When I threw my hat in the ring for an EU Sponsorship to attend the UK Booksellers’ Association (BA) Conference in September, I had an expired passport & hadn’t travelled overseas for 18 years. It was a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, carpe diem kind of decision, that I never expected would result in anything other than a polite email advising I had been unsuccessful. Just as well I fast tracked that passport renewal…

The BA Conference was a wonderful opportunity to meet booksellers from both the UK and beyond, with seven other RISE Bookselling sponsored booksellers attending from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Romania and the US. Author highlights included meeting Rick Astley, Richard Ayoade, Ian Rankin and Chloe Dalton.  RISE stands for Resilience, Innovation, and Sustainability for the Enhancement of Bookselling, and is funded by the EIBF (European and International Booksellers Federation), providing training and networking opportunities for booksellers around the world.  

I was lucky enough to extend my adventure and make the most of a grand exploration of London bookshops ahead of the conference itself. I spent a joyful 10 days visiting all kinds of amazing bookshops, from a tiny little specialist children’s bookshop in Clapham (ChocoLIT) that also sold gourmet chocolate (my revised dream business model), to vast institutions like Hatchard’s in Piccadilly and Blackwell’s in Oxford. All up I visited 19 bookshops across London, Oxford and Bath.

Some interesting observations from my bookshop tour:

• hardbacks are HUGE in the UK;
• books are overall cheaper than they are here (and so are Tim Tams, I can sadly confirm);
• booksellers and customers alike seem much more excited about signed copies than we are; and
• there are sadly very few current Australian titles on UK shelves (but plenty of backlist of Winton, Garner, Flanagan and White (Patrick, not Christian)!!) – they are missing out!

Overall, this was such an incredible experience on both a professional and personal level (I highly recommend solo travel in your late 40s!). Sharing ideas, experiences, concerns and learnings with international booksellers, hearing how their market and businesses are both similar and different from here in Australia, has given me much inspiration and food for thought.

(Note: my foxy friend in the photos is Farrell the Fox – a travelling companion from my kids the night I flew out, and named by them!)

Author Spotlight:

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

The breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the internationally bestselling author of 1Q84.

A novel about the porous boundary between the real and shadow worlds. After losing his beloved as a teenager, the narrator finds his way to the Town, a mysterious place where he finds work as a Dream Reader in the library. Back in the real world as an adult he tries to recapture his time in the Town by taking a job as a librarian in a remote location in Fukushima province, where he takes over the job from a ghost. When a boy, M, who visits the library every day, vanishes, the boundaries between spatial and temporal realities, and between individuals, seems to have been breached. A novel about the barriers, imaginary and real, that we put up between and within ourselves.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls will hit shelves on Tuesday 26 November.

It’s 1914 and Molly Dunnage wants to see change: at home, at work and in underwear. Her burgeoning corsetry business is starting to take off, thanks to some high-profile supporters. She’s marching with Melbourne’s suffragists for better conditions for women everywhere. And her family – her eccentric, confounding, adored father and aunt – are turning their minds to country retirement.

But as the clouds of war gather and an ominous figure starts skulking in the shadows of her life, Molly’s dreams begin to falter. Then, when true love drops out of the sky and into her arms, her hopes for her life and the world are entirely upended.

With the dark humour, richly detailed settings and vividly drawn characters we’ve come to expect from Rosalie Ham, this prequel to the international bestseller The Dressmaker is an unforgettable story of hopes lost, love found – and corsets loosened.

You can run from your past, but not from the girls left behind…

Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Ann Baker’s childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer Ethan Oswald. Haunted by what happened, Ruth has long been convinced Oswald had other victims. But no one has ever believed her.

After dropping out of college and failing to prove her serial killer theory, Ruth is bartending when she hears that another young girl has gone missing from her home town. With Oswald now deceased, she begins to suspect he had an accomplice. A partner in crime who is still active today.

Crossing the globe from New York to New Zealand, Ruth unlocks parts of herself that she hasn’t dared to revisit, bringing her perilously close to three different women. The deeper she delves, the more she can’t shake the feeling that one of them knows the truth. About her childhood friend. About the missing girl. And, perhaps most dangerously of all, about Ruth herself …

From the author of The North Wind comes a darkly reimagined tale of forbidden love, inspired by the Greek myth of Hero and Leander and the Scottish ballad Tam Lin.

Brielle of Thornbrook has dedicated her life to the abbey. She spends her days forging iron and her evenings studying the Text, all in preparation of becoming an acolyte. Twenty-one years on this earth and she has never touched a man. And she never will. But when she finds an injured stranger in the forest, Brielle can’t resist the urge to help him.

The encounter leads her to the realm of Under, where the air breathes rot, and the fair folk dance and whisper. Where she discovers that the man she helped is actually a god: Zephyrus, the West Wind, Bringer of Spring. 

