Here are some of the great new titles we’re excited about coming out in July and August – release dates are listed and pre-orders are welcome!
FICTION
Once There Were Wolves
Charlotte McConaghy
Release date: 3 August 2021
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.
Geiger
Gustaf Skoerdeman
Release date: 2 July 2021
The landline rings as Agneta is waving off her grandchildren. Just one word comes out of the receiver: ‘Geiger’. For decades, Agneta has always known that this moment would come, but she is shaken. She knows what it means.
Retrieving her weapon from its hiding place, she attaches the silencer and creeps up behind her husband before pressing the barrel to his temple.
Then she squeezes the trigger and disappears – leaving behind her wallet and keys.
The extraordinary murder is not Sara Nowak’s case. But she was once close to those affected and, defying regulations, she joins the investigation. What Sara doesn’t know is that the mysterious codeword is just the first piece in the puzzle of an intricate and devastating plot fifty years in the making.
The Island of Missing Trees
Elif Shafak
Release date: 3 August 2021
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic and chilli peppers, creeping honeysuckle, and in the centre, growing through a cavity in the roof, a fig tree. The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings; their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there, too, when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns – a botanist, looking for native species – looking, really, for Defne. The two lovers return to the taverna to take a clipping from the fig tree and smuggle it into their suitcase, bound for London. Years later, the fig tree in the garden is their daughter Ada’s only knowledge of a home she has never visited, as she seeks to untangle years of secrets and silence, and find her place in the world.
The Island of Missing Trees is a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, memory and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World.
The Last Guests
JP Pomare
Release date: 28 July 2021
Ever have the feeling you’re being watched?
Lina and Cain are doing their best to stay afloat. Money has been tight since Cain returned from active duty, and starting a family is proving harder than they thought. Putting Lina’s inherited lake house up for rent at weekends seems like the solution to at least one of their problems. The secluded house is more of a burden than a retreat, anyway, and fixing up the old place makes Cain feel useful for once. But letting strangers stay in their house might not be the best idea. Someone is watching – their most mundane tasks, their most intimate moments – and all the things Lina and Cain want to keep hidden will be exposed.
A smart, unsettling, unputdownable literary thriller from the award-winning, critically acclaimed writer of Call Me Evie, In the Clearing and Tell Me Lies.
The Bride of the Almond Tree
Robert Hillman
Release date: 2 July 2021
World War II is over and Hiroshima lies in a heap of poisoned rubble when young Quaker Wesley Cunningham returns home to Almond Tree. He served as a stretcher-bearer; he’s seen his fair share of horror. Now he intends to build beautiful houses and to marry, having fallen in love with his neighbour’s daughter Beth Hardy.
Beth has other plans. An ardent socialist, she is convinced the Party and Stalin’s Soviet Union hold the answers to all the world’s evils. She doesn’t believe in marriage, and in any case her devotion is to the cause. Beth’s ideals will exact a ruinously high price. But Wes will not stop loving her. This is the story of their journey through the catastrophic mid-twentieth century-from summer in Almond Tree to Moscow’s bitter winter and back again-to find a way of being together.
A love story about loyalty, belief and idealism, set against the epic sweep of twentieth-century history.
The Long Game
Simon Rowell
Release date: 3 August 2021
A summer of relentless heat. A local surfer named Ray Carlson is found dead in a house not far from Portsea back beach. There’s a kitchen knife deep in his chest, and blood everywhere.
Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer is scarcely back from extended leave, and still wrestling with her demons, but she is assigned the case-alongside her new service dog, Harry, whose instincts help her in unexpected ways.
There’s an obvious suspect for the murder, and Zoe makes an arrest. But it’s all too neat, and none of Zoe’s colleagues believes her theory that the whole thing is a stitch-up.
Except now someone is trying to hunt Zoe down.
Superbly plotted, and vividly set in the beachside suburbs and hilly retreats around Melbourne, The Long Game is a mystery about a tough and clever investigator who won’t give up.
The Rabbits
Sophie Overett
Release date: 2 July 2021
How do you make sense of the loss of those you love most?
Delia Rabbit has asked herself this question over and over again since the disappearance of her older sister, Bo. Crippled by grief, Delia and her mother became dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned eighteen.
Now an art teacher at a Queensland college, Delia has managed to build a new life for herself and to create a family of her own. Only more and more that life is slipping- her partner, Ed, has gone, her daughter, Olive, is distancing herself, and, all of a sudden, in the middle of a blinding heatwave, her sixteen-year-old son, Charlie, disappears too.
Suddenly what was buried feels close to the surface, and the Rabbits are faced not only with each other, but also with themselves.
