Writers' Week 2022

March 2022

Adelaide hosts Australia’s largest literary festival and the line-up of authors in 2022 was as impressive as we’ve all come to expect. Once again, the City of Unley Libraries, and both the Clarence Park and Fullarton Park Community Centres, livestreamed the East Stage discussions, so we've collected all the books mentioned in that stream below for your reading pleasure. While many of these books go through some heightened demand, you can place a hold to ensure you get a copy as soon as possible.

Also, you can search the catalogue for ‘Adelaide Writer’s Week 2022’ to see what’s available. BorrowBox also has a digital collection of books featured in the Adelaide Writers Week Festival. 

Staff Recommendations

The sessions may be over, but the books are still waiting to be read. At the top of each entry you will find the session recommended and why our staff members wanted to see it. Place a hold for the books related to each session below.

Funkytown by Paul Kennedy

28 by Brandon Jack

Beyond boyhood

with Brandon Jack and Paul Kennedy / Chaired by Tory Shepherd

‘I am really interested in this one and am hoping to read ‘28’ by Brandon Jack before it. He is a former Sydney Swans player who played 28 games, and although I wouldn’t normally read about a footballer I’ve heard it discusses expectation, masculinity (and toxicity surrounding it) and addiction in a really brilliant and beautiful way.’  - Darcy

I would also like to listen to Brandon Jack and Paul Kennedy “Beyond Boyhood”.  As the mother of a sport obsessed young man (and acknowledging my own sports obsession), I am interested to hear their “accounts of sport, masculinity and breaking free”. – Catherine  


The books

Funkytown

by Paul Kennedy

Paul Kennedy's Funkytown is the vivid true story of a year in the life of a teenager leaping into manhood. It is 1993: a serial killer is loose on the streets of Frankston, Victoria. The community is paralysed by fear and a state's police force and national media come to find a killer. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Paul Kennedy is searching for something else entirely. He is focused on finishing school, getting drafted into the AFL and falling in love. So much can change in a year. The rites of passage for many Australian teenage boys - blackout drinking, simmering violence and emotional suppression - take their toll, and the year that starts with so much promise ends with Kennedy expelled, arrested and undrafted. But one teacher sees Kennedy self-destructing, and becomes determined to set him on another path. Told with poignancy, humour and evoking the brilliant, dusty haze of late Australian summer, Funkytown is a love letter to adolescence, football, family, and outer suburbia 

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28: a memoir of football, addiction, art, masculinity and love

by Brandon Jack

A brutally honest memoir that completely rethinks what it means to be a man. How does one come to be? Continually told he was born with footballing blood, Brandon Jack has spent his life uncertain of the relationship he holds with the games he's played. Now a writer and musician, he sits in his apartment and reflects upon the years spent pursuing what felt like an inevitability - the footballing life. This is a unique and darkly poetic fly-on-the-wall account of a world which is usually shown in bright lights. Filled with relentlessly driven diary entries, vivid details of life at the fringe, and recounts of binge drinking into oblivion as an escape during his playing days at the Sydney Swans, 28 is a portrayal of the sporting psyche in a way that has never been done before. But the true beauty of this book lies in the space between football. Laid bare on these pages, a cuttingly honest deep-dive into sport, addiction, art, sexuality, masculinity, love, family and identity.

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For some book recommendations about healthy masculinity visit our Let's Talk page

Well Hello by Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales

 

Well Hello

with Annabel Crabb and Miranda Murphy/ Chaired by Natasha Cica

Annabel Crabb – “South Australia’s own” host of the ridiculously successful podcast with Leigh Sales, Chat 10 Looks 3.  She is a great raconteur, never short of a word and so funny and stylish!  The time with her will fly by. - Louise 


The book

Well Hello

by Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales

In 2014, two of Australia's most high-profile journalists sat at a kitchen table, hit record on a phone and started a rambling conversation that's still going on (and on). From books to TV, music to cooking, friendship to films, there's little cultural terrain Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales haven't traversed in their oddly named but nonetheless wildly popular podcast Chat 10 Looks 3. Now, in their first book together, the pair takes a stroll through some of the issues of our time, offering advice for would-be writers, thoughts on developing a rich reading life, tips for navigating the perilous world of social media, and the secrets of a great friendship, all with the digressions that listeners of their podcast have come to love. Here Crabb and Sales discuss kindness, success and failure, and not taking yourself -- or others -- too seriously, with a liberal sprinkling of fairy wrens, granny pants, show tunes, creative insults, diabolical mum bags and CLANGs. Whether you're a devoted listener of Chat 10 Looks 3, curious as to what all the fuss is about, or simply looking to cry-laugh on public transport, Well Hello is the book for you.

