CLEMENTINE FORD

$29.99

$24.99

page 13

TIM WINTON

$45

$29.99

page 12

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE

$29.95

page 21

BILLY BRAGG & JOE HENRY

$21.95

page 22

NEW IN OCTOBER

HANNAH KENT

$32.99

$27.99

page 7

OCTOBER 2016FREE

BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

OCTOBER 2016FREE

BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

TIM WINTONMark Rubbo asks Tim Winton about his new book, The Boy Behind the Curtain.

page 6

TIM WINTONMark Rubbo asks Tim Winton about his new book, The Boy Behind the Curtain.

page 6

TIM WINTONMark Rubbo asks Tim Winton about his new book, The Boy Behind the Curtain.

page 6

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 3

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Whatever your travel style, Lonely Planet is brimming with inspiration to help you prepare for your perfect trip. The sale is on in all Readings shops and online at readings.com.au.

READINGS A RECIPIENT OF THE CITY OF LITERATURE KNOWN BOOKSHOPS GRANTWe are delighted to be a recipient of a Known Bookshops grant, a Melbourne City of Literature office initiative. The Known Bookshops Fund provided up to $2, 000 to ten bookshops across Victoria to activate their shops and activities by working with artists in innovative and creative ways. Our grant supported the creation of a mural by celebrated Melbourne artist Marc Martin in our new children’s bookshop, Readings Kids. Marc’s handpainted mural forms the centrepiece of the shop’s design  – do visit Readings Kids and see for yourself! For more information on the Known Bookshop Fund and recipients, visit cityofliterature.com.au

WANGARATTA FESTIVAL OF JAZZ & BLUESThe 2016 Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues (28–30 October) showcases some of the world’s finest local and international jazz and blues artists in a bounty of scintillating performances. Your weekend in jazz country might also include sharing a picnic rug with friends and family in the King George Gardens enjoying ‘cross-over’ musical acts, great local food and wine, and live music and artistic installations on the

friendly streets of Wangaratta. Readings is the official retailer of the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues. Tickets and full program details are available at wangarattajazz.com.

THE READINGS FOUNDATION GRANTS OPENApplications for The Readings Foundation grants 2017 are now open. The Readings Foundation was established in 2009 to support Victorian individuals and organisations that wish to further the development of literacy, community work and the arts. Applications must be completed and lodged electronically by 5pm, Monday 31 October 2016. For more information please visit readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation

MAN BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLIST 2016The Man Booker Prize shortlist for 2016 has been announced. Amanda Foreman, chair of the 2016 judges, writes that the shortlisted titles ‘reflect the centrality of the novel in modern culture  – in its ability to champion the unconventional, to explore the unfamiliar, and to tackle difficult subjects.’ The six books on the 2016 shortlist are: The Sellout, Paul Beatty; Hot Milk, Deborah Levy; His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet; Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh; All That Man Is, David Szalay; and Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien. The prize is worth £50,000 and the winner will be announced on 25 October.

READINGS KIDS OPENING WEEKENDWe’re thrilled to announce that Readings Kids is opening this month! Readings Kids is a speciality children’s bookshop right next door to Readings Carlton. It is home to books, music, film and more for kids and teens, and welcomes families and people of all ages who enjoy children’s and young adult literature. Our official opening celebration will take place on Saturday 8 October, with guest appearances from Sally Rippin, Bob Graham, Alice Pung, Mitch Vane, Danny Katz and Fiona Wood. Join us for a special teddy bear story time, meet your favourite author and celebrate all things bright and beautiful in our brand new shop! For more information check out our events calendar on page 4.

READINGS DONCASTER IS NOW OPENWe’re equally excited to announce that Readings Doncaster is now open. You’ll find us at Ground Level right next to David Jones, stocked with the books, music and film you love to discover at Readings. To celebrate Readings Doncaster, we have many special author signings scheduled in the lead up to Christmas  – visit our events page at readings.com.au/events for more information.

25% OFF LONELY PLANETSpring is upon us  – what better time to begin planning for your next travel adventure? Luckily, the Readings’ Lonely Planet sale is on once more, with 25% off all titles from now until 31 October.

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4 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

October Events

4 TEXT CLASSICS: RECLAIMING AUSTRALIAN AUTHORS OF THE PAST

Join us for a discussion about the depth and breadth of our literary heritage chaired by Text publisher Michael Heyward. In the space of four years, Text Publishing has released 100 Text Classics, most of them long out of print. This series has brought numerous extraordinary writers from Australia and New Zealand to domestic and international attention, including Elizabeth Harrower, Kenneth Cook, David Ballantyne, Amy Witting and Madeleine St John.

Tickets are $15 and include a copy of one novel from the Text Classics series, as available on the night. Please book at readings.com.au/eventsTuesday 4 October, 6.30pmCinema Nova, 380 Lygon St., Carlton

15 A WORKSHOP WITH ILLUSTRATOR LANCE BALCHIN

Lance Balchin’s Mechanica is a beautifully illustrated field guide from the future. At this workshop, young artists 8 and up can learn how to create their own steampunk-inspired illustrations with help from Balchin.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsSaturday 15 October, 11amReadings Kids (315 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria)

5 TIM DUNLOP ON WHY THE FUTURE IS WORKLESS

Join us to hear Tim Dunlop discuss his new book, Why the Future is Workless, a timely examination of the future of work. Dunlop will be joined in conversation by the University of Melbourne’s Mark Davis.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsWednesday 5 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton

8 BOOK SIGNING WITH ANNA GARE

Come by our Doncaster shop to meet television personality and chef Anna Gare – who has appeared as a judge on Junior Masterchef and was co-host of Great Australian Bake Off. Gare will be signing copies of her new cookbook, Delicious Every Day.

Free, no booking requiredSaturday 8 October, 11amReadings Doncaster (Westfield Doncaster, 619 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster, Victoria)

13 KAZ COOKE IN CONVERSATION WITH ALAN BROUGH

Kaz Cooke is the number one go-to advisor for Australian girls and women. Her latest guide, Girl Stuff 8–12, is a fun, friendly and informative read for tweens – and for those of us who live and work with tweens. Cooke will discuss the book with comedian, TV star and writer Alan Brough.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 13 October at 5pmReadings Kids (315 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria)

6 A CONVERSATION WITH TIM WINTON ON THE BOY BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Join us for a rare view of Tim Winton’s imagination at work and play as the Miles Franklin Award-winning author reveals the real characters and events behind his bestselling novels in this intimate discussion ranging across his boyhood, movies and road-trips, family and faith to the natural world, art and writing.

This event has now booked out.Thursday 6 October, 12.30pmReadings Hawthorn

15 BOOK SIGNING WITH JUSTINE CLARKE

Come by our Doncaster shop to meet actress, singer and author Justine Clarke. Clarke will be signing copies of her new picture book, The Gobbledygook and the Scribbledynoodle.

Free, no booking requiredSaturday 15 October, 11amReadings Doncaster (Westfield Doncaster, 619 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster, Victoria)

18 KRISTEL THORNELL IN CONVERSATION WITH LUCY SUSSEX

Together with Sisters in Crime, we’re delighted to host an evening with Kristel Thornell in conversation with Lucy Sussex about the former’s new novel. On the Blue Train considers what happened to Agatha Christie during her mysterious 11-day disappearance, just as she was on the cusp of fame.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsTuesday 18 October, 6.30pmReadings Hawthorn

20 A DRAWING WORKSHOP WITH OSLO

Drawing Funny is a tongue-in-cheek how-to guide from illustrator, artist and cartoonist Oslo Davis. At this adult workshop, Oslo will demonstrate the basics of drawing for beginners.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 20 October, 6.30pm Readings Carlton

24 GEORGE GITTOES IN CONVERSATION WITH JEMIMA BUCKNELL

George Gittoes will be in conversation with Readings’ own Jemima Bucknell about his new, illustrated memoir, Blood Mystic, which chronicles the world-renowned Australian artist’s extraordinary life.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsMonday 24 October, 6.30pmReadings St Kilda

19 L.A. LARKIN AND JAMES PHELAN TALK ACTION THRILLERS

James Phelan and L.A. Larkin write heart-pounding, high stakes action thrillers, each with very different protagonists – ex-CIA operative Jed Walker and British investigative journalist, Olivia Wolfe. Together they will discuss the creative challenges of their genre.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsWednesday 19 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton

25 ARI SETH COHEN IN CONVERSATION WITH SARAH JANE ADAMS & TUTTI BENNETT

Ari Seth Cohen is the creator of Advanced Style. This project features the street style of the New York 60+ set, and started as a blog before expanding onto the screen and page. Come along to our Carlton shop to hear Cohen talk about his new book, Advanced Style: Older and Wiser, with Australian style icons Sarah Jane Adams and Tutti Bennett.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsTuesday 25 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton

25 GIDEON HAIGH IN CONVERSATION WITH FRANCIS LEACH

In Gideon Haigh’s new book, Stroke of Genius, Haigh goes beyond the cricketing legend to explore the real Victor Trumper. Haigh and broadcaster Francis Leach will discuss how Trumper became an icon, including the role of George Beldam’s famous ‘Jumping Out’ photograph, in creating the intersection of sport and art, and reality and myth, that is the Victor Trumper story we know today.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsTuesday 25 October, 6.30pmReadings Hawthorn

20 BOOK SIGNING WITH RICHARD ROXBURGH

Come by our Doncaster shop to meet actor, director and writer Richard Roxburgh – the star of the popular TV drama, Rake. Roxburgh will be signing copies of his new (and first) children’s book, Artie and the Grime Wave.