The Rabbits is a multigenerational family story with a dose of magical realism. It is about family secrets, art, very mild superpowers, loneliness and the strange connections we make in the places we least expect.
The Deep
Kyle Perry
Release date: 2 July 2021
If you encounter the Black Wind while out there at sea, all you can do is race back to shore. There’s no predicting it, no sailing it, no living with it. And if you’re a Dempsey, it can play tricks on your mind. . .
On the Tasman Peninsula, nestled amidst the largest sea-cliffs in the southern hemisphere, is Shacktown. Here the Dempsey family have run a drug ring for generations, using the fishing industry and the deadly Black Wind as cover. But when thirteen-year-old Forest Dempsey walks out of the ocean, bruised and branded, everything is at risk – because Forest has been presumed dead for the last seven years.
Mackerel Dempsey, out of jail on strict bail conditions, is trying to change his fate, doing his best to keep out of trouble before his next court date. His cousin Ahab has renounced the family altogether, in favour of working to keep the town and its fragile tourism economy safe. But in their search for answers about Forest, both Mackerel and Ahab can’t help but be drawn back into the underworld. What happened to the boy all those years ago? And does it have anything to do with the infamous drug kingpin Blackbeard, who is rumoured to be moving in on Shacktown?
When secrets long thought buried at sea wash up on shore, generations of the Dempsey family must stand up for what they believe in, even if it means sacrificing everything. But in the gritty fight between right and wrong, blood isn’t always thicker than water, and everyone is at risk of being pulled under…
From the bestselling breakout author of The Bluffs comes a heart-stopping new thriller set on the rugged coast of Tasmania about modern-day pirates, family bonds and betrayals, and the hidden dangers that lurk in the deep…
Dark as Last Night
Tony Birch
Release date: 3 August 2021
Dark as Last Night confirms, once again, that award-winning Indigenous writer, Tony Birch, is a master of the short story. These exceptional stories capture the importance of human connection at pivotal moments in our lives, whether those occur because of the loss of a loved one or the uncertainties of childhood. In this collection we witness a young girl struggling to protect her mother from her father’s violence, two teenagers clumsily getting to know one another by way of a shared love of music, and a man mourning the death of his younger brother, while beset by memories and regrets from their shared past.
Throughout this powerful collection, Birch’s concern for the humanity of those who are often marginalised or overlooked shines bright.
Just Murdered (Ms Fishers’s Modern Murder Mysteries)
Katherine Kovacic
Release date: 3 August 2021
Peregrine Fisher is unexpectedly summoned to a meeting of the Adventuresses’ Club of the Antipodes, where she learns some incredible news.
When Adventuress Florence Astor is accused of murder, Peregrine jumps at the chance to help on the case. Detective James Steed, initially dismissive, quickly finds Peregrine’s flair for investigating and headstrong nature leave him little choice.
A second shocking death occurs and Detective Steed’s boss, Inspector Sparrow, demands the case be brought to a close with suspicious speed.
With Sparrow issuing threats, time is running out for Peregrine. It seems she’s set herself an impossible task, but then, as Detective Steed says, ‘never underestimate a woman named Fisher’.
Based on the screenplay by Deb Cox.
Songbirds
Christy Lefteri
Release date: 2 July 2021
‘It began with a crunch of leaves and earth. So early, so cold, the branches shone with ice. I’d returned to collect the songbirds. They are worth more than their weight in gold.’
Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe, and selling them on the black market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha, who works for Petra and her daughter Angela. Nisha is raising Angela, mothering her own child back in Sri Lanka by the screen of a phone.
When Nisha disappears, Yiannis is convinced he is responsible, paralysed by heartbreak and fear. Petra is forced to care for her child again, and when little Angela insists that they find Nisha, she begins to see that Nisha hasn’t simply run away, and that no one else will bother to look for her.
With infinite tenderness and skill, Christy Lefteri has crafted a powerful story about the unseen who walk among us, cleaning our homes and caring for our children – what it is to migrate in search of freedom, only to find yourself trapped. Songbirds is a triumphant exploration of loss, the strength of the human spirit and the unbreakable bonds of courage, and of love.
When You Are Mine
Michael Robotham
Release date: 30 June 2021
For as long as we both shall live?
Philomena McCarthy has defied the odds and become a promising young officer with the Metropolitan Police despite being the daughter of a notorious London gangster. Called to the scene of a domestic assault one day, she rescues a bloodied young woman, Tempe Brown, the mistress of a decorated detective. The incident is hushed up, but Phil has unwittingly made a dangerous enemy with powerful friends.
