Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd. – förlag

What does it mean to be on land taken from others?

‘What does it mean to be on land that was taken from other people? Now that we know how the taking was done, what do we do with that knowledge?’

Kate Grenville is no stranger to the past. Her success and fame as a writer exploded when she published The Secret River in 2005, a bestseller based on the story of her convict ancestor, an early settler on the Hawkesbury River.

More than two decades on, and following the defeat of the Voice referendum, Grenville is still grappling with what it means to descend from people who were, as she puts it, ‘on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation’.

So she decides to go on a kind of pilgrimage, back through the places her family stories happened, and put the stories and the First People back into the same frame, on the same country, to try to think about those questions. This gripping book is the result of that journey.

'Grenville's pages are streaked with light … Kate Grenville is, like Kim Scott and Lia Hills here and Percival Everett in the US, turning our faces towards the two dazzlingly contemporary questions central to all of us, Colonisation and Race.'—The Age

'A beautifully written exploration of geography, spirituality and settlement … Grenville is to be celebrated for vulnerably setting forth into our darkest corners, unsettling us all.' —ArtsHub

'Effortless and artful … Unsettled, and the collective memory and identity it invokes, speaks powerfully to a structure of postcolonial feeling within Australian society' —The Conversation

'A gripping, profound look at colonisation that puts First Nations' stories back in the frame.'—Harper's Bazaar

'An unforgettable reimagining and retelling of history that is, in turns, intimate, unsparing – and confronting.' —Good Weekend

'This is a book of deep and complex musings with sharp illuminations – tiny gold nuggets rising up through the hidden sands of time … The book allows the reader space to breathe somewhere ­between the worlds of fact and fiction, and feel into the space ­between the past and present. Through her own journey, Grenville gives her readers a road map for a deeper understanding.'—The Australian

Luke and Anna, thirty-something and restless, decide on a sea change. Worn down by city life and wounded by a loss neither can talk about, they flee to a sleepy village by the coast. There, surrounded by nature, they begin to feel rejuvenated. But when bushfire threatens their new home, they must confront what they have tried to put behind them.Vertigo is a fable of love and awakening by one of Australia''s finest writers, about the unexpected way emotions can return and life can change.‘A carefully crafted little gem of a book’ —Advertiser‘Lohrey achieves a kind of perfection’ —Sydney Morning Herald‘Extraordinarily vivid and compelling ... A stunning and memorable novella’ —Age‘Vertigo will keep you up much too late but it’s worth a one-sitting read.’ —West AustralianAmanda Lohrey is the author of the acclaimed novels Camille’s Bread, Vertigo and The Morality of Gentlemen, as well as the award-winning short story collection Reading Madame Bovary. She has also written two Quarterly Essays: Groundswell and Voting for Jesus. In 2012 she was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award.

An insightful exploration of one of Australia's most acclaimed writers, the award-winning Alexis Wright

'Do you have a heart? her books ask. Is it still beating? Do you want to live? If the answer is yes, she says, then you're with me. There is something exhilarating in the breadth of her church. For a congenital doomscroller with ancestor issues like myself, Wright opens a door to the potential for justice, comity and healing. It's one I walk through with gratitude and relief.'

Winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2007 and 2024 and the Stella Prize in 2018 and 2024, Alexis Wright is the most eminent and influential Indigenous creative writer of recent times. In this eloquent essay, noted critic Geordie Williamson reflects with deep insight on Wright's powerful work.

A story of love, dreams, exile and tragedy, told with heartbreaking beauty

'Although if they are asked before they die, they all say they came here for a better life, they do not always find a better life, do they?'

In the Victorian town of Mitrefò, tobacco is grown, an Italian cinema and café open, and people travel back and forth from Italy. A boy fishes, wanders the countryside and watches a community form, with its joys, scandals and shared understandings. Interspersed are the 'grotesques' – indelible and terrible events that sit alongside the better future they all seek.

In The Immigrants, Moreno Giovannoni depicts a family as they build a new life in a strange land. Through love and exile, industry and tragedy, their unspoken dreams and fears unfold in this astonishing and moving book.