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Love Stories by Trent Dalton

 

Loves Stories

with Trent Dalton/ Chaired by Ashley Hay

Trent Dalton – always lovely writing, either in short or long form, has a deep interest in humanity. At Writer’s Week he will be talking about his Love Stories project which I’m sure will include some beautiful anecdotes behind the stories themselves. - Louise

I would like to hear Trent Dalton speaking again.  I saw him at last year’s WW and he was great, very engaging and full of upbeat energy – like the Energizer Bunny!  I haven’t read Love Stories yet but I intend to, it sounds to me like the perfect anecdote to the disconnect, angst and negativity we’ve all experienced over the last couple of years.  - Catherine 


The book

Love Stories

by Trent Dalton

Trent Dalton goes out into the world and asks a simple, direct question: Can you please tell me a love story? A warm, wise, poignant, funny, and moving book about love in all its guises, including stories, observations, and reflections on lovers in parks; people in cemeteries, hospital wards, pubs, and bingo halls; and newlyweds walking out of registry offices. There will be stories of people falling into love, falling out of love, and never letting go of the loved ones in their hearts.

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Blight Street by Geoff Goodfellow

 

Blight Street

with Geoff Goodfellow and performers Roslyn Oades and Nic Darrigo/ Chaired by Rick Sarre

Geoff Goodfellow – an Adelaide legend! Experiencing Geoff reading his own work is always special, this time he has a new verse novella called Blight Street. - Louise  


The book

Blight Street

by Geoff Goodfellow

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Growing up queer in Australia edited by Benjamin Law

 

Growing up in Australia

with Anita heiss, Benjamin Law and Fiona Murphy / Chaired by Anton Enus

Benjamin Law – his upbringing was made hilariously famous by the TV show “The family Law”, hear him in person with other panelists talking about “Growing up in Australia”, all their perspectives should be interesting. - Louise 


The books

Growing up in Australia

- see below in our live streaming section.

Growing up queer in Australia

Edited by Benjamin Law

I marked the day in my adolescent diary with a single blank page. The mantle of 'queer migrant' compelled me to keep going - to go further. I never 'came out' to my parents, I felt I owed them no explanation. I was thirty-eight and figured it was time to come out to her. Even now, I sometimes think that I don't know my own desire. Compiled by celebrated author and journalist Benjamin Law, 'Growing Up Queer in Australia' assembles voices from across the spectrum of LGBTIQA+ identity. Spanning diverse places, eras, genders, ethnicities and experiences, these are the stories of growing up queer in Australia. Compiled by celebrated author and journalist Benjamin Law, Growing Up Queer in Australia assembles voices from across the spectrum of LGBTIQA+ identity. Spanning diverse places, eras, genders, ethnicities and experiences, these are the stories of growing up queer in Australia. For better or worse, sooner or later, life conspires to reveal you to yourself, and this is growing up. With contributions from David Marr, Fiona Wright, Nayuka Gorrie, Steve Dow, Holly Throsby, Sally Rugg, Tony Ayres, Nic Holas, Rebecca Shaw, Kerryn Phelps and many more.

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So you think you know what's good for you? by Dr Norman Swan

 

Cometh the virus, cometh the man

with Norman Swan / Chaired by David Sly

Norman Swan – Australia’s go-to on anything Coronavirus related, his new book offers general health advice.  And because it’s Norman Swan, it should be honest, practical and relevant.  A calm and extremely knowledgeable communicator, hearing him speak on any topic would be riveting. - Louise 


The book 

So you think you know what's good for you?

by Norman Swan

 

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Leaping into waterfalls by Bernadette Brennan