Determined to protect each other, the two women strike up a tentative friendship. Tempe is thoughtful and sweet and makes herself indispensable to Phil, but sinister things keep happening and something isn’t quite right about the stories Tempe tells. When a journalist with links to Phil’s father and to the detective is found floating in the Thames, Phil doesn’t know where to turn, who to blame or who she can trust.
This exhilarating thriller from the bestselling author – whose books have sold more than 6 million copies – is Michael Robotham’s finest page-turner yet.
The Other Side of Beautiful
Kim Lock
Release date: 7 July 2021
Meet Mercy Blain, whose house has just burnt down. Unfortunately for Mercy, this goes beyond the disaster it would be for most people: she hasn’t been outside that house for two years now. Flung out into the world she’s been studiously ignoring, Mercy goes to the only place she can. Her not-quite-ex-husband Eugene’s house. But it turns out she can’t stay there, either. And so begins Mercy’s unwilling journey.
After the chance purchase of a cult classic campervan (read tiny, old and smelly), with the company of her sausage dog, Wasabi, and a mysterious box of cremated remains, Mercy heads north from Adelaide to Darwin. On the road, through badly timed breakdowns, gregarious troupes of grey nomads, and run-ins with a rogue adversary, Mercy’s carefully constructed walls start crumbling.
But what was Mercy hiding from in her house? And why is Eugene desperate to have her back in the city? They say you can’t run forever…
Exquisite, tender and wry, this is a break-out novel about facing anxiety and embracing life from an extraordinary new talent.
The Others
Mark Brandi
Release date: 30 June 2021
I heard voices talking last night. I’ve never heard my father talk to someone else. Not that I can remember. I was in bed, and I heard my father’s voice first. He was talking to someone, and then I heard another man with a deep voice. The man got angry, I could tell, even though I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying. Then my father said, ‘I’d kill you first.’
On his eleventh birthday, Jacob’s father gives him a diary. To write about things that happen. About what he and his father do on their farm. About the sheep, the crop, the fox and the dam.
But Jacob knows some things should not be written down. Some things should not be remembered. The only things he knows for sure are what his father has taught him. Sheltered, protected, isolated.
But who is his father protecting him from? And how far will his father go to keep the world at bay? All too soon, Jacob will learn that, sometimes, people do the most terrible things.
From the bestselling author of Wimmera and The Rip comes an unforgettable novel that explores the darkness in our world with the light only a child can find.
Mrs March
Virginia Feito
Release date: 28 July 2021
George March’s latest novel is a smash hit.
None could be prouder than Mrs. March, his dutiful wife, who revels in his accolades and relishes the lifestyle and status his success brings. A creature of routine and decorum, Mrs. March lives an exquisitely controlled existence on the Upper East Side.
Every morning begins the same way, with a visit to her favourite patisserie to buy a loaf of olive bread, but her latest trip proves to be her last when she suffers an indignity from which she may never recover: an assumption by the shopkeeper that the protagonist in George March’s new book – a pathetic sex worker, more a figure of derision than desire – is based on Mrs. March. One casual remark robs Mrs. March not only of her beloved olive bread but of the belief that she knew everything about her husband – and herself – sending her on an increasingly paranoid journey, one that starts within the pages of a book but may very well uncover both a killer and the long-buried secrets of Mrs. March’s past.
A razor-sharp exploration of the fragility of identity and the smothering weight of expectations, Mrs. March heralds the arrival of a wicked and wonderful new voice – Shirley Jackson meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets My Sister the Serial Killer – in a brilliantly unsettling and darkly funny debut novel full of suspense and paranoia.
When Things are Alive they Hum
Hannah Bent
Release date: 28 July 2021
My hum will be in everything – the wind, the sea, the sand, the air, in you.
Marlowe and Harper share a bond deeper than most sisters, shaped by the loss of their mother in childhood. For Harper, living with what she calls the Up syndrome and gifted with an endless capacity for wonder, Marlowe and she are connected by an invisible thread, like the hum that connects all things. For Marlowe, they are bound by her fierce determination to keep Harper, born with a congenital heart disorder, alive.
Now twenty-five, Marlowe is finally living her own life abroad, pursuing her studies of a rare species of butterfly secure in the knowledge Harper’s happiness is complete, having found love with boyfriend, Louis. But then she receives the devastating call that Harper’s heart is failing. She needs a heart transplant but is denied one by the medical establishment because she is living with a disability. Marlowe rushes to her childhood home in Hong Kong to be by Harper’s side and soon has to answer the question – what lengths would you go to save your sister?
When Things Are Alive They Hum poses profound questions about the nature of love and existence, the ways grief changes us, and how we confront the hand fate has dealt us. Intensely moving, exquisitely written and literally humming with wonder, it is a novel that celebrates life in all its guises, and what comes after.
