Moving on to the Summer holidays and we would like to give some recommendations to our staff. It will be an unusual holiday break with no travel for most of you… however we hope to inspire you to go on a “Staycation” and travel to wonderful places through the pages of a good book!
Drama: Click on the book cover to find out more
The bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, Trent Dalton returns with All Our Shimmering Skies – a glorious novel destined to become another Australian classic. Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger’s daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued actress and Yukio, a fallen Japanese fighter pilot. Run, Molly, run, says the daytime sky. Run to the vine forests. Run to northern Australia’s wild and magical monsoon lands. Run to friendship. Run to love. Run. Because the graverobber’s coming, Molly, and the night-time sky is coming with him. So run, Molly, run. (Goodreads)Drawing on Maggie O’Farrell’s long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare’s most enigmatic play, HAMNET is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.
Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet. (Goodreads)Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass and cedar palace on an island in British Columbia. Jonathan Alkaitis works in finance and owns the hotel. When he passes Vincent his card with a tip, it’s the beginning of their life together. That same day, Vincent’s half-brother, Paul, scrawls a note on the windowed wall of the hotel: “Why don’t you swallow broken glass.” Leon Prevant, a shipping executive for a company called Neptune Logistics, sees the note from the hotel bar and is shaken to his core. Thirteen years later Vincent mysteriously disappears from the deck of the Neptune Cumberland. (Goodreads) This unforgettable tale as told through Edward’s eyes takes on a new and decidedly dark twist. Meeting Bella is both the most unnerving and intriguing event he has experienced in all his years as a vampire. As we learn more fascinating details about Edward’s past and the complexity of his inner thoughts, we understand why this is the defining struggle of his life. How can he justify following his heart if it means leading Bella into danger? (Goodreads)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)In 1901, the word ‘Bondmaid’ was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid’ flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. (Goodreads)Mourning Thrax’s death, Ankhesenamun tries to find peace again. But as she resumes her normal life, her world is upended by another death — this time, that of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
As Ankhesenamun tries to keep control of her throne and her country, the chief advisors tighten their own hold on power. Stripped of all authority and confined to her chambers, Ankhesenamun finally does the unthinkable — she sends a message to the Hittite king offering the throne to one of his sons. (Goodreads)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)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)Emma Woodhouse is one of Austen’s most captivating and vivid characters. Beautiful, spoilt, vain and irrepressibly witty, Emma organizes the lives of the inhabitants of her sleepy little village and plays matchmaker with devastating effect. (Goodreads)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)
The captivating and heart-pounding third book in the instant New York Times bestselling Nevermoor series, as heroine Morrigan battles a new evil.Morrigan Crow and her friends have survived their first year as proud scholars of the elite Wundrous Society, helped bring down the nefarious Ghastly Market, and proven themselves loyal to Unit 919. Now Morrigan faces a new, exciting challenge: to master the mysterious Wretched Arts of the Accomplished Wundersmith, and control the power that threatens to consume her. (Goodreads)Knowing that he will soon die, Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi takes pen to paper. His life has been spent on the banks of the Murrumby River at Prosperous House, on Massacre Plains. Albert is determined to pass on the language of his people and everything that was ever remembered. He finds the words on the wind. (Goodreads)Conspiracy. Betrayal. Rebellion. Peace is just another kind of battlefield…
Savine dan Glokta, once Adua’s most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way.
