February 2012
20 posts
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Book of the day: Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin...
Spring 1985
The handmade Jesus on Napoleon’s living room wall has no face, just a gasping, caved-in head with blood dripping down its chest. He appears to have been crucified on some popsicle sticks. His mottled green and gold surface reminds us of fish scales and his paddle-shaped toes fan out like a tail. It is a singularly gruesome crucifix. We call it “Fish Jesus.”
The first time I saw it,...
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A magical novel for young readers: Hatched by...
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Hello, my name is Martha Grimstone. Shall I tell you my best secret? One day I’m going to be Lady Martha the Magnificent. I don’t know what my special talent is, but I hope to find it any day now.
I live in a grand old house in a valley full of rare and precious herbs, which my grandfather uses to heal and comfort people. But they haven’t worked on ...
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Fabulous fiction: The Little Shadows by Marina...
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. — crowfoot A summer evening. Moths dance in the lights outside the opera house. A girl in a white dress slides into a seat on the aisle beside her father. The hall is crowded, many standing at the back....
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Faber announces the winner of their Lord of the...
Congratulations to Amy Baxter whose work ‘Into the Mouth of the Beast’ was the unanimous choice of the judges! The judging panel included William Golding’s daughter Judy, as well as an experienced book designer, Faber’s senior designer, and the art & design editor at the Guardian.
Ms Baxter’s work will now be turned into a finished cover and will feature on a...
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A sparkling read for teens: Spoiled by Jessica...
“ARUGULA, PUT THEM DOWN. You know thigh-high sandals give you cankles.” Brooke Berlin snatched the seven-hundred-dollar Gucci gladiator shoes out of her friend’s hand and threw them back onto the display table, knocking over five and a half pairs of boots in the process. Choosing not to notice the shoes strewn across the floor - Brooke, in life and in shopping, rarely cleaned up her own messes -...
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The 60th annual APA Book Design Awards
The shortlists for this year’s Australian Publishers Association (APA) Book Design Awards have been revealed… and we are BURSTING with pride to see the titles below make the cut! Thank you, designers, for making our books so eyecatching and ‘pick-uppable’.
In… Best Designed Children’s Fiction:
Crow Country by Kate Constable
cover and internals by Josh...
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Book of the day: Rupert Murdoch by David McKnight
I think what people don’t understand about me is that I’m not just a businessman working in a very interesting industry. I am someone who’s interested in ideas. — Rupert Murdoch, 1995
For better or worse [my company] is a reflection of my thinking, my character, my values. — Rupert Murdoch, 1996
The 2004 convention of the Republican Party, held in New York’s Madison Square Garden,...
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Book of the day: Sammy, I Love You by Sally...
Life was good. In fact, life was great. It was the end of summer, and the days were warm and clear. As the sun set over the back deck of our brand new home, I glanced over at Sam playing with our two dogs, and thought just how lucky we were. Sam and I had met in the winter of 2004 while I was in my first year of Business Management at the Queensland University of Technology. This particular day,...
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Fabulous fiction: Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan
‘The old witch is there,’ said Raditch, peering over the top to Six-Mile Beach. ‘Well settled with her knitting.’
‘It’s all right. We’re plenty,’ said Grinny.
‘We’re plenty and we have business,’ James said with some bluster - he was as scared of her as anyone. He shook his empty sack. ‘We have been sent by our mams. We’re to provide for...
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Fabulous fiction: What Remains by Denise Leith
I smell the sweet scent of ginger flowers and it begins. I am the vulture circling, but I’m not as bad as Pete. He stalks. I insist there is a difference. I pick my way through the bodies rotting in the afternoon heat: white bones jutting; maggots erupting through bloated, black skin. Treading on something soft I look down to see a small hand under my boot: body parts; tiny body parts;...
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Fabulous fiction: Currawalli Street by Christopher...
Always there has been this funny little hill. Always there has been a crooked path of some sort running along its crown. Sometimes it could not be called a path; sometimes it was just a break in the growth of the tree trunks where the wind had pushed them aside when they were saplings, like the part in a head of hair, for the wind always liked to run up this rise and sail over the crest; and it...
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Introducing the Hon. Phryne Fisher (part 2)
Phryne Fisher… coming to Australian television screens from Friday 24 February, 8.30pm on ABC1! Get ready to immerse yourself in the opulent, exciting world of Australia’s leading lady detective Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) in MISS FISHER’S MURDER MYSTERIES. Phryne (pronounced Fry-nee) is a glamorous and thoroughly modern woman of the 1920s. Our lady sleuth sashays through the...
