Tears of Monterini by Am; a Weinberg

$24.99 AUD

Category: General

Monterini, Italy. 1921. Yacobo Levi, an intellectual dreamer, works in the family bookshop. Angelo Ghione, a contadino, makes good wine by singing to the grapes. Lifetime best friends, their Jewish and Catholic families live side by side amidst a backdrop of village communal life, Etruscan tales and the growth of Benito Mussolini. Born on the same day, their children grow up and fall in love. When the 1938 racial laws are passed, the love between Bella and Rico thrives amidst and perhaps because of the fear and uncertainty. When Angelo discovers their liaison he suggests they marry but life is complicated and tensions simmer beneath the surface of love and friendship. When war is declared on the day of Bella's wedding to Michele a fellow Jew, the peaceful village they live in is torn apart, and the Levis find themselves displaced and fighting for their lives. Will life ever be the same again? The Tears of Monterini is a story of love and betrayal, loyalty and friendship. Inspired by true events in Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, this beautifully written debut will appeal to readers interested in history, Italy, romance, family dynamics and conflict. ...Show more

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

$32.99 AUD

Category: General | Reading Level: Adult

Booker Prize Winner 2020. It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abando ned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves. It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother's sense of snobbish propriety. The miners' children pick on him and adults condemn him as no' right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place. Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Édouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara. It is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist with a powerful and important story to tell.   ...Show more

Dark Tides (#2 Fairmile) by Philippa Gregory

$32.99 AUD

Category: Historical Fiction

Midsummers Eve, 1670. A wealthy man waits outside a poor London warehouse to meet with Alinor, the woman he failed twenty-one years before. He has everything to offer, wealth, land, status, and he believes she has the only thing he cannot buy: his son and heir. The warehouse is failing, clinging on to poor business in Restoration London--a city gone mad for pleasure. But will Alinor and her family sell-out to Sir James? Meanwhile in New England, Alinor's brother Ned, who rebelled against the Crown, cannot find justice in the New World, as the King's revenge stretches across the Atlanic and turns the pioneers against each other and against the native Americans. A beautiful widow, Livia, arrives from Venice, telling them Alinor's son, Rob, has drowned and that she needs the family's help with a profitable new trade. She will import beautiful statues of marble and bronze to fuel the classical craze among the wealthy landowners. She enchants the warehouse family with her son, their new heir; her sensual carefree warmth; and promises of wealth to come. She captures Sir James and spins them all into a mesh of deceit which only the brave little daughter of the warehouse can break. Sarah searches for the truth about Livia in Venice bringing home the stunning denouement to this, the second book in the Fairmile series.   ...Show more

Leave The World Behind by Rumaan Alam

$29.99 AUD

Category: General

Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a holiday: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple - it's their house, and they've arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area - with the TV and internet now down, and no phone service - it's hard to know what to believe. Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple - and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the holiday home, isolated from civilisation, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another? Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam's third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped - and unexpected new ones are forged - in moments of crisis. ...Show more

The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

From the Number 1 bestselling author of The Binding. If everything in your life was based on a lie Would you risk it all to tell the truth? At Montverre, an exclusive academy tucked away in the mountains, the best and brightest are trained for excellence in the grand jeu: an arcane and mysterious contest. Léo Martin was once a student there, but lost his passion for the grand jeu following a violent tragedy. Now he returns in disgrace, exiled to his old place of learning with his political career in tatters.   Montverre has changed since he studied there, even allowing a woman, Claire Dryden, to serve in the grand jeu's highest office of Magister Ludi. When Léo first sees Claire he senses an odd connection with her, though he's sure they have never met before. Both Léo and Claire have built their lives on lies.  And as the legendary Midsummer Game, the climax of the year, draws closer, secrets are whispering in the walls... ...Show more

Bob's Bedtime Stories

$25.00 AUD

Category: Graphic Novels

Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann

$29.99 AUD

Category: General | Series: Planet Omar Ser.