For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye . . . before it kills her. (Goodreads)In 1936, a young dreamer named Edmond Charlot opened a modest bookshop in Algiers. Once the heart of Algerian cultural life, where Camus launched his first book and the Free French printed propaganda during the war, Charlot’s beloved bookshop has been closed for decades, living on as a government lending library. Now it is to be shuttered forever. But as a young man named Ryad empties it of its books, he begins to understand that a bookshop can be much more than just a shop that sells books. (Goodreads)It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. (Goodreads)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)Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend.Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn how to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life. (Goodreads)Bridge of Clay is about a boy who is caught in the current – of destroying everything he has, to become all he needs to be. He’s a boy in search of greatness, as a cure for memory and tragedy. He builds a bridge to save his family, but also to save himself. It’s an attempt to transcend humanness, to make a single, glorious moment: A miracle and nothing less. (Goodreads)Zachary Ezra Rawlins is searching for his door, though he does not know it. He follows a silent siren song, an inexplicable knowledge that he is meant for another place. When he discovers a mysterious book in the stacks of his campus library he begins to read, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities, and nameless acolytes. Suddenly a turn of the page brings Zachary to a story from his own childhood impossibly written in this book that is older than he is. (Goodreads)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)Ruby has always been the generous mediator among her friends, family and colleagues, which is why they have all turned up to celebrate her 50th birthday. But after a few too many glasses of champers, Ruby’s speech doesn’t exactly go to plan. Instead of delivering the witty and warm words her guests are expecting, Ruby takes her moment in the spotlight to reveal what she really thinks of every one of them. She also accuses her husband, Harry, of having an affair, and reads to the audience the evidence she found on his phone that very morning. (Goodreads)In this follow-up to The Tattooist of Auschwitz, the author tells the story, based on a true one, of a woman who survives Auschwitz, only to find herself locked away again. (Goodreads)
MYSTERY AND CRIME
Coming home dredges up deeply buried secrets in The Survivors, a thrilling mystery by New York Times bestselling author Jane Harper
Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on the day a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences.
The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal community he once called home. (Goodreads)Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. (Goodreads)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. (Goodreads)
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… (Goodreads)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. 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. 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)Two teachers discover the body of the school’s unpopular games mistress, shot through the heart from point-blank range. The school is thrown into chaos when the ‘cat’ strikes again, and Julia Upjohn knows that without Poirot’s help she could be next. (Goodreads)
NON-FICTION AND BIOGRAPHIES
The groundbreaking two-term President of Ireland tells the stories of her life
When a young Mary McAleese told a priest that she planned to become a lawyer, the priest dismissed the idea: she knew no one in the law, and she was female. The reality of what she went on to achieve – despite those obstacles, and despite a sectarian attack that forced her family to flee their home – is even more improbable. (Goodreads) This remarkable book presents a unique portrait of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, drawing on more than twenty years of conversations with Jeffrey Rosen, starting in the 1990s and continuing through the Trump era. Rosen, a veteran legal journalist, scholar, and president of the National Constitution Center, shares with us the justice’s observations on a variety of topics, and her intellect, compassion, sense of humor, and humanity shine through. The affection they have for each other as friends is apparent in their banter and in their shared love for the Constitution–and for opera. (Goodreads)‘You will not be able to buy a more beautiful book for Christmas for somebody you love’ Chris Evans
A book of hope for uncertain times.
Enter the world of Charlie’s four unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons.
The conversations of the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse have been shared thousands of times online, recreated in school art classes, hung on hospital walls and turned into tattoos. In Charlie’s first book, you will find his most-loved illustrations and some new ones too. (Goodreads)The Inner Self is a book about the ways we hide from the truth about ourselves and the psychological freedom we enjoy when we finally face that most searching question of all: ‘Who am I, really?’
Hugh Mackay explores our ‘top 20’ hiding places – from addiction to materialism, nostalgia to victimhood. He explains how it is our fear of love’s demands that drive us into hiding. (Goodreads)In Tom Boyce’s extraordinary new book, he writes of his acclaimed and pathfinding work as a developmental pediatrician working with troubled children in child-development research for almost four decades, and explores his major discovery: that certain variant genes can increase a person’s susceptibility to depression, anxiety, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, antisocial, sociopathic, or violent behaviors. Rather than seeing this “risk” gene as a liability, Boyce, through his daring research has recast the way we think of human frailty, and has shown that while these “bad” genes can create problems, they can also, in the right setting and the right environment, result in producing children who not only do better than before, but far exceed their peers. (Goodreads)There is a voice of longing inside every woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good mothers, daughters, partners, employees, citizens, and friends. We believe all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives, relationships, and world, and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? (Goodreads)The first Queenslanders to witness the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-20 were serving in the AIF in Europe and the Middle East. On their return, they brought the disease home.