Free, no booking requiredThursday 20 October, 4.30pmReadings Doncaster (Westfield Doncaster, 619 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster, Victoria)

27 KILL YOUR DARLINGS FIRST BOOK CLUB: REBELLIOUS DAUGHTERS

Melbourne literary journal Kill Your Darlings is hosting a special one-off First Book Club featuring the new Australian anthology, Rebellious Daughters. Come along to help Kill Your Darlings celebrate writers’ stories of rebellion and independence.

Free, but please RSVP to info@killyourdarlingsjournal.comThursday 27 October 6.30pmReadings Carlton

8 WELCOME TO READINGS KIDS

We’re thrilled to invite everyone along to the opening of our brand-new children’s bookshop! There will be author signings, a teddy bear story time, plus prizes, giveaways and more.

Free, no booking requiredSaturday 8 October, all day:

10am: Meet Sally Rippin11am: Meet Bob Graham and Alice Pung12.30pm: A teddy bear’s story time with our favourite Walker bear (BYO teddy bear)2pm: Meet Mitch Vane & Danny Katz3pm: Meet Fiona Wood

Readings Kids (315 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria)

18 MEET THE WINNER OF THE READINGS PRIZE FOR NEW AUSTRALIAN FICTION

Join us for the announcement of this year’s winner of The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction! The evening will include a conversation between the winning author and our 2016 guest judge, Maxine Beneba Clarke.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsTuesday 18 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton

20 RICHARD ROXBURGH IN CONVERSATION WITH CHRIS GORDON

Richard Roxburgh, the star of Rake has released his first children’s book! Artie and the Grime Wave is a madcap, illustrated adventure sure to entertain readers aged 8–12. Roxburgh will talk about the book with our own events manager Chris Gordon.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 20 October, 6.30pmReadings Hawthorn

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 5

27 A DEATH SALON

In acknowledgement of All Saints’ Eve, our St Kilda shop is hosting an intimate death salon. Join writers Gerard Elson and Leah Kaminsky over a glass of wine as they discuss depictions of death in popular culture and literature.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 27 October, 6.30pmReadings St Kilda

October Launches

Join us for the launch of Kimberley Starr’s Text Prize-winning YA novel, The Book of Whispers.Thursday 6 October, 6.30pm Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required.

Professor Patricia Rich will launch Pauline Schokman’s new novel, The Other Side of Silence, a gripping account of a single week in the life of a Melbourne doctor.Wednesday 5 October, 6.30pmReadings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required.

Join us for the launch of M.E. McGuire’s new biography of the remarkable woman who was Sidney Nolan’s wife, Cynthia Nolan.Tuesday 11 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton | Free, no booking required.

Helen Garner will launch Catherine de Saint Phalle’s new memoir, Poum and Alexandre, a moving elegy to family and place.Wednesday 12 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton | Free, no booking required.

Join us for the launch of Tania Chandler’s new psychological thriller set across rural Victoria and Melbourne, Dead in the Water.Thursday 13 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton | Free, no booking required.

When Manny Waks went public about having been sexually abused at his Ultra-Orthodox Jewish school, he and his family were shunned and intimidated by their community. Join us for the launch of his memoir, Who Gave You Permission?, which is co-written with Michael Visontay.Thursday 13 October, 6.30pmReadings St Kilda | Free, no booking required.

Join us for the launch of Sarah Martin’s new non-fiction book, Bush Heritage Australia, which tells the inspiring story of an organisation with big ambitions.Monday 24 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton | Free, no booking required.

Mal Walden is the longest serving newsman on Australian television. Join us for the launch of his memoir, The Newsman: 60 Years of Television.Wednesday 26 October at 6.30pmReadings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required.

Join us for the launch of Emeritus Professor Robert Manne’s new non-fiction book, The Mind of the Islamic State, which offers a condensed and gripping history of political jihadism.Wednesday 26 October, 6.30pmReadings Carlton | Free, no booking required.

27 DON WATSON IN CONVERSATION WITH BARRIE CASSIDY

We’re pleased to be hosting a necessary and important discussion on the near eve of the American election. Don Watson’s latest Quarterly Essay, The Enemy Within, is an eloquent yet barbed look at the state of the union and the American malaise. Watson will discuss the issues raised in his essay with Insiders’ Barrie Cassidy.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 27 October, 6.30pmChurch of All Nations, 180 Palmerston St., Carlton

November Dates!

3November

JACINTA HALLORAN IN CONVERSATION WITH LEAH KAMINSKY

Jacinta Halloran’s new novel, The Science of Appearances, explores an era of social constraint and profound scientific discovery. Join us in St Kilda to hear Halloran discuss the writing of her novel with fellow author Leah Kaminsky.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 3 November, 6.30pmReadings St Kilda

5November

BOOK SIGNING WITH MANU FEILDEL

Come by our Doncaster shop to meet passionate French chef Manu Feildel, who has appeared on MasterChef Australia and My Kitchen Rules. He will be signing copies of all his cookbooks.

Free, no booking requiredSaturday 5 November, 11amReadings Doncaster (Westfield Doncaster, 619 Doncaster Rd, Doncaster, Victoria)

10November

CLIVE HAMILTON ON HIS NEW BOOK, WHAT DO WE WANT?

We are delighted to host a special event with Australian author and public intellectual, Clive Hamilton. He will be talking about his new book, What Do We Want?, which explores the forms of protest and social movements that have come to define modern Australia.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 10 November, 6.30pmReadings St Kilda

Banish awkward silences with the in-laws, stop hearing the same old stories from your great uncle and give your teenagers a reason to switch o� their screens.

Available at Readings. $19.95 www.taoc.com.au

27 DI MORRISSEY IN CONVERSATION WITH TONI JORDAN

Di Morrissey is one of Australia’s favourite storytellers. A former journalist who’s worked around the world, a bestselling author and an environmentalist and activist, Morrissey writes addictive novels that weave in environmental, political and cultural issues. Join us at our Hawthorn shop to hear her talk about her new novel, A Distant Journey, with fellow author Toni Jordan.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsThursday 27 October, 6.30pmReadings Hawthorn

28 BOOK SIGNING WITH GUS GORDON

Drop by our new children’s specialty shop to meet the prolific Australian illustrator and writer Gus Gordon. Gordon will be signing copies of all his books including his gorgeous new picture book, Somewhere Else.

Free, no booking requiredFriday 28 October, 4pmReadings Kids (315 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria)

31 SPINE-TINGLING FUN WITH JAMES LEE

Drop by Readings Kids on Halloween to meet James Lee, the author of the spine-tingling Ghostworks series. This event is suitable for ages 6–12, and the best costume will win a complete pack of all Lee’s books, signed by the author.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsMonday 31 October, 4.30pmReadings Kids (315 Lygon St, Carlton, Victoria)

29 A SPOOKY HALLOWEEN STORY TIME

Dress up in your favourite costume and come by our St Kilda shop for a special, spooky story time. There will treats (or maybe tricks …) for everyone.

Free, no booking requiredSaturday 29 October, 10.30amReadings St Kilda

9November

BOOK SIGNING WITH CADEL EVANS

We are beside ourselves to have Cadel Evans visiting us to sign copies of his autobiography, The Art of Cycling. Cadel Evans AM is considered the greatest Australian cyclist of all time.

Free, no booking requiredWednesday 9 November, 12.30pmReadings Carlton

Join us for the launch of Ricci Carr’s I Can Sing, But Where Is My Voice?, a simple, holistic guide for people wishing to learn basic singing techniques.Monday 31 October, 6.30pmReadings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required.

Join us for the launch of Kathy Tsaples’ Sweet Greek Life, the eagerly awaited follow-up to her bestselling cookbook, Sweet Greek.Wednesday 2 November, 6.30pmReadings Carlton | Free, no booking required.

Join us for the launch of Kim Kane’s When the Lyrebird Calls, a time-slip children’s novel in which a young girl finds herself transported back to 1900 Australia. Thursday 27 October, 6.30pmReadings Kids | Free, no booking required.

A peek at November launches

6 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

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Mark Rubbo: Some of the pieces that appear in your new memoir, The Boy Behind the Curtain, have appeared in various journals, but some, like the title piece, only appear now for the first time. What prompted you to collect these often very personal pieces in one volume?

