Readings.com.au: Carlton Recommends: Books

Bloods A Rover

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. The country is exploding. We are running point with three men: a Klan-raised, Yale-educated FBI agent infiltrating black-militant groups at J. Edgar Hoover’s racist behest and obsessed with a leftist shadow figure named Joan Rosen Klein. An ex-cop and heroin runner paving the way for the mob’s casinos in the Dominican Republic. A young L.A. “wheelman” for divorce lawyers within tantalizing reach of the men who killed the Kennedys and Martin Luther King and took us to the threshold of Watergate. Their lives collide in pursuit of the “Red Goddess Joan”—and they will all pay “a dear and savage price to live History.”

Once again James Ellroy razes and reconstructs our recent past. Blood’s A Rover is his largest and greatest work of fiction.

Biography

James Ellroy’s previous novels American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand began the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy. His L.A. Quartet novels—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz—were international best sellers. American Tabloid was Time magazine’s Best Book (fiction) of 1995; My Dark Places, a memoir, was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996; The Cold Six Thousand was a Los Angeles Times Best Book and a New York Times Notable Book for 2001. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.

Hypothermia

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 first sight it appears to be a straightforward case of suicide; the woman, María, had never recovered from the loss of her mother two years earlier and had a history of depression. But when Karen, the friend who found her body, approaches Erlendur and gives him the tape of a séance that María had attended, his curiosity is aroused.

Driven by a need to find answers that even he does not fully understand, Erlendur embarks on an unofficial investigation to find out why the woman’s life ended in such an abrupt and tragic manner. At the same time he is haunted by the unresolved cases of two young people who went missing thirty years before, and, inevitably, his discoveries raise ghosts from his own past.

Love And Summer

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 couldn't know that the Connultys are said to own half the town: he has only come to Rathmoye to photograph the scorched remains of its burnt-out cinema. But Mrs Connulty's daughter, liberated at last by the death of her imperious mother, resolves to keep an eye on Florian Kilderry, and it's she who comes to witness the events that follow.

A few miles out in the country, Dillahan, a farmer and a decent man, continues to live with the knowledge that he was accidentally responsible for the deaths of his wife and baby. He has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. She falls in love with Florian Kilderry and, although he is planning to leave Ireland and begin all over again after what he considers to be his failed life, a dangerously reckless attachment develops between them.

In a characteristically masterly way Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer.

Love and Summer is William Trevor's eagerly awaited new novel, his first since the Booker-shortlisted The Story of Lucy Gault.

Legend Of A Suicide

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 memory and the shadow it casts over his small-town boyhood, describing with poignant, mercurial wit his parents' woeful marriage and inevitable divorce, their kindnesses and weaknesses, the absurd and comic turning-points of his past. Finally, in Legend of a Suicide, Roy lays his father's ghost to rest. But not before he exacts a gruelling, exhilarating revenge.

Revolving around a fatally misconceived adventure deep in the wilderness of Alaska, this is a remarkably tender story of loss, survival and disillusioned love.

Juliet, Naked

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 enough to hold them together any more. When Annie hates Tucker's 'new release', a terrible demo of his most famous album, it's the last straw - Duncan cheats on her and she promptly chucks him. Via an internet discussion forum, Annie's harsh opinion reaches Tucker himself, who couldn't agree more. He and Annie start an unlikely correspondence which teaches them both something about moving on from years of wasted time. Nick Hornby's compelling new novel, four years after A Long Way Down, is about the nature of creativity and obsession, and how two lonely people can gradually find each other.

Father's Day

‘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 invisible ties that bind — Birch’s subject matter is ordinary life, lit from within with an honesty which makes his characters and their travails achingly familiar.’ Cate Kennedy

Barley Patch

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 experience. It is funny, self-deprecating, personal, as well as thoughtful and reflective, and enchanting in its clarity, detail and evocations of Australian life and landscape.

The Essence Of The Thing

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 living room when she returns is not the adorable, straightforward, devoted Jonathan with whom she has been sharing her life and flat for the past six weeks. That Jonathan would never have simply, unilaterally, decided that she should, as he abruptly put it, ‘move out.’

So a shocked, grief-stricken Nicola packs her bags and sets out bravely on the bumpy course that will take her fro the hellish end of an affair to the essence of the thing. So too does the brilliant Madeleine St John, whose vision is both comic and tender, take us into the changing nature of the human heart.

‘My mother sent you this,’ he said. ‘Oh?’ ‘I believe it’s some marmalade,’ he said ‘From the latest batch. ‘How kind,’ said Nicola, opening the bag. ‘You haven’t told them, then?’ ‘Told them what?’ ‘That we’re no longer in a shared marmalade situation…’

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest

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 a bullet to the head, Salander is under close supervision in Intensive Care, and is set to face trial for three murders and one attempted murder on her eventual release.

With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist from Millennium Magazine, Salander must not only prove her innocence, but identify and denounce the corrupt politicians that have allowed the vulnerable to become victims of abuse and violence. Once a victim herself, Salander is ready to fight back.

The Water's Edge

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. Unusually in a small town, he does not return Kristine's smile and drives off in a hurry. Near the end of their walk they make a terrible discovery: lying in a cluster of trees is the lifeless body of a young boy. It is a moment that will change their lives for ever.

Inspector Sejer is called to the scene, but can find no immediate cause of death. As the weeks go by, the appeal for the man seen in the woods to come forward remains unanswered. A once peaceful community is deeply shaken and the children lose the sense of complete freedom they had enjoyed. Then a second boy goes missing.