The countess from Kirribilli by Joyce Morgan

In case you missed them

with  Bernadette Brennan and Joyce Morgan/ Chaired by Caroline Baum

I have just read the amazing biography of Australian writer Gillian Mears by Bernadette Brennan - Leaping into Waterfalls: the enigmatic Gillian Mears. This is an absolutely riveting, fascinating and sometimes horrifying account of a writer's life and introduces a body of work that I was unfamiliar with. Bernadette has also written a biography of Helen Garner - my favourite Australian author.  The other author Joyce Morgan - who I don't know - has written a biography of the writer Elizabeth von Arnim - a writer born in Australia who became a "literary sensation compared to Jane Austen." Lots for follow up there and to put on my reading list. - Carolyn 


The books 

Leaping into waterfalls : the enigmatic Gillian Mears

By Bernadette Brennan

To most people Gillian Mears appeared to be a shy woman from Grafton, but her lived and imaginative life was rich with adventure, risk and often transgressive passion. In her award-winning and acclaimed novels and short stories Mears wrote fearlessly of the dark undercurrents of country and family life and probed the depths and complexity of human desire.

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The countess from Kirribilli

By Joyce Morgan

Elizabeth von Arnim was an extraordinary woman who lived during glamorous, exciting and changing times that spanned the innocence of Victorian Sydney and finished with the march of Hitler through Europe. Joyce Morgan brings her to vivid and spellbinding life.

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Devotion by Hannah Kent

 

Devotion

with  Hannah Kent/ Chaired by Anton Enus

I want to catch Hannah Kent (Thurs 10 March) - loved her latest Devotion - particularly as it is relevant to my family history story - German Lutheran immigrants coming to SA in the mid 1800s  - Carolyn 


The book

Devotion

By Hannah Kent

Prussia, 1836. Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature - she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity ... until she meets Thea. Ocean, 1838. The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their King's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne's heart, along with the miracle of her love for Thea. Theirs is a bond that nothing can break. The whale passed. The music faded. South Australia, 1838. A new start in an old land. God, society and nature itself decree Hanne and Thea cannot be together. But within the impossible ... is devotion.

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Once there were wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

 

Once there were wolves

with  Charlotte McConaghy / Chaired by Geordie Williamson

I also want to catch Charlotte McConaghy (Sunday 6 March) who will be talking about her latest novel - Once There Were Wolves - which I haven't read. I recently read her first novel The Last Migration which I would highly recommend 


The book 

Once there were wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team tasked with reintroducing fourteen grey wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but a broken Aggie, too. However, Inti is not the woman she once was, and may be in need of rewilding herself.

Despite fierce opposition from the locals, Inti's wolves surprise everyone by thriving, and she begins to let her guard down, even opening up to the possibility of love. But when a local farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, she makes a reckless decision to protect them, testing every instinct she has.

But if her wolves didn't make the kill, then who did? And what will she do when the man she's been seeing becomes the main suspect?

Propulsive and spellbinding, Once There Were Wolves is the unforgettable tale of a woman desperate to save the creatures she loves. Part thriller, part redemptive love story, Charlotte McConaghy's profoundly affecting novel will stay with you forever.

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This is your mind on plants by Michael Pollan

 

This is your mind on plants

with  Michael Pollan / Chaired by Ben Brooker

Michael Pollan’s talk has piqued my interest – his long-term exploration into our relationship with plants and nature is intriguing; his curiosity always shines through and gives you plenty of food for though. His latest book is an eye-opener that really gives you a unique perspective on the way we govern ourselves both personally and as a society. - Hannah 


The book 

This is your mind on plants

by Michael Pollan

Of all the many things humans rely on plants for, surely the most curious is our use of them to change consciousness: to stimulate, calm, or completely alter the qualities of our mental experience. In This Is Your Mind On Plants, Michael Pollan explores three very different drugs - opium, caffeine and mescaline - and throws the fundamental strangeness of our thinking about them into sharp relief. Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs, while consuming (or in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants, and the equally powerful taboos.

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Real pigeons - Spy High by Andrew McDonald and Ben Wood

Pawcasso by Remi Lai

Kids' Day

for readers aged 2-11

Our Youth and Children’s team have plenty of favourites attending as well! Did you know that children’s graphic novels are one of our most popular collections? The creators of the super-popular Real Pigeons graphic novel series are making an appearance; another favourite is Remy Lai, whose middle-grade fiction and graphic novels highlight stories of young Chinese immigrants and Chinese Australians. 