Tim Winton: Well they’ve been written over quite a while, but they felt as if they belonged together. And I guess it must be a time-of-life thing, looking back and trying to make some sense of who I am and where I’ve been. It’s a weird thing, having to give an account of yourself, to try to make sense of yourself for yourself. I’m not that old, but I have been writing fiction professionally for a long time now. I started so young and went so hard for so long. And I guess it was about feeling I had the space to look over my shoulder.MR: Are you someone who naturally keeps a mental notebook  – do you file moments from real life away for later use in your writing? Do people close to you notice you doing this? How do they respond?

TW: No, I don’t consciously watch and file lived moments for my work. I have a couple of writer friends who do that and it creeps me out, to be honest. I know people think I must do that too, but I don’t. But I do have a long memory. People close to me aren’t afraid of being used or exposed, I don’t think. But they do notice a certain abstraction about me quite often. I guess I’m wandering  – ‘thinking’ might be too flash a word for that sort of vagueing-out. I doubt it’s a writerly thing, though.MR: Do you ever find yourself responding to confronting moments in real life first as a writer – for example looking at a moment as a potentially revealing or interesting plot twist or ethical conundrum for the people involved – by processing an event analytically and creatively before the meaning of the event begins to resonate for you as an individual?

TW: Life events are mostly only interesting after the fact. I’m not that analytical in the moment. I can’t make something ‘useful’ to me in a writing sense for a very long time. I don’t have any journalistic instinct. And I do keep a journal, but it’s neither very revealing nor fruitful for work. Stuff just bubbles up from the swamp later.MR: You are known for exploring important issues in your fiction and nonfiction  – some of which you return to often,

including class and conservation  – how do the experiences of writing about issues you are passionate about differ in each medium?

TW: In fiction ‘issues’ are accidental, sometimes incidental. The place and the people it creates are paramount. I never start with what lots of people think of as a subject or a theme. They’re school words, not art words. So, writing essays busts my arse because the art is in addressing the subject. I find it really difficult and monstrously time-consuming. In an essay I need to employ my imagination but it’s indentured in a way it’s not when I’m free to make everything up.MR: In The Boy Behind the Curtain, you write about the ambition that drove you to become a writer. Can you share a little about what inspired this vision for yourself, and how your feelings about it have evolved in the years since you first discovered your vocation?

TW: I wanted to be a writer all my life. Since I was 10. And then at a certain point I began to assume I was one, which is rich, I know. I didn’t meet a writer until I was nearly an adult, so I had no idea what I’d bet the farm on. There was no backup plan. I get queasy looking back at the presumption of it, but I’m slightly in awe of the dopey conviction, the running-straight-at-the-ball courage of it. Thing is, I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know enough to flinch and back down. I’m not boasting about this  – the boy who did this is still with me somewhere, but I doubt I’m still him.MR: You also write about the tough times writers inevitably experience, including the self-doubt and loneliness that come with spending a lot of time alone and in your head. Can you offer any advice to other writers about how to go on in times of doubt?

TW: I don’t think I’m qualified to give that sort of advice, any more than I have the nerve to give parenting advice. I’ve been a writer and a parent since adolescence, it feels like, and I’m still making both gigs up as I go along. I did both in different forms of isolation  – too young by conventional standards, too far off-grid culturally and geographically. So my experience is probably too specific to be useful. None of us do this stuff the same way. We just try to endure and press on, I guess.MR: Unexpected events feature in your life and your work  – what interests you about the way people respond to havoc? How have your own feelings about surprises changed over time?

TW: I suppose I’m interested in how domesticated life seems to be in this little pocket of post-modernity. Of course most of that safety and order is illusory, or at least highly contingent. Life is wild by definition. And organic existence is violent. Though I find this hard to accept. And I know it goes against the cultural grain of therapeutic smoothing so dominant in what we like to call ‘cultural discourse’. The kind of thinking that clogs the arteries of critics as much as columnists and bloggers. I don’t think this denatured squeamishness does art any favours. I guess

I look back and see how pivotal certain random and very unwelcome passages of violence have shaped me. And not just road accidents or beatings, either. I’m talking about the physical facts of life. I went to school for 12 years, and uni for 4, but I learnt more about human existence in the 30 hours it took my first child to be born than I did in all those years of study. (Could be I was paying more attention, true.) What I’m saying so badly is we’re bred now to believe we’re in control and should be in control. It’s when we’re not  … well, that’s when it’s interesting. And I don’t mean that in any Rimbaud-deliberate disordering of the senses way, either. True, I’m not keen on surprises nowadays. I tell myself my thrillseeking days are behind me. But I frightened the tripe out of myself twice this week alone  – for fun  – so I suspect there’s some self-deception at work here.MR: Which is more intimidating: the blank page at the beginning of a new work of fiction or nonfiction? Why?

TW: The blank page doesn’t bother me. It’s the voice in my head (not always my own) that gives me the yips. It’s worse when I’m not making stuff up.MR: Your father’s terrible accident prompted a spiritual awakening for him and your mother and, by default, your whole family. You write about this in the book. To what extent does faith inform your writing?

TW: Yeah, I think my parents were delivered from the conventional world of surfaces. Firstly by a terrible event. Secondly by what the bumper sticker would call ‘a random act of kindness’. Actually, it was a concerted act of compassion. So I grew up in a family that believed love was at work in the world. I guess that’s a religious idea, though of course it needn’t be. Whatever you believe, you need faith to get through the day. The notion that love is abroad in the world has shaped my life. I guess it could have distorted my work, too. MR: In your new essay collection there is a splendid breadth of tone – from serious to reflective, deeply compassionate to energising, and beyond. Some of your stories are hilarious. How important is the humour in life to you?

TW: Humour’s the pay-off for all that existential horror. My kelpie is not burdened by the certainty of death and loss. Neither is she subject to low emotions like schadenfreude. But when she farts it’s just … well, ‘atmos’ as we say in the movies. It’s deep background. She doesn’t find it funny, and that’s tragic. Humour is God’s special gift to humanity. Handy, because it turns out to be necessary.

Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings.

Tim Winton has published 28 books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into 28 languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian Vogel Award in 1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times ( for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize ( for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.

Tim Winton’s new memoir, The Boy Behind the Curtain is available in all Readings shops and online at readings.com.au

For more about The Boy Behind the Curtain, see our review on p12.

Mark Rubbo interviews Tim Winton about his new memoir, The Boy Behind the Curtain.

Tim Winton

THE BOY BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Tim WintonHamish Hamilton. HB.

Special Readings edition.

Was $45

$29.99

Available 28 September

with Q&A

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 7

for a traditional cure. The measures to which the women resort in their pursuit of the restoration of the child’s vitality begin to arouse suspicion and the ardent disapproval of the new priest, and events escalate from there.

The Good People is a heart-rending parable about ignorance and fear that is convincing in its portrayal of nineteenth-century rural Ireland, and yet also alarmingly reminiscent of issues rife in our own society today. Fear of that which cannot be explained, and of difference, produces questionable behaviours even now. Kent has written a timeless story of human frailty and a gripping period drama.

Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly

THE BETTER SONKatherine JohnsonVentura. PB. $29.99

Available 1 October

Katherine Johnson’s debut

novel Pescador’s Wake was highly praised, and her original, descriptive language made her an Australian writer to watch. While Pescador’s Wake was set on the rough seas

of the far Southern Ocean, Johnson has chosen another intimidating landscape for her second novel  – the labyrinth of underground caves in rural Tasmania.

The Better Son is the story of two brothers: younger, sensitive Kip, and Tommy, a daredevil who is favoured by their abusive, alcoholic father. Set in

Australian Fiction

THE GOOD PEOPLEHannah KentPicador. PB. Was $32.99

$27.99

Available 27 September

Hannah Kent’s second novel,

The Good People, is based on a true story, as was her bestselling and much-lauded debut novel, Burial Rites. Both are engrossing works of historical fiction that

bring to life little-known stories of real women and the communities in which they live.

The Good People is set in 1825 in a relatively isolated small village in south-west Ireland, near Killarney, on the Flesk river. After the death of her daughter and then, mere months later, her husband, Nora Leahy is left to care for her four-year-old grandson alone. Once a thriving toddler, by the time he came into her care the child was a drastically altered being  – he can no longer walk, speak or interact. Fearful of the villagers’ reaction, Nora keeps him hidden from all but her closest associates and the girl she has hired to help her care for him, fourteen-year-old Mary.

As a particularly hard winter and a spate of misfortunes increase tension in the small community, ill-will breeds and Nora becomes increasingly desperate. When neither priest nor doctor will help, Nora turns to the resident wise woman, Nance,

New Fiction

By the time you read this Readings will be on the brink of having two new shops and a slightly changed Carlton one. I’ve just returned from the first few hours of our new shop at Westfield Doncaster; it was a mighty morning welcoming the people coming to look at the shop and to buy. We were thrilled and so were they  – a feeling of mutual excitement! And lots of discussions about books, about ebooks, the future of the book and an overwhelming consensus that books and bookshops matter  – music to an old booksellers’ ears but also an affirmation that bookshops, wherever they may be, have a role to play in the community.

