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Bestsellers |  Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
A magisterial new novel that takes us behind the scenes during one of the most formative periods in English history: the reign of Henry VIII.
|  Breath by Tim Winton
Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and about learning to live with its passing. In his first novel for seven years, Tim Winton has achieved a new level of mastery. Breath confirms him as one of the world's finest storytellers, a writer of novels that are at the same time simple and profound, relentlessly gripping and deeply moving.
|  Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
At last - another brilliant, original and moving novel from the author of THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE. dearest e, I told you I would let you know — so here it is — goodbye. I try to imagine what it would feel like if it was you — but it’s impossible to conjure the world without you, even though we’ve been apart so long. I didn’t leave you anything. You got to live my life. That’s enough. Instead I’m experimenting — I’ve left the whole lot to the twins. I hope they’ll enjoy it. Don’t worry, it will be okay. Say goodbye to Jack for me. Love, despite everything, e Julia and Valentina Poole are normal American teenagers – normal, at least, for identical ‘mirror’ twins who have no interest in college or jobs or possibly anything outside their cozy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn’t know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. They feel that at last their own lives can begin ... but have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, from the obsessive-compulsive crossword setter who lives above them to their aunt’s mysterious and elusive lover who lives below them, and even to their aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins’ mother – and who can’t even seem to quite leave her flat.... With Highgate Cemetery itself a character and echoes of Henry James and Charles Dickens, HER FEARFUL SYMMETRY is a delicious and deadly twenty-first-century ghost story about Niffenegger’s familiar themes of love, loss and identity. It is certain to cement her standing as one of the most singular and remarkable novelists of our time.
|  The Mind and Times of Reg Mombassa by Murrat Waldren & Murray Waldren
Christopher O'Doherty, aka Reg Mombassa, has infiltrated our culture for more than thirty years with a unique, laconic view of our world - and of his. Yet, long before he became a Mental or transformed shirts into collector's items, Mombassa was first and foremost an artist. But there is much more to Reg Mombassa, as Murray Waldren shows.
|  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.
|  The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
Salander is plotting her revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and against the government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life. But it is not going to be a straightforward campaign. After taking a bullet to the head, Salander is under close supervision in Intensive Care, and is set to face trial for three murders and one attempted murder on her eventual release. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his researchers at Millennium magazine, Salander must not only prove her innocence, but identify and denounce the corrupt politicians that have allowed the vulnerable to become victims of abuse and violence. Once a victim herself, Salander is now ready to fight back. Author Biography: Stieg Larsson was the founder and editor-in-chief of the anti-racist magazine Expo. He was a renowned expert on right-wing extremist organisations. He died in 2004, soon after delivering the text of the novels that make up the Millennium Trilogy. Reg Keeland is the translator of many fine writers from Swedish.
|  The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. Two Millennium journalists about to expose the truth about sex trafficking in Sweden are murdered, and Salander's prints are on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. Mikael Blomkvist, editor-in-chief of Millennium, does not believe the police. Using all his magazine staff and resources to prove Salander's innocence, Blomkvist also uncovers her terrible past, spent in criminally corrupt institutions. Yet Salander is more avenging angel than helpless victim. She may be an expert at staying out of sight - but she has ways of tracking down her most elusive enemies.
|  The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
The lead singer of The Birthday Party, The Bad Seeds and Grinderman, Nick Cave has been performing music for more than 30 years. He has collaborated with Kylie Minogue, PJ Harvey and many others. His album Murder Ballads has sold nearly a million copies. His debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, was published by Black Spring/Penguin in 1989 and has sold more than 100,000 copies. Born in Australia, Cave now lives in Brighton, England. FROM THE BOOK: 'I am damned,' thinks Bunny Munro in a sudden moment of self-awareness reserved for those who are soon to die. He feels that somewhere down the line he has made a grave mistake, but this realisation passes in a dreadful heartbeat, and is gone-leaving him in a room at the Grenville Hotel, in his underwear, with nothing but himself and his appetites ...'