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Introducing the Hon. Phryne Fisher (part 1)
Phryne Fisher… coming to Australian television screens from Friday 24 February, 8.30pm! Get ready to immerse yourself in the opulent, exciting world of Australia’s leading lady detective Phryne Fisher (Essie Davis) in MISS FISHER’S MURDER MYSTERIES. Phryne (pronounced Fry-nee) is a glamorous and thoroughly modern woman of the 1920s. Our lady sleuth sashays through the back lanes...
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Suspenseful summer reads: The Cold, Cold Ground by...
The riot had taken on a beauty of its own now. Arcs of gasoline fire under the crescent moon. Crimson tracer in mystical parabolas. Phosphorescence from the barrels of plastic bullet guns. A distant yelling like that of men below decks in a torpedoed prison ship. The scarlet whoosh of Molotovs intersecting with exacting surfaces. Helicopters everywhere: their spotlights finding one another like...
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Suspenseful summer reads: Call Me Cruel by Michael...
When I began to attend murder trials as a journalist, I was curious to find out how real murder differed from fiction. Like most people, I was fortunate that my only knowledge of violent death came from crime novels and television dramas. I knew reality would be different, but how?
I found many differences, but the main one was the character of the murderer. In fiction, killers are often...
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Suspenseful summer reads: Voices of the Dead by...
Hess had no idea where he was. He had been driving west on Pennsylvania Avenue, and now was somehow on K Street. He regretted stopping at the gentlemen’s club but he’d needed several drinks to calm him down, he had been so charged up, so high on adrenalin. To the right was a sign for Lafayette Park, and he realized he was traveling in the wrong direction. The White House was somewhere south...
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Suspenseful summer reads: Bloodland by Alan Glynn
The way his heart is beating is unreal, the rate, the intensity – it’s like a jackhammer drilling into rock. He puts a hand up to his chest, and waits, gauges. This has to be close to some upper limit of what his or anyone else’s heart is capable of enduring, because it’s only an organ after all, a pump, a piece of meat, dark, red, wet – and incessant, naturally … but not imperishable, not...
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Suspenseful summer reads: Cold Wind by C.J. Box
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. —Age-old medical school admonition He set out after breakfast on what would be his last day on earth. He was an old man, but like many men of his generation with his wealth and station, he refused to think of himself that way. Deep in his heart, he honestly entertained the possibility he would never break down and perhaps live forever, while...
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Suspenseful summer reads: Comeback by Peter Corris
‘You read the papers don’t you, Cliff?’ my lawyer, Viv Garner, said. ‘All depends,’ I said. ‘On what?’ ‘Whether they’re going to make me angry or not, and a lot of things make me angry—politics, economics, religion, television…’ ‘That just about covers it. Bit sour though.’ ‘Oh, a lot of things make me happy. Make me laugh. Sometimes the same things that make me angry. I’m not sour. You...
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Suspenseful summer reads: Never Knowing by Chevy...
SESSION ONE I thought I could handle it, Nadine. After all those years of seeing you, all those times I talked about whether I should look for my birth mother, I finally did it. I took that step. You were a part of it—I wanted to show you what an impact you had on my life, how much I’ve grown, how stable I am now, how balanced. That’s what you always told me, “Balance is the key.” But I forgot...
November 2011
21 posts
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Book of the day: 100 Gardens by Jamie Durie
Cover blurb:
From the luxurious to the accessible, the sustainable and the edible, Jamie Durie’s innovative garden designs have changed the way we look at gardens. A pioneer of the Outdoor Room concept, Durie’s designs are as much about the humans who live in them as they are about the concepts. This philosophy-communicated through his award-winning designs, ...
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Book of the day: Double Entry by Jane...
On 18 March 1968, three months before an assassin’s bullet cut short his life, Senator Robert F. Kennedy made an impassioned speech at the University of Kansas. He spoke about the health of his nation, the economic powerhouse that is the United States of America, and the way we measure national wealth using figures such as the Gross National Product (GNP). Kennedy said:
Too much and for too...
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Classic book of the day: The Mint Lawn by Gillian...
I’m telling him about drug squad Alsatians when he begins to cry. He’s quite far away, curled like a puppy on the collapsing curve of futon that was a wedding present from his parents. A sheet has rucked to reveal the beginning of a mildew problem on the mattress. Condensation dribbles down the inside of the coffee plunger until I push the grounds down hard. Outside, although it’s nearly spring,...
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Book of the day: Darius Bell and the Crystal Bees...
Darius Bell walked up the drive. The gravel crunched under his feet, and Darius smiled as he heard it, feeling like an explorer crunching his way across a dry, rocky desert. But if he was an explorer, he didn’t have far to go. At the end of the drive ahead of him was Bell House, with its clock tower rising above it.
The clock in the tower showed eighteen minutes past eleven. Whether it was...