Readings has always been fiercely independent and some people expressed surprise that we would open in a mall; it wasn’t something we sought and we were in fact approached by Westfield; they had had a Borders there and there was obviously an appetite for books and there were few bookshops between the inner suburbs and Eltham. It seemed like a perfect opportunity and an interesting one. We commissioned a local architectural firm, Nest, to come up with a design that would reflect the independence of Readings yet fit in a shopping centre. The decision to choose Nest was based on their portfolio, but was helped by the fact that the principal architect’s partner is a writer well known to us – ‘They should have strong empathy for our project,’ we thought. They came up with a motif of the pages of a book and their sensuous curves; it might sound a bit trite but it works really well in this medium-sized shop that holds enough stock to make it interesting and varied. I get the feeling that we’ll grow well into this space.

Our second shop is a dedicated children’s shop in Lygon Street. Children’s book sales are the success story of the publishing industry and those of you who know our Lygon Street shop would have seen how our children’s section has been bursting at the seams. The new shop is in a building that was originally designed by Melbourne architect Daryl Jackson for the clothing company Esprit; it’s a lovely, simple building with beautiful natural light. Once again, we briefed Nest Architects; we wanted something that is playful and practical. They came up with an idea of a park full of picnic tables, full of books – a few days out from opening, it’s looking rather exciting. In addition to the picnic theme, we’ve commissioned children’s book illustrator and author Marc Martin to do a huge mural against the high walls. It wasn’t the best time for Marc as Penguin Random House have just published his latest book, Lots, and I suspect that being perched high on scaffolding painting like Michelangelo within the Sistine Chapel wasn’t exactly how he’d thought of preparing for publication. So, for us, the bookshop is still alive and well and it’s thanks to you, dear readers, for your support; the new shops would not have been possible without it, so please, if you have a chance, we’d love you to visit some time soon.

Mark’s Say

News and views from Readings’ Managing Director, Mark Rubbo

1952, Harold is not long back from the war, and has brought back many secrets and resentments. Harold has high hopes for Tommy, and states that Tommy will become a doctor, but he sees no good in Kip, despite Kip’s hard work at the family dairy. Jess, their mother, tries to protect her younger son, but she is bound to Harold in ways the reader doesn’t understand until later in the book.

When Kip and Tommy discover an entrance to the underground cave system near their home, they explore their new underground playground at every opportunity. Despite being forbidden to play there, it becomes a haven for them away from the farm, until one day Tommy stirs up a rockslide and disappears from sight. Terrified, nine-year-old Kip tells the search party that Tommy is lost in the forest. This lie and its consequences haunt him for the next fifty years.

The novel is narrated by Kip, and the farmhand, Squid, who remains on the farm. We next meet the characters in 2002, when Kip realises his secret is jeopardising his marriage and relationship with his own son, and returns to make amends.

The Better Son contains many beautiful images, and explores the emotional legacy of parental abuse. It is a good choice for book groups, and fans of Tony Birch’s novels.

Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn

GOODWOODHolly ThrosbyA&U. PB. $29.99

Available 1 October

Goodwood is a quintessential

NSW country town  – sandwiched between a river and a mountain, known for its timber and its fishing  – the sort of town where not much happens, everyone

knows everyone else’s business, and nobody much bothers with locking their doors. That is until 18-year-old Rosie White disappears without a trace, followed a week later by Bart McDonald, the town’s beloved local butcher. The town is turned on its head  – gossip and speculation turn into mistrust and suspicion as secrets are revealed, and the townspeople’s lives intersect in unforeseen and unforced ways. Against all this is the coming-of-age of narrator Jean Brown, whose interest in the case mirrors that of the whole town  – it upends everything she thinks she knows about the world, and is all she can think about  – except for an enigmatic new girl in town.

Best known and highly regarded as as a singer–songwriter, Holly Throsby’s debut novel is lyrical without being abstruse, colloquial without being contrived. Her characters, while familiar, are nuanced and authentic, and her depiction of small-town life is bang-on in both its endearing and suffocating ways.

At multiple points while reading Goodwood I was convinced that Holly Throsby had based the titular town on the one I grew up in, which has had its own share of tragedy in recent years  – the close-knit cast of characters, the power of gossip as currency, even small details like the local-humour stubby coolers everyone seems to own, all ring remarkably true. Small towns react to tragedy differently from big cities  – the landscape seems changed, the all-pervasive sense of ‘local

mood’ shifts noticeably. Reminiscent of Jasper Jones or Emily

Maguire’s An Isolated Incident, Goodwood approaches small-town violence through a softer lens, but the undercurrents and ramifications are no less chilling. As in Maguire’s novel, there may be answers in the end, but answers are often not enough.

Alan Vaarwerk is the editorial assistant for Readings Monthly

THE BIRDMAN’S WIFEMelissa AshleyAffirm. PB. Was $32.99

$27.99

Available 1 October

The Birdman’s Wife is a novel that

will appeal to bird fanciers and devotees of John Gould’s monographs. The story is told from the perspective of Gould’s wife, Elizabeth, and

begins in 1828 when she is twenty-four, and meets Gould for the first time. At this stage Gould is working as a taxidermist, though once the couple marries, he decides to specialise in the classification of species.

Ashley has painstakingly researched Elizabeth’s life and world, and this is evident in her detailed narrative. She has also brought to the forefront Elizabeth’s art, and the essential but largely unrecognised role Elizabeth played in her husband’s success. Bringing a modern, feminist perspective to her examination of Elizabeth’s life, Ashley explores the conflict Elizabeth feels in attempting to balance the roles of mother, wife and artist. This is most evident when John asks Elizabeth to come with him to Australia in 1838 to document species in the new land. She is torn between the needs of her children, the two youngest of whom would remain at home in England, and the exciting opportunity for her husband. She chooses to go for the two years, but is constantly aware of her distance from her two girls; a distance made even more fraught when she receives a letter from home telling of her youngest daughter’s illness.

Ashley has created a beautifully written book, and I had no trouble believing it was narrated by a figure from the 1800s. It is a wonderful, fictional biography of an exceptional woman whose life is best summarised by Ashley’s own words: My husband loved me and had done well for us. We might make something of our union. And so I came to my decision: to keep his house, to be mother to his children. To sketch the feathered tribes that obsessed his mind.

Annie Condon is from Readings Hawthorn

ON THE BLUE TRAINKristel ThornellA&U. PB. $29.99

Available 1 October

On 4 December 1926, Agatha Christie became Teresa Neele, resident of the spa hotel, the Harrogate Hydro. Lying to her fellow guests about the death of a husband and child, Teresa settles in to the

anonymity she so fiercely desires. Until Harry McKenna, bruised from the end of his own marriage, asks her to dance. In this entrancing novel of creativity and grief, Kristel Thornell combines fact and fantasy to reconstruct Agatha Christie’s infamous lost days.

8 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

terrible famine and starved for hope, Anna quickly becomes a beacon for religious faith, and the local doctor  – eager not to seem superstitious and backwards in a rapidly modernising world – enlists the assistance of a 24-hour Watch to decide once and for all whether the girl is a miracle, or a fraud.

Enter Lib Wright, the pragmatic, practical English nurse sent to uncover the truth behind Anna’s condition. Lib is a sceptic who places her faith in science and process rather than religion, and she is certain that it won’t take long before the truth of Anna’s deception can be uncovered. During her prickly interactions with the journalist, Byrne, Lib comes to the realisation that the case is more complicated than she first believed, and that her prejudices may be affecting her ability to discern what is at the heart of Anna’s fast. The Wonder is a beautifully realised historical thriller that examines the conflict between the old world and the new, but never loses sight of the human story at the heart of the mystery. Anna’s innocence and gentle piety contrasts with Lib’s rational atheism, and it’s clear that both of them have something to learn from the other.

Lian Hingee is the digital marketing manager for Readings

TODAY WILL BE DIFFERENTMaria SempleW&N. PB. Was $32.99

$27.99

Available 11 October

Eleanor Flood is a well off

animator living in Seattle with her sports surgeon husband Joe and their 8-year-old son, Timby. Eleanor is generally depressed by her life, which is outwardly full of

material comfort but unsatisfying. Eleanor wakes each day deciding that today she is going to be her best self, that today will be different from all the other days in what she feels is a usually failed bargain with the world. But today will be different.

In an escalating series of misadventures Eleanor careens through her day, accompanied at different points by Timby, her poet Alonzo, and Yo-Yo the dog, not to mention the reappearance of an old employee she had fired who has made it big. It’s the set up for a broad and funny satire on modern upper-middle class American living. Then it takes a turn. A third of the way into this screwball satire, the Flood Sisters arrive. A graphic novel (or comic  – depending on what you call it) within the novel, the Flood Sisters, in 12 intricate pages bring into focus the weight behind the comedy.

Maria Semple, whose earlier novel Where’d You Go, Bernadette was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, and who for 15 years wrote for television on shows including Arrested Development, Ellen, and Mad About You, brings an assured, fast paced comic sensibility to a very well realised portrait of a woman suffering from depression and family trauma. Maria Semple has achieved something very difficult, and something I much appreciated, in writing a fast-reading, clever comedy that packs a real emotional punch.

Marie Matteson is from Readings Carlton

THE SCHOOLDAYS OF JESUSJM CoetzeeText. HB. Was $34.99

$29.99

Available now

In the startling sequel to The Childhood of Jesus, Davíd is the small boy who is always asking questions. Simón and Inés take care of him in their new town Estrella. But he'll be seven soon – he should

be at school. And so, Davíd is enrolled in the Academy of Dance. In his new golden dancing slippers, he learns how to call down the numbers from the sky. But the Academy also brings troubling discoveries about what adults are capable of.

International Fiction

THE NIXNathan HillPicador. PB. $29.99

Available now

While Nathan Hill’s debut

novel The Nix is certainly ambitious, givent that it contains the Chicago riots of 1968, the invasion of Iraq, the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, as well as online

gaming, a new, minimal, social media, growing up in the suburbs of the ’80s and, most notably, Norwegian ghosts, what binds this huge novel together is its cynical and somewhat ironic world-view.

You could chalk this up to the influence of Samuel Adresen-Anderson, the book’s main protagonist, a bored lit teacher who once had great promise as a writer, and who has managed to swing a large advance and a position at a college on a book that he never wrote. Now he’s bored and mostly stays in his office playing an online role-playing game until the small hours.

When his publisher threatens to sue him into bankrupcy, Samuel promises to write a book about his mother, who abandoned him as a child and has recently resurfaced in his life after being arrested for attacking a conservative senator with some gravel.

As Samuel investigates the mother he never knew, we get a mix of characters and storylines including: fraternal twins, one of them a violin prodigy and love of Samuel’s life, the other a bully and Samuel’s best friend; two students making moves to get Samuel fired; a handful of activists; a policeman obsessed with Samuel’s mother and role-playing power user who is constantly failing to get his life together.

While the book is definitely a comedy, what slowly emerges is an intricate portrait of a mother and son, both trying to deal with the lackluster turnout of their lives. In its strongest moments the novel also becomes something much weirder, inventive and even touching. The Nix is definitely a ride worth taking.

Chris Somerville is from Readings Carlton

HAGSEEDMargaret AtwoodHogarth. PB. $29.99

Available 6 October

Margaret Atwood’s

Hag-Seed, the fourth novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, is a contemporary retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his late-career tale of magic and illusion. In

Atwood’s version the plot takes place in a correctional facility (the Fletcher County Correctional Institute) somewhere in Ontario. In Hag-Seed, Shakespeare’s play is staged by ‘The Fletcher Correctional Players’, made up of medium-security inmates taking part in the ‘Literacy Through Literature high school level program’ at the facility, under the direction of Felix Phillips, former Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Festival.

Felix  – unceremoniously ousted from his previous position years before by poxy, poisonous usurpers – seeks revenge on said usurpers, and seeks to regain his title. Having disappeared into private exile, he stalks the ‘malignant, bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dogs’  – those poxy usurpers  – on the internet as they rise through the ranks of government even as he is planning his revenge. In the meantime, the story’s only ‘true’ relationship is revealed: that between Felix and the daughter he lost at a young age. This beautiful, magical relationship at the heart of this story is only an illusion: his Miranda is gone, but he imagines her there, he talks to her, he comes home to find her there, he misses her when she doesn’t appear. Illusion and magic infuse this story, and Felix’s life; as a theatre director, he uses all the tools of illusion and deception at his fingertips to take his revenge.

Atwood uses cleverness and cheek to tell this tale of revenge, insanity, and grief. The play-within-the-play-within-the-novel is playful and perfect and suits Shakespeare’s Tempest to a ‘T’. Felix uses the magic of Prospero’s books and Shakespeare’s words to bring about his revenge, achieving unexpected redemption into the bargain. The evocative and haunting father–daughter relationship at the heart of the novel depicts a deep humanity in what is an almost-too-clever, tongue-in-cheek book. But  – as always with Atwood  – what cleverness, what tongue, what cheek!

Ed Moreno is from Readings Carlton

THE WONDEREmma DonoghuePicador. PB. $29.99

Available 27 September

Emma Donoghue is best known as

the author of the Booker Prize-nominated novel, The Room, which was adapted to become one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2015. In The Wonder

she goes back a hundred or so years to find another child living in desperate and unusual circumstances.

Anna O’Donnell is a healthy 11-year-old Irish girl; unremarkable in every way, except that for four months she’s eaten nothing. In a country recovering from

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 9

www.panmacmillan.com.au

The chilling new novel from the bestselling author of Room.

Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, The Wonder is a psychological thriller about a child’s murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. Pitting all the seductions of fundamen-talism against sense and love, it is a searing examination of what nourishes us, body and soul.

The remarkable new novel from the bestselling author of Burial Rites. A story about the intersection of ‘reality’ and folk traditions, an exploration of the thresholds between what we know and what we don’t. A thoroughly engrossing entrée into the macabre nature of a vanished society, its virtues and its follies and its lethal impulses.’ TOM KENEALLY

The masterwork from one of Australia’s greatest writers, now released as a film.

‘Garner’s book is a writer’s profound response to a tragedy and to questions about human responsibility over time as well as at precise moments, questions about duty of care in a community, about the law and its limits’. THE AGE

An inspiring guide to real food and life’s fundamentals, with recipes, advice and projects to help you grow, cook, preserve, trade without money and live well.

Beautifully packaged with over 100 nourishing wholefood recipes, Grown & Gathered is perfect for those who want to rediscover a more natural way of living and eating.

EMMA DONOGHUETHE WONDER

HANNAH KENTTHE GOOD PEOPLE

HELEN GARNERJOE CINQUE’S CONSOLATION

MATT & LENTIL PUBRICKGROWN & GATHERED

In 1992, when Jean Brown is seventeen, a terrible thing happens. Two terrible things.

e

Small town. Big secrets.

A warm, big-hear ted novel about coming of age in a small town torn apar t by

rumour and tragedy, from musician and songwriter,

Holly Throsby.

... a town where everyone knows everyone. People die, but they

don’t just disappear.

TRANSITRachel CuskJonathan Cape. PB. $32.99

Available 17 October

In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions – personal, moral, artistic, practical – as she endeavours to construct a

new reality for herself and her children. Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility and the mystery of change.

AUTUMNAli SmithHamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99

Available 17 October

The first installment in Ali Smith’s cyclical novel quartet Seasonal, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past that fuses Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, immediacy and

colour-hit of Pop Art. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture, and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means. A breathtakingly inventive new novel from the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author.

ECHOLANDPer PettersonHarvill Secker. HB. $35

Available 17 October

Twelve-year-old Arvid and his family are on holiday, staying with his grandparents in Denmark. He’s on the cusp of becoming a teenager, feeling awkward in his own skin, and confused by the

underlying tension between his mother and grandmother. As Arvid cycles around town, down to the beach with its view of the lighthouse, his new-found freedom fuels his desire to experience life. Echoland is a subtle and truthful snapshot of growing up that will linger long after its final pages.

NICOTINENell ZinkHarperCollins. PB. $29.99

Available 1 October

Penny Baker has rebelled against her bohemian family her whole life, by being the conventional one. But all that changes when her father dies, and Penny inherits his childhood home in New Jersey – which turns out

to be occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters, united in defence of smokers’ rights, who have renamed the property Nicotine. Baby-Boomer idealism and Millennial pragmatism clash in this fierce and audaciously funny novel of family, obsession, and idealism.

SMALL GREAT THINGSJodi PicoultA&U. PB. Was $32.99

$27.99

Available 1 October

Roisin and François first meet in the snowy white expanse of Antarctica, chasing a rare comet sighting. As we loop back through their lives, glimpsing each of them only during a comet event, we see how their

paths cross as they come closer and closer to this moment. Theirs are lives filled with love and hope and heartbreak, in a story that shows how the world can be as lonely or as beautiful as the comets themselves.

ORPHANS OF THE CARNIVALCarol BirchCanongate. PB. $29.99

Available 1 October

Julia Pastrana is the singing and dancing marvel from Mexico, heralded on tours across nineteenth-century Europe as much for her talent as for her unusual appearance. Yet few can see past the thick

hair that covers her: she is both a fascinating curiosity and a shunned, unnatural beast. But what is her wonderful and terrible link to Rose, collector of lost treasures in modern-day London? In this haunting tale of identity, love and independence, these two lives will connect in unforgettable ways.

CONCLAVERobert HarrisHutchinson. PB. Was $32.99

$27.99

Available 17 October

The Pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, 120 Cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election. They are holy men - but they have ambition, and

they have rivals. Over the next 72 hours, one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth. A masterful, intelligent thriller in which the power of God clashes with the ambitions of men.

DIVORCE IS IN THE AIRGonzalo TorneHarvill Secker. PB. $32.99

Available 3 October

Joan-Marc’s out of work, he’s alone, he has a heart condition, his family is a mess – otherwise, life is beautiful. But there’s a lot his estranged second wife doesn’t know about him. From the failure of

his first marriage, a holiday taken in a last-ditch attempt to salvage a once passionate relationship, is triggered a life-story’s worth of flashbacks. The result is an unapologetic, daring, acerbic novel by an electrifying young writer about the end of love, and the difficulty of letting go.