Queenslanders fought the ‘Flu with determination and dignity – and kindness. (Goodreads)Whether using dried flowers or tiny shells, spaghetti or postage stamps, Jeannie Baker draws from the world around her to make work that is singularly beautiful and imaginative. Incorporating a wide range of textures, her arresting collage pieces have earned her international acclaim. Now she shares her secrets and encourages readers to get creative: each of the four main sections in Playing with Collage presents an abstract collage by the artist and offers suggestions and starting points for anyone aspiring to master the art. (Goodreads)
The New York Times bestselling book from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—“a comprehensive look inside her brilliantly analytical, entertainingly wry mind, revealing the fascinating life of one of our generation’s most influential voices in both law and public opinion” (Harper’s Bazaar). (Goodreads)MIRANDA TAPSELL was born in Darwin and her people are the Larrakia. She grew up in Kakadu National Park and began performing at the age of seven. At 16, she won the Bell Shakespeare Company regional performance scholarship. She has her own podcast on BuzzFeed, Pretty for an Aboriginal, with Nakkiah Lui, which rocks the traditional perceptions of Indigenous Australia and challenges rigid mindsets of what women of colour can and cannot do. Top End Girl is her literary debut. (Goodreads)As a member of the strictly religious Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism, Deborah Feldman grew up under a code of relentlessly enforced customs governing everything from what she could wear and to whom she could speak to what she was allowed to read. It was stolen moments spent with the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott that helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. Trapped as a teenager in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she barely knew, the tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until she gave birth at nineteen and realized that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to escape. (Goodreads)Kids with Tricky Behaviours don’t need to be ‘fixed’ because they aren’t broken. They do, however, need to be shown ways to play to their own strengths and to learn a range of ways to interact with the world. They need to be shown how to flourish and thrive, and parents are the best people to do this.
In this revised and updated edition of his bestselling book, Tricky Kids, leading Australian adolescent psychologist Andrew Fuller delves deeply into all the different types of tricky behaviour displayed by children of all ages. Using the latest thinking and developments in child psychology, he explains the most common reasons why children can display confronting behaviour and outlines practical steps you can take to help show them the way to live harmoniously with you and others. (Booktopia)Over the last decade, we have become better at knowing what brings us contentment, well-being and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy, that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others offer our best chance at achieving happiness. But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them? (Goodreads)Spelling can be a source of anxiety for school children and working professionals alike. Yet the spelling of words in English is not as random or chaotic as it is often perceived to be; rather, it is a system based on both meaning and a fascinating linguistic history. Misty Adoniou’s public articles on the processes of teaching and learning spelling have garnered an overwhelming response from concerned parents and teachers looking for effective solutions to the problems they face in teaching English spelling to children. Spelling It Out aims to ease anxiety and crush the myth that good spelling comes naturally. (Goodreads)‘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)In these pages, some of today’s most wonderful culture-makers—writers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers—reflect on the joys of reading, how books broaden and deepen human experience, and the ways in which the written word has formed their own character. On the page facing each letter, an illustration by a celebrated illustrator or graphic artist presents that artist’s visual response. (Goodreads)
NEW STUDY RESOURCES
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)
Organisational Behaviour 6e and its rich suite of digital educational resources leads the market in this exciting field. Now in its sixth edition, the engaging text has been developed to satisfy the evolving needs of learners and academics with its offerings of contemporary theory and research, real-world examples, learning resources and visually stimulating design. (booktopia)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 artist’s unique approach and perspective provided art and society with a new way of seeing things. (Goodreads)
ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLE – CUSTURAL AND HISTORIC RESOUCES
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)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. Almost all the evidence in Dark Emu comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources. (Goodreads)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)‘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)
It is now over 250 years since James Cook and his crew set sail in the Endeavour to explore the Pacific. In 1770 they reached the east coast of a continent that has been inhabited for more than 65,000 years by many Indigenous groups with different languages and diverse cultures. Cook’s landing marked the beginning of a history that still has repercussions today, a history that both unites and divides Australia and highlights the continuing need for reconciliation. (booktopia)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)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. (Goodreads)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.
The Battle of One Tree Hill tells the story of one of the most audacious stands against this influx. It concerns actions engineered by a father and son, Moppy and Multuggerah. In 1843, this culminated in an ingenious ambush and one of the first solid defeats of white settlement in Queensland. (Goodreads)
Pathfinder – A list of AHS library resources: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Culture Resources (Click link below)
Online copies of CHOICE magazine at: icon on library catalogue home page, scroll down (maximum 5 users at any one time) or go to https://www.choice.com.au/ Username: library@ahs.qld.edu.au Password: choice
ALSO TAKE A LOOK ON THE CATALOGUE AT THE “WHAT’S HOT” SECTION IN THE BLUE MENU BAR.