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New |  The Blaze of Obscurity by Clive James
"Clive James on TV" is now in book form. For many people, Clive James will always be a TV presenter first and foremost, and a writer second - this despite the fact that his adventures with the written work took place before, during and after his time on the small screen. Nevertheless, for those who remember clips of Japanese endurance gameshows and Egyptian soap operas, Clive reinventing the news or interviewing Hefner and Hepburn, Polanski and Pavarotti, Clive's 'Postcards' from Kenya, Shanghai and Dallas, or Clive James Racing Driver, Clive's rightful place does seem to be right there - on the box, in our homes, and almost one of the family. However you think of him, though, and whatever you remember him for, "The Blaze of Obscurity" is perhaps Clive's most brilliant book yet. Part "Clive James on TV", it tells the inside story of his years in television, shows Clive on top form both then and now, and proves - once and for all - that Clive has a way with words...whatever the medium.
|  Nine Lives by William Dalrymple
Three brothers from a remote village in the Himalayas are driven by poverty to become monks. One becomes a famous masked dancer; the second an accomplished player of the Tibetan temple trumpet; and the third a great Buddhist scholar. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve herself to death. A woman leaves her middle class family in Calcutta and her job in a jute factory, only to find unexpected love and fulfillment living as a tantric in a skull-filled hut in a remote cremation ground. A prison warder from Kerala becomes for two months of the year a temple dancer and is worshipped as an incarnate deity; then, at the end of February each year, he returns to prison. An illiterate goat herd from Rajasthan keeps alive an ancient 200,000-stanza sacred epic that he, virtually alone, still knows by heart. A devadasi - or temple prostitute - initially resists her own initiation into sex work, yet pushes both her daughters into a trade she regards as a sacred calling. Nine people, nine lives. Each one taking a different religious path, each one an unforgettable story.
|  A Life on Pittwater by Susan Duncan
Susan Duncan came to Pittwater when she impulsively bought a tumbledown, boxy little shack in Lovett Bay. The move changed her life forever, as she describes in her bestselling title, Salvation Creek. Now Susan lives in Tarangaua, the gracious house built for Dorothea Mackellar in 1925, and is a well-loved member of the small Pittwater community. A Life on Pittwater takes us on a memorable trip to this beguiling place and presents all aspects of its distinctive way of life. There is Susan's lovely home with its gorgeous verandah; the lush surroundings, the bush and the bays; the wildlife and the ever-present dogs; the tinnies, the ferries and the peculiarities of living somewhere without cars; the boatsheds and the working boats; the bushfires; and, above all, the close community life. Welcome to Pittwater, where neighbours stop their tinnies to have a quick chat. It's a place like nowhere else in Australia; and it's also quintessentially Australian.
|  Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls
A debut novel based on the extraordinary life of Jeannette Walls' maternal grandmother - a sassy, straight-talking heroine for whom saving lives, taming wild horses and beating ranch hands at poker are all in a day's work. Born in 1901 in the rolling grassland of West Texas, at the age of 15, with very little formal education, Lily Casey Smith left home to begin teaching in a frontier town, riding 500 miles on her beloved pony, Patch, all alone, to get to her job. She went on, with her husband, to run an 180,000 acre ranch in Arizona and to raise two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls. Readers will love and marvel at this intrepid woman, for her fearlessness, her courage, her wicked sense of humour. A true adventurer!
|  I Blame Duchamp by Edmund Capon
In this sweeping collection of essays, Edmund Capon describes his lifelong fascination with art and the artists who, over centuries, have enlightened us and challenged the way we see the world. He shares his passion for topics as diverse as the art of China and the Renaissance Old Masters, talks of personal encounters with artists such as Henry Moore and Sidney Nolan, and tells the stories behind some of his controversial acquisitions as the long-time director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, including Cy Twombly's Three Studies from the Temeraire. Driven by curiosity and his love of the unorthodox, Capon applies the same level of passion to his discussion of football as to the ideas of Confucius. He sharpens his wit on the contemporary art world, where conceptual art - much of it devoid of beauty (and sometimes a concept) - reigns supreme. For this, says Capon, Duchamp, and his infamous Fountain, are at least partly to blame. Featuring more than fifty beautiful reproductions of paintings and drawings from collections around the world, this is a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the liveliest and most generous thinkers of our generation.
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