The Portrait

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 extraordinary story.

A young painter, loved for his fine and true-to-life portraits, receives a commission that is unlike any he's had before: make a portrait of a dead boy. 'You will save a life with it', says the boy's extremely rich father. The painter knows he will have to surpass himself. He takes on the job. But who was the boy? Why is he dead? Why, when the painting is finished, does the father not come to collect it? And why does the painter undertake this painting?

The Portrait is a thrilling novel about the desire to bring someone into the world. But it also about love and death, betrayal and trust, truth and falsehood, and lies and honesty.

It's breathtaking how Willem Jan Otten plays with secrets and riddles that the reader can only unravel at the very end. Demonstrating his rare gifts to English readers for the first time in this book, Otten has written an ingenious, contemporary, and extraordinarily gripping novel.

Faber And Faber: Eighty Years Of Book Cover Design

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 guide and love letter to the designers, artists and authors at the heart of Faber's design story. From its beginnings in the 1920s and 1930s on to the classic years of innovation under Berthold Wolpe after the War, and from the celebrated period of collaboration with Pentagram on to the modern day, here is, as he concludes in his preface, 'a lavish celebration of the art and beauty of these magnificent covers, from just the first eighty years'. Even gazing at these so slim spines, I was taken. And at the foot of each one, the word Faber. The vitality of the design, even on these very narrow spines, compelled me to slide out the books. And the covers! Oh my goodness, the covers ... the colour, strength and typography were not at all brash, but merely dynamic: here, I thought, was splendour. And it was the covers that encouraged me to open the books. And to read. And then to discover.

View a gallery of iconic Faber images on the Guardian UK website

Mark Strizic: Melbourne, Marvellous To Modern

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 once known as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ was being punctuated by a wave of development and the modern architectural movement.

Today Mark Strizic is renowned as a photographer. In the 1950s he was a young science student from Europe playing with the possibilities of the camera. His enthusiasm for photography was encouraged by Melbourne artist Leonard French and academic David Saunders. As he gained work as a professional his commercial success was accompanied by the instincts and eye of an artist. His solid technicality was accompanied by the whimsy and wit that him the ‘poet of the fleeting movement’.

The versatility of his work shows us many aspects of Melbourne – its magnificent architectural heritage, its intimate and vibrant laneways, its grand arcades counter-posed against the sudden spaces of the wrecker, the brash intrusion of the glass and concrete skyscrapers, the poignancy of poverty in the run-down inner suburbs. We see the people, on grand occasions such as the 1954 Royal Visit, or just caught in their own world of travelling, shopping, resting, walking, working.

Ice Cold

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 the quiet country lanes outside the city, cycling to destinations they will never reach. A Party member is executed for the crimes, but was he really guilty? Could the murderer still be out there?

Kathie has come to Munich looking for work, but found herself drawn into the sleazy underworld of casual sex and occasional prostitution. Pretty and dark-haired, she fits the profile of the murderer's victims exactly. As she tries to reconcile her naïve hopes for happiness and true love with the day-to-day struggle for existence, it becomes clear that she, like the others, is in grave danger.

The Price Of Love

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 ago. Walking again the narrow alleys and back streets of his mind, he remembers the seedy Soho nights of his last case - dubious businessmen in dodgy clubs, young girls on the game. And a killer on the loose. In addition to the brand new novella that fills in the gaps in Banks's life before Yorkshire, Peter Robinson gives us ten more brilliant and eclectic stories that have never before been published. The Eastvale Ladies' Poker Circle finds that murder may be just another game of risk. Is a suitcase of cash worth a man's head on a plate? And tragedy leads a young boy to learn the price of love . . .

My Wonderful World Of Fashion: Book For Drawing Creating Dreaming

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. The book encourages creativity, with illustrations to colour in and designs to finish off, as well as simple ideas for making and doing (how to make a sari, turn a napkin into a headscarf, dye a t-shirt, etc.). Covering clothing, shoes, bags, jewellery and other accessories, the illustrations span both vintage fashions, drawing on beautiful and interesting objects from past ages, and contemporary designs from the illustrator's own imagination. 'Did you know...?' features giving brief historical notes encourage children to be inspired by history and by the fashions of other cultures. A wonderful celebration of fashion, the book will appeal to addicts from 8 years plus.

Censoring: An Iranian Love Story

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 secret messages hidden in code in the pages of books that have been outlawed, but then something quite extraordinary and unexpected happens. Through adeptly handled asides to the reader, as well as anecdotes, codes and metaphors, and cheeky references to the wonderfully rich Iranian literary heritage, the novel builds to offer a revealing yet often playful and hopeful comment on the pressures of writing within the tightly prescribed Islamic regime, pressures that naturally are heightened where affairs of the heart are concerned.

If The Dead Rise Not

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 Police, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. The discovery of two bodies - one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer - involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world.

Paradise Updated

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 light into the darkest corners of the world, SmallWorld wrote the book on it.

Robert Rind is a legend in travel writing circles, fiercely independent and resolutely old school. Too old school. The Company decides he’s a liability and sends young, pliable Mithra to tropical Maganda to take his place. But the guidebook writer’s life isn’t all bustling street markets and five-star resorts: as any seasoned traveller knows, things rarely go as planned and Robert Rind is unlikely to come quietly.

Mic Looby’s masterful debut novel weaves a hilarious and hair-raising tale of compromised idealism and corporate skullduggery. You’ll never open another guidebook without reading between the lines.

