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Drama
Florence Saint Claire, former child star, generally prefers plants to people. She’s a reluctant member of a musical family with a legendary father, an impossible mother, a sister who can’t keep still and a brother who walks to his own beat.
Albert Flowers is a people person, life rushing at him from all corners, carrying him to weddings and parties and late nights in rooftop bars. (Goodreads.com)Too much lip, her old problem from way back. And the older she got, the harder it seemed to get to swallow her opinions. The avalanche of bullshit in the world would drown her if she let it; the least she could do was raise her voice in anger. (Goodreads.com)A novel of love, crime, magic, fate and coming of age, set in Brisbane’s violent working class suburban fringe – from one of Australia’s most exciting new writers.
Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crime for a babysitter. It’s not as if Eli’s life isn’t complicated enough already. He’s just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way – not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. (Goodreads.com)At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. (Goodreads.com)The suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences
Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she’s accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma’s worst fears are confirmed. (Goodreads.com)In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners. (Goodreads.com)
Mystery and Crime
Harry Bosch and LAPD Detective Renee Ballard come together again on the murder case that obsessed Bosch’s mentor, the man who trained him — new from #1 New York Times bestselling author Michael Connelly. (Goodreads.com)Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland, in this stunning new standalone novel from New York Times bestseller Jane Harper
They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects…When what looks like an amorous assignation turns out to be an assignation of quite a different sort, a globetrotting murderer leads Hercule Poirot on a breathless chase from a revolution-torn Arab sheikdom to a very respectable English school for young ladies. (Goodreads.com)
New Non-Fiction and Biographies
‘I just want to warn you. You’re going to dive to the end of the cave. You’re going to see these kids. They’re all looking healthy and happy and smiley. Then, you’re going to swim away, and they’re probably all going to die.’
In June 2018, for seventeen days, the world watched and held its breath as the Wild Boars soccer team were trapped deep in a cave in Thailand. Marooned beyond flooded cave passages after unexpected rains, they were finally rescued, one-by-one, against almost impossible odds, by an international cave-diving team which included Australians Dr Richard Harris and Dr Craig Challen. (Goodreads.com)Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty—a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre—took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. Thrown into a profession of gallows humor and vivid characters (both living and very dead), Caitlin learned to navigate the secretive culture of those who care for the deceased. (Goodreads.com)This extraordinary book has its genesis in a series of concerts first staged in 2004. Over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, one hundred of his songs from the previous three decades. In between songs he told stories about them, and from those little tales grew How to Make Gravy, a memoir like no other. Each of its hundred chapters, also in alphabetical order by song title, consists of lyrics followed by a story, the nature of the latter taking its cue from the former. (Goodreads.com)Factfulness:The stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.When asked simple questions about global trends – why the world’s population is increasing; how many young women go to school; how many of us live in poverty – we systematically get the answers wrong. So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers. (Goodreads.com)Born with a rare genetic condition, Lizzie Velasquez always knew she was different, but it wasn’t until she was older that she understood what that meant to herself and others.
In this daring, inspirational book, Lizzie reveals the hidden forces that give rise to self-doubt and empowers us to unlock empathy and kindness for ourselves and others. Through her own battles with anxiety and depression she demonstrates how we can overcome obstacles and move forward with greater positivity and hope. (Goodreads.com)‘The vegan Jamie Olivers’ The TimesWant to cook ridiculously good plant-based food from scratch but have no idea where to start? With over 140 incredibly easy and outrageously tasty all plants meals, BOSH! The Cookbook will be your guide.Henry Firth and Ian Theasby, creators of the world’s biggest and fastest-growing plant-based platform, BOSH!, are the new faces of the food revolution. (Goodreads.com)
New Study Resources
This major new biography of Mao uses extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to biographers to reveal surprising details about Mao’s rise to power and his leadership in China.
Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was champion of the poor and brutal tyrant, poet and despot. (Goodreads.com)‘The future can’t be predicted but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being.’ Donella Meadows
Like most of us, Damon Gameau has spent most of his adult years overwhelmed into inaction by the problem of climate change and its devastating effects on the planet. But when Damon became a father, he knew he couldn’t continue to look away. So he decided to do what he does best, and tell a story. And the story became an imagining of what the world could look like in 2040, if we all decided to start doing things differently, right now. (Goodreads.com)Until recently, popular biographers and most scholars viewed Alexander the Great as a genius with a plan, a romantic figure pursuing his vision of a united world. His dream was at times characterized as a benevolent interest in the brotherhood of man, sometimes as a brute interest in the exercise of power. Green, a Cambridge-trained classicist who is also a novelist, portrays Alexander as both a complex personality and a single-minded general, a man capable of such diverse expediencies as patricide or the massacre of civilians. (Goodreads.com)A richly illustrated book, We Are Artists celebrates the life and work of fifteen female artists from around the globe and the distinctive mark they made on art. Presented as a collection of exciting biographical stories, each section reveals how the artists unique approach and perspective provided art and society with a new way of seeing things. (Goodreads.com)
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People – cultural and historic resources
I’m Aboriginal. I’m just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be.
What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate campaigner for Aboriginal literacy, was born a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school. She is Aboriginal – however, this does not mean she likes to go barefoot and, please, don’t ask her to camp in the desert. (Goodreads.com)Bruce Pascoe has collected a swathe of literary awards for Dark Emu and now he has brought together the research and compelling first person accounts in a book for younger readers. Using the accounts of early European explorers, colonists and farmers, Bruce Pascoe compellingly argues for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer label for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. He allows the reader to see Australia as it was before Europeans arrived – a land of cultivated farming areas, productive fisheries, permanent homes, and an understanding of the environment and its natural resources that supported thriving villages across the continent. (Goodreads.com)Tourism Australia statistics show that many overseas tourists, as well as Australians, are keen to learn more about Australia’s first peoples. And while the Indigenous tourism industry continues to grow, no comprehensive travel guide is currently available.
Marcia Langton: Welcome to Country is a curated guidebook to Indigenous Australia and the Torres Strait Islands. Author Professor Marcia Langton offers fascinating insights into Indigenous languages and customs, history, native title, art and dance, storytelling, and cultural awareness and etiquette for visitors. (Goodreads.com)In 1840, Brisbane was the furthest outpost of settled Australia. On all sides, it was embedded in a richly Indigenous world. Over the next few years, mostly from across New South Wales northern plains, a large push of pastoralists thundered into the Darling Downs, Lockyer and much of southern Queensland – establishing huge sheep stations. The violence that erupted welded many of the tribal groups into an alliance that by 1842 was working to halt the advance. (Goodreads.com)
We all love someone. We all fear something. Sometimes they live right next door – or even closer.
Kane will do everything he can to save his mother and his little brother Sam from the violence of his father, even if it means becoming a monster himself.
Mrs Aslan will protect the boys no matter what – even though her own family is in pieces. (Goodreads.com)Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize and Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction for The Natural Way of Things Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend, in which three friends in their 70s gather for a last weekend at the former holiday home of a mutual friend who has recently died, where they confront betrayals that have lain hidden, and the bond that sustains them, to Sarah McGrath at Riverhead, for publication in 2020 (Goodreads.com)No ones ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what shes thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. (Goodreads.com)Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in plain sight. But those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them. (Goodreads.com)Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War. (Goodreads.com)
Mystery and Crime
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life–until the unthinkable happens.When a socially isolated vagrant is found dead in the condemned building where he had been sleeping in Les Halles, Paris, Maigret must delve into the victim’s mysterious past to discover who could have killed him. (Goodreads.com)
New Non-Fiction and Biographies
Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them—women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.
She couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. “Go ahead, ask your question,” her father urged, nudging her forward. She smiled shyly and said, “You’re my hero. Who’s yours?” (Goodreads.com)For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris—Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut.
