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 place For good behavior,” they said to me.

“Another psycho just like you No more isolation,” they said to me.

They are the minions of The Reestablishment. The initiative that was supposed to help our dying society. The same people who pulled me out of my parents’ home and locked me in an asylum for something outside of my control. No one cares that I didn’t know what I was capable of. That I didn’t know what I was doing.

I have no idea where I am.

I only know that I was transported by someone in a white van who drove 6 hours and 37 minutes to get me here. I know I was handcuffed to my seat. I know I was strapped to my chair. I know my parents never bothered to say good-bye. I know I didn’t cry as I was taken away.

I know the sky falls down every day.

Cover blurb

‘You can’t touch me,’ I whisper.

I’m lying, is what I don’t tell him.

He can touch me, is what I’ll never tell him.

Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.

But things happen when people touch me.

Strange things. Bad things. DEAD THINGS.

No one knows why Juliette’s touch is fatal but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon.

But Juliette has plans of her own.

After a lifetime without freedom, she’s finally discovering a strength to fight back for the very first time - and to find a future with the one boy she thought she’d lost forever.

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Author’s blog

The US hardcover edition:

Book of the day: The Coming of the Whirlpool by Andrew McGahan

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 rebel by his numerous enemies, a hero by his few friends.

But his real name, the name of his birth, was simply Dow.

Dow Amber.

And strange as it may seem, he was not born to the sea. As this volume – the first of his extraordinary history – will tell, his childhood was, in fact, a landlocked one, and it was only through peculiar chance and gravest hazard that he came to voyage upon the open ocean at all.

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andrewmcgahan.com.au

Books of the day: WA Premier’s Book Awards winners

**Joint winner (with Anonymity Jones by James Roy) of the Young Adult category

Laurence Augustine Rainbow was born in July 1990. This was the month Saddam Hussein amassed his troops for the invasion of Kuwait, the act that spawned the Persian Gulf War. In Mecca, 1426 Muslim pil-grims died as a result of a stampede in a tunnel during hajj. Boris Yeltsin quit the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, eventually becoming the first popularly elected president of Russia, and so the Cold War was officially over.

Laurence Augustine Rainbow was born at Cradle Valley general hospital, Villea, after a thirteen-hour labour, on Friday the thirteenth, but those portents went unnoticed by the people in the room at that moment.

They all had bigger things on their minds.

Malcolm Rainbow, Laurence’s father, had missed his morning postal round for the first time in his working life. He’d held his wife and encouraged her for the entire labour, though he couldn’t help worrying that whoever did his round would use the letterbox of Mrs D. Kilgower at 27 Factory Place, not knowing that Mrs D. Kilgower had misplaced her keys and would be forced to retrieve her mail with pliers if it wasn’t left in the tube for newspapers. He also worried that his beautiful wife might be irreparably damaged by the birth. He worried that his child might be born with the wrong total of appendages and no provision for a fiercely scribbled ‘Return to Sender’. He worried how much the birth, and the child itself, would cost. Nappies. Clothing. Food. Education.

Cover blurb:

Laurence Augustine Rainbow is born into an ordinary family, and seems set for an ordinary life. But as the world changes around him, so does the happiness of his own family.

Unique, dark and ultimately uplifting, this is a beautiful story of one family - and one boy - trying to hold their heads above water in a world quietly gone mad.

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**Winner of the People’s Choice category

Earlsbrae Hall, Essendon, 1918

The marmoset runs through the grass, straight to-wards the old man in the black suit and top hat. It climbs up his leg, swings from his coat and settles on his shoulder, muttering in his ear. The man strokes its chest.

The day is winding down, the sun is low, and bees fly drunken circles around the lavender. Soon the birds will come to roost in the palm trees, singing wild songs to ward off the night. Shadows stealing colour from their bodies and wings. Soon the night will come, and stay for hours, days. And he will lay the usual traps for sleep: books, warmed milk, lavender beneath the pillow.

