There's nothing better than gathering with friends and family for a festive feast during the summer months. Below, we've rounded up some of the best Christmas-centric cookbooks to help you celebrate this year!

Christmas Table by The Australian Women's Weekly

A modern approach to the season's fare in a beautiful book containing all the recipes you'd expect for ham, turkey, sides, desserts and puddings

Christmas is a special time of year for indulging in food and fun with your loved…

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Eat Lao by Sam Sempill

Sam Sempill is a Lao-born Australian textile artist and architect with a certain magical cooking skill developed through years spent in the kitchen with her grandmother. Like all good cookbooks, this collection of Lao-cuisine based recipes is more than a list of ingredients and instructions. It is a window into the past. Beautifully illustrated, you will find recipes for trout soup, custard pumpkin dessert and an enormous range of deliciously flavoured meals that, once seen…

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As I write this, I’m about to head off to Bali for the 20th Ubud Writers & Readers Festival. It’s a testament to its founders, Melbourne-born Janet DeNeefe and her Indonesian husband Ketut Suardana, that it has become a sought-after gig for writers and book lovers from around the world.

This trip comes on the back of a jaunt around Italy and Greece with my sister, with side trips to New York and Montreal. She’s a researcher at the Columbia…

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As we approach the end of the year many of us have begun to feel a little jaded or fatigued by the pace of life. Thankfully, we have cosy literature – complete with token cats – to lean on. The below books are some of our favourites, and they're waiting on our bookshelves for you to discover or perhaps even gift to a friend.

What You Are Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama & Alison Watts (trans.)

…

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Enjoy merry – and seasonally correct – storytimes this Christmas! These picture books, a mix of new and old favourites, are perfect for storytimes this festive season or to post to friends abroad.

Christmas Wonder Down Under by Vikki Conley & Cheryl Orsini (illus.)

Cracker bang! Stars above. Christmas wonder. Peace and love.

The unique magic of an Australian Christmas is perfectly captured in this joyful celebration of love, pavlova and precious family moments.

Twelve Days of Kindness by Sophie…

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The winners of this year's National Book Awards have been announced! Since 1950, the National Book Awards have been celebrating the best writing in America.

The winner for Fiction is Justin Torres for Blackouts

The winner for Nonfiction is Ned Blackhawk for The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

The winner for Poetry is Craig Santos Perez for from unincorporated territory [åmot]

The winner for Translated Literature is Stênio Gardel for The Words That Remain …

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Each week our amazing staff bring you a sample of the books or music they're immersed in.

Joanna Di Mattia is reading Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain

Over the past three months, I have read one great book after another. I recently finished Rose Tremain’s latest novel, Absolutely & Forever, which has continued this golden streak.

This is a book of young passions written with the insight of age, told from the perspective of Marianne Clifford, a teenager…

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The winners of this year's Prime Minister's Literary Awards have been announced! The Prime Minister's Literary Awards celebrate outstanding literary talent in Australia and the valuable contribution Australian literature and history makes to the nation's cultural and intellectual life.

Fiction winner:

Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au

Nonfiction winner:

My Father and Other Animals by Sam Vincent

Australian History winner:

Unmaking Angas Downs by Shannyn Palmer

Poetry winner:

At the Altar of Touch by Gavin Yuan Gao

Young Adult…

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These are the crime books which have been read and reviewed by our excellent booksellers this month - all in one place!

The Mantis by Kotaro Isaka & Sam Malissa (trans.)

Reviewed by Joe Murray from Readings Kids

Kabuto lives a double life: one as a loving father and dutiful husband, the other as a cold-blooded contract killer. Only one of those lives is terrifying – the other is just murder for hire. Trouble is, Kabuto wants out of the…

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Australian Fiction | The Conversion by Amanda Lohrey

Nick: so persuasive, ever the optimist, always on a quest to design the perfect environment, convinced it could heal a wounded soul. The conversion was Nick’s idea, but it’s Zoe who’s here now, in a valley of old coalmines and new vineyards, working out how to live in a deconsecrated church. What to do with all that vertical space, those oppressive stained-glass windows? Can a church become a home or, even with…

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