My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic

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 questions are related to art or his personal life, Saatchi answers them all with disarming and sometimes brutal frankness, creating an entertaining and enlightening portrait of a famously publicity shy man, and offering a unique insight into today's art world.

Sample questions include:

What's the point of art?
How do you decide whether something is worth £10 or £10 million?
What do you think of the art world?
What advice do you and your wife give your children?
Have you ever taken advantage of anyone in the art world?
How do you rate political advertising today?
I know very little about contemporary art but have £1,000 to invest. Any advice?
So much contemporary art looks the same to me. Am I missing something?
The artist Peter Blake has called you a 'malign influence' because of the way you can 'make' certain artists. Are you a malign influence?

Summertime

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 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was finding his feet as a writer.

Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him - a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues. From their testimony emerges a portrait of the young Coetzee as an awkward, bookish individual with little talent for opening himself to others. Within the family he is regarded as an outsider, someone who tried to flee the tribe and has now returned, chastened. His insistence on doing manual work, his long hair and beard, rumours that he writes poetry evoke nothing but suspicion in the South Africa of the time.

Sometimes heartbreaking, often very funny, Summertime shows us a great writer as he limbers up for his task.

The Melbourne Design Guide 2009/2010

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 Guide pulls together the know-how of dozens of movers and shakers from all areas of design.

Full of hand-drawn maps and walking itineraries, the Guide is a direct connection to the pulse of this inspired city. It will tell you all there is to know about architecture, fashion, art, graphics, objects and of course the stores, galleries, bars and restaurants Melbourne’s creative community embraces and frequents.

The 2009/2010 edition, for the first time, features two parts. The first part helps readers to find and explore design-oriented destinations. The second part introduces the design talent that often works away behind closed doors.

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

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 including Dan Graham, Miltos Manteas, Stephen Pippin, Bernadette Corporation, Simon Startling and Julian Opie have been drawn to its unique atmosphere, and even launched their careers there. Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, this book takes a look at the festivals achievements so far, as well as its role in the redevelopment of this vibrant corner of southeast London. Illustrated throughout with works from past exhibitors, as well as photos that capture the spirit of the festival, this book is a must-read for all those who love arts festivals, as well as anyone who has ever worked with artists, is an artist or is thinking of becoming one.

Vitamin 3-D: New Perspective In Sculpture And Installation

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

Phaidon editors, with an introduction by Anne Ellegood

The definitive book on contemporary sculpture and installation art from around the world
Features the work of 120 international artists, such as Ai Weiwei, Rebecca Warren, Mike Nelson, Rachael Harrison and Ernesto Neto, who have been nominated by an international roster of influential critics and curators
Displays the incredible breadth of techniques and materials used by artists today from large-scale sculptures of glass and cement to delicate paper installations
Texts by significant critics, curators, art historians and creative writers represent a wide variety of perspectives
Both a reference book for the art world and an accessible introduction for newcomers to the scene

Between Stations

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 present, the memory and the imagination.

The essays attempt to recover a vanished Singapore and reconcile with the lost landscapes of a childhood and the ghost of a distant father, as they follow the narrator through a year of international wandering, en route to relocation in the new world of Australia. About the Author Kim Cheng Boey was born in Singapore and migrated to Australia in 1997. He has published four award-winning collections of poetry, and teaches at the University of Newcastle.

Unparalleled Sorrow

"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 firing squad.

Try as I might I couldn't get comfortable that night; I remember the physical distress and the floating stomach and wriggling and rubbing and twitching of my feet in bed before they came to collect me at 6 am exactly. Soon I shall be given a shot of electricity to lift my mood, as they keep putting it. What on earth is wrong with sadness?"

In early 2008, Barry Dickins suffered from insomnia. He went to the doctor, who cited anxiety as the cause and, then, depression. Clinical and severe. He checked in to the Albert Road Clinic, where he was told that he would be there until the joy returned to him. But where was it? The joy eluded Barry for months, so he stayed in the clinic, alongside patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorders and other traumas, but depression was overriding.

Depression that could fell you with a single blow.

He took his medication and succumbed to the electro-convulsive therapy, which left him unable to grip a pen and riddled his memory with holes. The experience marked him for good, and is one that more people share than we might like to consider.

Written with Barry's inimitable wit, humour and lyricism - and his ability to find the ridiculous and the jubilant amid the pain - Unparalleled Sorrow charts Barry's journey from the lows of the clinic to the small joys of a game of tennis with his young son.

It follows the path to depression - via his salad days in St Kilda and the murder of his housemate - and the road out of it.

The Tower

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 investigation, but all is not what it seems. A gripping, fast-paced debut crime novel.

Young detective Nicholas Troy is basically a good man, for whom working in homicide is the highest form of police work. But when a woman falls from the construction site for the world's tallest skyscraper, the tortured course of the murder investigation that follows threatens his vocation.

Hampered by politicised managers and incompetent colleagues, Troy fights his way through worlds of wealth and poverty, people-smuggling and prostitution. He has always seen Sydney as a city of sharks, a place where predators lurk beneath the glittering surface. Now he uncovers networks of crime and corruption that pollute the city, reaching into the police force itself.

Finally, the shadowy predator Troy has been chasing turns and comes for him, putting his family at risk. Forced to defend himself with actions he would never have considered before, Troy confronts a moral abyss. He realises it's a long way down.

To hear The Tower's theme, The Saints' recording of Sydney crime song 'Water and Wine', visit www.cityofsharks.com

Lennox

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.

Four weeks and a day ago, I didn't know Frankie McGahern. I also didn't know that this was a state of affairs much to be desired. My life was, admittedly, not without its ups and, more often, downs, and I knew a lot of people that others would cross the street to avoid, but Frankie McGahern was a bright star that was yet to cross my sky. Shady investigator Lennox stands somewhere between legal and illegal, honour and greed, crims and cops. The one clear thing about Lennox is his certainty that only the toughest and most ruthless survive in his home town of Glasgow.

The McGahern twins are on the way up in Glasgow's grimy underworld. Then Tam, the brains of the two, is killed in a vicious contract killing. Frankie, Tam's identical twin, wants Lennox to find out who killed Tam. Lennox refuses.

Later that night, Frankie turns up dead, and Lennox finds himself in the frame for the murder. The only way for him to prove his innocence is to solve the crime - but he'll have to evade dodgy cops and men more deadly than Glasgow's notorious crime bosses before he gets any answers.

Rain Gods

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 of a dried-out, broken-down border town in south Texas, Hackberry soon finds himself dealing with more than just his own demons after nine dead prostitutes are dug up in the desert. The page-turner that ensues, told with characteristic Burkian panache, pits Hack against hired guns, unscrupulous skin bar owners, drug dealers who operate on both sides of the border and more. Burke deftly combines intricate, engaging plotlines and original, compelling characters with his uniquely graceful prose.

The House In Via Manno

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 — her romantic, beautiful, and somewhat crazy grandmother. Nonna is an unforgettable character whose life spans much of the twentieth century. A dreamer with fierce loyalties and unbridled passions, we follow her search for perfect love to an ending both surprising and profound. Along the way, against the stunning Sardinian landscape of cities, marinas and mountains, we meet the members of her large family, and the mysterious Veteran, the man of her dreams — each one drawn with warmth, humour and deep insight.

Milena Agus writes of family loves and secrets, of sexuality, of music, and of the harsh realities of war and migration in twentieth-century Europe in a powerful, compelling, and yet whimsical voice.

A bestseller in Europe, The House in Via Manno introduces Milena Agus to English-speaking readers in this sparkling translation by Brigid Maher.

Dancing Backwards

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 Edwin′s friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity.

Despite her natural reserve, she meets a rich variety of passengers travelling with her, who affect her understanding of her own past. Most significantly, she meets Dino, the dance host, whose motives in befriending Vi are shady, but who teaches her to ballroom dance - and inadvertently helps her to recover from her past.

Moving between the late sixties and the present day, Dancing Backwards is written with the lightness of touch and psychological insight which characterise Salley Vickers′ acclaimed work. This bittersweet novel is subtle, poignant and wonderfully entertaining.

Read an extract from Dancing Backwards

Let The Great World Spin

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 mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann's stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Let the Great World Spin is the critically acclaimed author's most ambitious novel yet: a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Elegantly weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann's powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city's people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the artistic crime of the century. A sweeping and radical social novel, Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence. Hailed as "a fiercely original talent" (San Francisco Chronicle), award-winning novelist McCann has delivered a triumphantly American masterpiece that awakens in us a sense of what the novel can achieve, confront, and even heal.

Document Z

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 knew that the crowd was here for her. Hunting her. From the back seat of the Cadillac, she peered into their faces beyond the glass. Angry looks. Perplexed and desolate. Some were already shouting, trying the handles on the doors. There were Russian voices. English voices. Several times the sound of her name.She was certain these people would kill her before they'd let her through the terminal and onto the plane. Beside her, Zharkov thrust the door open and Evdokia stepped out following, thinking she must be mad. Just close your eyes, she thought. Keep your feet marching like the Pioneer Youth. Guns under the jackets of her escorts. This might be it, she realised. A chaos building, a climbing potential. Defector's Wife Dies in Airport Shootout.

Canberra, 1951. The Cold War is at its height. Into an atmosphere of paranoia, rumour and suspicion, Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov are among a group of new arrivals at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra. Both are party loyalists, working for the MVD, Moscow intelligence. Yet all is not well in the new city of Canberra. The atmosphere in the Embassy is tense and suspicious; the Ambassador resents their presence, and is secretly working to have Vladimir disgraced and recalled. In the meantime, ASIO are determined to discover who in this new group works for the MVD.

Only three short years later, Vladimir has defected and his wife Evdokia is held prisoner at the Soviet Embassy, waiting to be transported back to Russia to face punishment or death for his crime. How did it come to this?

A tightly told story of secrets, lies, deception and betrayal - both personal and political - Document Z, the winner of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, is a taut and atmospheric novel of political espionage and intrigue which brings our recent history vividly and immediately to life.

'Impressive. A distinctive voice, taut writing ... a brooding atmosphere of shadows and spooks.' - Marele Day

'A remarkable achievement . . . a story that is emotionally and politically complex as well as consistently human . . . distinctive and significant' - Matt Rubinstein

'Very impressive . . . absorbing, sophisticated ... beautiful suspenseful writing. A powerful and complex piece, wonderfully crafted.' - Cate Kennedy

Bloke

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-urchin diver on a stretch of coastal paradise, he's right at home with the morwong, pearl perch and butterfish.

He's less at home with the people – apart from the woman who works as his deckhand – since the industry's crookeder than your average banker. And because Bloke's already done a season in the big gym, he makes a perfect fall guy when things go wrong.

That sends him running again, by a roundabout way into the arms of his real family. But Jim's not sure that's where he wants to be. He wants love and that's hard, he wants his identity and that's even harder.