The marmoset breathes its warm breath on his neck. They are waiting for him in the house.

He turns, stumbles, and the monkey dips earth-wards, grips his ear to keep from falling. It happens, since the stroke.

Cover blurb:

It’s the 1880s and Marvellous Melbourne is a lavish and raucous city where anything could happen. Eccentric entrepreneur Edward William Cole is building the sprawling Cole’s Book Arcade and filling it with whatever amuses him, or supports his favourite causes: a giant squid, a brass band, monkeys, a black man whose skin has turned white, a Chinese tea salon, and of course, hundreds of thousands of books.

When Edward decides to marry he advertises for a wife in the newspaper, shocking and titillating the whole town. To everyone’s surprise he marries his broadsheet bride and the Arcade grows into a monumental success.

But the 1890s depression hits Melbourne - and Edward - hard, and the death of one of his children leaves him reeling. Grief, corruption and a beautiful, unscrupulous widow all threaten to derail his singular vision. But it’s not until he visits Chinatown one night - and his own deeply suppressed past - that the idealist faces his toughest challenge.

Utopian Man is the story of a man who lives life on his own terms, and leaves behind a remarkable legacy.

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See all the WA Premier’s Book Awards categories and winners

Book of the day: The Wicked Wood (Tales from the Tower vol.2) edited by Isobelle Carmody & Nan McNab

From the story ‘Seventy-two Derwents’ by Cate Kennedy:

Mrs Carlyle has given us all exercise books and said we are going to try to keep a journal this term. This is mine. She says it’s better if we don’t feel self-conscious so we don’t have to put our names on the journals. They will be anonymous. She says she would just like to read them.

Mrs Carlyle has two budgies, a boy and a girl, and they have built a nest. If they have baby budgies and if I’m allowed she will give me one. You have to wait until they’re old enough to leave the nest before you can take them away from their parents because they need special looking after. In my mind I can picture this. The babies would live in a soft little nest inside the milk carton Mrs Carlyle has put inside their cage as a nesting box.

Cover blurb:

In this companion to The Wilful Eye, six much-loved writers - Catherine Bateson, Victor Kelleher, Cate Kennedy, Maureen McCarthy, Nan McNab and Kate Thompson - give fresh voice to age-old stories of abandonment, desire and entrapment.

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Discover The Wilful Eye

Find out more about the series design process

Book of the day: Taken Away by Celine Kiernan

We were watching TELLY the night Nan burnt the house down. It was March 1974, and I was fifteen years of age. I thought I lost everything in that fire, but what did I know about loss? Nothing, that’s what. I would learn soon enough.

Cover blurb

I think the fire changed us – me and Dom. Though I didn’t feel much different at first, I think something inside of us opened up, or woke up. I think, all at once, we began to understand how easily things are broken and taken and lost. It was like walking through a door: on one side was the warm, cosy sitting room of our childhood; on the other, a burnt-out shell of ash and char.

I think that’s how the goblin-boy was able to see us. Though he’d been there for every summer of our childhood – mine and Dom’s – we’d only been stupid boys until then. Stupid, happy, ignorant boys. And what in hell would he have had in common with two stupid boys? But after the fire we were different. We were maybe a little bit like him. And so he saw us, at last, and he thought he’d found a home.

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Visit Celine Kiernan’s website

The Lord of the Flies cover competition

Oh, to be aged 13 and 16 and a resident of the UK or Ireland!

If we were, we could enter this unbelievably cool competition being run by our UK colleagues at Faber in partnership with the Guardian. The winning illustration will be turned into a cover for a new edition of William Golding’s classic Lord of the Flies!

Plus there are tips from Faber’s art director Donna Payne and cover designer Neil Gower, not to mention an awesome gallery of previous Lord of the Flies cover art.