Jenny Lawson realized that the most mortifying moments of our lives—the ones we’d like to pretend never happened—are in fact the ones that define us. In the #1 New York Times bestseller, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Lawson takes readers on a hilarious journey recalling her bizarre upbringing in rural Texas, her devastatingly awkward high school years, and her relationship with her long-suffering husband, Victor. (Goodreads.com)Some people’s lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks’ isn’t. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years. (Goodreads.com)Heartbreaking, joyous, traumatic, intimate and revelatory, Reckoning is the book where Magda Szubanski, one of Australia’s most beloved performers, tells her story.
In this extraordinary memoir, Magda describes her journey of self-discovery from a suburban childhood, haunted by the demons of her father’s espionage activities in wartime Poland and by her secret awareness of her sexuality, to the complex dramas of adulthood and her need to find out the truth about herself and her family. (Goodreads.com)When Jeremy Bentham proposed that government should run “for the greatest benefit of the greatest number,” he posed two problems: what is happiness and how can we measure it? With the rise of positive psychology, freakonimics, behavioural economics, endless TED talks, the happiness manifesto, the Happiness Index, the tyranny of customer service, the emergence of the quantified self movement, we have become a culture obsessed with measuring our supposed satisfaction. (Goodreads.com)‘None of us get out of life alive, so be gallant, be great, be gracious, and be grateful for the opportunities you have.’ Jake Bailey’s inspirational end-of-year speech as head boy at Christchurch Boys’ High School was delivered from a wheelchair just one week after he was diagnosed with the most aggressive of cancers. As he lay in hospital fighting to stay alive, his speech grabbed headlines around the world. (Goodreads.com)MiNDFOOD is the leading site for Smart Thinking Content. Featuring delicious recipes, health tips, latest community news, puzzles, how to videos, destination ideas.
New Study Resources
This book challenges long-established views that Mao Zedong became Chinese Communist Party leader during the Long March (1934-1935) and that by 1935 the CCP was independent of the Comintern in Moscow. The result is a critique not only of official Chinese historiography but also of Western scholarship, which all future histories of the rise of the PRC will need to take into account. (Goodreads.com)Philip of Macedon was one of the extraordinary figures of antiquity. Inheriting a kingdom near collapse, he left to his son Alexander the strongest state in Eastern Europe. He developed new military technology and made Macedonia the greatest power in the Western world. He created a united, multiracial kingdom based on liberal principles, and added to it the resources of a Balkan empire. Most important, he inspired the city-states of the Greek peninsula to form a unified community, ensuring peace among its members, the rule of law in internal politics, and collective security in the face of agressors. No statesman in Europe had ever achieved so much. (Goodreads.com)Alexander the Great, arguably the most exciting figure from antiquity, waged war as a Homeric hero and lived as one, conquering native peoples and territories on a superhuman scale. From the time he invaded Asia in 334 to his death in 323, he expanded the Macedonian empire from Greece in the west to Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, Central Asia and “India” (Pakistan and Kashmir) in the east. Although many other kings and generals forged empires, Alexander produced one that was without parallel, even if it was short-lived. (Goodreads.com)Colony explores the immediate and far-reaching impact of British colonisation of Australia through historical, twentieth-century and contemporary art. Through 1000 essential pieces of our cultural heritage, this book highlights the confronting and complex perspectives of the shared history of First Peoples and European settlers. (Goodreads.com)Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing – behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. (Goodreads.com)vSoon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historians inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. (Goodreads.com)This is the first book of its kind in Australia: a history of Aboriginal campsites. This is also the first guidebook to the location and features of the numerous Aboriginal camps that flourished in and around Brisbane from convict times to in some cases as late as the 1950s. Many of Brisbane’s suburbs trace their names, parks and key events to these former campsites. This book focuses on 15 key areas, and includes a full suburban listing at the back. (Goodreads.com)‘As uncomfortable as it is, we need to reckon with our history. On January 26, no Australian can really look away.’
Since publishing his critically acclaimed, Walkley Award-winning, bestselling memoir Talking to My Country in early 2016, Stan Grant has been crossing the country, talking to huge crowds everywhere about how racism is at the heart of our history and the Australian dream. But Stan knows this is not where the story ends. (Goodreads.com)
