February 2012
23 posts
2 tags
Sneak peek: Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult
All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel… . Think about it. There’s escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into...
6 tags
Book of the day: Calories & Corsets by Louise...
Virtually all so-called obesity cures … are simply shrewd schemes for fooling the overweight, and the purchasers of most of them are being kidded by experts. — Arthur J. Cramp, ‘Fooling the Fat’ in Your Weight and How to Control it (1928) I have always wanted a mistress who was fat. — Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) If fat is not an insidious creeping enemy, I do not know what is. —...
4 tags
Fabulous February fiction: Narcopolis by Jeet...
Before Dimple came to be called Zeenat, she worked part-time for Rashid and disappeared every evening to the hijra’s brothel. I smoked at her station even if other pipes were free, and we talked the way smokers talk, horizontally, with long pauses, our words so soft they sounded like the incomprehensible phrases spoken by small children. I asked the usual foolish questions: is it better to be a...
5 tags
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,...
4 tags
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 ...
3 tags
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....
8 tags
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...
5 tags
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 -...
4 tags
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...
6 tags
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,...
3 tags
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,...
5 tags
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...
4 tags
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;...
2 tags
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...
5 tags
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...
6 tags
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...
4 tags
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...
4 tags
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...
4 tags
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...
5 tags
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...
5 tags
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...
3 tags
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...
3 tags
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...