Deepwater King (#2 Deepwater Trilogy)
Claire McKenna
Release date: 7 July 2021
Since losing her great love to the Queen of the Sainted Isles, Arden must fulfil an impossible promise before she can return home – she must complete the dangerous Rite that will return Jonah’s spirit to the abyssal Court of the Deepwater King. This sets her off on a journey far out at sea to find believers of the old religion on the oil-slick and mysterious islands beyond the horizon.
But such a responsibility will not come without sacrifice, for the Deepwater folk who worship the King require the most desperate payments the soul, and with one man Arden may have to pay the greatest price of all…
Astonishingly original, with world-building to rival the depths of the ocean, McKenna has drawn a rich tale of longing and courage – penning the perfect oceanic steampunk fantasy. The sensational follow up to Monstrous Heart; a magical tale of intrigue on dark waters and a love story for the ages. The perfect gothic, gaslamp fantasy – ideal for fans of V.E. Schwab and China Mieville.
The Cellist
Daniel Silva
Release date: 28 July 2021
The most beautiful music hides the deadliest secrets…
Viktor Orlov had a longstanding appointment with death. Once Russia’s richest man, he now resides in exile in London, where he is waging a crusade against the kleptocrats who have seized control of the Kremlin. His mansion is protected by armed bodyguards.
Yet somehow, on a rainy summer evening, in the midst of a global pandemic, Russia’s vengeful president finally manages to cross Orlov’s name off his kill list. Before him was the receiver from his landline telephone, a half-drunk glass of red wine, and a stack of documents. The documents are contaminated with a deadly nerve agent. The Metropolitan Police determine that they were delivered by one of Orlov’s employees, a prominent investigative reporter. And when the reporter vanishes hours after the killing, MI6 concludes she is a Moscow Center assassin who penetrated the billionaire’s formidable defenses.
But Gabriel Allon believes his friends in British intelligence are dangerously mistaken. His search for the truth will take him to Geneva, where a private intelligence service is plotting an act of violence that will plunge an already divided America into chaos. Only Allon, with the help of a brilliant young woman employed by the world’s dirtiest bank, can stop it….
The Desert Prince (#1 Nightfall Saga)
Peter V. Brett
Release date: 3 August 2021
Fifteen years have passed since the demons were destroyed. Heroes have become legend, and those that remain live in their shadows.
Olive, Princess of Hollow, has her entire life planned out-a steady march toward succession. But the more her mother writes the script, the more Olive rails against playing the parts she is assigned.
Darin is the son of the man people say saved the world. Everyone expects greatness from Darin, but the only thing he’s ever been great at is hiding. But now it’s time to fight the darkness.
When Olive and Darin step across the wards one night, they learn that the demons are not all gone, and those that remain hunger for revenge. Are Darin and Olive ready to be heroes?
Peter V. Brett, bestselling author of The Demon Cycle, begins a brand new epic fantasy adventure set in his beloved world, following a new generation of heroes.
Final Witness
Karin Slaughter
Release date: 3 August 2021
He saw what you did…He knows who you are.
They thought they’d got away with it…they were wrong.
Leigh and her sister Callie are not bad people – but one night, more than two decades ago, they did something terrible. And the result was a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, devastated by violence.
Years later, Leigh has pushed that night from her mind and become a successful lawyer – but when she is forced to take on a new client against her will, her world begins to spiral out of control. Because the client knows the truth about what happened twenty-three years ago. He knows what Leigh and Callie did. And unless they stop him, he’s going to tear their lives apart…
Just because you didn’t see the witness…doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.
NONFICTION
So You Think You Know What’s Good For You?
Dr. Norman Swan
Release date: 30 June 2021
We all want to be healthier, but do you know what’s good for you?
For over thirty years, Dr Norman Swan has been delivering straight, honest, common-sense health information to ordinary Australians as both a physician and much-loved broadcaster. And when Australia needed clear, scientifically backed COVID-19 facts and advice, it was Norman Swan who stepped up every day to provide the answers we required.
After many years of listening, Norman Swan knows what medical issues people are curious and concerned about. Drawing on the questions he hears time and again, from millennials to baby boomers and all the generations between, So You Think You Know What’s Good For You? is a one-stop handbook that will settle fruitless anxieties and allow people to focus on what matters to them.
Replace medical myths, half-truths and misconceptions with the information you need to make better decisions about how to eat and how to live to put your mind at ease and ensure your and your family’s health is the best it can be.
So You Think You Know What’s Good For You? is the new authoritative must-have for every health-conscious Aussie household.