Praise for The Fireflies of Autumn:

'I can't remember ever reading anything quite like it. It thrilled me, and made me laugh, and moved me very deeply.' —Helen Garner

'There is immense beauty in this book, and there is great sadness and there is genuine tenderness. I can't recall when I was last thrilled by a book as I am by this one.' —Christos Tsiolkas

'I have never read a migrant tale so original, so breathtaking in scope, or so magical.' —Alice Pung

Oslo Davis has a complicated relationship with Melbourne: the fear of living anywhere else is pretty much the only thing keeping him here. Yet the city continues to inspire, amuse and compel Oslo to make jokes about it. Call it a coping mechanism.This clever, funny and often cheeky collection brings together years of the artist''s most astute musings on Melbourne. It''s also a poignant celebration of a city that has suffered much in recent years and survived to tell the tale.Oslo''s Melbourne contains the best of Oslo''s drawings and essays from The Monthly, The Age, The Guardian and beyond, as well as original works commissioned for this book. It is the perfect gift for every proud Melburnian, or at least anyone who literally couldn''t live anywhere else.

In this powerful collection of personal essays, thirty-six Australian Jewish women, including Ramona Koval, Dani Valent and Kylie Moore-Gilbert, reveal how their lives were turned upside down in the wake of October 7 attacks.Our hope is that these essays, the opportunities they offer to hear and understand us, can become tools for repairing the rupture between our community and the world around us.The world changed irrevocably on October 7, 2023.In this powerful collection of essays, thirty-six women, including Ramona Koval, Dani Valent, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Kerri Sackville, Deborah Conway and Rachelle Unreich, reveal how their lives were turned upside down in the wake of the attacks.From race-walker Jemima Montags account of competing in the Olympics as a Jewish athlete, to actress Dena Amy Kaplan encountering hostility when she speaks against Jew-hatred, to author Elise Hearsts attempts to find solace in making comedy,Ruptured showcases compelling true stories where narrators reflect on the profound rift created that day and their attempts to mend it.

Our region is experiencing a momentous transition. The US-led order is fading, and China has become ever more powerful. Today the question we face is not whether we fancy living in an Asia in which power is shared between the United States and China. It is how we feel about living in an Asia in which America no longer plays any significant strategic role.In this controversial and gripping essay, Hugh White looks at what has happened to the US globally. He considers China’s growing assertiveness in our region. He dissects the leadership of Donald Trump. He analyses what all of this means for Australia, looking at marines in Darwin, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the role of Japan, fears of Chinese interference, and more. Above all, he asks: where is this heading? How do we feel about living in a new Asia, and how best to navigate a changed world?Hugh White is the author of The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power and Quarterly Essay 39 Power Shift: Australia’s Future between Washington and Beijing. He is a professor of strategic studies at ANU and has been an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessments, a journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, a senior adviser to Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and a senior official in the Department of Defence, where from 1995 to 2000 he was deputy secretary for strategy and intelligence and co-author of Australia’s Defence White Paper 2000.

‘We need to determine a foreign policy of our own – one that looks after Australia’s interest in the new order; an order which will have China as its centre of gravity.’ —Paul KeatingAustralia’s top thinkers on foreign affairs address the most significant foreign affairs dynamics affecting Australia today, including the rise of China and the election of Donald Trump. The world is changing, and so is Australia’s place in it. What do we need to know? What do we need to think about? Paul Keating discusses changes occurring in the United States, Europe and Asia and how Australia should respond.Allan Gyngell looks at the collapse of long-held beliefs underlying Australian foreign policy and the need to prepare for growing uncertainty.George Megalogenis analyses Australia’s changing demographics and the rapid increase in migrants from China and India – a development that comes with both challenges and benefits.Linda Jakobson examines China’s evolving reach and ambitions under Xi Jinping and what this could mean for Australia and the region. The Big Picture is an essential exploration of Australia’s position in the world today.‘There has never been a more critical time for Australia to contemplate its place in the world. My intention is that Australian Foreign Affairs will serve as a forum for our most adventurous and deepest strategic thinkers to interrogate foreign policy’ —Morry Schwartz, Publisher, Australian Foreign Affairs‘Australia is increasingly affected by events beyond its borders, especially as global power and wealth shifts towards Asia. The challenges facing Australia and the region are varied and complex, but they are also fascinating. There is a strong need and appetite for a publication that explores these challenges and debates the ways Australia should respond.’—Jonathan Pearlman, Editor, Australian Foreign Affairs