Bloke is an achingly funny novel about coming to terms with who you are, where you belong, who you love. Jim has a weakness for women that leads him into trouble, and then to salvation.

Read an extract from Bloke.

After The Fire, A Still Small Voice

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.

Forty years earlier, Leon is growing up in Sydney, turning out treacle tarts at his parents' bakery and flirting with one of the local girls. But when he's conscripted as a machine-gunner in Vietnam, he finds himself suddenly confronting the same experiences that haunt his war-veteran father.

As these two stories weave around each other - each narrated in a voice as tender as it is fierce - we learn what binds together Frank and Leon, and what may end up keeping them apart.

The Housekeeper And The Professor

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 of short-term memory.

She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper with a ten-year-old son, who is entrusted to take care of him.

Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. He devises clever maths riddles - based on her shoe size or her birthday - and the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her little boy. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family where one before did not exist.

Up From The Mission: Selected Writings

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 power, which introduces a fascinating man and a compelling writer. Many of the pieces included have been hard to find until now. Gathered together in a cohesive, broad-ranging book, they show a key Australian thinker coming into being.

Pearson evokes his early life in Hope Vale, Queensland. He includes sections of his epoch-making essay Our Right To Take Responsibility, which exposed the trap of passive welfare and proposed new ways forward. There are pieces on the apology; on Barack Obama and black leadership; on Australian party politics – Keating, Howard and Rudd; and on alcoholism, despair and what can be done to mend Aboriginal communities that have fallen apart.

A Deadly Trade

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, allegedly a tourist from South Africa and a second guest at the camp, is found bludgeoned to death a few hours later. Detective “Kubu” Bengu is sent from Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, to assist the local Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in solving the crime.

Another guest at the camp – Ishmael Zondo - departed unexpectedly at dawn the morning after the murders. Now Zondo has completely disappeared, and the Zimbabwe police are unable – or unwilling – to trace him. Reports surface that he is wanted as a dissident in Zimbabwe. And, as a final enigma, matching fingerprint records reveal that Goodluck Tinubu was killed in the Rhodesian civil war thirty years earlier.

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

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 cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl. In the stories of Wells Tower, families fall apart and messily, hilariously try to reassemble themselves. His characters - marauding Vikings, washed-up entrepreneurs, and jobbing hacks on local papers - are adrift from the mainstream, confused by contemporary masculinity, angry and aimless. Combining electric prose with compassion and dark wit, this is a major debut.

Green Design

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One Thousand New Eco Designs And Where To Find Them

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 mean you have to sacrifice good design. More and more designers are creating products that are both beautiful and ethical. 1000 New Eco Designs is a showcase of contemporary product design and interior products that are ecologically sound. Informative and visually inspirational, the book acts as a handbook, guiding readers through the complex issues involved in creating and choosing eco friendly designs for the home. A series of icons show each product's "green" credentials; highlighting the use of recycled materials, sustainable materials, carbon neutral, low air miles, so that readers can see at a glance the individual characteristics of each product. The book also provides full information on where to source and buy the work featured.

The Scarecrow

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 Michael Connelly.

Forced out of the Los Angeles Times amid the latest budget cuts, newspaperman Jack McEvoy decides to go out with a bang, using his final days at the paper to write the definitive murder story of his career. He focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer in jail after confessing to a brutal murder. But as he delves into the story, Jack realises that Winslow's so-called confession is bogus. The kid might actually be innocent. Jack is soon running with his biggest story since The Poet made his career years ago. He is tracking a killer who operates completely below police radar - and with perfect knowledge of any move against him. Including Jack's.

About Michael Connelly Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of the Harry Bosch series of novels as well as The Poet, Blood Work, Void Moon, Chasing the Dime, and the #1 New York Times bestseller The Lincoln Lawyer. He is a former newspaper reporter who has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He spends his time in California and Florida.

Brother, I'm Dying

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 age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her ‘second father’, when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who ‘knew all the verses for love’.

And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known.

Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother, I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name — and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic — into the next generation.

Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family — of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both.

The Angel's Game

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 fine hand.

In an abandoned mansion in Barcelona a young man named David Martin makes a living by writing steamy melodramas under a pseudonym. When his own novel receives scathing reviews, it seems his publishers are plotting against him and David is destined to literary obscurity.

In a locked room deep within the house he finds letters and photographs hinting at the death of the previous owner. Like a slow poison the history of the place seeps into his bones as David struggles with an impossible love.

Then he receives an extraordinary proposal from the French editor Andreas Corelli—a proposal that could make David rich and famous. And a bookseller called Sempere introduces him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books…

Prequel to the best-selling The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game is a tale of lost souls and haunting shadows set amid the winding alleyways of Barcelona during the turbulent 1920s. It is a masterful tale and spellbinding love story about the magic of books and the darkest corners of the heart.

Translated by Lucia Graves.

SNEAK PEAK - click here to download chapter 1

The Music Room

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 about welcoming visitors – actors, musicians, travelling fairs, members of the public – but behind these very public scenes a more intimate drama was taking place. William's older brother, Richard, had been diagnosed with severe and debilitating epilepsy.