Semut
Christine Helliwell
Release date: 2 July 2021
March 1945. A handful of young Allied operatives are parachuted into the remote jungled heart of the Japanese-occupied island of Borneo, east of Singapore, there to recruit the island’s indigenous Dayak peoples to fight the Japanese. Yet most have barely encountered Asian or indigenous people before, speak next to no Borneo languages, and know little about Dayaks, other than that they have been – and may still be – headhunters. They fear that on arrival the Dayaks will kill them or hand them over to the Japanese. For their part, some Dayaks have never before seen a white face.
So begins the story of Operation Semut, an Australian secret operation launched by the organisation codenamed Services Reconnaisance Department – popularly known as Z Special Unit – in the final months of WWII. Anthropologist Christine Helliwell has called on her years of first-hand knowledge of Borneo, interviewed more than one hundred Dayak people and all the remaining Semut operatives, and consulted thousands of military and other documents to piece together this astonishing story. Focusing on the operation’s activities along two of Borneo’s great rivers – the Baram and Rejang – the book provides a detailed military history of Semut II’s and Semut III’s brutal guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, and reveals the decisive but long-overlooked Dayak role in the operation.
But this is no ordinary history. Helliwell captures vividly the sounds, smells and tastes of the jungles into which the operatives are plunged, an environment so terrifying that many are unsure whether jungle or Japanese is the greater enemy. And she takes us into the lives and cavernous longhouses of the Dayaks on whom their survival depends. The result is a truly unique account of the encounter between two very different cultures amidst the savagery of the Pacific War.
Every. Night. Of. The. Week.
Lucy Tweed
Release date: 3 August 2021
Welcome to Every Night of the Week, a cookbook for people who don’t like hard-and-fast recipes, by food and recipe writer, stylist and Instagram genie Lucy Tweed.
Some days you want to cook; other days the goal is simply ‘food in mouths’.
MONDAY has potential. There are lists and ideas. The herbs are fresh and the fridge is full.
TUESDAY the week has begun. Can we have efficient and beautifully delicious please?
WEDNESDAY we wonder what day it is. Cook with a dash of laziness; it tastes great.
THURS … we’re not even typing the full day anymore. What’s in the freezer? What can we pimp?
FRIDAY is family fun. ‘Decorate’ your own pizza, kids, or DIY san choy bau. Time to exhale.
SATURDAY is the flex day, time to stretch the repertoire. Hmm, who’s around for lunch?
SUNDAY is for brunch and linner; two leisurely meals, eaten in absolute comfort.
THAT EXTRA DAY YOU WISHED FOR is the secret day that will save your bacon Tues-Thurs.
A Life in Words
Les Carlyon
Release date: 3 August 2021
Les Carlyon was one of Australia’s greatest journalists and writers. His career in newspapers was stellar, becoming editor of The Age at 33, and going on to become editor in chief of The Herald & Weekly Times. But he was always more about the written word than about management, winning two Walkley Awards and the coveted Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year Award across a career where he covered everything from politics to horse racing.
Yet most Australians will know him as an author, writing books that gave us the very essence of our history and our culture – whether in the trenches of the Western Front, or in the betting ring at Flemington. His epic account of the Gallipoli campaign, Gallipoli (2001), was as ground-breaking in its day as Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore, combining incredible research and an ability to capture the human essence with a style that was distinctively his own. Gallipoli went on to sell over 250,000 copies in Australia, and his follow-up book The Great War (2006) won the Prime Ministers Prize for History, and was the 2007 ABIA Book of the Year. The Master (2012), an intimate portrait of Bart Cummings, cemented Les’s place as Australia’s greatest ever horse racing writer.
From Don Bradman to Paul Keating, from Flemington to Flanders, from Henry Lawson to Clive James, A Life in Words is a collection of Les’s very best writing, taken from across his career.
The Reckoning
Mary L Trump
Release date: 17 August 2021
For four years, Donald J Trump inflicted an onslaught of overlapping and interconnected traumas upon the American people, targeting anyone he perceived as being an ‘other’ or an enemy. Women were discounted and derided, the sick were dismissed as weak and unworthy of help, immigrants and minorities were demonised and discriminated against and money was elevated above all else. In short, he transformed America into a macro version of his malignantly dysfunctional family.
How can Americans make sense of the degree to which their institutions and leaders have let them down? How can they negotiate a world in which all sense of safety and justice seems to have been destroyed? How can they – as individuals and as a nation – confront, process and overcome this loss of trust and the ways they have been forever altered by chaos, division and cruelty? And when the dust finally settles, how can they begin to heal, in the midst of ongoing health and economic crises and the greatest political divide since the Civil War?