The second issue of Australian Foreign Affairs, Trump in Asia, examines the United States’ sudden shift from the Asia Pivot to America First. It provides insights into Donald Trump’s White House and explores how his unpredictable approach to international affairs is affecting the volatile Asian region. Trump in Asia is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the issues facing Canberra as Australia’s closest ally recasts its alliances. Michael Wesley explores the challenges and risks for Australia as it rushes to find a new plan for surviving in a post-America Asia. David Kilcullen reports from the US on Trump''s effect on Washington and how the president’s team will affect Australia. Andrew Davies analyses the Australian military''s dependence on the United States and the trade-off for Canberra as it weighs the cost of self-reliance. Australian Foreign Affairs is published three times a year and seeks to explore – and encourage – debate on Australia’s place in the world and global outlook.

Grace Parker needs to figure out how to handle the 3Bs: boys, boy bands and ball sports.Things were simple for netball nerd Grace Parker at primary school. She was captain of her school team – and with best friends Stella and Mia won the grand final. Back then, her biggest problem was persuading her parents to buy her tickets to see Friday at Five, the world’s hottest boy band. But high school’s a whole new story. Grace’s greatest rival on the court, Amber Burns, just made the same netball team as her. Her twin brother, Gus, is devastated he didn’t make the A-grade AFL side. Her older brother, Tyler, is ignoring her. And as if that wasn’t enough for a 13-year-old girl to handle, dreamy aspiring rockstar Sebastian King is suddenly paying her a lot of attention …Maddy Proud is a professional netballer currently playing for the NSW Swifts. Previously she played for the Adelaide Thunderbirds, who signed her at 16, making her the youngest player ever contracted in the Trans-Tasman ANZ Championships.

‘A compelling invitation to imagine the future we want’ —BRIAN CHRISTIAN, author of The Most Human HumanBy 2062 we will have built machines as intelligent as us – so the leading artificial intelligence and robotics experts predict. But what will this future look like? In 2062, world-leading researcher Toby Walsh considers the impact AI will have on work, war, economics, politics, everyday life and even death. Will automation take away most jobs? Will robots become conscious and take over? Will we become immortal machines ourselves, uploading our brains to the cloud? How will politics adjust to the post-truth, post-privacy digitised world? When we have succeeded in building intelligent machines, how will life on this planet unfold?Based on a deep understanding of technology, 2062 describes the choices we need to make today to ensure that the future remains bright.‘Clarity and sanity in a world full of fog and uncertainty – a timely book about the race to remain human.’—RICHARD WATSON, author of Digital Vs. Human and futurist-in-residence at Imperial College, London‘One of the deepest questions facing humanity, pondered by a mind well and truly up to the task.’—ADAM SPENCER, broadcaster

A timely account of the four most troubled hotspots in the world’s most combustible regionAsia is at a dangerous moment. China is rising fast, and its regional ambitions are growing. Reckless North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un may be assembling more nuclear weapons, despite diplomatic efforts to eradicate his arsenal. Japan is building up its military, throwing off constitutional constraints imposed after World War II. The United States, for so long a stabilising presence in Asia, is behaving erratically: Donald Trump is the first US president since the 1970s to break diplomatic protocol and speak with Taiwan, and the first to threaten war with North Korea if denuclearisation does not occur. The possibility of global catastrophe looms ever closer.In this revelatory analysis, geopolitical expert Brendan Taylor examines the four Asian flashpoints most likely to erupt in sudden and violent conflict: the Korean Peninsula, the East China Sea, the South China Sea and Taiwan. He sketches how clashes could play out in these global hotspots and argues that crisis can only be averted by understanding the complex relations between them. Drawing on history, in-depth reports and his intimate observations of the region, Taylor asks what the world’s major powers can do to avoid an eruption of war – and shows how Asia could change this otherwise disastrous trajectory.

