Staff Picks
Pagong Cannot Climb Trees
In this debut work, spoken word poet and filmmaker, Butch Schwarzkopf, reaches out to the empty spaces: a too-quiet house, the end of the universe, a silenced colonial history, the grief of losing a loved one. Schwarzkopf braids his artistic disciplines together to portray cinematic visions of past, present, and future beating to deep-rooted ancestral rhythms. Pagong Cannot Climb Trees is a moving reflection on the messiness of life and heritage, and a reminder of the beauty and humanity in trying, with every new day, to carry the burdens of the heart.
Crudo
From a Tuscan hotel for the super-rich to a Brexit-paralysed UK, Kathy spends the first summer of her 40s trying to adjust to making a lifelong commitment just as Trump is tweeting the world into nuclear war. But it's not only Kathy who's changing. Political, social and natural landscapes are all in peril. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is hotting up. Is it really worth learning to love when the end of the world is nigh? And how do you make art, let alone a life, when one rogue tweet could end it all.
Olivia Laing radically rewires the novel in a brilliant, funny and emphatically raw account of love in the apocalypse. A Goodbye to Berlin for the 21st century, Crudo charts in real time what it was like to live and love in the horrifying summer of 2017, from the perspective of a commitment-phobic peripatetic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker . . .
The Therapist
Martha Elliott, maverick psychotherapist, harbours some dark secrets from her own past, and is more interested in achieving good outcomes for her clients than playing by the rules. Martha blends counselling with breathing exercises, meditation, foot massages . . . whatever it takes. In a series of intense encounters with her clients, deep insights and raw truths about human nature emerge, including reflections on the nature of psychotherapy itself.
Rob, Martha's colleague, is trapped in a tempestuous relationship with the beautiful and feisty Constancia, and Martha wonders if he will ever find the resolve to free himself.
Samantha, Martha's daughter, hears her biological clock ticking, but finding the right sperm donor is proving to be harder than she expected . . .
Then there's the mysterious couple who arrive in Martha's office. Who are they? And what is it that they know about her?
A Matter of Life and Death
As the great chief matriarch lay dying, she gave one final decree: Upon her death there would be a contest. Having no heir of her own blood she called on the Gods. Let fate decide the one truly worthy to rule in her place. The rich, the strong, the wise, the powerful; many put forward their names in hope of being chosen. But when the night came… only fifty souls alone were chosen.
Join our cast of characters in a spell-binding journey of betrayal, magic and tragedy as they battle their way through a series of tasks set by a sorceress of unimaginable power, all with the purpose of discovering who will be the next ruler. As our protagonist, Io, fights for her life and faces horrifying consequences, will her fellow chosen souls band together to defeat evil, or is it every soul for themselves?
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Emily Wilde is good at many things: she is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encylopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party - much less get invited to one. Emily prefers the company of her books, her dog Shadow, and the Fair Folk to that of friends or lovers.
So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of her research, and utterly confound and frustrate Emily.
But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones - the most elusive of all faeries - lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds hersel
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos "pretending" to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.
But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and…Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.
As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when peril comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
Dinner
The food you want to cook, eat and share, night after night. Through her phenomenally popular online food site, RecipeTin Eats, Nagi Maehashi talks to millions of people a year who tell her about the food they love. Now, in her first cookbook, Nagi brings us the ultimate curation of new and favourite RecipeTin Eats recipes - from comfort food (yes, cheese galore), to fast and easy food for weeknights, Mexican favourites, hearty dinner salads, Asian soups and noodles, and special treats for festive occasions. Featuring a photo and how-to video for every recipe (follow the QR code), readily available ingredients, Nagi's famously helpful notes, and Dozer, Australia's best-loved food tester, this is a kitchen-shelf must have for the novice cook, the expert seeking to perfect technique (straight to the Beef Wellington!), and everyone in between.
The Trees
The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk.
The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body - that of a man who resembles Emmett Till, a young black boy lynched in the same town 65 years before.
The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried.
Girl Friends
From the day they first meet as teenagers, Fern and Jessica are best friends. Despite their differences, they are there for each other through everything. That is until Jessica crosses a line that Fern can't forgive. Now they haven't seen each other for more than ten years when Jessica unexpectedly arrives back in Fern's life.A lot has changed for them both - but can things really be that different between them now they are older? Or will their shared history ultimately be doomed to repeat itself again?
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
Seizing upon the energy of the #MeToo movement, feminist activist Mona Eltahawy advocates a muscular, out-loud approach to teaching women and girls to harness their power through what she calls the "seven necessary sins" that women and girls are not supposed to commit: to be angry, ambitious, profane, violent, attention-seeking, lustful, and powerful. All the necessary "sins" that women and girls require to erupt.
Eltahawy knows that the patriarchy is alive and well, and she is fed the hell up: Sexually assaulted during hajj at the age of fifteen. Groped on the dance floor of a night club in Montreal at fifty. Countless other injustices in the years between. Illuminating her call to action are stories of activists and ordinary women around the world-from South Africa to China, Nigeria to India, Bosnia to Egypt-who are tapping into their inner fury and crossing the lines of race, class, faith, and gender that make it so hard for marginalized women to be heard. Rather than teaching women and girls to survive the poisonous system they have found themselves in, Eltahawy arms them to dismantle it.
Brilliant, bold, and energetic, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls is a manifesto for all feminists in the fight against patriarchy.