Darkly comic and hauntingly surreal The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures examines obsession, paranoia and the dwindling career of a Stasi operative.It is November 9th 1989 in East Berlin, the day the Berlin Wall will fall. Bernd Zeiger, a Stasi agent whose manual on the demoralisat ion of political opponents once made him renowned is now in the fading twilight of his career.Twenty five years earlier a physicist, Johnnes Held had been sent by the East Germans to infiltrate a US military operation in the American desert, where teleportation and other paranormal activities were being investigated. Held had unknowingly fathered a child there, a fact Zeiger was aware of and when he returned and refused to divulge what he had learned, despite being tortured, Zeiger strangely became a sort of friend. But he would still betray him, a treachery that haunts him to this day.Like many other officials and government functionaries Zeiger has been feeling strange, beginning to lose his grip on reality, a development he has tied to the disappearance of a cafe waitress for whom he has developed an attraction. This woman, Lara, who has been missing for a month has a surprising connection to Johannes Held. In his attempts to find her Zeiger will discover that he himself has been betrayed, as chaos breaks out, the Wall comes down and his carefully curated life unravels. ...Show more

The Evening and the Morning (The Pillars of the Earth Prequel) by Ken Follett

$44.99 AUD

Category: General

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, a thrilling and addictive new novel--a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth--set in England at the dawn of a new era: the Middle Ages It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Th ose in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns. In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when the only home he's ever known is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in. . . . A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and as she begins to realize that everyone around her is engaged in a constant, brutal battle for power, it becomes clear that a single misstep could be catastrophic. . . . A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power. Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of the Earth. Now, Follett's masterful new prequel The Evening and the Morning takes us on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate, that will end where The Pillars of the Earth begins.   ...Show more

Magic Lessons: A Prequel to Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

$32.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

Discover how the magic began: the prequel to the beloved novel PRACTICAL MAGIC.    The extraordinary new novel from the author of Practical Magic and The Dovekeepers We first met the Owens in the glorious novel Practical Magic. We discovered the tragedy of the Owens siblings in The Rules of Magic. Now we learn how it all began ... with a baby abandoned in a snowy English field in the 1600s. Under the care of gentle Hannah Owens, little Maria learns about the ‘Unnamed Arts'. Maria has a gift for them - a gift that may well prove her undoing. When Maria is abandoned by the man who has declared his love for her, she follows him to Salem, Massachusetts. Here she invokes the curse that will haunt her family. And it's here that she learns the rules of magic and the lesson that she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Love is the only thing that matters. Magic Lessons is a celebration of life and love, and a showcase of Alice Hoffman's masterful storytelling. Praise for Alice Hoffman ‘A testament to the human spirit and to love rising from the ashes of war' Jodi Picoult ‘Beautiful, harrowing, a major contribution to twenty-first century literature' Toni Morrison ...Show more

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

A powerful new novel set in a divided Naples by Elena Ferrante, the beloved best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend. Giovanna's pretty face has changed: it's turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Into which mirror must she look to find her self and save herself? She is searching for a new face in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: the Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and the Naples of the depths, which professes to be a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves between these two cities, disoriented by the fact that, whether high or low, the city seems to offer no answer and no escape. ...Show more

Poly by Paul Dalgarno

$32.99 AUD

Category: General

Chris Flood - a married father of two with plummeting self-esteem and questionable guitar skills - suddenly finds himself in the depths of polyamory after years of a near-sexless marriage. His wife, Sarah - a lover of the arts, avid quoter of Rumi, and always oozing confidence - wants to rediscover her sexuality after years of deadening domesticity.   Their new life of polyamory features late nights, love affairs and rotating childcare duties. While Sarah enjoys flings with handsome men, Chris, much to his astonishment, falls for a polydactylous actor and musician, Biddy.   Then there's Zac Batista. When Chris and Sarah welcome the Uruguayan child prodigy and successful twenty-two-year-old into their lives they gratefully hand over school pick-up and babysitting duties. But as tensions grow between family and lovers, Chris begins to wonder if it's just jealousy, or something more sinister brewing...   A searing and utterly engrossing debut, Poly is a raw, hilarious, and moving portrait of contemporary relationships in all their diversity, and an intimate exploration of the fragility of love and identity.      ...Show more

Normal People by Sally Rooney

$19.99 AUD

Category: General | Reading Level: good

A universal story of love, friendship, and growing up. At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at Marian ne's house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers-one they are determined to conceal. A year later, they're both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. And as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other. Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship. Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize Winner of Novel of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards Winner of the Costa Novel Award " Rooney] has been hailed as the first great millennial novelist for her stories of love and late capitalism... she writes] some of the best dialogue I've read."--The New Yorker   ...Show more