Why has no one heard of Edna Cranmer?When a young writer is hired to put together the life of an unknown artist from Geelong, of all places, she thinks it will be just another quick commission paid for by a rich, grieving family obsessed with their own past.But Edna Cranmer was not a privileged housewife with a paintbrush. Edna’s work spans decades. Her soaring images of red dirt, close interiors and distant jungles have the potential to change the way the nation views itself.Edna could have been an official war artist. Did she choose to hide herself away? Or were there people who didn’t want her to be famous? As the biographer is pulled into Edna’s life, she is confronted with the fact that how she tells Edna''s past will affect her own future.This elegant and engrossing novel explores how we value and celebrate art and artists’ lives. The Biographer’s Lover reminds us that all memory is an act of curation.Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian NovelistLonglisted, 2019 Colin Roderick Award‘Murray is a magical storyteller.’ —Brenda Niall‘An accomplished and moving novel about the gaps left in our inherited history, and the imperfect storytellers we entrust to fill them. So beautifully constructed that I finished reading it, and immediately turned to the first chapter to start again.’ —Abigail Ulman

An electrifying story of fear and sacrifice, and what people will do to outrun the shadows.Iraqi aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Australia, decades later, Gerry is in fear of his tyrannical father, Toohey, who has returned from the Iraq War bearing the physical and psychological scars of conflict. Meanwhile, Robbie is dealing with her own father’s dementia when the past enters the present.These characters’ worlds intertwine in a brilliant narrative of guilt and reckoning, trauma and survival. Crossing the frontiers of war, protest and reconciliation, Act of Grace is a meditation on inheritance: the damage that one generation passes on to the next, and the potential for transformation.‘Act of Grace is bold, brilliant and breathtakingly humane. Anna Krien makes riveting the sweep of history and the lived price of war; at the same time she reveals, with great insight, the intimacies of daily love and tiny, splintering acts of violence in families. She is both wide-angle and close-up, and there is redemption in every line. Anna Krien is the real deal – a novelist for our times.’ —Anna Funder, author of All That I Am‘Masterful – a far-reaching tapestry of a novel. Nuanced and whip-smart, this is a work of profound empathy – a book of and for our times. As Act of Grace unfolds with precise muscularity, Krien’s inhabitation of each character approaches the divine.’ —Peggy Frew, author of The Islands and Hope Farm‘Act of Grace is a work of stunning virtuosity. Krien has taken a huge leap of creative faith, and from the very first page to the last I was ready to follow her anywhere.’ —Ceridwen Dovey, author of In the Garden of the Fugitives and Only the Animals‘An ambitious and compelling study of trauma and how it’s transferred and inherited … a nuanced consideration of the different forms and ethics of activism.’ —Books+Publishing

It’s 1944 when bookish, unworldly Emily Dean is shipped off to the relatives in rural Victoria after her mother has a nervous breakdown. At the family property, Mount Prospect, Grandmother is determined to keep up standards despite the effects of the war. Meanwhile Della, the bible-quoting cook, rules the kitchen with religious fervour, while Great-Uncle Cecil has plans to shoot the women if the Japs invade – it’s known as mercy killing, Emily’s young Aunt Lydia casually informs her. If only the beautiful, fearless Lydia would bestow her friendship then things might be better, but that seems destined never to occur. It’s all too ghastly and Emily can’t wait to go home.That is, until she encounters Claudio, the Italian prisoner of war employed as a farm labourer, who awakens new, and as-yet unnameable feelings, in her. And then William, Lydia’s brother, unexpectedly returns from the war, wounded and bitter. He withdraws to the old blacksmith’s workshop where Emily is given the job of taking his evening meals. He’s rude, traumatised, and mostly drunk, yet a passion for literature soon draws them together.Funny, wry and affecting, The Unexpected Education of Emily Dean is a charming coming-of-age novel about desire, deceit and self-discovery.‘A resonant and engaging story - illuminating and subtly compelling’ —Rosalie Ham

Quarterly Essay 69 by Mark McKenna will be released in March 2018.

With a historian's inquiring mind, Billy Griffiths excavates two absorbing twentieth century histories: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity and the uncovering of traces of ancient Australia by pioneering archeologists.

Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. In this original, important book, Griffiths investigates a twin revolution- the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the simultaneous uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia by pioneering archaeologists.

Deep Time Dreaming is about a slow shift in national consciousness. It explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and identity. It brings to life the deep time dreaming that has changed the way many Australians relate to their continent and its enduring, dynamic human history.

'When John Mulvaney began his fieldwork in January 1956, it was widely believed that the first Australians had arrived on this continent only a few thousand years earlier. In the decades since, Australian history has been pushed back into the dizzying expanse of deep time. The human presence here has been revealed to be more ancient than that of Europe, and the Australian landscape, far from being terra nullius, is now recognised to be cultural as much as natural, imprinted with stories and law and shaped by the hands and firesticks of thousands of generations of Indigenous men and women. The New World has become the Old ...'

Winner of the Felicia A. Holton Book Award, the Max Crawford Medal, the Ernest Scott Prize, the Book of the Year at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-fiction and the John Mulvaney Book Award

Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards

Shortlisted in the Queensland Literary Awards, the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, and the Educational Publishing Awards

Longlisted in the Australian Book Industry Awards and for the CHASS Book Prize

'This book is hugely impressive, a revelation, showing that archaeology has been far more important to Australian culture than anyone could have guessed. Every Australian should read it.' –Tim Low

'Beautifully written, with a cast of compelling characters both ancient and modern, and a storyline that traces one of humanity's great narratives, this is a book that will captivate both the general reader and the scholar . . . It is a book for our time, a deep history that allows us to imagine our way into the future.' -Kim Mahood, Australian Book Review

'Here is archaeology as passion; fierce and relevant. Here are dizzying meditations on time and human purpose. Here are the complex relationships between the hidden traces in the ground and the politics of the day . . . Deep Time Dreaming reads like a family tree of the hardy eccentrics and visionaries who defied a prevailing understanding to re-invent a discipline, to look at the land with new eyes and to teach us an appropriate kind of awe in which to behold it.' –Jock Serong, Meanjin

'A remarkable book, and one destined, I believe, to become a modern classic of Australian history writing. Written in vivid, evocative prose, this book will grip both the expert and the general reader alike. It tells a story of physical, political and cultural discovery, where fascinating individuals encounter and decipher awe-inspiring ancient places. Sensitive and scrupulous, the book does full justice to the achievements and concerns of the Indigenous peoples who shaped and inscribed this ancient land. Both ancient and modern Australia have here found a truly worthy historian.' –Iain McCalman

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, attempts to showcase as many diverse voices, experiences and stories as possible in order to answer that question. Each account reveals, to some degree, the impacts of invasion and colonisation – on language, on country, on ways of life, and on how people are treated daily in the community, the education system, the workplace and friendship groups. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside newly discovered voices of all ages, with experiences spanning coastal and desert regions, cities and remote communities. All of them speak to the heart – sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect. This groundbreaking anthology aims to enlighten, inspire and educate about the lives of Aboriginal people in Australia today.

Across the globe, the so-called Big Four accounting and audit firms – Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG – are massively influential. Together, they earn more than US$100 billion annually and employ almost one million people. In many profound ways, they have changed how we work, how we manage, how we invest and how we are governed.Stretching back centuries, their history is a fascinating story of wealth, power and luck. But today, the Big Four face an uncertain future – thanks to their push into China; their vulnerability to digital disruption and competition; and the hazards of providing traditional services in a new era of transparency.Both colourful and authoritative, this account of the past, present and likely future of the Big Four is essential reading for anyone perplexed or fascinated by professional services, working in the industry, or contemplating joining a professional services firm.

Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. Their sting is the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom, their venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Made of roughly 95 percent water, some jellies are barely perceptible virtuosos of disguise, while others’ luminescent glow has revolutionized biotechnology. Yet until recently, jellyfish were largely ignored by science, and they remain among the most poorly understood of ocean dwellers. Over a decade ago, ocean scientist Juli Berwald left her career to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas, but jellyfish drew her back to the sea. Driven by questions about how overfishing, coastal development, and climate change were contributing to a jellyfish population explosion that has caused millions of dollars of damage, Juli embarked on a scientific odyssey that took her across the globe. She met the biologists who devote their careers to jellies, hitched rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild, raised jellyfish in her dining room, and throughout it all marveled at the complexity of these alluring and ominous biological wonders.Gracefully blending personal memoir with crystal-clear distillations of science, Spineless is the story of how Juli learned to navigate and ultimately embrace her ambition, her curiosity, and her passion for the natural world. She discovers that jellyfish science is a call to realize our collective responsibility for the planet we share. Cover design by Grace HanAuthor photograph by Madeleine Tilin

Patrick White is the unAustralian writer who did more than any other writer in the twentieth century to create an imaginative language that we can call “Australian”, who unshackled us from the demand that we write as the English do, who recognised, through his own alienation and also through his profound love for his partner, that we were a migrant and mongrel nation forging our own culture and our own language.In this passionate and electrifying short book, Christos Tsiolkas writes about his year spent reading Patrick White, of his ‘discovery and rediscovery of White as a writer.’ The result is a vivid introduction to and celebration of the Nobel prize-winning writer’s work that asks: what does it mean to us now? In the Writers on Writers series, leading writers reflect on another Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative, crisp and written from a practitioner’s perspective, the series starts a fresh conversation between past and present, and writer and reader. It sheds light on the craft of writing, and introduces some intriguing and talented authors and their work.Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria.Christos Tsiolkas is the award-winning author of five novels: Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head-On, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe. His novel The Slap won a Commonwealth Writers'' Prize, was shortlisted for the 2009 Miles Franklin Literary Award, longlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and has been twice adapted for TV. His latest novel, the bestselling Barracuda, has also been adapted for the screen and his short-story collection, Merciless Gods, was published to acclaim in 2014. Christos is also a playwright, essayist and screenwriter. He lives in Melbourne.

How did the big banks get away with so much for so long? Why are so many aged-care residents malnourished? And when did arms manufacturers start sponsoring the Australian War Memorial?In this passionate essay, Richard Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society. For decades, we have been led to believe that the private sector does everything better, that governments can’t afford to provide the high-quality services they once did, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are now less equal, millions of workers have no sick leave or paid holidays, and housing is unaffordable for many. Deregulation, privatisation and trickle-down economics have, we are told, delivered us twenty-seven years of growth ... but to what end?In Dead Right, Denniss looks at ways to renew our democracy and discusses everything from the fragmenting Coalition to an idea of the national interest that goes beyond economics. “Neoliberalism, the catch-all term for all things small government, has been the ideal cloak behind which to conceal enormous shifts in Australia’s wealth and culture ... Over the past thirty years, the language, ideas and policies of neoliberalism have transformed our economy and, more importantly, our culture.” Richard Denniss, Dead Right

Stan ‘Yarra’ Yarramunua is a highly successful Melbourne artist, musician, businessman and charity worker. A charismatic Yorta Yorta man who grew up in Melbourne with an alcoholic and abusive father, Yarra had a rough and sometimes homeless childhood and was in and out of trouble constantly. He too became an alcoholic, before swearing off the drink and committing himself to making something of himself. Now an internationally successful artist, Yarra is committed to improving the lives of Aboriginal kids in his hometown of Shepparton, particularly through better housing.A Man Called Yarra is an inspiring memoir of overcoming hardship and striving for a better life.

What has lived with us, entertained us, travelled with us and symbolised Australian aspirations, only to end up gathering dust or even at the tip? It’s not the car, or the washing machine, or the sewing machine… it’s the piano! Before electricity brought us the gramophone, the radio and eventually TV, the piano was central to family and community life in colonial Australia. It brought Australians of different ages and backgrounds together, offering solace on remote stations, comfort at the fronts of war, and joyous entertainment at weddings and parties, on ships and trains, in hospitals and prisons. An upright piano in the nineteenth century home, with its iron frame, candelabra, carvings, polished surfaces and ivory keys, was a machine, an instrument and a key member of the household that conveyed potent social meanings: prestige, education, class, leisure, national identity and intergenerational relationships.From the arrival of a square piano at Sydney Cove in 1788 to the resurrection of derelict heirloom pianos in the streets of twenty-first century Melbourne, A Coveted Possession tells the curious story of Australia’s intimate relationship with the piano. It’s an insightful, beautifully illustrated multi-stranded cultural history that reveals the material, social and political worlds in which the ivories were tinkled, the shifting aspirations embodied by this instrument and the way it came to fulfil powerful educational, social and spiritual purposes.