Die For You

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, leaves for work, and disappears into thin air. Isabel relentlessly tried to reach him when he doesn't return home. But when his call finally comes, she hears only a man's terrified scream. The police are of no use. The screams she heard may have been a prank, they tell her. Men leave. They leave all the time. Isabel races to Marcus's office, trying to find some answers. Instead she finds herself in the middle of an FBI raid, and she is knocked unconscious. When she awakes in a hospital, she learns that everyone Marcus worked with is dead. When Isabel returns home she finds that it has been completely ransacked and all their money is missing from their accounts. Then the police discover that Marcus Raines is a dead man. Long dead. Years dead. Isabel has been married to a stranger. And now the chase is on, because Isabel will not rest until she finds the truth about the man she loved, who he was, where he's gone, and how he was able to deceive her so completely.

Midnight Fugue: A Dalziel & Pascoe Novel

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.

Following his near−death‚ resurrection and convalescence in a quiet seaside town‚ the Fat Man is back to reunite with loyal sidekick DCI Peter Pascoe for a new adventure.

My Driver

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 of the Sheraton Hotel in Kampala, has secretly borrowed Vanessa’s ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, and taken him to her home village to help build a well. Vanessa decides instead to take a trip into Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But she manages to insult her driver so much that he leaves her in the lurch, and as war threatens Bwindi from the Congo side of the border, it’s up to Trevor and Mary to come to her aid. A hilarious comedy of cultural errors. Originally published by Telegram Books, UK.

Why She Loves Him

 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 of fugitive lives: dazzling portraits of women and men on the run; from their present, their past, their future – from themselves… Here, finally, is the complete collection of short fiction from award-winning author Wendy James. Holding a discerning mirror to seemingly ordinary lives, James captures recurring themes of love, betrayal, passion and guilt to show just how vulnerable and intricate the human heart really is. Whether narrating from the living room of a contemporary marriage, from the wheel of a desperate getaway car, or while composing an elaborate diversion in 18th century Salzburg, James has the rare ability to wryly comment on humankind with unnerving clarity and precision.

Lucky Kunst: The Story Of YBA

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 memoir is the first history of the birth of the Young British Artists, and a slice of London subculture. Muir - who now runs a major London gallery - describes himself accurately as YBA's "embedded journalist". He was the only writer who happened to be in Shoreditch and Hoxton at the time when the White Cube Gallery was founded, and at that unique moment of recent history when a remarkable array of young artists - Hirst, the Chapman brothers, Sarah Lucas, Rachel Whiteread, Sam Taylor-Wood - all came together to produce a fresh, irreverent, wacky and quickly enormously popular form of art. Often it was notorious - Hirst's shark, Whiteread's House, Lucas's two fried eggs and a kebab - and incredibly newsworthy. Their hedonistic riotous world grew up in a then forgotten, down-at-heel part of East London. Back then Shoreditch was full of squats and grotty pubs, not groovy nightclubs. Muir tells the history of YBA up to the seminal Sensation show at the Royal Academy - a picaresque, hilarious story never before told. An Ian Sinclair for the modern art world, this is a memorable and unique piece of modern history. Gregor Muir now runs a London art gallery.

Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition

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 York City. 25 years on, the graffiti subculture it chronicled has blossomed into a global art movement, and Subway Art has become the most influential book ever to be published in the genre. Now - with over half a million copies sold worldwide - the bible of the international street-art movement is back. A new large-format layout heightens the impact of Henry Chalfant’s images of the trains, and lets Martha Cooper’s narrative pictures tell the story. In new introductions, the authors recall how they gained entry to the New York graffiti community in the 1970s and 1980s and describe the techniques that they used to photograph it. New afterwords report how the lives of the original subway artists have unfolded, and chronicle the end of the subway graffiti scene in the late 1980s and its unexpected rebirth as a global art movement. The 25th Anniversary Edition is an essential book for all fans of graffiti, stunning photography and 1980s-cool. A deluxe anniversary edition of the groundbreaking bible of the international street-art movement. Features over 70 photographs of artists and artworks not included in the original edition. Striking large-format layout celebrates both the artistry of the photographs and the iconic artworks they captured. New text specially commissioned for the 25th anniversary gives an intimate insight into the making of the original Subway Art.

The Way We Live With The Things We Love

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 Chabaneix’s eagle-eye for a good idea or intriguing detail, offering an international tour of how people frame, hang and place objects, as well showing the best ways of combining and balancing them, and displaying them with wit or irony. Every opportunity to make cross-cultural comparisons and connections is taken within this book to provide a truly international vision of the ways in which our lives are reflected by the things we love. An ultimate treasury of inspiration. Stafford Cliff, born in Adelaide, was formerly Creative Director of the Conran Design Group in London. Gilles de Chabaneix was one of France’s most prominent photographers of design and lifestyle for many years; his work appeared in all the leading style magazines, including Elle Decoration and Marie Claire.

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

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, Ruddock, Olmert, Blair, Musharreff, Mugabe, Costello, Nelson, Buswell and Bush, from the campaign insults of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin to the great economic meltdown and the night of Obama's audacious victory, Bob Ellis took notes, attended funerals, went to the cricket, wrote mordant midnight verse, walked his dogs and pondered on humanity's most formative interim in quite a while.

No better meditation on the Iraq war's backwash and the propaganda weapons of the Right has been thus far attempted, no wittier essay on human mortality, the planet's fate, and the melancholy harvest of Australia's most rancorous political years. And So It Went is a book to read and savour.

The Preacher

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 a young boy out playing has confirmed this grim truth. Their remains‚ discovered with those of a fresh victim‚ send the town into shock.

