29.95 – Hardback / Walker Books Australia
For all creatures the great and the small, the winged and the walking, the singing and the silent we are thankful. This second collaboration by the award-winning team of Glenda Millard and Rebecca Cool is a celebration of the... Buy or find out more→
Taj and the Great Camel Trek
$16.95 – Paperback / University of Queensland Press
Beltana, South Australia, 1875: Twelve-year-old Taj and his camel Mustara are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. They are joining explorer Ernest Giles on his second attempt to cross the Australian desert. An... Buy or find out more→
Crow Country
$15.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
When Sadie moves back to her mother's home town in country Victoria, she finds herself drawn to the dried-up lake where eerie carved standing stones have recently been revealed. The wheeling crows seem to speak to her about an old... Buy or find out more→
Five Bells
$19.95 – Paperback / Random House Australia
Four adults converge on Circular Quay, site of the iconic Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Crowds of tourists mix with the locals, enjoying the glorious surroundings and the play of light on water. But each of the four... Buy or find out more→
The Argument
$24.95 – Paperback / Fremantle Press
The Argument is the sixth volume of poetry from award-winning author Tracy Ryan. These are poems of keen appraisal and survival, bound by a cohesive vision. Each poem makes clear the poet's preoccupation with mortality. If the... Buy or find out more→
Sarah Thornhill
$29.95 – Paperback / Text Publishing Co
A new novel from Kate Grenville and a journey back to the Thornhill family of the bestselling The Secret River Buy or find out more→
The Life
$23.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
He looked into the Pacific and the Pacific looked back into him. Malcolm Knox is one of Australian literature's rising stars. No less a literary authority than the Guardian had this to say after Jamaica, Malcolm's third novel,... Buy or find out more→
The Many Worlds of R.H. Mathews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist
$35.00 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
A timely and important re-evaluation of a pioneer in anthropology and Aboriginal studies: meticulously researched, beautifully written and convincingly argued. Buy or find out more→
All That I Am
$22.95 – Paperback / Penguin Books Australia
An award-winning author delivers an affecting and beautifully evocative debut novel, set in 1930's Europe and based on a true story, about a group of young German exiles who risk their lives to awaken the world to the terrifying... Buy or find out more→
That Deadman Dance
$22.99 – Paperback / Pan Macmillan Australia
Bobby Wabalanginy never learned fear, not until he was pretty well a grown man. Buy or find out more→
The Golden Day
$19.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
A beautiful, haunting novel from the author of the multi-awarding winning The Red Shoe. Set in 1967, and imbued with the atmosphere and psychological intrigue of Picnic at Hanging Rock. There were only... Buy or find out more→
Cow
$24.95 – Paperback / Spinifex Press
Cow leaps and fl ies into imaginative realms carrying mythology and language. Cow creates the universe, the galaxies and travels through the sky as a herd of stars. Cow writes love poetry and ponders lost histories. Susan... Buy or find out more→
An Eye for Eternity: The Life of Manning Clark
$15.95 – Hardback / Melbourne University Press
Winner of the 2012 PM's Literary Award for Non-Fiction Manning Clark (1915–1991) was a complex, demanding and brilliant man. Mark McKenna’s compelling biography of this giant of Australia’s cultural... Buy or find out more→
The Roving Party
$19.95 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
An unforgettable new novel from the 2011 winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award. 'I really, really am in awe of the amount of work that's gone into this...' Margo Lanagan. 'I'm still talking about this story to... Buy or find out more→
Act of Faith
$19.99 – Paperback / HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
England, 1640. Sixteen-year-old Isabella is forced to flee her home when her father's radical ideas lead him into a suicidal stand against Oliver Cromwell's army. Taking refuge in Amsterdam and desperate to find a means to... Buy or find out more→
The Dead I Know
$19.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
Winner of the CBCA Older Readers Award 2012 Aaron Rowe has dreams he can't explain, and memories he can't recover. But if he doesn't discover the truth about his hidden past soon, he may fall asleep one... Buy or find out more→
Her Father's Daughter
$29.95 – Paperback / Black Inc.
Read our Q&A with Alice Pung about Her Father's Daughter. From the bestselling author of... Buy or find out more→
Only Ever Always
$16.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
A suspenseful story of parallel realities - two girls in two worlds with two different ways to survive. Claire lives in an ordinary world where everything is whole. But inside Claire is broken. Clara's world has always been... Buy or find out more→
A Straight Line to My Heart
$17.99 – Paperback / Allen & Unwin
School is over, not just for the year, but forever. Tiff and Kayla are free, which is what they've always wanted, but now summer is nearly at and end and that means life decisions. Tiff is hoping her job at the local paper will... Buy or find out more→
Sly Mongoose for Albert Ayler
$25.00 – Paperback / Puncher and Wattmann
In this book of poems the author deals with the vagaries of the Adelaide art-scene, the career of Cy Twombly, the Sydney of the 1920s, 40s and today. Buy or find out more→
Sydney: Haunted City
$29.95 – Hardback / NewSouth Publishing
Sydney may look golden, but this is the sunniness of Mozart, whose bright notes, especially at their most joyous, seem to cast themselves out across a great abyss. Sydney has always been the sexiest and most... Buy or find out more→
New And Selected Poems
$26.95 – Paperback / Giramondo Publishing Co
The emotional and social power of Gig Ryans poems have exerted an influence over two generations of readers, since the publication of her award-winning collection Division of Anger in 1981. A canonical figure in Australian poetry,... Buy or find out more→
Southern Barbarians
$34.00 – Paperback / Giramondo Publishing Co
The Portuguese traders who brought Europe to Japan in the sixteenth century were known as southern barbarians. In his new collection John Mateer offers a contemporary re-charting of the Portuguese Empire. This empire is a fugitive... Buy or find out more→
Swallow
$21.95 – Paperback / Five Islands Press
The author offers a dramatic synergy between observation and feeling; literary vignettes, glasshouse musings, mythical characters and desire interweave within the haunting shadow of the swallow's migratory absence/presence. Her... Buy or find out more→