As she embarks on a journey through the eerie banks and caves of Under, Brielle finds herself in a perilous situation. For here is where faith and heart collide – and where she risks not only her future … but her life.

When Pat Cummins unexpectedly became Australia’s 47th Test Captain at age 28, he inherited a team with a long and storied history, but also one on the cusp of reinvention. It was the beginning of a personal leadership journey for him; a unique moment of challenge and pressure that would see him become a seasoned captain, and in his private life, become a father and husband but also lose his mother to cancer.

Inspiring, revealing and deeply personal, Tested is an exploration of the remarkable place where challenge, crisis and opportunity meet, and how it’s only in the moments when we are tested that we discover what we are made of. From a charity leader to Australia’s first female Prime Minister, a Test cricket great to a ground-breaking scientist, an Indigenous leader to a bestselling author and podcaster, Pat interviews eleven extraordinary people whose own stories of challenge, adversity, perseverance and resilience – navigating moments of crisis and doubt, seizing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, creativity and giving back – have inspired him. Tested is a book of insight and hard-earned wisdom about how the power of resolve to make decisions, big and small, and see them through, is at the heart of all our stories.

Todd and partner Jeff have been at the renovation game for nearly twenty years, but they’ve only ever been able to afford the worst house on the worst street. It hasn’t been easy, but it has been hilarious. In The Worst House on the Worst Street, Todd chronicles their journey from optimistic home buyers to self-taught, weary home renovators. Beginning with humble rental refreshes, they’ve tackled and transformed collapsing apartments, damp-infested terrace houses, acres of overgrown vineyards and off-the-grid homesteads – with a growing tally of injuries, floods and menacing neighbours thrown in.

But nothing could have prepared them for the very worst house: a small-town, dilapidated fibro shack on the wrong side of the tracks. Asbestos, mould, rotting timber, vermin, crumbling walls, holes in the roof, floors and windows . . . This house has it all. Amid Covid-19, near-bankruptcy and multiple DIY-related hospital visits, Todd and Jeff put their hard-won knowledge to the test. Jeff brings his dogged determination, obsessive quest for perfection and super-human DIY skills, while Todd brings a sense of humour to his roles of Jeff’s labourer, painter, shopper, cleaner and site health & safety manager. 

Part inspiration and larger part cautionary tale, Todd Alexander’s The Worst House on the Worst Street will help any home renovator keep laughing along the way.

From the earliest crop plantings to the most elaborate formal gardens, humans have cultivated gardens for millennia. Recently there has been a shift away from clean lines and perfectly trimmed hedges to more naturalistic plantings: the new natural garden is considered and curated, taking its cues from the surrounding landscape. Plants are laid out asymmetrically, but still are balanced, random in appearance, as though seeds have blown in and germinated where they fell.

Garden designer Richard Unsworth offers advice on how to select materials that sit effortlessly in the landscape, planting combinations that thrive in different settings, and discusses principles of bush regeneration and restoration. Whether large or small, urban or rural, every garden and every gardener can benefit from wildening their surroundings to reconnect with nature.

There are so many wonderful things to know, as you grow… 

From award-winning creators Meg McKinlay and Nicky Johnston, a gentle, generous and surprising guide to growing up. From how to make a friend – and be one – standing up for yourself, and the importance of looking up, this luxury hardback gift edition provides the seeds of good advice. 

Urchins are eating Speedy’s home, so he sets off with his eggs to find a safe place for them to hatch.

Speedy the weedy seadragon spends his days posing for divers in his seafloor home until a new current sweeps in invasive urchins! Carrying his eggs on his tail, he bravely sets off in search of a safe place for them to hatch. Along the way he meets all kinds of critters to kindly point him in the right direction on his hunt for the ideal habitat Giant Kelp.

Learn about these special sea critters via beautifully textured realistic illustrations that bring the speedy the seadragon and his surroundings to vivid life. 

When I listen to music it speaks to me, fills up my soul until I’m bursting with the rainbow-sprinkled, breathless, blush-red joy of being ALIVE.

Meet Thunderhead: awkward, music-obsessed and a magnet for bad luck. Their favourite things in life are listening to records and hanging out with their best (and only) friend Moonflower. But Thunderhead has a big secret. And when Moonflower moves schools, they’re faced with the reality of surviving the wilderness of high school alone. Make new friends? NOTHANKYOUVERYMUCH.

As two big life events approach, Thunderhead posts playlists and heartfelt diary entries as an outlet to try to make sense of their changing world, to try to calm the storm brewing in their brain and to try to find the courage to unfurl their heart. Drawing on Sophie Beer’s own experience of hearing loss, this indelible illustrated middle grade novel about music, disability, friendship and fandom is immediately engaging & utterly authentic.