1. Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Little Golden Book by Diane Muldrow
2. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
3. Do You Dare?: Tough Times by Simon Mitchell
4. A Country Too Far: Writings on Asylum Seekers edited by Thomas Keneally & Rosie Scott
5. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
6. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
7. Do You Dare?: The Bushranger’s Boys by Alison Lloyd
8. The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
9. The Book Thief (film tie-in) by Markus Zusak
10. Our Australian Girl: Meet Daisy by Michelle Hamer

Not only was our State Library shop buzzing along with White Night, we were also thrilled to be part of several other amazing literary festivities last week - the sales from which are reflected in our bestsellers list!

At our Hawthorn shop we celebrated a new companion series to the much-loved Our Australian Girl books - this time presenting Australian historical fiction for boy readers aged 8 to 12. The first two books in the series are The Bushranger’s Boys by Alison Lloyd and Tough Times by Simon Mitchell - both of which are included in our list.

Alison and Simon came along to launch their books, along with Michelle Hamer and Gabrielle Wang, who were launching two new Our Australian Girl adventures. Michelle’s Meet Daisy is number ten on our list while Gabrielle’s Meet Pearlie was close behind at number eleven…

We also celebrated the release of A Country Too Far: Writings on Asylum Seekers together with PEN Melbourne. Anthology editor Rosie Scott sat down with contributors Rodney Hall, Judith Rodriguez and Arnold Zable, to reflect on one of the most conflicted issues of Australian society today.

(If this topic is of interest to you then Melbourne cartoonist Sam Wallman’s comic At Work Inside Our Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story is well-worth a read and available online.)

Eleanor Catton also visited Melbourne last week - much to the delight of several of our staff members - and her intricately-structured, thrillingly-heart-pounding gold-rush tale The Luminaries is number two on our bestsellers list.

We have a terrific event program planned for next month as well. Read more here.