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First covers of classic novels
Flavorwire has an interesting round-up of the very first covers used on a bunch of classic novels. The usual suspects are all included - you know: Mrs Dalloway, A Clockwork Orange, Ulysses, The Hobbit - but there are a couple of less well-known examples too:
This post has inspired us! Keep an eye out for our own ‘First covers of classic Allen & Unwin books’ round-up, coming...
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Book of the day: Outlaws by Adam Shand
The driver hears the threat long before the infernal rumble takes ghastly form in his mirrors.
A biker is snaking his way through the cars at the traffic lights. The handlebars of his chopped Harley all but graze the paintwork of the cars as he glides to the front of the queue.
He stops, the bike straddling the pedestrian crossing.
Behind reflective sunglasses, the biker’s expression is...
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The many covers of a classic: Lolita by Vladimir...
An ‘online exhibition’ of Lolita covers through the years makes fascinating browsing:
Fabulous stuff. Browse them all here
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Book of the day: Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D....
It was generally agreed by the female residents of Meryton that Mr and Mrs Bennet of Longbourn had been fortunate in the disposal in marriage of four of their five daughters. Meryton, a small market town in Hertfordshire, is not on the route of any tours of pleasure, having neither beauty of setting nor a distinguished history, while its only great house, Netherfield Park, although impressive,...
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Book of the day: Kitchen Coquette by Katrina...
Cover blurb
Kitchen Coquette is a cookbook that will make you smile. It will feed ten hungry friends, the man of your dreams, your lovely gran; even providing a bite to eat for all those inspired in-between moments.
Katrina Meynink knows that sometimes food is the only answer so Kitchen Coquette provides the recipes with the context. It is important to know why you are cooking -...
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Book of the day: The Little Refugee by Anh Do,...
Cover blurb
Giant waves crashed down on our little boat. I was terrified but my mum hugged me tight and told me, ‘Everything will be okay. Don’t worry, it will be okay.’
Anh Do nearly didn’t make it to Australia. His entire family came close to losing their lives as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. It was a dangerous journey, ...
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Book of the day: Daylight on Iron Mountain by...
It was the summer of 2067, that bright, hot summer before the beginning of the American campaign. And it was there, in the green shadow of Li Mountain, in that most ancient of places, Hua Ch’ing Hot Springs, sixty li east of China’s ancient capital, Xi’an, that they met. Hua Ch’ing was an ancient place, even by Han standards. A sprawling summer palace, built into the green of the mountainside....
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Book of the day: Australians Volume II by Thomas...
Conviction was at an end in Eastern Australia, but because of its shame it had induced in the white community a tendency to pretend that all convicts ceased breathing and vanished utterly at the date of the abolition of transportation. Much later in the nineteenth century, the Bulletin wrote that the day ‘among all others which has been forced upon us as the natal-day of Australia is that which...
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Book of the day: Parrot Carrot by Jol & Kate...
Cover blurb
This book will make you giggle every time you read it! It takes a very simple concept - what would happen if you mixed an animal with an object? - adds some kooky illustrations and a strong design sense to create a book with lots of mixed-up animals and quirky visual humour. Try to make up your own animal pairs! Addictively good fun. Find the app at parrotcarrot.com
...
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Book of the day: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
Hush … Can you hear him?
The trees can. They are the first to know that he is coming.
Listen! The trees of the deep, dark wood, shivering and jittering their leaves like papery hulls of beaten silver; the sly wind, snaking through their tops, whispering that soon it will begin.
The trees know, for they are old and they have seen it all before.
Cover blurb
‘The suspense will have...
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Book of the day: Bondi Republic by Andrew Hoyne &...
Cover blurb
An international celebrity, a national icon, a tourist haven or simply home. Bondi means different things to different people. In Bondi Republic photographer Ali Nasseri gives us a peek at the free-spirited, larger-than-life Sydney suburb that lies behind the designer shades and ripped abs.
Gaze into the true heart of Bondi, where it’s kinda edgy, sorta...
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Book of the day: Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
I’ve been locked up for 264 days.
I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. 1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet.
I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.
6,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being.
“You’re getting a cellmate roommate,” they said to me.
“We hope you rot to death in this...
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Book of the day: The Drop by Michael Connelly
Christmas came once a month in the Open-Unsolved Unit. That was when the lieutenant made her way around the squad room like Santa Claus, parceling out the assignments like presents to the squad’s six detective teams. The cold hits were the lifeblood of the unit. The teams didn’t wait for call outs and fresh kills in ...
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Book of the day: After Words by P.J. Keating
Whatever was pedestrian about Sydney, and God knows so much has always been, we have always rejoiced in the extraordinary natural beauty of its harbour and its maritime environs.