Local detective Patrik Hedstrom‚ expecting a baby with his girlfriend Erica‚ can only imagine what it is like to lose a child. When a second young girl goes missing‚ Hedstrom′s attention focuses on the Hults‚ a feuding clan of misfits‚ relgious fanatics and criminals. The suspect list is long but time is short − which of this family′s dark secrets will provide the vital clue?

Jeff In Venice, Death In Varanasi

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 journalist-whose dedication to the cause of Bellini-fuelled partygoing is only intermittently disturbed by the obligation to file a story. When he meets the spellbinding Laura, he is rejuvenated, ecstatic. Their romance blossoms quickly, but is it destined to disappear just as rapidly?

Every day thousands of pilgrims head to the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, the holiest Hindu city in India. Among their number is a narrator who may or may not be the Atman previously seen in Venice. Intending to visit only for a few days he ends up staying for months, and suddenly finds-or should that be loses?-a hitherto unexamined idea of himself, the self. In a romance he can only observe, he sees a reflection of the kind of pleasures that, willingly or not, he has renounced. In the process, two ancient and watery cities become versions of each other. Could two stories, in two different cities, actually be one and the same story?

Nothing Geoff Dyer has written before is as wonderfully unbridled, as dead-on in evocation of place, longing and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment, and as irrepressibly entertaining as Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.

Read sample chapters here

The Thoughtful Dresser

'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 pursuit of vain empty-headed women. Yet, clothes matter, whether you are interested in fashion or not because what we choose to dress ourselves in defines our identity. For the immigrant arriving in a new country to the teenager who needs to be part of the fashion pack or the woman turning forty who must reassess her wardrobe, the truth is that how we look and what we wear, tells a story. And what a story. THE THOUGHTFUL DRESSER tells us how a woman's hat saved her life in Nazi Germany, looks at the role of department stores in giving women a public place outside the home, savours the sheer joy of finding the right dress. Here is the thinking woman's guide to our relationship with what we wear: why we want to look our best and why it matters. THE THOUGHTFUL DRESSER celebrates the pleasure of adornment

thethoughtfuldresser.blogspot.com

Jasper Jones

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-out. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of Corrigan. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress.

Jasper takes him through town and to his secret glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion as he locks horns with his tempestuous mother; falls nervously in love and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend, Jeffrey Lu.

And in vainly attempting to restore the parts that have been shaken loose, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth, and why white lies creep like a curse. In the simmering summer where everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart.

Read our interview with Craig Silvey about Jasper Jones.

Atlas Of Unknowns

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 of their mother's mysterious death, Linno and Anju Vallara are raised in Kerala by their father and grandmother. As a teenager, Anju wins a scholarship to a Manhattan prep school with an act of betrayal that severs her relationship with Linno, whose own future seems to hold little more than marriage. In New York, Anju is plunged into the elite world of her Hindu American host family, led by a well-known television personality and her fiendishly ambitious son, a Princeton dropout determined to make a documentary about Anjus life. But when Anju finds herself ensnared in her own lies, she runs away, helped by a stranger with hidden ties to her parents. Desperate to find Anju, Linno embarks on a journey of her own, toward her sister, and toward her mother, whose memory she has kept shrouded until now.

Funny, sad, moving, expertly told, with impeccably rendered portraits of unforgettable families on two continents, James's first novel is a masterful evocation of two sisters whose bonds are powerfully tested, whose love provides the only reliable compass in a landscape of unknowns, and whose dreams of home finally converge in a stunning reunion. A vibrant, dazzlingly original debut.

The Redeemer

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 a Salvation Army street concert. An explosion cuts through the music, and a man in uniform falls to the ground, shot in the head at point-blank range.

Harry Hole and his team have little to work with: no immediate suspect, no weapon and no motive. But when the assassin discovers he has shot the wrong man, Harry Hole's troubles have only just begun. After some exceptionally shrewd detective work, the team begins to close in on a suspected hit man, monitoring his credit card, false passport and the line to his employer. With no money, only six bullets and no place to stay in the bitter cold, the hit man becomes increasingly desperate. He will stop at nothing to eliminate his target.

Moving at a breathless pace, The Redeemer is Jo Nesbø's most gripping thriller yet.

Reunion

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 secrets.

Helen‚ a brilliant and dedicated molecular biologist‚ is faced with unexpected moral dilemmas as she finds herself drawn into bioterrorism research.

Conrad is a philosopher with a popular media profile and a desire for a much younger woman.

And Jack‚ whose career has stalled in the light of his long unrequited love for Ava‚ is a scholar of the history and culture of Islam.

It is Ava′s husband‚ Harry‚ a man for whom the others can barely conceal their disdain‚ who has drawn them back to Melbourne where they first met at university.

As they deal with the reality of their present lives and their memories of the past‚ none will be unchanged by the reunion. And not everyone will survive.

Andrea Goldsmith has created a story of love‚ power‚ friendship and betrayal that is as gripping as it is exquisitely insightful.

American Rust

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 with a propulsive thriller'- Kirkus Review

Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation - as well as the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love - that arises from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to prison, it is the story of two young men, bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.

Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend and former high school football star Billy Poe, they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.

Evoking John Steinbeck's novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.

'. . . prying the lid off a rusted can of failed hope and small-town secrets. . . his taut, direct prose strikes the perfect tone for this kaleidoscope of fractured dreams. . . honest and unflinching storytelling.' Amazon, Book of the Month

'American Rust is both darkly disturbing and richly compelling...signals the arrival of a new voice in American letters.' - Patricia Cornwell

'With its strong narrative engine and understated social insight, American Rust is reminiscent of the best of Robert Stone and Russell Banks. Author Philipp Meyer locates the heart of his working class characters without false sentiment or condescension, and their world is artfully described.' George Pelecanos

'. . . a brilliantly realised story that is a painful rendition of the reality being played out. . . American Rust presents the human effects of our industrial decline more powerfully than any newspaper editorial or TV special report. Philipp Meyer is a fine writer, and he has nailed a difficult story.' Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News

'An engrossing drama.' Marie Claire

Italian Shoes

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 operating table. One morning in the depths of winter, he sees a hunched figure struggling towards him across the ice. His past is about to catch up with him. The figure approaching in the freezing cold is Harriet, the only woman he has ever loved, the woman he abandoned in order to go and study in America forty years earlier. She has sought him out in the hope that he will honour a promise made many years ago. Now in the late stages of a terminal illness, she wants to visit a small lake in northern Sweden, a place Welin's father took him once as a boy. He upholds his pledge and drives her to this beautiful pool hidden deep in the forest. On the journey through the desolate snow-covered landscape, Welin reflects on his impoverished childhood and the woman he later left behind. However, once there Welin discovers that Harriet has left the biggest surprise until last. Italian Shoes is as compelling as it is disturbing. Through his anti-hero Welin, Mankell tackles ageing and death with sensitivity and acuity, and as with the critically acclaimed Depths, delivers a moving tour-de-force on the frailty of mankind.

Breath

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 about learning to live with its passing.

In his first novel for seven years, Tim Winton has achieved a new level of mastery. Breath confirms him as one of the world's finest storytellers, a writer of novels that are at the smae time simple and profound, relentlessly gripping and deeply moving.

breath.timwinton.com.au

Nocturnes

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 explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the Piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the 'hush-hush floor' of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Gentle, intimate and witty, Nocturnes is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older, relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.

Book Of Clouds

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 continent away, Tatiana settles in Berlin and cultivates solitude while distancing herself from the city's past. Yet the phantoms of Berlin--seeping in through the floorboards of her apartment, lingering in the abandoned subterranea--are more alive to her than the people she passes on her daily walks. When she takes a job transcribing notes for the reclusive historian Doktor Weiss, her life in Berlin becomes more complex--and more perilous. Through Weiss, she meets Jonas, a meteorologist who, as a child in the GDR, took solace in the sky's constant shape-shifting, an antidote to his grim and unyielding reality. As their three paths intersect and merge, the contours of all their worlds begin to change, culminating in an act of violence that will leave none of them untouched. Unfolding with the strange, charged logic of a dream, Book of Clouds is a profound portrait of a city forever in flux, and of the myths we cling to in order to give shape to our lives. From a crowded U-Bahn where Hitler appears dressed as an old woman, to an underground Gestapo bowling alley whose walls bear score marks from games long settled, Chloe Aridjis guides us through Berlin with wit and compassion, blurring the lines between real and imagined, and showing why cities, like people, cannot outrun their pasts.

In The Kitchen

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 course of the ensuing pages, peels back the layers of polyglot London to reveal the melting pot which exists below. Once again, it confirms Monica Ali not only as a great modern storyteller but also an acute observer of vagaries of a contemporary culture. Monica Alis is the bestselling author of Brick Lane, which was made into a 2007 film. She has been shortlisted for the Booker, George Orwell and Commonwealth Prizes. Monica will be in Australia for publication and will tour in Sydney and Melbourne.

Dark Places

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 then she has been drifting, surviving for over twenty years on the proceeds of the 'Libby Day fund'. But now the money is running out and Libby is desperate. When she is offered $500 to do a guest appearance, she feels she has to accept. But this is no ordinary gathering. The Kill Club is a group of true-crime obsessives who share information on notorious murders, and they think her brother Ben is innocent. It is 2 January 1985 - the day of the murders. Ben is a social misfit, ground down by the small-town farming community in which he lives. His family is extremely poor and his father Runner is violent, gambles and disappears for months on end. But Ben does have a girlfriend - a brooding heavy metal fan called Diondra. Through her, Ben becomes involved with drugs and the dark arts. When the town suddenly turns against him, his thoughts turn black. But is he capable of murder? In a brilliantly interwoven plot, Gillian Flynn keeps the reader balanced on a knife-edge, as Libby delves into her family's past and Ben spirals towards destruction.

The Little Stranger

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 masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his. Prepare yourself. From this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story

The Women In Black

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 and the summer sales that follow. But it’s Sydney in the 1950s, and there’s still just enough time left on a hot and frantic day to dream and scheme…

By the time the last marked-down frock has been sold, most of the staff of the Ladies’ Cocktail section at F. G. Goode’s have been launched into slightly different careers. With the lightest touch and the most tender of comic instincts, Madeleine St John conjures a vanished summer of innocence. The Women in Black is a great novel, a lost Australian classic.

The Secret Intensity Of Everyday Life

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 dramas. The hidden longings of a large cast of characters; teacher, journalist, farmer, schoolboy, grandmother, and many more, interweave in a gripping plot that reveals how intensely even the most ordinary lives are led.

The Pleasures and Sorrows Of Work

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 work's pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton here heads out into the under-charted worlds of the office, the factory, the fishing fleet and the logistics centre, ears and eyes open to the beauty, interest and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace. Along the way he tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can ask about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? And why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet?

Characteristically lucid, witty and inventive, Alain de Botton's 'song for occupations' is a celebration and exploration of an aspect of life which is all too often ignored and yet as central to us as our love lives.