A new leader alone cannot fix the situation. Donald J Trump is only the latest symptom of a disease that has existed within the body politic since America’s inception – from the original sin of slavery through its population’s unceasing, organised commitment to inequality. An enormous amount of healing must be done to rebuild the lives of Americans, their faith in leadership and their hope for their nation. It starts with The Reckoning.
Relax: A Little Book of Calm
Meredith Gaston
Release date: 7 July 2021
In this delightful and beautifully illustrated book, acclaimed artist Meredith Gaston will show you how to relax through rest and play, building resilience and nurturing your own inner sanctuary by treasuring simplicity and authenticity. The affirmations and inspirations in these ten chapters will assist you to embrace relaxation so that your productivity increases, your health flourishes, and your happiness becomes more abundant.
Explore the joy of peaceful living and a daily state of ease through caring for our mind and body with Meredith Gaston’s Relax: A little book of calm. With practice, time and care, each one of us can cultivate serenity and profoundly transform our experience of life.
Ethel Rosenberg
Anne Sebba
Release date: 29 June 2021
Ethel Rosenberg’s story has been called America’s Dreyfus Affair: a catastrophic failure of humanity and justice that continues to haunt the national conscience, and is still being played out with different actors in the lead roles today.
On 19th June 1953, Ethel Rosenberg became the first woman in the US to be executed for a crime other than murder. She was thirty-seven years old and the mother of two small children. Yet even today, at a time when the Cold War seems all too resonant, Ethel’s conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union makes her story still controversial.
This is an important moment to recount not simply what FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the ‘trial of the century’, but also a timeless human story of a supportive wife, loving mother and courageous idealist who grew up during the Depression with aspirations to become an opera singer. Instead, she found herself battling the social mores of the 1950s and had her life barbarically cut short on the basis of tainted evidence for a crime she almost certainly did not commit.
Anne Sebba’s masterly biography makes full use of the dramatic prison letters Ethel exchanged with her husband, lawyer and psychotherapist over a three-year period. Sebba has also interviewed Ethel’s two sons and others who knew her, including a fellow prisoner. Ethel’s tragic story lays bare a nation deeply divided and reveals what happens when a government motivated by fear tramples on the rights of its citizens.
Take One Fish
Josh Niland
Release date: 28 July 2021
Forget everything you thought you knew about fish cookery with Take One Fish. There are no rules when it comes to cooking fish according to award winning chef Josh Niland, only an endless world of possibilities. With 60 mind-blowing recipes from just 15 global varieties of fish, this cookbook will take you on a gustatory journey – from elaborate to easy, small to large and – always – scale to tail.
Josh’s multi award-winning and bestselling book, The Whole Fish Cookbook, revealed the blueprint for a new and unprecedented kind of fish cookery. In this latest book, Josh continues to open our eyes to the potential of fish in the kitchen, starting from the moment we take our fish home and unpack it – yes that’s right: bring it home, take it out of the plastic, let it breathe uncovered in your fridge. Then you are ready.
With flair, colour and bucket loads of flavour, Take One Fish unpacks each of Josh’s 15 fish to reveal their true culinary potential, from swordfish cotoletta to pot au feu, to tuna mapo tofu to an ethereal raw flounder. Celebrate the drips, crunchy bits, burnt edges and imperfections that are so central to Josh’s mission – to get more people having fun with fish ingenuity every day.
Brain Reset
David Gillespie
Release date: 29 June 2021
Anxiety, depression and addiction are the scourge of modern-day living. How are they linked? How do we beat them?
According to bestselling author and researcher David Gillespie, we are more addicted than ever before, which is playing havoc with our dopamine levels. This is fuelling epidemic-like levels of depression, anxiety and stress. Gillespie reveals a large and robust body of research that shows how addictive activities, such as screen use, sugar consumption, drinking, gambling, shopping and smoking, spike our dopamine levels. This, in turn, affects our brain’s ability to regulate our mood.
The good news is that we can break the cycle to make things better. There are myriad root causes of mental illness, many of which are beyond our control; David argues that it makes sense to tackle the thing that is within our control – our see-sawing dopamine levels. Packed with cutting-edge research and practical advice, David’s latest book arms us with the tools we need to break our addictions, conquer uncertainty and reset our brains.
Garden Like a Nonno
Jaclyn Crupi
Release date: 27 July 2021
Jaclyn Crupi is back with more Italian wisdom!
In Garden Like a Nonno, Jaclyn uncovers the secrets of the green-thumbed nonnos from their no-nonsense approach to life to their zero waste gardening.
Whether you have a tiny balcony or a sprawling backyard, you’ll be growing your own fruit and veg in no time with a little guidance from the nonnos.