Check it all out at http://lordofthefliescover.com/

Book of the day: Crow Country by Kate Constable

The crow wheeled high in the clear winter sky.
The land was spread beneath, laid out like a map, like an open book. The lines of the creeks, and the bumps and sags of the hills and swamps held the stories of the country’s ancient history, the marks of its creation.
Far below, the crow saw a tiny speck move along a muddy track. It was a human girl-child. She tramped along, her head down, ignoring the country around her and the small town at her back. The girl did not see the paddocks, the railway line, the trees, the birds, the clouds. Her eyes were fixed on her own muddy shoes and the boggy road she stalked along.

Cover blurb

‘Beginning and ending, always the same, always now. The game, the story, the riddle, hiding and seeking. Crow comes from this place; this place comes from Crow. And Crow has work for you.’

Sadie isn’t thrilled when her mother drags her from the city to live in the country town of Boort. But soon she starts making connections - connections with the country, with the past, with two boys, Lachie and Walter, and, most surprisingly, with the ever-present crows.

When Sadie is tumbled back in time to view a terrible crime, she is pulled into a strange mystery. Can Sadie, Walter and Lachie figure out a way to right old wrongs, or will they be condemned to repeat them?

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The Wilful Eye / The Wicked Wood: An interview with designer Zoe Sadokierski

The Wilful Eye and The Wicked Wood are the first and second volumes of a stunning short-story collection that sees some of the world’s best-loved writers take on some of the world’s best-known fairy tales. As one reviewer quipped, ‘Fairy tales never die - they just get facelifts’.

The creation of jacket images for the two volumes - published some six months apart - came with a slightly different set of challenges to the usual process of cover design. We asked Zoe Sadokierski to tell us about it.

The final full cover for The Wilful Eye:



Tell us about the brief; where did the idea of designing the two volumes together come from?
I was briefed to design the two covers as a set – the Tower Anthologies. The audience was described as: “16+, crossover/adult, fantasy readers, lovers of magical realism, literary fiction.” The books are anthologies of fairy tales that are quite dark and many are told from a female perspective.

Who briefed you - publisher, editor, both?
Both initially, then I worked closely with the editor. I enjoy working with the A&U Melbourne team because everyone is enthusiastic and involved the whole way through, without intruding on my creative process.

The final full cover for The Wicked Wood:



Did they have a clear vision of what they wanted or was it more collaborative and evolved over the course of the design process?
The initial direction was clear in terms of what kind of mood needed to be communicated, but initially we were going to use another illustrator whose work was much more linear in style. It was a collaborative process to get to the rich, layered illustrations these covers ended up with. Designers call this the ‘rebriefing’ process; over the course of a project, you need to keep re-looking at the brief and reassessing how to keep all parties (publishing, marketing, sales, the authors) happy. Sometimes this means stopping, reflecting, and changing tack.

Process pic no.1:



Where did you start (ie picture research, colour palette, mood board…?)
I always start by going to the book store. It’s important to see what ‘friends’ your covers are going to be hanging out with on the shelf. You want a cover to belong to the genre but also to stand out from the other books there. Then I do some image research and develop an archive of inspiration – colours, images, ideas. I start sketching ideas in a notebook. I don’t start on the computer until I know what I want to create.

Process pic no.2:



What sort of constraints if any were there? (budget? intended audience? format? other?)
Audience, genre and budget are always constraints in the commercial publishing world, and an important part of the brief to consider from the start. The format was pitched by the publisher/editor (taller and thinner than a regular format to reflect the idea of the ‘tower’ books) – that was a constraint I liked. We ended up using a 5th colour PMS (the gold) as an embellishment, because it ‘lifted’ the darkness of the illustration.

Walk us through your process: where did you start, and how was the cover refined over the course of the process?
I wanted an image that travelled across both covers, connecting them without having to be one ‘piece’. The idea of the two woman with their hands touching was inspired by the idea of looking through a mirror, into another world. Each women touches the reflection of the other’s world. The titles of the books, which actually came quite late in the process (I imagine it’s very difficult to name an anthology of such unique stories), helped me with the tone of each illustration.