The books 

Real Pigeons

by Andrew McDonald and Ben Wood

the Real Pigeons solve high crimes - by flying and spying everywhere. They zoom around in their nest plane and wear cloudy disguises as they investigate weird mysteries. Like why are birds falling out of the sky? Who kit-napped a notorious kitten called Clawzy? And why is a pack of locusts attacking them?

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Pawcasso

by Remy Lai

Every Saturday, Pawcasso trots into town with a basket, a shopping list and cash in paw to buy groceries for his family. One day, he passes by Jo's house, where she's peering out the window, bored and lonely. When Jo sets out to follow him, a group of kids from school mistake her for Pawcasso's owner and, excited to make new friends, she reluctantly hides the truth. But what starts as a Chihuahua-sized lie quickly grows into a Great Dane-sized problem when Pawcasso gets his own internet fan club

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Other print copies of Remy Lai books via our catalogue

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More digital copies of Remy Lai books via our eLibrary on Overdrive

Other digital copies of Remy Lai books via our eLibrary on BorrowBox 

 

 


 

The Books (Live streaming sessions)

The artful Dickens by John Mullan  

The Artful Dickens

by John Mullan

Discover the tricks of a literary master in this essential guide to the fictional world of Charles Dickens. From Pickwick to Scrooge, Copperfield to Twist, how did Dickens find the perfect names for his characters? What was Dickens's favourite way of killing his characters? When is a Dickens character most likely to see a ghost? Why is Dickens's trickery only fully realised when his novels are read aloud? In thirteen entertaining and wonderfully insightful essays, John Mullan explores the literary machinations of Dickens's eccentric genius, from his delight in cliches to his rendering of smells and his outrageous use of coincidences. A treat for all lovers of Dickens, this essential companion puts his audacity, originality and brilliance on full display.

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Growing up in Australia  

Growing up in Australia

by Various, with an introduction by Alice Pung

This special collection is the perfect introduction to Black Inc.'s definitive 'Growing Up' series. Featuring pieces from Growing Up Asian, Growing Up Aboriginal, Growing Up African, Growing Up Queer and Growing Up Disabled in Australia, it captures the diversity of our nation in moving and revelatory ways. Growing Up in Australia also features gems from essential Australian memoirs such as Rick Morton's 100 Years of Dirt and Magda Szubanski's Reckoning. Contributors include Benjamin Law, Anna Goldsworthy, Nyadol Nyuon, Tara June Winch and many more. With a foreword by Alice Pung, this anthology is a wonderful gift for adult and adolescent readers alike.

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System failure by Michael Bradley  

System failure: the silencing of rape survivors

by Michael Bradley

One in five Australian women has been the victim of a sexual assault. For these women, there is less than a 1 per cent chance that their rapist has been arrested, prosecuted and convicted of the crime. These are the bare numerical facts of system failure. We offer rape survivors a stark choice: go to the police, or remain silent. In recent times, the public pressure on survivors to report has increased, alongside a growing focus on two other options: civil action against the perpetrator, or going public. These evolving social responses are intended to offer an alternative to the tradition of silencing. However, each of these choices, for survivors, involves a further sacrifice of what they have already lost. The legal system's responses to rape were designed without survivors in mind, and they do not address, in any way, the questions that survivors ask or the needs they express. Simply put, on the systemic response to rape, we are having the wrong conversation.

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Power and consent by Rachel Doyle  

Power and consent

by Rachel Doyle

The scandal involving Dyson Heydon, former justice of the High Court, confirmed that the scourge of sexual harassment in Australian workplaces was also to be found in the chambers of one of the seven most senior judges in the country. An unquestioning reliance on the calibre of the fine legal minds appointed to the High Court had blinded us to the reality that sexual harassment is as common in the legal profession as it is in corporate Australia and in all other industries. In particular, in the legal profession, a hierarchical structure and a culture of silence had served to perpetuate feelings of embarrassment, fear and shame on the part of victims. In Power & Consent, Rachel Doyle, a practising Senior Counsel for over a decade, argues that we need to understand the power relationships at the heart of the modern workplace. Sexual harassment is rarely a 'one off'. Perpetrators continue their harassment because they are not called to account for their actions. Silence and complicity allow recidivists to go unpunished and normalise the phenomenon of 'getting away with it'. Perpetrators must be taught what consent means. This book demands a new response to complaints of sexual harassment; one which recognises the power of strength in numbers, the probative value of multiple complaints, and the restorative power of grievances shared. It also calls for the imposition of new obligations: it asks bystanders to become participants and to take collective responsibility for supporting victims and stopping perpetrators.

