Pelsaert's Nightmare by Gregory Hansen

$45.00 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

In the antipodean winter of 1629, the Dutch East Indiaman 'Batavia' was wrecked on the desolate cays of the Houtman Abrolhos, an island chain lying beyond the sea horizon of what is now Western Australia. One year later her merchant commander, Francisco Pelsaert, lies dying in a mildewed room outside t he walls of Batavia Castle (modern-day Jakarta), the stigma of shipwreck and bloody mutiny foreclosing on his legacy. With only a servant-carer and the occasional visitor to relieve his solitude, he passes the hours in haunted reflection of events which have shaped his life. From the Netherlands and its colonial outposts to Mogul India and the coastal wildernesses of the Great South Land, Pelsaert's tale is one of many parts and places, of exotic encounter and shrouded pleasure to unnerving dreams and thwarted certainties. Ultimately, 'Pelsaert's Nightmare' is a journey in the quest for redemption. The manuscript was shortlisted for the inaugural 2016 First Novel Prize in the United Kingdom and was a First Place Category Winner in the 2018 Chaucer Book Awards for Pre-1750s Historical Fiction. ...Show more

No Modernism Without Lesbians by Diana Souhami

$39.99 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

'Souhami is an exceptionally witty and original biographer' Sunday Times, on Wild Girls. 'Souhami has a Midas touch with words. Her narrative sparkles' Nigel Nicolson, Sunday Telegraph, on Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter. The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place - Paris, Between the Wars - fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer. They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own - forming a community around them in Paris. Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris. ...Show more

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville

$39.99 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

Do not believe too quickly... What if Elizabeth Macarthur-wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in early Sydney-had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? In her introduction Kate Grenville tells, tongue firmly in cheek, of discovering a long-hidden box containing that memoir. What foll ows is a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented. Grenville's Elizabeth Macarthur is a passionate woman managing her complicated life-marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her own heart, the search for power in a society that gave her none-with spirit, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir reveals the dark underbelly of the polite world of Jane Austen. It explodes the stereotype of the women of the past- devoted and docile, accepting of their narrow choices. That was their public face-here's what one of them really thought. At the heart of this book is one of the most toxic issues of our times- the seductive appeal of false stories. Beneath the surface of Elizabeth Macarthur's life and the violent colonial world she navigated are secrets and lies with the dangerous power to shape reality. A Room Made of Leaves is the internationally acclaimed author Kate Grenville's first novel in almost a decade. It is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand that gives the past the piercing immediacy of the present.   ...Show more

Hollow Places: an Unusual History of Land and Legend by Christopher Hadley

$24.99 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

'Impossible to summarise and delightfully absorbing, Hadley's book is comfortably the most unexpected history book of the year' Sunday Times A luminous journey through a thousand years of folklore and English history. Once upon a time in a Hertfordshire field, an ancient yew tree hid a dragon hunte d by a giant named Piers Shonks. Today, the dragon and its slayer are the survivors of an 800-year battle between rural legend and national record, storytellers and sceptics. In this brilliant and lyrical history, Christopher Hadley journeys from churches to tombs to manuscript margins, to explore history, memory and legend, and the magical spaces where all three meet. ...Show more

Down Days: A Novel by Hugo, Ilze

$39.99 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

An Inventory of Losses by Judith Schalansky; Jackie Smith (Translator)

$45.00 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

A dazzling cabinet of curiosities from one of Europe's most acclaimed and inventive writers. Judith Schalansky's strange and wonderful new book, recalling writers as different as W.G. Sebald and Christa Wolf, Joan Didion and Rebecca Solnit, sees her return to the territory she explored so successfully w ith her best-selling Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On and Never Will, which Robert MacFarlane called "utterly exquisite" (Guardian) and about which Time Out's reviewer said "Rarely has armchair travel been so farflung and romantic". Judith Schalansky is a wholly original writer whose books articulate perfectly what she wishes to say. Each of the pieces, following the conventions of a different genre, considers something that is irretrievably lost to the world, including the paradisal pacific island of Tuanaki, the Caspian Tiger, the Villa Sacchetti in Rome, Sappho's love poems, Greta Garbo's fading beauty, a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, and the former East Germany's Palace of the Republic. As a child of the former East Germany, it's not surprising that the dominant emotion in Schalansky's work should be "loss" and its aftermath, but what is extraordinary is the thoroughly engaging mixture of intellectual curiosity, down-to-earth grasp of life's pitiless vitality, ironic humour, stylistic elegance and intensity of feeling that combine to make this book a masterpiece and one of the most original and beautifully designed books to be published in 2020. Translated from the German by Jackie Smith ...Show more

Hurricane Season by Melchor, Fernanda, Hughes, Sophie

$43.00 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse has the whole village investigating the murder. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these ch aracters--inners whom most people would write off as irredeemable--forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.Like Roberto Bolano's 2666 or Faulkner's novels, Hurricane Season takes place in a world saturated with mythology and violence--real violence, the kind that seeps into the soil, poisoning everything around: it's a world that becomes more and more terrifying the deeper you explore it. ...Show more

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty

$29.99 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of 15-year-old Dara McAnulty's world. From spring and through a year in his home patch in Northern Ireland, Dara spent the seasons writing. These vivid, evocative and moving diary entries about his connection to wildlife and the way he sees the world a re raw in their telling. Diary of a Young Naturalist portrays Dara's intense connection to the natural world, and his perspective as a teenager juggling exams and friendships alongside a life of campaigning. 'In writing this book,' Dara explains, 'I have experienced challenges but also felt incredible joy, wonder, curiosity and excitement. In sharing this journey my hope is that people of all generations will not only understand autism a little more but also appreciate a child's eye view on our delicate and changing biosphere.'   Dara lives with his mum, dad, brother Lorcan, sister Bláthnaid and rescue greyhound Rosie in County Down, Northern Ireland. Dara's love for nature, his activism and his honesty about autism, has earned him a huge social media following from across the world and many accolades: in 2017 he was awarded BBC Springwatch 'Unsprung Hero' Award and Birdwatch magazine 'Local Hero'; in 2018 he was awarded 'Animal Hero' of the year by the Daily Mirrorand became ambassador for RSPCA and the iWill campaign; in 2019 he became a Young Ambassador for the Jane Goodall Institute and became the youngest ever recipient of the RSPB Medal for conservation. 'We share a mind, a fascination with nature and a forthright desire to make the world a better place for it. I can't wait to read Dara's book.' Chris Packham 'Dara's is an extraordinary voice and vision: brave, poetic, ethical, lyrical, strong enough to have made him heard and admired from a young age.' Robert Macfarlane 'Our planet and its wildlife are in a dire state, but if anyone can help save them, Dara can - and he's bringing our generation along with him.' Bella Lack ...Show more

Repo Virtual by Corey J. White

$48.99 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

Corey J. White's debut novel Repo Virtual blurs the lines between the real and virtual in an action-packed cyberpunk heist story.The city of Neo Songdo is a Russian doll of realities -- augmented and virtual spaces anchored in the weight of the real. The smart city is designed to be read by machine visi on while people see only the augmented facade of the corporate ideal. At night the stars are obscured by an intergalactic virtual war being waged by millions of players, while on the streets below people are forced to beg, steal, and hustle to survive. Enter Julius Dax, online repoman and real-life thief. He's been hired for a special job: stealing an unknown object from a reclusive tech billionaire. But when he finds out he's stolen the first sentient AI, his payday gets a lot more complicated. ...Show more

Clothes... and Other Things That Matter (HB) by Alexandra Shulman

$35.00 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

Chosen by Evening Standard as one of the best books to look forward to in 2020. 'a must-read memoir for even those beyond the fashion set.' - Evening Standard Chosen by Stylist as one of 2020's best non-fiction books. 'In the funny and opinionated Clothes... and other things that matter, former Vogue U K editor Alexandra Shulman explores the meaning of clothes and how we wear them. From the little black dress to the white shirt and the bikini, she takes pieces of clothes and examines their role in her own life and the lives of women in general, touching on issues including sexual identity, motherhood, ambition, power and body image.A must-read for anyone, like Miranda Priestly, who knows that clothes might not maketh the woman, but they certainly help.' - Stylist 'Clothes... and other things that matter is a book not only about clothes but about the way we live our lives. From childhood onwards, the way we dress is a result of our personal history. In a mix of memoir, fashion history and social observation I am writing about the person our clothes allows us to be and sometimes the person they turn us into.' - Alexandra Shulman In Clothes... and other things that matter, Alexandra Shulman delves into her own life to look at the emotions, ambitions, expectations and meanings behind the way we dress. From the bra to the bikini, the trench coat to trainers, the slip dress to the suit, she explores their meaning in women's lives and how our wardrobes intersect with the larger world - the career ladder, motherhood, romance, sexual identity, ambition, failure, body image and celebrity. By turns funny, refreshingly self-deprecating and often very moving, this startlingly honest memoir from the ex-Editor of British Vogue will encourage women of all ages to consider what their own clothes mean to them, the life they live in them and the stories they tell. ...Show more

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

$44.00 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

"Ross Gay's eye lands upon wonder at every turn, bolstering my belief in the countless small miracles that surround us." --Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize winner and U.S. Poet Laureate The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyric essays, written daily over a tumu ltuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders. In The Book of Delights, one of today's most original literary voices offers up a genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year. The first nonfiction book from award-winning poet Ross Gay is a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. Among Gay's funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend's unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room. But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything other subject, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world--his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis.The Book of Delights is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight. ...Show more

All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg

$29.99 AUD

Category: New Hardbacks

An unforgettable novel of family secrets from New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins.