Theodora Ell
A captivating memoir that unravels the emotional struggles of a nation the world has long overlooked. Through the eyes of an outsider, this story takes a deep dive into the intimate details of Lebanon’s hardships, providing a profound understanding of its people and their journey.

From 2018 to 2021, writer and researcher Theodore Ell accompanied his wife on her diplomatic posting to Lebanon and unexpectedly found himself a witness to a country on the brink of collapse.
In prose as lucid as it is emotionally rich, and based on reportage that won Ell the 2021 Calibre Prize, Lebanon Days welcomes those who wish to understand more than news footage can convey.

This is the story of a nation largely ignored by the rest of the world, a complex country driven over the edge but still seeking faith in itself, seen through the eyes of an outsider drawn into its intimate struggle.

Bruce Pascoe
Sometimes you need to repeat something a hundred times before a bell rings in the colony. From the bestselling author Bruce Pascoe comes a deeply personal story about the consequences and responsibility of disrupting Australia’s history. When Dark Emu was adopted by Australia like a new anthem, Bruce found himself at the centre of a national debate that often focussed on the wrong part of the story.

But through all the noise came Black Duck Foods, a blueprint for traditional food growing and land management processes based on very old practices. Bruce Pascoe and Lyn Harwood invite us to imagine a different future for Australia, one where we can honour our relationship with nature and improve agriculture and forestry; where we can develop a uniquely Australian cuisine that will reduce carbon emissions, preserve scarce water resources and rebuild our soil.

Bruce and Lyn show us that you don’t just work Country, you look, listen and care. It’s not Black Duck magic, it’s the result of simply treating Australia like herself. From the aftermath of devastating bushfires and the impact of an elder’s death to rebuilding a marriage and counting the personal cost of starting a movement, Black Duck is a remarkable glimpse into a year of finding strength in Country at Yumburra.

Margaret Reeson
One day in late June 1942, over a thousand men were taken from an internment camp in Rabaul, New Guinea. They were never seen again. Questions surrounding their fate have continued until the present.

Many decades later, questions are still being asked by bereaved families and their friends. What really happened on that fateful day? How could such a tragedy, with a loss of Australian life twice that of the whole Vietnam War, be left forgotten and unresolved? Was there government incompetence? Is ‘friendly fire’ by a US submarine against the prison ship Montevideo Maru a sufficient explanation?
This is the story of the wives and families who waited, not knowing whether their men were dead or alive – of despair and false hope, of somehow carrying on at home. It is also the story of a handful of Australian nurses who disappeared from New Britain, beyond reach or help – and survived in captivity in Japan. It is based on original wartime records and first-hand memories of those who lived that experience.

Julie Bennett
A captivating tale of love, glamour and betrayal, inspired by the life of 1920s Australian film icon Annette Kellerman, for readers of Kate Morton and Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Blue Mountains, 2023: Working on a documentary at the historic Carrington Hotel, videographer Emma Quinn rescues a box of vintage film reels destined for landfill. Trawling through the box, Emma finds a series of handwritten letters hidden beneath the reels – letters that seem to belong to Rose Carey, golden girl of the silent film era.
Intrigued, Emma begins to read the letters and is fascinated by what she uncovers. And as her relationship with her wife fractures under the stress of IVF, she becomes increasingly obsessed with Rose’s story, at the heart of which lies a deadly secret.
Sydney, 1923: Rose Carey knows her glittering Hollywood days are numbered after a near-death experience following the filming of her latest epic. On top of that, she faces bankruptcy. Rose is no quitter, though – she has reinvented herself many times before, overcoming several obstacles to transform into one of Hollywood’s glamour girls. She can’t stop now, and so she throws herself into planning a spectacular production that will take the world by storm. But when she suffers another life-threatening accident, Rose realises that someone close to her wants her out of the way. Who in her close-knit circle has the most to gain? Can she trust anyone, other than herself?

Lily Samson
When young couple Elena and Adam are offered the chance to house-sit in their dream neighborhood for a few months, they jump at the opportunity. The leafy South London enclave is a world away from everything they know, complete with grand homes, lush gardens, and quaint local coffee shops.

Soon Elena crosses paths with the beautiful and enigmatic artist Sophia and her husband, Finn, and she and Adam are pulled into their orbit. Sophia is everything Elena isn’t—glamorous, alluring, successful—and Finn exerts a mysterious pull on Elena that she can’t seem to shake.

Elena’s infatuation with Finn grows stronger by the day, and when Sophia proposes a thrilling game to her new friend—to swap partners in secret—Elena quickly agrees. It’s not long before Elena experiences a sexual awakening that blossoms into an illicit love affair, but Sophia’s plans are far more dangerous than Elena could ever have imagined. . .

Sophie Matthieson
A beautifully crafted debut novel from a compelling new voice in Australian fiction. For the past seven years, Clare has been living in London. She works for a judge on child protection cases. Her partner, Miriam, is devoted to raising their young son, Rupert – their days are dominated by nap times, laundry, and hiding from each other.

When Clare returns to Melbourne to visit her ailing father, another crisis looms – her brother Max’s long-term drug addiction. She turns her efforts towards helping Max into rehab, but is this at the expense of her family back in London?

Moving, heartbreaking and devastatingly insightful, Together We Fall Apart is a story about running away and coming home.

Sophie Green
Mornington Peninsula, 1999. Wife and now grandmother Joan has checked into the grand old Duchess Hotel to find herself again after thirty-five years of being who her husband and family have wanted her to be. Peninsula local and soon-to-be octogenarian Frances is distracting herself from getting old, and avoiding her self-interested son by escaping to the warmth of the Duchess where the hotel staff treat her like the person she still is.

Meanwhile Frances’s daughter, Alison, is trying to manage significant disruptions at home while hoping to finally prove to her mother that she’s just as worthy of love as her brother. New to the Duchess, hotel maid Kirrilyis feeling the weight of a lifetime of responsibility, struggling to balance bills and work and family, and keeping thoughts of how there must be more to life at bay.

With its old-world glamour, sprawling seaside grounds and air of possibility, the Duchess Hotel might just be the place to help the women rediscover who they are and bring some spark back to their lives.

Griffin Dunne
At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion’s legendary L.A. party for the publication of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early 20s, he shared an apartment in Manhattan’s Hotel Des Artistes with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher, while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars and he was a struggling actor working as a popcorn seller at Radio City Music Hall.

A few years later, he produced and starred in the now-iconic film After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese. In the midst of it all, Griffin’s 22-year-old sister Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the 1980s, which ended in a travesty of justice that also somehow marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne’s career as a bestselling author of true crime narratives. And yet, for all its bold-face cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, The Friday Afternoon Club is no celebrity memoir.
It is, down to its bones, a family story that brilliantly embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny and moving characters – its author most of all – finding wicked, self-deprecating humour and glints of surprising light in even the most harrowing and painful of circumstances.

Bill Edgar
A private investigator with a haunting past, Bill Edgar’s life was never destined to be ordinary. Rising to international fame as the ‘Coffin Confessor’ – the man who crashes funerals on behalf of the deceased, giving voice to their last wishes – Bill dismantled many of the assumptions we hold about truth, dignity and the business of dying.

Swindlers, cheaters, vultures, liars and con-artists – there isn’t a musty corner of the human soul Bill hasn’t confronted. Loved and loathed in equal measure, his only concern is being the caretaker of the secrets and desires his clients have entrusted to him. Shame and outrage, healing and comfort are left up to those left behind.

But it’s a request from one woman to hand-deliver a bottle of wine to her husband on the anniversary of her death that raises deeper What do we make out of the handful of days we’re given? If hate and injustice are so hard to bury, why does love have a knack for triumphing? Are the most profound acts in life sometimes the most quiet ones?

Patricia Collins
When Cyclone Tracy flattened Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, it was the worst natural disaster Australians had ever experienced. Stationed in the city with the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service, Patricia Collins not only lived through Tracy but was part of the massive clean-up effort. This is her extraordinary story. The experience of living through a terrifying natural disaster is chillingly told by Collins as she recounts her own dark hours that Christmas along with those of her contemporaries.

They sat huddled in doorways and bathtubs as the winds raged, lifting off roofs, picking up cars and sinking ships. Most of the city was destroyed. Seventy-one people died. The Navy suffered terrible losses.
The cyclone’s devastating aftermath tested the mettle of many. It is arguable that the template for Australians’ responses to the ongoing natural disasters of the past few years was made in Darwin in 1974. We look for answers and stories to help us deal with those natural disasters and manage them better next time. Those answers and stories are in Rock and Tempest.

Patricia Collins joined the Navy to serve in a time of peace, but Rock and Tempest is a testament to the courage and resolve needed by members of the Defence Force at any time. It is fascinating and moving, and absolutely essential reading.