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The luminous solution by Charlotte Wood  

The luminous solution

by Charlotte Wood

In this essential, illuminating book, the author shares the insights she has gained over a career paying close attention to her own mind, to the world around her and to the way she and others work. Drawing on research and decades of observant conversation and immersive reading, Charlotte shares what artists can teach the rest of us about inspiration and hard work, how to pursue truth in art and life, and to find courage during the difficult times: facing down what we fear and keeping going when things seem hopeless.

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Continuous Creation by Les Murray  

Continuous creation

by Les Murray

In a poetic gift from beyond the grave, Les Murray left a trove of last poems. These are poems he was working on up to his death, as well as work uncovered from his scrapbooks and files.

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After story by Larissa Behrendt  

After story

by Larissa Behrendt

When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother Della on a tour of England's most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past. Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine's older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols including Jane Austen, the Bronté sisters and Virginia Woolf, Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear.

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My body keeps your secrets by Lucia Osborne-Crowley  

My body keeps your secrets

by Lucia Osborne-Crowley

Lucia shares the voices of women and trans and non-binary people around the world, as well as her own deeply moving testimony. She writes of vulnerability, acceptance and the reclaiming of our selves, all in defiance of a world where atrocities are committed and survivors are repeatedly told to carry the weight of that shame.

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Carbon Justice by Jeremy Moss  

Carbon Justice

by Jeremy Moss

A leading political philosopher takes on Australia's biggest carbon emitters and their moral responsibilities.It's a shocking fact: the emissions produced annually from the fossil fuels extracted by Australia's major gas, coal and oil producers — Glencore, BHP Yancoal, Peabody, Whitehaven and Anglo-American — and sold here and overseas are larger than the emissions of all 25 million Australians.And if Australia's exported and domestic emissions are combined, Australia ranks as the sixth largest emitter in the world, behind China, USA, India, Russia and Japan. Far from being an insignificant contributor to climate change because of our small population, Australia is a key driver through our fossil fuel exports.How have these companies' exports escaped scrutiny when climate change is such an immediate area of concern around the world?Understanding the moral responsibility of Australia's major carbon emitters is a crucial first step in determining how to fairly share the burdens of a climate transition. In Carbon Justice, leading political philosopher Jeremy Moss sets out an ethical framework to establish the cost of the harms of these major emitters and what they should do about it. What they do next will shape Australia's response to climate change. 

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Seven and a half by Christos Tsiolkas  

7 1/2

by Christos Tsiolkas

A man arrives at a house on the coast to write a book. Separated from his lover and family and friends, he finds the solitude he craves in the pyrotechnic beauty of nature, just as the world he has shut out is experiencing a cataclysmic shift. The preoccupations that have galvanised him and his work fall away, and he becomes lost in memory and beauty. He also begins to tell us a story. A retired porn star is made an offer he can't refuse for the sake of his family and future. So he returns to the world he fled years before, all too aware of the danger of opening the door to past temptations and long-buried desires. Can he resist the oblivion and bliss they promise? A breathtakingly audacious novel by the acclaimed author of The Slap and Damascus about finding joy and beauty in a raging and punitive world, about the refractions of memory and time and, most subversive of all, about the mystery of art and its creation.

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Wild abandon by Emily Bitto  

Wild abandon

by Emily Bitto

In spring of 2011, a young Australian man travels to the USA. It is a quest of sorts, a quest as old as narrative itself: a young man striking out from home in search of experience and culture, which he associates with that talismanic word, America. Beginning in the excessive, uncanny-familiar glamour and plenitude of New York City, Will crashes with expat chef and former nemesis Paul, and his girlfriend Justine, a rising star in the art scene. From here, he embarks on a doomed road trip into the American heartland, where he meets Wayne Gage. This charismatic, fast-living and deeply damaged Vietnam veteran, collector of exotic animals and would-be spirit guide, draws Will towards the dark conclusion of his journey. Wild Abandon is a headlong tumble through the falling world of end-days capitalism, a haunting, hyperreal snapshot of our own strange times and what it means to be a tourist, or indeed a human, within them.

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A bloody good rant by Thomas Keneally  

A bloody good rant

by Thomas Keneally

Thomas Keneally has been observing, reflecting on and writing about Australia and the human condition for well over fifty years. In this deeply personal, passionately drawn and richly tuned collection he draws on a lifetime of engagement with the great issues of our recent history and his own moments of discovery and understanding. He writes with unbounded joy of being a grandparent, and with intimacy and insight about the prospect of death and the meaning of faith. He is outraged about the treatment of Indigenous Australians and refugees, and argues fiercely against market economics and the cowardice of climate change deniers. And he introduces us to some of the people, both great and small, who have dappled his life.

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The right to sex by Amia Srinivasan  

The right to sex

by Amia Srinivasan

How should we talk about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do; a supposedly private act laden with public meaning; a personal preference shaped by outside forces; a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart. Since #MeToo many have fixed on consent as the key framework for achieving sexual justice. Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity – its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power – we need to move beyond 'yes and no', wanted and unwanted. We need to interrogate the fraught relationships between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation. We need to rethink sex as a political phenomenon. Searching, trenchant and extraordinarily original, The Right to Sex is a landmark examination of the politics and ethics of sex in this world, animated by the hope of a different one. 

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Mermaid singing and Peel me a lotus  

Mermaid singing ; Peel me a lotus

by Charmian Clift

Two classic travel works by Charmian Clift describing the life she and her Australian family led in Greece in the 1950's in one volume.

For Charmian Clift, Greece was the Promised Land. In 1954 she and her husband, George Johnston, abandoned their sophisticated London existence and set off with two new typewriters and two small children to start a new life.

In Mermaid Singing - written during the first miraculous year of discovery - she records the family's adaptation to the primitive sponge-diving island of Kalymnos.

Peel Me a Lotus continues the exploration as Clift and Johnson buy a house on the island of Hydra, in the middle of the summer tourist trail. Clift's writing about Greece was undervalued at the time of first publication, because she wrote from a women's point of view and recorded the intimate details of daily life. It is exactly this quality which enables this classic to appeal to a new generation of readers.

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Signs and wonders by Delia Falconer  

Signs and wonders: dispatches from a time of beauty and loss

by Delia Falconer

Chosen as a 'Book of the Year' in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Book Review. The celebrated, Walkley Award-winning author on how global warming is changing not only our climate but our culture. Beautifully observed, brilliantly argued and deeply felt, these essays show that our emotions, our art, our relationships with the generations around us – all the delicate networks that make us who we are – have already been transformed.

In Signs and Wonders, Falconer explores how it feels to live as a reader, a writer, a lover of nature and a mother of small children in an era of profound ecological change. Building on Falconer's two acclaimed essays, 'Signs and Wonders' and the Walkley Award-winning 'The Opposite of Glamour', Signs and Wonders is a pioneering examination of how we are changing our culture, language and imaginations along with our climate.

Is a mammoth emerging from the permafrost beautiful or terrifying? How is our imagination affected when something that used to be ordinary – like a car windscreen smeared with insects – becomes unimaginable? What can the disappearance of the paragraph from much contemporary writing tell us about what's happening in the modern mind? Scientists write about a 'great acceleration' in human impact on the natural world.

Signs and Wonders shows that we are also in a period of profound cultural acceleration, which is just as dynamic, strange, extreme and, sometimes, beautiful. Ranging from an 'unnatural' history of coal to the effect of a large fur seal turning up in the park below her apartment, this book is a searching and poetic examination of the ways we are thinking about how, and why, to live now. 

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Violeta by Isabel Allende  

Violeta

by Isabel Allende

This novel tells the epic story of Violeta Del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family of five boisterous sons. From the start, her life will be marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses all and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling ... She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, times of both poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life will be shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and, ultimately, not one but two pandemics.

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Wild place by Christian White  

Wild place

by Christian White

In the summer of 1989, a local teen goes missing from the idyllic suburb of Camp Hill in Australia. As rumours of Satanic rituals swirl, schoolteacher Tom Witter becomes convinced he holds the key to the disappearance. When the police won't listen, he takes matters into his own hands with the help of the missing girl's father and a local neighbourhood watch group. But as dark secrets are revealed and consequences to past actions are faced, Tom learns that the only way out of the darkness is to walk deeper into it. Wild Place peels back the layers of suburbia, exposing what's hidden underneath -- guilt, desperation, violence -- and attempts to answer the question: Why do good people do bad things?

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The Last Guests by J. P. Pomare  

The last guests

by J. P. Pomare

Ever have the feeling you're being watched? Newlyweds Lina and Cain don't make it out to their property on gorgeous Lake Tarawera as often as they'd like, so when Cain suggests they rent the house out to vacationers, Lina reluctantly agrees. While the home has been in her family for generations, they could use the extra money. And at first, Lina is amazed at how quickly guests line up, and at how much they're willing to pay. But both Lina and Cain have been keeping secrets, secrets that won't be put off by fresh paint or a new alarm system. And someone has been watching them--their mundane tasks, their intimate moments. When a visit takes a deadly turn, Lina realizes someone out there knows something they shouldn't... and that welcoming strangers into your home is playing a dangerous game.

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Love Stories by Trent Dalton  

Love stories

by Trent Dalton

Trent Dalton goes out into the world and asks a simple, direct question: Can you please tell me a love story? A warm, wise, poignant, funny, and moving book about love in all its guises, including stories, observations, and reflections on lovers in parks; people in cemeteries, hospital wards, pubs, and bingo halls; and newlyweds walking out of registry offices. There will be stories of people falling into love, falling out of love, and never letting go of the loved ones in their hearts.

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The reckoning by Jess Hill  

The Reckoning

by Jess Hill

This year, Australia's #MeToo moment erupted in the national parliament. In this electrifying essay, Jess Hill, the acclaimed author of See What You Made Me Do, traces the meaning of those events and what could happen next.

What are the politics of rage? What couldn't Scott Morrison see? And what hope is there of real progress and accountability? Hill examines how the law, the media and politics can bring about – or stall – change. She shows how when #MeToo meets patriarchy, the results are unpredictable – from lasting reform to backlash. And she asks whether a conservative prime minister can do what is required to meet the moment.

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The death of Dr Duncan by Tim Reeves  

The death of Dr Duncan

by Tim Reeves

The drowning of Dr Duncan in the River Torrens in 1972 remains one of South Australia's most notorious unsolved murders. His death shocked the community and still reverberates 50 years later.

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Fulfillment by Alec MacGillis  

Fulfillment: winning and losing in one-click America

by Alec MacGillis

An award-winning journalist investigates Amazon's impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States.

In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle A Story of Ford-America. He blasted the callousness of a company worth "a billion dollars" that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes dangerous assembly line labor. Eighty-three years later, the market capitalization of Amazon.com has exceeded one trillion dollars, while the value of the Ford Motor Company hovers around thirty billion. We have, it seems, entered the age of one-click America-and as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, its sway will only intensify.

Alec MacGillis's Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company's growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon's sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated. Ranging across the country, MacGillis tells the stories of those who've thrived and struggled to thrive in this rapidly changing environment.

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Mortals by Rachel E. Menzies and Ross G. Menzies  

Mortals: how the fear of death shaped human society

by Rachel E. Menzies and Ross G. Menzies

This book uncovers how our fear of death is the hidden driver of most of humankind's endeavours. The human mind can grapple with the future, visualising and calculating solutions to complex problems, giving us tremendous advantages over other species throughout our evolution. However, this capability comes with a curse. By five to ten years of age, all humans know where they are heading: to the grave. In Mortals, Rachel Menzies and Ross Menzies, both acclaimed psychologists whose life's work has focused on death anxiety, examine all the major human responses to death across history. From the development of religious systems denying the finality of death, to 'immortality projects' involving enduring art, architecture and literature, some of the consequences of our fear of death have been glorious while others have been destructive, leading to global conflicts and genocide. Looking forward, Mortals hypothesises that worse could be to come-our unconscious dread of death has led to rampant consumerism and overpopulation, driving the global warming and pandemic crises that now threaten our very existence. In a terrible irony, Homo sapiens may ultimately be destroyed by our knowledge of our own mortality.

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Easy lies and influence by Fiona McLeod  

Easy lies & influence

by Fiona McLeod

In Australia, corruption spends public funds in pursuit of power, rewards favour, and strips support from worthy programs. It silences journalists and those charged with upholding standards of integrity by depriving them of funding. Grift and stacking are commonplace as those chasing influence infiltrate the structures of power. Corruption rewards loyalty through appointments to office and by preferencing those within the favoured network ahead of others of equal or greater talent. It conceals itself through unfit-for-purpose access to information laws and processes, vague budget commitments, the assertion of unchecked executive discretion, a quick media cycle and overburdened parliamentary committees. It undermines trust in government at a time when trust is vital to keeping us safe. Corruption allows mistrust to fester, offers nourishment to conspiracy theories, and engenders civil unrest. In Easy Lies & Influence, Fiona McLeod, a practising Senior Counsel and Chair of the Accountability Round Table, tells us what corruption can do, and why it's imperative that we address it. After all, if citizens can't see a way of bolstering the pillars of democracy, trust, truth, integrity and accountability, what chance is there of restoring decency and the prioritisation of community interests in public office?

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The magician by Colm Toibin  

The magician

by Colm Toibin

When the Great War breaks out in 1914 Thomas Mann, like so many of his fellow countrymen, is fired up with patriotism. He imagines the Germany of great literature and music, that had drawn him away from the stifling, conservative town of his childhood, might be a cause of pride once again. But his flawed vision will form the beginning of a dark and complex relationship with his homeland, and see the start of great conflict within his own brilliant and troubled family.

Colm Toibin's epic novel is the story of a man of intense contradictions. Although Thomas Mann becomes famous and admired, his inner life is hesitant, fearful and secretive. His blindness to impending disaster in the Great War will force him to rethink his relationship to Germany as Hitler comes to power. He has six children with his clever and fascinating wife, Katia, while his own secret desires appear threaded through his writing. He and Katia deal with exile bravely, doing everything possible to keep the family safe, yet they also suffer the terrible ravages of suicide among Thomas's siblings and their own children. In The Magician, Colm Toibin captures the profound personal conflict of a very public life, and through this life creates an intimate portrait of the twentieth century.

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The mother by Jane Caro  

The mother

by Jane Caro

Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore widow, real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother. She was thrilled when her daughter, Ally, married her true love, but as time goes by Miriam watches in disbelief and growing fear as Ally's perfect husband starts controlling her and their children, and cutting them off from the rest of the world.

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The family doctor by Debra Oswald  

The family doctor

by Debra Oswald

Paula is a dedicated suburban GP, who is devastated by the murder of a friend and her children by their estranged husband and father. Stacey and the children had been staying with her after fleeing his control, and Paula is haunted by the thought that she couldn't protect them when they most needed it. How had she missed the warning signs? How had she failed to keep them safe? Not long after, a patient with suspicious injuries brings her anxious young son into Paula's surgery. The woman admits that her husband hurts her, but she's terrified to leave for fear of escalating the violence, and defeated by the consistent failures of the law to help her. Can Paula go against everything she believes to make sure one woman is saved, one child spared? She isn't motivated by revenge. She's desperately trying to prevent a tragedy.

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Dark emu by Bruce Pascoe  

Dark emu

by Bruce Pascoe

Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been blatantly understated in modern retellings of early Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia’s past is required

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Devotion by Hannah Kent  

Devotion

by Hannah Kent

Prussia, 1836. Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature - she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity ... until she meets Thea. Ocean, 1838. The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their King's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia. In the face of brutal hardship, the beauty of whale song enters Hanne's heart, along with the miracle of her love for Thea. Theirs is a bond that nothing can break. The whale passed. The music faded. South Australia, 1838. A new start in an old land. God, society and nature itself decree Hanne and Thea cannot be together. But within the impossible ... is devotion.

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