Zoe also worked on the books’ internal design:



Can you give us some technical specs? Also, what was the hardest part about this design job? What was the easiest/most fun?
The most fun part is always reading the stories and getting excited about the flock of different ideas that come at me as I read. The typefaces are Packard Antique, which has a slightly distressed look without being too much of a novelty font, and Perpetua – which is also the typeface I designed the internals with. Perpetua has a beautiful set of italics that are readable but still distinct and unique. I created the images from scratch, using a ridiculous number of layers in Photoshop. I knew what I wanted before I started making the illustration in Photoshop, but I always allow happy accidents or unexpected outcomes to lead me as I’m making the image. I’m mostly self-taught with Photoshop, so much of my process is fumbling around trying things out and trusting my ‘eye’ when something works.



Some of Zoe’s other recently published work

A Life in Frocks - Kelly Doust (for which Zoe won Best Designed Non-Fiction Book at the APA Book Design Awards 2011)









See more of Zoe’s work at her online folio

Book of the Day: Only Ever Always by Penni Russon

‘I had a dream,’ Groom tells. ‘It was you and me. We was travellin to make somethin new. A beginnin.’ He lays his hand on mine, and I twitch with the warmth of it. ‘Would you?’

I pull my hand away. ‘This now?’

‘Some day. Some night or other.’

‘And where would we be going? Where is there to go where there’s beginnings?’

Cover blurb

Who dreams the dreamer?

Claire lives in an ordinary world where everything is whole. But inside Claire is broken. The silvery notes of her music box allow her an escape from her grief into a dream-world, into Clara’s world.

Clara’s world has always been broken. She finds broken things to swap at the markets; she walks the treacherous route past the brown river where lone dogs prowl; she avoids the seamy side when she can, but with powerful people pulling the strings, it’s not always possible.

Which world is real?

Claire’s and Clara’s paths are set to collide, and each has much to lose - or gain.

Original and poetic, this captivating novel explores dreams, grief, friendship and love through a brilliantly constructed dystopian fantasy world.

‘Like the sound of the little loved music box that is so pivotal to the story, Penni Russon’s Only Ever Always is both deeply touching and strangely eerie, leaving the reader with a mixture of warmth and apprehension, yearning and wonder - about death, life, language, art,dreams and childhood. Fascinating and absolutely memorable.’ - Ursula Dubosarsky

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Elliott Allagash paperback edition - Simon Rich

My parents always took my side when I was a kid, no matter how much I screwed up. When I smashed my brand new Sega Genesis during a temper tantrum, they blamed the game “Sonic the Hedgehog” for getting me riled up. When I lost my passport at the airport, they blamed themselves for entrusting it to me. So when I told them what Elliott had done to me, I was pretty surprised by their reaction.

“Maybe it was an accident,” my father said. “Accidents happen all the time.”

Cover blurb

Seymour isn’t cool, but he isn’t a geek either. He’s a lonely, obedient 8th grade loser at Glendale, a second tier prep school in Manhattan. His chubbiness has recently earned him the nick name Chunk Style and he has resigned himself to a life of isolation. All of this is about to change. Allagash, the arrogant heir of America’s largest fortune, finds himself marooned at Glendale. Try as he may, Elliot cannot get expelled this time; his father has donated too much money. Bitter and bored, Elliot decides to amuse himself by taking up a new hobby: transforming Seymour into the most popular student in school. as Elliot introduces Seymour to new concepts, like power, sabotage and vengeance.

With Elliot as his diabolical guide, Seymour gradually learns about all of the incredible things that money can buy, and the one or two things that it can’t. Hilarious, ingenious and tightly plotted, Elliot Allagash reminds you what your teens were like, and why growing up is so hard to do.

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How the book looked in trade paperback: