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This brilliant collection mixes the storytelling originality of George Saunders and Lydia Davis with a sensibility all its own, taking the reader on an extraordinary tour of an old and a new Australia. A woman on a passenger ship in 1958 gets involved with a young, wild Barry Humphries. A man looks back to the 1970s and his time as a member of Australia’s least competent scout troop. In 1988, a teenage boy recalls his sexual initiation, out on the tanbark. In 2015, two sisters text in Kmart about how to manage their irascible, isolated mum. Then, in the near future, a racist demagogue addresses the press the day after his electoral triumph. As the cities heat up and lose their water, a lad...
""What I love, what I need, first in Helen Garner's writing is a particular kind of closeness to self - the good, greedy, mistaken, emotional, fierce, sceptical, changing and disrupting self ... But I also love that she's always fighting to come back, enough, as well: find enough of a law, a rule, a family, a home." In a brilliantly argued and very personal essay, Sean O'Beirne looks at the whole of Helen Garner's writing life so far - from Monkey Grip to the recently published Diaries - while trying to come to terms with the demands, and the rewards, of Garner's extraordinary, radical individualism and honesty. In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work"--Publisher's description.
This third edition of John O'Beirne Ranelagh's classic history of Ireland incorporates contemporary political and economic events as well as the latest archaeological and DNA discoveries. Comprehensively revised and updated throughout, it considers Irish history from the earliest times through the Celts, Cromwell, plantations, famine, Independence, the Omagh bomb, peace initiatives, and financial collapse. It profiles the key players in Irish history from Diarmuid MacMurrough to Gerry Adams and casts new light on the events, North and South, that have shaped Ireland today. Ireland's place in the modern world and its relationship with Britain, the USA and Europe is also examined with a fresh and original eye. Worldwide interest in Ireland continues to increase, but whereas it once focused on violence in Northern Ireland, the tumultuous financial events in the South have opened fresh debates and drawn fresh interest. This is a new history for a new era.
Fifty years after the event, here is the first full account of an audacious publishing decision that — with the help of booksellers and readers around the country — forced the end of literary censorship in Australia. For more than seventy years, a succession of politicians, judges, and government officials in Australia worked in the shadows to enforce one of the most pervasive and conservative regimes of censorship in the world. The goal was simple: to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under the censorship regime, books that might damage the morals of the Australian public were banned, seized, and burned; bookstores were raided; publishers were fined; a...
We Were Liars meets Looking for Alaska in a uniquely funny and heartbreaking teen novel about a passionate-yet-doomed friendship set against a backdrop of wealth and glamour. Willa Parker, 646th and least-popular resident of What Cheer, Iowa, is headed east to start a new life. Did she choose this life? No, because that would be too easy—and nothing in Willa’s life is easy. It’s her famous genius mother’s idea to send her to ultra-expensive, ultra-exclusive Pembroke Prep, and Willa has no intention of fitting in. But when she meets peculiar, glittering Remy Taft, the richest, most mysterious girl on campus, she starts to see a foothold in this foreign world—a place where she could ...
**THE FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER is now available to pre-order in ebook** PRAISE FOR NATASHA LESTER... 'A fantastically engrossing story. I love it' KELLY RIMMER 'Intrigue, heartbreak... I cannot tell you how much I loved this book' RACHEL BURTON 'A gorgeously rich and romantic novel' KATE FORSYTH Her Mother's Secret is the thrilling and captivating story of a brave young woman chasing her dream against society's disapproval. Perfect for fans of Gill Paul, Kate Furnivall and Penny Vincenzi. 1918, England. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora East's life. Rather than making cosmetics secretly in her father's chemist shop, Leo hopes to now display her wares openly. Instead, Spanish flu arriv...
The mid-seventies – and satin baggies and chunky platforms reigned supreme. Jethro Tull did battle with glam-rock for the airwaves. At an all-boys Catholic school in Melbourne, Timothy Conigrave fell wildly and sweetly in love with the captain of the football team. So began a relationship that was to last for 15 years, a love affair that weathered disapproval, separation and, ultimately death. Holding the Man recreates that relationship. With honesty and insight it explores the highs and lows of any partnership: the intimacy, constraints, temptations. And the strength of heart both men had to find when they tested positive to HIV. This is a book as refreshing and uplifting as it is moving; a funny and sad and celebratory account of growing up gay.
Akin is a tender tale of love, loss and family, from Emma Donoghue, the international bestselling author of Room. 'If Room forced home truths on us, about parenthood, responsibility and love, Akin deals with similar subject matter more subtly, but in the end just as compellingly' - Guardian A retired New York professor’s life is thrown into chaos when he takes his great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother's wartime secrets. Noah is only days away from his first trip back to Nice since he was a child when a social worker calls looking for a temporary home for Michael, his eleven-year-old great-nephew. Though he has never met the boy, he gets talked into takin...
What really did happen to Agatha Christie during her mysterious eleven-day disappearance just as she was on the cusp of fame?