Featuring gardening tips and tricks, recipes for pickling and preserving your produce, plus classic nonno sayings, Garden Like a Nonno will help you to get in touch with your inner Italian. La dolce vita awaits.
The Comfort Book
Matt Haig
Release date: 1 July 2021
Nothing is stronger than a small hope that doesn’t give up.
The Comfort Book is a collection of little islands of hope. It gathers consolations and stories that give new ways of seeing ourselves and the world. Matt Haig’s mix of philosophy, memoir and self-reflection builds on the wisdom of philosophers and survivors through the ages, from Marcus Aurelius to Nellie Bly, Emily Dickinson to James Baldwin.
This is the book to pick up when you need the wisdom of a friend, the comfort of a hug or just to celebrate the messy miracle of being alive.
Last Shot
Jock Zonfrillo
Release date: 28 July 2021
From reckless drug addict to one of Australia’s top chefs and television stars: MasterChef judge Jock Zonfrillo’s powerful life story will shock and inspire. Jock’s life spiralled out of control when he tried heroin for the first time as a teenager while growing up in 1980s Glasgow. For years he balanced a career as a rising star amongst legendary chefs with a crippling drug addiction that took him down many dark paths.
Fired from his job at a Michelin star restaurant in Chester, England, after a foul-mouthed rant, Jock made his way to London looking for work and found himself in front of the legendary Marco Pierre White. He credits White for saving his life, but Jock continued to struggle with addiction in a world of excess, celebrity, and cut-throat ambition. On New Year’s Eve 1999, Jock shot up his last shot of heroin before boarding a plane to Sydney, where he would find passion and new meaning in life in the most unexpected places. There would be more struggles ahead, including two failed marriages, the closure of his prized restaurant during COVID-19, his time on-country, and some very public battles.
This is his unforgettable story – a coming-of-age memoir of addiction, ambition and redemption in the high-stakes world of Michelin star kitchens. Foreword by Jimmy Barnes.
Parental as Anything
Maggie Dent
Release date: 7 July 2021
How much screen time should you let your children have? How and when do you talk about sex? What can you do when your kid throws a tantrum? Why should you let your children just play?
Maggie Dent, queen of common-sense parenting, has answers to your real-world parenting dilemmas. Focusing on the most engaged-with topics from her popular ABC Parental As Anything podcast, Maggie tells us what the experts have to say, relates the experiences of other parents, and offers her own reassuring guidance to provide practical solutions to the challenges parents and caregivers face today.
This book will give you the means to be the parent you’d like to be, and help you in your quest to raise happy, healthy, thriving, resilient children.
All Day Baking: Savoury, Not Sweet
Michael James
Release date: 7 July 2021
For every two lovers of sweet baked treats, there is at least another who will take the gruyere gougere or the curry pastie every time, thank you. All Day Baking: Savoury, Not Sweet is a baking cookbook – at last – for them. Its mission is to deliver comforting, inventive and wholegrain-forward ideas for pies, sausage rolls, pasties and myriad other mostly pastry-based recipes, alongside gutsy accompaniments that equip the reader with the tools to transform delicious bakes into nourishing any-time-of-day meals.
Author Michael James is a Michelin-restaurant chef by training who was drawn early to the art, precision, and satisfaction of baking. In All Day Baking, his second book, he turns his attention to the pasties of his UK childhood, the pies he creates today for his young family, and the quiches, sausage rolls, palmiers and galettes that have earned him a cultish following in Australia and beyond. As well, he delivers a master class in pastry – from puff to rye to vegan and gluten-free – gifting readers a foundation knowledge that sets them on a path to their own freewheeling baking adventures.
The book is structured across the arc of a day but the recipes at their heart are interchangeable – if you fancy beetroot & shallot galette for breakfast or bacon & onion quiche for dinner – that’s perfectly ok. And throughout there is a nod to Michael and wife Pippa James’ ethos, rooted in sustainability, seasonality and a desire to minimise their waste footprint.
The Mother Wound
Amani Haydar
Release date: 29 June 2021
‘I am from a family of strong women.’
Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder.
After her mother’s death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents’ relationship. They had been unhappy for so long – should she have known that it would end like this? A lawyer by profession, she also saw the holes in the justice system for addressing and combating emotional abuse and coercive control.
Amani also had to reckon with the weight of familial and cultural context. Her parents were brought together in an arranged marriage, her mother thirteen years her father’s junior. Her grandmother was brutally killed in the 2006 war in Lebanon, adding complex layers of intergenerational trauma.