10 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

Read more at penguin.com.au

Passchendaele epitomises everything that was most terrible about the Western Front. It tells the story of a war of pure attrition at

its most spectacular and ferocious.

Cadiz, Palermo, Copenhagen and more... Rick Stein goes in search of good food in

fabulous locations.

The Pope is dead and now one hundred and twenty Cardinals will cast their votes

in the world’s most secretive election.

Shakespeare’s play of magic and illusion reimagined by one of the world’s great

literary innovators.

From its humble beginnings Dinosaur Designs has become a beloved Australian brand. This book celebrates the innovation

and inspiration that have produced a covetable body of homewares and jewellery.

In her third cookbook, Silvia embraces the healthy Mediterranean food she grew up with. La Dolce Vita offers authentic recipes catering

to those with vegan, vegetarian, gluten-, grain-, egg- and dairy-free dietary preferences.

The remarkable true stories that reveal an intimate and rare view of Tim Winton’s

imagination at work and play.

October’s To-Read List

John Green meets Rainbow Rowell in this irresistible story of first love, broken hearts, and the golden seams that put them back

together again.

CHELSEA GIRLS: A NOVELEileen MylesSerpent’s Tail. PB. $19.99

Available 1 October

In this inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms her life into a work of art. Suffused with alcohol, drugs, and sex; evocative in its depictions of the hardscrabble realities of

a young queer artist’s life; with raw, flickering stories of awkward love, laughter, and discovery, Chelsea Girls is a funny, cool, and intimate account of how one young female writer managed to shrug off the imposition of a rigid cultural identity.

BIT ROTDouglas CouplandHeinemann. PB. $32.99

Available 3 October

‘Bit rot' is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose. Bit Rot the book explores the ways humanity tries to make sense of our shifting

consciousness. Coupland, just like the internet, mixes forms to achieve his ends. Short fiction is interspersed with essays on all aspects of modern life, resulting in an addictively satisfying collection of observations about our world. Every page of Bit Rot is full of wit, surprise and delight.

THE ATOMIC WEIGHT OF LOVEElizabeth J ChurchFourth Estate. PB. $29.99

Available now

In 1941, the spirited Meridian Wallace wins a place at the University of Chicago to study ornithology. When she falls in love with her brilliant physics professor, Alden Whetstone, who is suddenly recruited to a

mysterious wartime project in New Mexico, Meridian defers her plans to join him, but finds her wings clipped – what was an electrifying intellectual partnership soon evolves into something quite different. A luminous and enthralling story of birds and science, ambition and sacrifice, and the late blooming of an unforgettable woman.

THE EXPLOSION CHRONICLESYan LiankeText. PB. $29.99

Available 17 October

The village of Explosion was founded more than a millennium ago by refugees fleeing a volcanic eruption. But in the post-Mao era, the name takes on a new significance. Three major families, linked by a

complex web of loyalty, betrayal, desire and ambition, are the driving force behind their hometown’s transformation into an urban superpower. Brimming with intelligence and wit, The Explosion Chronicles is a smart, flamboyant and poetic tale of ambition, lies and vice from China’s master satirist.

A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOWAmor TowlesHutchinson. PB. $29.99

Available 3 October

In 1922 Count Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the grand Metropol Hotel. Rostov who has never worked a day in his life, must now live in an

attic room as some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold outside the hotel’s doors. Brimming with humour and beautifully rendered, this spellbinding novel follows the Count’s endeavour to understand what it means to be a man of purpose.

GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERSMax PorterFaber. PB. $19.99

Available 1 October

Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter’s extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura to dazzling effect. In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their

mother’s sudden death, their father imagining a future of emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow – antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss gives way to memories, the little unit of three starts to heal.

THE LAST DAYS OF NIGHTGraham MooreScribner. PB. $32.99

Available 1 October

In New York, in the late 1880s, the miracle of electric light is still in its infancy. Thomas Edison has won the race to the patent office for his electric light bulb and is now suing his one remaining rival, George

Westinghouse, for the unfathomable one billion dollars. Westinghouse makes a surprising choice to defend himself, choosing untested 26-year-old Paul Cravath as his attorney. Cravath’s task is truly daunting, and the stakes are immense: the victor will hold the monopoly on light itself.

Science Fiction

DEATH’S END: BOOK 3 OF THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM TRILOGYCixin Liu & Ken Liu (trans.)Head of Zeus. PB. $29.99

Available 6 October

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. The two civilisations are gradually learning to co-exist peacefully – but

peace has made humanity complacent. Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. Reviving long-forgotten secrets, her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 1 1

New Crimewith Fiona Hardy

Dead Write

NEVER ALONEElizabeth HaynesText, PB, $29.99

Available 17 October

Gosh, it’s an enchanting notion, isn’t it? A windswept farm in the Yorkshire moors, nothing but lush fields and fluffy sheep out of your cottage windows. And so it is for Sarah, living alone after the

death of her husband and her grown children moving on and away from her in the world  –  just her and her dogs on an isolated property. Then Aiden, an old friend, moves back to town and into the spare cottage on her land, promptly throwing Sarah’s life into an almost welcome disarray  –  until a friend of Sarah’s estranged son starts to show up more than expected, Sarah’s closest friend vanishes, and a storm closes in. A pulsating, sexy, slow-burn thriller with a brutal British winter as visceral as the pages themselves. One for ruining all fantasies of lifestyle changes to rural England.

THE SILENCE BETWEEN BREATHSCath StaincliffeHeadline. PB. $29.99

Available now

On the 10.35 to London, Euston, a carriage full of strangers ambles along the rails, its inhabitants bored, frustrated, impatient for something. Meg and Diana are going on a walking holiday, but Meg is

hiding something from her partner. Nick is fed up with his wife and children and their never-ending needs. Jeff is on his way to a job interview. Rhona is regretting leaving her sick daughter at school for the sake of her job. There are more: a disparate group of humans, going about their day, except for

one, who has an unthinkable secret. And when it happens, and the world comes crashing down, it will leave some of them dead, some of them injured, and all of them struggling to cope with the aftermath. A tense, sombre read.

THE ICE BENEATH HERCamilla GrebeZaffre. PB. $29.99

Available 1 October

In fashion CEO Jesper Orre’s beautiful mansion, everything is just so: black lacquered kitchen counters, glossy surfaces, not much in the way of decoration  –except for the decapitated body in the hallway, the head

arranged neatly so. Peter, a policeman at the end of his enthusiasm for working homicide, is on the case, even though there seems an obvious culprit  –  Jesper himself: strict businessman, now vanished. But the case also has similarities with another, ten years earlier  –  and Hanne, the psychological profiler on the case back then, has been summoned out of retirement to help again, despite Peter’s reservations about the past they share  –and despite Hanne’s own fears that the illness she is suffering, and its impact on her memory, will impede the investigation. And still, they don’t know who the victim is. A chilling Scandinavian crime to freeze your nerves.

SLAUGHTER PARKBarry MaitlandText. PB. $29.99

Available 3 October

The third and final book in the Belltree Trilogy finds Harry Belltree shielding those around him from danger by hiding out in Cape Tribulation where his closest neighbour is a crocodile named Marilyn

who, handily, doesn’t need defending from

anyone. But he’s soon back in Sydney once he’s caught wind of what’s happened to the wife and baby daughter he hasn’t seen for months. The baby is in the care of her aunt. Harry’s wife, Jenny, was away for a brief holiday, but is now on the run and wanted for murder. But who is the man Jenny has theoretically murdered? What is his connection to Nordlund, the mining company with an unpleasantly recent history with the Belltrees? And what is the connection to Slater Park, now named Slaughter Park in the press thanks to the dismembered body parts hanging by ribbons from a tree? Another blistering book from the Ned Kelly Award-winning Maitland.

DEAD IN THE WATERTania ChandlerScribe. PB. $29.99

Available 3 October

Brigitte Serra and her family have left Melbourne  – and the memories of Chandler’s debut novel, Don’t Leave Me Here  – for a small island in Gippsland and the comfort that being away from the city

provides. Here, all that’s outside their door is squabbling koalas and the dark pull of the sea  – but then a body is found in the water, and Brigitte’s old boyfriend Matt Elery  –now a writer who has written a crime book called Dead in the Water  –is in town for a signing. Brigitte’s policeman husband Aidan is on high alert, and now the sanctuary of their home is at risk, not only from unknown exterior threats but also that of Brigitte and Aidan’s own visceral suffering as the present reveals afresh the trauma of violence in their past. The Ned Kelly and Davitt-shortlisted Chandler has written another absorbing thriller, shot with fear, crackling energy, and dynamic, flawed characters.

MAGPIE MURDERSAnthony HorowitzOrion. PB. Was $32.99

$27.99

Available 11 October

We do sometimes suspect that our favourite authors may be less favourable in real life, and publisher Susan Ryeland both loves and loathes the moment she gets a new manuscript by crime author Alan

Conway on her desk. Conway she is no fan of, but his literary invention  –  post-war German detective Atticus Pund, solving cosy British crimes in the 1950s  –  is wonderful. And so Ryeland is devastated when the latest manuscript has no ending, and more so when she discovers that Conway himself now has an ending  –  dead, apparently by his own hand. But, as she  –and we readers  –examine the manuscript, it seems that Conway has hidden clues to an even more revealing and deadly mystery in the pages of his book. Just hope, dear reader, that no one has the pen poised above your own story as you read Horowitz’s.

A DEADLY THAWSarah WardFaber. PB. $29.99

Available 1 October

It’s all very unassuming, of course, a book with a version of the word ‘dead’ in the title, a misty cover. So far, so British Crime Novel, but this is a book you can’t shake. A man is found in a

disused wartime mortuary, dead on a slab, and the homicide team start their typical assessments, until one identifies the man as one Andrew Fisher  – a local who was killed and cremated twelve years earlier, his wife Lena just released from prison after being found guilty of his murder. But where has Fisher been for twelve years, and why did his wife accept her fate? When Lena vanishes, her sister Kat endeavours to find her, along with Detective Constable Connie Childs and a police team working to survive the repercussions of incorrectly idenitifying a dead man all those years earlier. Taut and beautifully written, this is a cracker of a mystery with genuine characters worth staying up late for.

THE SCHOLL CASE: THE DEADLY END OF A MARRIAGEAnja Reich-OsangText. PB. $29.99

Available 3 October

The day after her forty-seventh wedding anniversary  –  December 29, 2011  –  Brigitte Scholl disappeared. Her husband, the well-known Heinrich Scholl, had spent the day checking in on his

beloved south Berlin town of Ludwigsfelde, where he had been mayor for years. That night, he alerted his friends that his wife was missing; later, she and her dog were found in the woods, dead. Now, Heinrich Scholl sits in jail for her murder, protesting his innocence, but the case still grips the German public, not least the award-winning journalist Anja Reich-Osang, who intended to briefly visit the courtroom during his trial for a look into what was happening and, instead, spent years investigating his case. Reich-Osang provides a powerful, beautifully written exposition into a murder that is as much about the world Scholl inhabits as it is about the man himself.

THE TRESPASSERTana FrenchH&S. PB. $32.99

Available now

The wonderful thing about Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series is that they’re all excellent, but all very different at the same time. Each book has enough familiarity to allow you to slip

effortlessly into the story, but not so much that the books seem repetitive or cookie-cutter. The Trespasser is the sixth book in the series, and the second to feature Detectives Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran, whose partnership was in its infancy in The Secret Place. The acerbic Conway holds the reins in this new book, which is about a case that might not be the slam-dunk domestic violence crime that it at first appears to be. As Conway and Moran are drawn deeper into a web of secrets and conspiracies, it becomes clear that someone on the squad is determined to see them fail. The Trespasser is a twisty, hard-edged thriller that leaves you feeling uneasy and on edge and desperate to find out where the line lies between truth and fiction.

Lian Hingee is the digital marketing manager for Readings

Crime Book of the Month

DR KNOXPeter SpiegelmanHeadline. PB. $29.99

Available now

Adam Knox is a man of contradictions. Altruistic by day, he runs a clinic for the poor, the drug addicted, the prostitutes and

homeless of downtown Los Angeles. Mercenary by night, Knox makes home visits to criminals and those famous enough not to want to visit the emergency room, patching them up on a cash-only basis with the guarantee of silence. Thus Knox funds his clinic, which in

part seems to be an attempt to make amends for mistakes he made as a medic for an NGO in Africa, all of which ended in disaster.

So here we have it: the flawed doctor with a heart of gold. One night a woman turns up at his clinic, a prostitute it seems, beaten and exhausted, with a boy in anaphylactic shock. Knox deals with the boy, only to find the woman has bolted out the back door. Our kind-hearted doctor is drawn headfirst into the mystery, which threatens not only himself and his staff, but his best buddy Ben Sutter, an ex-Special Forces agent who despairs at and protects the good doctor.

Cue Russian gangsters, an evil, rich industrialist, and some fast dialogue and brutal violence as Knox and Sutter take up the cause of the kid who has been dumped on them. Los Angeles looms large in this novel, with its petrochemical sunsets and iconic boulevards hosting the action in what can only be described as neo-noir. Plot complications build rapidly against the backdrop of a city that wears extreme inequality like a badge of honour, as Knox and Sutter face corporate and criminal entities that send ever more brutal and sadistic messages that they want  – for reasons unknown  – the mysterious boy back.

There is a lot going on here, but Spiegelman keeps the complicated plot flowing with snappy wise-cracking dialogue and bursts of tension and violence. I loved Knox, Sutter, and the heat of Los Angeles’ underbelly. The best part is that things seem set up for a sequel.

Robbie Egan is the operations manager for Readings

12 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

responsibilities as a non-Indigenous Australian whose family’s privilege was built on stolen land? After a four-decade absence, Webster returns to her hometown to reconnect with her former friends, and to piece together Kurrawang’s story.

NUJEENNujeen MustafaHarperCollins. PB. $32.99

Available 1 October

A 16-year-old Syrian girl with cerebral palsy, Nujeen Mustafa has the courage of a lion. A strong, extraordinary voice, Nujeen tells the story of what it’s really like to be a refugee, to have grown up through war

and left a beloved homeland to become dependent on others. It tells how the Syrian war has destroyed a proud nation and torn families apart. It is the story of our times told through one remarkable girl, determined to keep smiling.

DASHING FOR THE POSTPatrick Leigh FermorVictor Gollancz. PB. $35

Available 11 October

Handsome, spirited and erudite, Patrick Leigh Fermor was a war hero and one the greatest travel writers of his generation. The letters in this collection span almost seventy years, sent to correspondents

including Deborah Devonshire, Ann Fleming, Nancy Mitford, Lawrence Durrell, Diana Cooper and his lifelong companion, Joan Rayner. His letters exhibit many of his most engaging characteristics: his zest for life, his unending curiosity, his exuberance and his tendency to get into scrapes.

HILLBILLY ELEGYJ. D. VanceHarperCollins. PB. $32.99

Available 1 October

Former marine and Yale graduate J.D. Vance tells a true story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. Vance piercingly

shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his family’s fight for upward mobility. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humour and vividly colourful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream.

THE INVENTION OF ANGELA CARTEREdmund GordonChatto & Windus. PB. $35

Available 3 October

One of the most important English writers of the last century, Angela Carter’s work stands out for its bawdiness and linguistic zest, its hospitality to the fantastical and the

absurd. Her life was as rich with incident, as vigorously modern, as unconventional, and ultimately as tragic as anything in her fiction. Meticulously researched and artfully constructed, Edmund Gordon uncovers a wealth of new details about the life of this extraordinary writer, and skilfully captures the remarkable personality that left an indelible mark on English fiction.

KARL MARX: GREATNESS AND ILLUSIONGareth Stedman JonesAllen Lane. HB. $79.99

Available now

As the nineteenth century unfolded, new economic, political, religious and intellectual challenges transformed the industrial landscape. One of the most distinctive and arresting voices to

arise came from Karl Marx, the son of a Jewish convert in the Rhineland and a man whose entire life was devoted to making sense of the puzzles and paradoxes of the nineteenth century. This remarkable book gives valuable new insight into the ideas that shaped Marx’s world  – and in turn made Marx shape our own.

MARGARET PRESTON: RECIPES FOR FOOD AND ARTLesley HardingMUP. PB. Was $45

$39.95

Available 3 October

Celebrated for her vibrant and distinctive pictures of indigenous flowers, artist Margaret Preston was an equally colourful and outspoken personality. A

generous and insightful teacher and keen cook who believed art should be within everyone’s reach, Preston published widely on a host of creative pursuits. Drawing on handwritten recipes found in the National Gallery of Australia and richly illustrated with Preston’s paintings, prints and photographs, this book sheds new light on the fascinating private life of a much-loved Australian artist.

Business

FEMINIST FIGHT CLUBJessica BennettPenguin. PB. $29.99

Available 17 October

If this were an equal world, this book wouldn’t have to exist. But it’s not, and we shouldn’t wait around for somebody else to save us. We need to fight for ourselves. Here is an arsenal of weapons for

surviving in an unequal world  – learn how to fight micro-aggressions, correct

the wit, acuity and outspokenness that we came to expect from this inimitable wordsmith. Bob Ellis: In His Own Words honours Ellis’s prodigious writing legacy  – a keepsake for fans that will also win him new admirers.

WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION? Manny Waks & Michael VisontayScribe. PB. $35

Available 3 October

Raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family, Manny Waks was sexually abused as a teenager at a Melbourne religious school. In mid-2011 Manny went public, exposing his abusers and those who covered

up their crimes. For his courage in speaking out, Manny and his family were intimidated and shunned by their community. This is the story of a man on a mission to shatter a powerful code of silence, and the extraordinary toll it has taken on Manny and his loved ones.