Feature articlesHugh White: ‘Australia, Overshadowed: Keeping the peace with our rising northern neighbour’Jen Rayner: ‘The View from Australia: more Jakarta, less condescension’PLUS‘The View from Indonesia: How to say “deputy sheriff” in Bahasa Indonesia’‘One Country, 18,000 Islands: Islamists, separatists and the growing cracks in the republic’

San Ginese is a village where God lingers in people’s minds and many dream of California, Argentina or Australia. Some leave only to return feeling disheartened, wishing they had never come back, some never leave and forever wish they had.The Fireflies of Autumn takes us to the olive groves and piazzas of this little-known Tuscan village. There we meet Bucchione, who was haunted by the Angel of Sadness; Lo Zena, his neighbour, with whom he feuded for forty years; Tommaso the Killer, the Adulteress, the Dead Boy and many others.These are tales of war and migration, feasts and misfortunes – of a people and their place over the course of the twentieth century.‘I have never read a migrant tale so original, so breathtaking in scope,or so magical. I have not since stopped thinking aboutthe characters in San Ginese.’ ALICE PUNG‘Astonishing in the seductiveness and uniqueness of its storytelling. I readit greedily, not wanting to leave San Ginese and return to the real world.’ CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS

‘A young, naive kid, with a brand-new football. Over time, the leather aged from the bumps along the trail. The Footscray winters and some glorious liniment-scented afternoons. All of the laughs, the scraps, the yarns and characters. The game. It all left a mark on me, on my soul.’Bob Murphy has never been a typical footballer. Music buff, Age columnist and Winnebago driver, he is as comfortable in a quiet corner of a Fitzroy café or the front bar of a grungy pub as he is in the locker room. Murphy takes the reader inside his 17-year career, including his three years as captain of the Bulldogs, exploring the people, places and events that shaped him: from playing backyard cricket in 1980s Warragul to Community Cup with Paul Kelly in the 2000s, and from the joy of marrying his high-school crush to the agony of a season-ending ACL ruptures.How did the country kid with a gypsy’s heart become an All-Australian captain? What’s it like to have your club win the grand final for the first time in 62 years and have to cheer from the sidelines? How does it feel to realise you can no longer do the things that made you great? The celebrated Australian football bard Martin Flanagan has long insisted Bob Murphy has a book in him like no footballer has written. Leather Soul proves him right.

Bee hives might look like seething anarchy at first glance, but bees know exactly what they are doing. The universe of the beehive is an intricately organised, delicately balanced ecosystem. From the mighty queen to the lowliest worker bees, each bee plays its part in the whole. The Honey Factory plunges the reader into the invisible life of a bee colony and reveals the secrets of this fascinating world. How do worker bees come to a collective decision? What does the honeybees’ waggling dance communicate? What provokes the sexual excesses of the young queen bee? And why is the precious relationship between humans and bees a matter of species survival? Combining the most fascinating scientific discoveries and greatest secrets in bee research, The Honey Factory answers these questions and more.

A BRILLIANT COLLECTION FROM ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S LEADING WRITERS Close to Home brings together Alice Pung’s most loved writing, on topics such as migration, family, art, belonging and identity. Warm, funny, moving and unfailingly honest, this is Alice at her best – an irresistible pleasure for fans and new readers alike. In 2006, Alice Pung published Unpolished Gem, her award-winning memoir of growing up Chinese-Australian in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Since then, she has written on everything from the role of grandparents
to the corrosive effects of racism; from the importance of literature to the legacy of her parents’ migration from Cambodia as asylum seekers. In all
of this, a central idea is home: how the places we live and the connections we form shape who we become, and what homecoming can mean to those who build their lives in Australia. ‘Most people have an idea of home as a place of comfort and safety. But it is more than that. Your home is a place where your suffering can take shelter.’ —ALICE PUNG