Writing with grace and beauty, Amani has drawn from this a story of female resilience and the role of motherhood in the home and in the world. In The Mother Wound, she uses her own strength to help other survivors find their voices.
My Mess is a Bit of a Life: Adventures in Anxiety
Georgia Pritchett
Release date: 17 August 2021
Multi-award-winning television writer and producer Georgia Pritchett knows a thing or two about anxiety.
From worrying about the monsters under her bed as a child (were they comfy enough?), to embracing womanhood (one way of knowing you have crossed from girlhood to womanhood is that men stop furtively masturbating at you from bushes and start shouting things at you from cars. It’s a beautiful moment) to being offered free gifts after an award ceremony (It was an excruciating experience. Mortifying) worry has accompanied her at every turn.
Halliday Wine Companion 2022
James Halliday
Release date: 13 August 2021
For over thirty years James Halliday has been Australia’s most respected wine critic, and his Halliday Wine Companion is recognised as the industry benchmark for Australian wine. A best-selling annual, the Halliday Wine Companion is the go-to guide for wine ratings, regions, best varietals, winery reviews and a curated selection of the best wines in Australia. The 2022 edition has been completely revised to bring readers up-to-the-minute information.
The Halliday team, now led by Tyson Stelzer in the role of chief editor, share their extensive knowledge of wine through detailed tasting notes with points, price, value symbol and advice on best-by drinking, as well as each wine’s closure and alcohol content. The book provides information about wineries and winemakers, including vineyard sizes, opening times and contact details. The perfect self-purchase or gift for the wine lover in your life.
Power Play
Julia Banks
Release date: 7 July 2021
Having won the ‘unwinnable’ seat that secured the Coalition Government majority in 2016, Julia Banks shocked Australia when she announced she would stand as an independent MP in 2018, having experienced a toxic workplace culture in the country’s centre of power – designed by men for their dominance. Julia doesn’t just know what power looks like in a political sense; she made it to the top of her game in the legal and corporate sectors before running for parliament. And at every level, she had to navigate through the bias, barriers and boys’ clubs that aim to silence women or deter them from leadership roles.
Power Play reveals the unvarnished realities of any workplace where power disparities and gender politics collide: from the unequal opportunities, casual sexism and systemic misogyny, to pressures around looks, age and family responsibilities, and the consequences of speaking out. Julia shares personal stories, practical advice, and a resounding argument for why women aren’t the problem – but why more women in decision-making positions will help us find the solution.
For anyone who is aspiring to lead, this book will help you to navigate there. And for anyone who believes that women’s voices need to be heard equally, it will inspire you to strive until that is our reality. Power Play is an honest guide for women who aspire to leadership in the workplace and in the world, from the trailblazing Julia Banks.
Too Migrant, Too Muslim, Too Loud
Mehreen Faruqi
Release date: 2 July 2021
Too Migrant, Too Muslim, Too Loud is a no-holds-barred memoir and manifesto from outspoken senator, trouble¬maker and multicultural icon Mehreen Faruqi. As the first Muslim woman in any Australian parliament, Mehreen has a unique and crucial perspective on our politics and democracy. It is a tale of a political outsider fighting for her right and the rights of others like her to be let inside on their terms.
From her beginnings in Pakistan and remaking in Australia, Mehreen recounts her struggle to navigate two vastly different, changing worlds without losing herself. This moving and inspiring memoir shares shattering insights learned as a migrant, an engineer, an activist, a feminist and a politician.
Still Life
Love in Five Acts
China
The Girl Remains
Before You Knew My Name
Whereabouts
Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray (River of Dreams)
The Perfect Lie
Circus of Wonders
The Road Trip
The Shadow of Gods
The Maidens
Still 
The Missing Sister (#7 Seven Sisters)
Animal
Whisper Songs
Mirror Man
One Hundred Days
Off the Charts
The Kindness Revolution
Fury
House of Kwa
The CSIRO Women’s Health & Nutrition Guide
Noise
Still Life Drawing
My Dog Eats Better Than Me
The Book of Australian Trees
MELMO: Modernist Architecture in Melbourne
ully Human
The School: The Ups and Downs of One Year in the Classroom
Who Gets to be Smart
Care: The Radical Art of Taking Time
Do Something for Nothing
Ariadne
Chase
Love Objects
Early Morning Riser
How Do You Live? 
The Ripping Tree
The Truth About Her
The Lady with the Gun Asks the Questions
First Person Singular
Legacy of War
Lapsed 
Remember
Australia The Cookbook
Sex, Lies and Question Time
Car Crash A Memoir
Derrick VC: In His Own Words
Beyond Order
The Beauty of Living Twice
Elizabeth and Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters
Defiant Voices