The high points of its built form—the colonial ones such as Greenway’s St James’ Church and environs, Barnet’s monumental Bridge Street, St Mary’s Cathedral and Sydney University—as well as the twentieth-century...
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Hot covers from cool Swedes
While being led down the internet rabbit-hole this morning we stumbled across this fab blog of Swedish book cover design:
Gorgeous stuff!
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Book of the day: The Coming of the Whirlpool by...
Later, when he was the greatest mariner of his day and famous throughout the Four Isles, he was to be known by many names. He would be called the Last of the Ship Kings, even though he was nothing of the sort. He would be called the Young Admiral, and the Scapegoat’s Captain. He would be called The Man Who Sailed Off The Edge Of The World, and a good many other things besides; a traitor and...
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Book of the day: Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears
The sound of horses’ hooves turns hollow on the farms west of Wirri. If a man can still ride, if he hasn’t totally lost the use of his legs, if he hasn’t died to the part of his heart that understands such things, then he should go for a gallop. At the very least he should stand at the road by the river imagining that he’s pushing a horse up the steep hill that leads to the house on the farm...
October 2011
19 posts
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Book of the day: Join the Club: How peer pressure...
The mist was still rising from the fields on a cold Sunday morning in early May. In a subdivision of brick-and-beige Tudor-style connected houses in Algonquin, Illinois, a far suburb of Chicago, three men in sweatpants jogged up to the house of Ryan Boldt. His family still asleep, Boldt stepped out the door and into the street. It was just before 6am.
Cover blurb
Tina Rosenberg has spent her...
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Book of the day: The Damnation of John Donellan by...
In the fifteenth-century church in Newbold-on-Avon, Warwickshire, is a curious monument. Mounted high on the chancel wall to the right of the altar is a visored helmet, the crest of which shows a disproportionately heavy long-necked bird, marked with a double chevron and holding a struggling serpent in its mouth. The ancient armour is believed to be a relic of the Boughton family. Through the...
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Books of the day: the Faber Romantics collection
Read a short but very interesting interview with Miriam Rosenbloom, the art director who commissioned eight different printmakers to work on the eight different poets in the newly released ‘Romantics’ series from Faber. (Fun fact: Miriam is a native Aussie from Melbourne; she is now back home after several years with Faber in the UK. We’re not normally...
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Book of the day: Sweet As by Garth Cartwright
Snow has not stopped falling for several weeks now. Just off the Old Kent Road this is not the constant, heavy snowfall that turns mountainous regions into calendar material. The London snow arrives in drifts, piles up on car roofs, dusts black polythene trash bags white, turns to ice, melts into slush and leaves horrible grey puddles. Then more snow falls, building bigger banks of greasy snow...
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Book of the day: Lights Out in Wonderland...
There isn’t a name for my situation. Firstly because I decided to kill myself. And then because of this idea: I don’t have to do it immediately. Whoosh – through a little door. It’s a limbo. I need never answer the phone again or pay a bill. My credit score no longer matters. Fears and compulsions don’t matter. Socks don’t matter. Because I’ll be dead. And who am I to die? A microwave chef. A...
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Book of the day: What It Is Like To Go To War by...
The sun had struggled all day behind monsoon clouds before finally being extinguished by the turning earth and the dark wet ridges of the Annamese Cordillera. It was February 1969, in Quang Tri province, Vietnam. Zoomer lay above my hole in monsoon-night blackness on the slick clay of Mutter’s Ridge, the dark jungle-covered ridge paralleling Vietnam’s demilitarized zone where the Third Marine...
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Book of the day: Ape House paperback edition by...
The plane had yet to take off, but Osgood, the photographer, was already snoring softly. He was in the center seat, wedged between John Thigpen and a woman in coffee-colored stockings and sensible shoes. He listed heavily toward the latter, who, having already made a great point of lowering the armrest, was progressively becoming one with the wall. Osgood was blissfully unaware. John glanced at...
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Book of the day: Grumpy Little King by Michel...
Cover blurb
The little king was always grumpy. ‘I am fed up with being the little king of a tiny nation!’ he shouted. ‘I want to rule over an enormous country and be famous!’ So the little king decided to start a war. But it didn’t quite work out the way he planned… Michel Streich’s witty text and amusing illustrations make this a perfect...
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Book of the day: A Private Life - fragments,...
She was tall and spare. She was friendly enough but, underneath that sweet exterior, was a voice of cold com-mand. It was not to be messed with. She needed that voice to keep control over the thirty or so boys and girls—five year olds—in her charge. She was Mrs Church: my first teacher. Her specialities were plasticine and the piano. Anything to keep our young minds occupied and out of...