A TEAR IN THE SOULAmanda WebsterNewSouth. PB. $29.99

Available 3 October

As a child, Amanda Webster had assumed the Aboriginal kids on the Kurrawang Mission near her Kalgoorlie home were well cared for  – but over the years, her questions accumulated: were her friends members of the

Stolen Generations? What was life at Kurrawang really like? What are her

Biography

WORKING CLASS BOYJimmy BarnesHarperCollins. HB. Was $45

$39.95

Available now

Long before Jimmy Barnes became a household name, there was James Dixon Swan  – a working class boy whose family made the journey from Scotland to Australia in search of a better life. Raw, gritty,

compassionate, surprising and darkly funny, Working Class Boy is the story of how James Swan became Jimmy Barnes. It is a powerful reflection on the traumatic and violent childhood that fuelled the excess and recklessness that would define, and almost destroy, the rock’n’roll legend.

BOB ELLIS: IN HIS OWN WORDSBob EllisBlack Inc. PB. Was $32.99

$29.99

Available 3 October

This book showcases the best of Ellis’s celebrated and much-loved essays, speeches, diaries and scripts, in addition to previously unpublished work, archival photos and reflections from close friends and

family. Compiled by Ellis’s widow, Anne Brooksbank, this collection contains all

New Nonfiction

Book of the Month

THE BOY BEHIND THE CURTAINTim WintonHamish Hamilton. HB Special Edition. Was $45

$29.99

Available 28 September

Helen Garner’s Everywhere I Look, a collection of personal essays and diary notes, delighted readers and it went on to

become one of our bestsellers. I’ve got a feeling that Tim Winton’s collection, The Boy Behind the Curtain, will hit the same mark. Like Garner’s, this book is a collection of pieces, some previously published and others appearing for the first time. Last year

Hamish Hamilton published another Winton collection, Island Home, featuring work on the landscape and environment. The Boy Behind the Curtain is much more personal and much more revealing and has, I believe, a much stronger appeal.

‘Winton is arguably one of our most loved and respected writers;  …  He is also an intensely private person  …  so that makes this

book even more special.

Winton is arguably one of our most loved and respected writers; he writes in a vernacular that is distinctly his but one which resonates strongly with readers. He is also an intensely private person who rarely appears comfortably in public, so that makes this book even more special. It’s probably the closest we’ll get to seeing the interior Winton. The pieces range across a number of topics, but the ones about his family resonated most strongly with me. His father, a country copper, was an important influence on his life, giving him a strong moral compass which was later reinforced by the family’s conversion to the Church of Christ and a literalist interpretation of the scripture. Some of the pieces where he deals with this certainly made Winton the writer and the person click with me. There’s a lovely piece where he pays homage to Elizabeth Jolley who taught him writing at the West Australian Institute of Technology, although, according to Winton, it was more as though: ‘We learnt to write alongside her, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say in her wake.’ This is a brilliant collection of insights. You’ll come away intrigued, delighted and perhaps a little bit wiser.

Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 13

unconscious bias, deal with male colleagues who can’t stop ‘manterrupting’ or ‘bro-propriating’ your ideas, and ‘lean in’ without falling over. Every woman needs this book, and they needed it yesterday.

Cultural Studies

FIGHT LIKE A GIRLClementine FordA&U. PB. Was $29.99

$24.99

Available 1 October

The shocking nature of

online abuse that Clementine Ford has received for her feminist writing is pretty widely known. In her first full-length book she fights back with a wholly

justified vengeance. Ford describes this book as ‘an exploration of my experience as a girl in this world’ and it begins with her unwillingness as a teenager to identify with the feminist movement because she thought it was ‘irrelevant’ but really because she thought it might mean that boys wouldn’t like her. Ford goes on to describe her experience with an eating disorder, her sexual awakening and ongoing struggle with mental health. She positions all these experiences against a backdrop of the structural oppression (patriarchy, capitalism etc.) that shaped them.

Importantly, Ford also acknowledges that she is a privileged white woman and that unpacking privilege is an incredibly difficult but important part of any movement. Ford’s writing is explosive, hilarious and incredibly accessible without dumbing down the big theoretical issues too much. In many ways this book is perfect for teenagers (I was going to write teenage girls but it’s essential that boys read this kind of stuff too) and I certainly wish this book had been around when I was a teenager. Reading it as an adult, I found that Ford has a wonderful ability to crystallise all that swirling unease that surfaces whenever I hear a sexist comment or joke but have become too complacent and lazy to call it out. Ford ends the book with a reassurance that ‘it’s OK to be angry’, which is good because now that I’ve finished reading it I am reminded that there is still so much to be angry about.

Kara Nicholson is from Readings Carlton

THE PROMISE OF THINGSRuth QuibellMUP. PB. $27.99

Available 3 October

Some of our strongest, most lasting relationships are hidden in plain view  – those we have with objects. What do our possessions do for us? And how do they do it? Ruth Quibell explores what

our possessions say about us: who we think we are, what we long for and struggle against. She invites us to think about how we use things, what makes them precious, and why we find it so hard to throw these objects away.

Australian Studies

SWALLOWED BY THE SEAGraeme HendersonNLA. PB. $44.99

Available 1 October

Swallowed by the Sea tells the stories of Australia’s greatest and most tragic shipwrecks, lost in raging storms, on jagged reefs, under enemy fire, or through

human error, treachery or incompetence. From English and Dutch trading vessels in the seventeenth century to emigrant ships in the nineteenth century and the great warships of the Second World War, Swallowed by the Sea explains how each ship was wrecked and discovered, and what remains of the wrecks today.

FAIR GAME: THE INCREDIBLE UNTOLD STORY OF SCIENTOLOGY IN AUSTRALIASteve CannaneHarperCollins. PB. $32.99

Available now

From rugby league players to Hollywood superstars and media moguls, Scientology has recruited its share of famous Australians  – despite Australia being the first place to ban Scientology. Numerous

Australians have held senior posts in the organisation only to fall foul of the top brass and lose their families as a result. Based on years of interviews and research, Steve Cannane’s extraordinary insight into Scientology in Australia is investigative journalism at its very best.

THE STORY OF AUSTRALIA’S PEOPLE: VOLUME IIGeoffrey BlaineyPenguin. HB. Was $49.99

$39.99

Available 17 October

Geoffrey Blainey continues his account of the history of our nation and its people. When Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land, traditional life for Australia’s first

inhabitants changed forever. For the new arrivals, Australia was a land that rewarded, tricked, tantalised and often defeated. From the gold rush to land rights and the digital age, Blainey brings to life the key events of more recent times that have shaped us into the nation and people we are today.

FROM THE EDGEMark MckennaMUP. PB. Was $34.99

$29.99

Available 3 October

From the Edge recounts four extraordinary and largely forgotten Australian stories: the shipwreck survivors who walked from Bass Strait to Sydney in 1797; the founding of a ‘new Singapore’ in Arnhem

w w w . n e w s o u t h p u b l i s h i n g . c o m

Amanda Webster is a sixth generation Australian descended

from white settlers and the third generation to grow up in Kalgoorlie. When she turned five Amanda started school and became friends with Aboriginal children from the nearby Kurrawang Mission. Forty years later, Webster meets Gregory Ugle, older brother of one of the “Mission kids” she remembers from school. He travels with her to her hometown and helps her reconnect with her former friends. Webster is forced to confront her racist blunders, her cultural ignorance and her family’s secret past. And so begins her journey of reconciliation, taking her into a world she hardly knew existed.

After months of being trapped in a shopping centre, Nox must confront what happened outside.

Big waves, black magic and mad Aussie expats make for dangerous surf.

On Australia’s vast southern oceans, sealers and their captives must cooperate or die.

There’s a killer on the loose in Broome and it’s no croc.

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The cowboy capitalists of Perth’s 1980s just rode into town, and PI Frank Swann is in the firing line.

CR

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COMINGSOON

New Indie Reads

From piranha-infested waters to mining company boardrooms, triumphs and disasters on the gold trail.

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NED KELLY AWARDFOR BEST CRIME

FICTION

WINNER 2016

14 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

Land in the 1840s; Australia’s largest industrial development project nestled amongst outstanding Indigenous rock art in the Pilbara; and the ever-changing story of James Cook’s time in Cooktown in 1770. All of these forgotten stories feature encounters between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, shedding new light on past moments.

THE BUSH: TRAVELS IN THE HEART OF AUSTRALIADon WatsonPenguin. PB. $24.99

Available 3 October

The bush: in Australia no word resounds like it, and none is harder to define. Part memoir, part travel document, The Bush is a thought-provoking journey through this distinctive Australian landscape. Don

Watson presents the bush in a way that neither romanticises nor decries it as he probes our legends, from the axeman to the swagman, looking deep into the stories we like to tell and those we avoid  – in everything from history, literature and art, to the national myth and political debate.

Natural History

THE DRAGON BEHIND THE GLASSEmily VoigtS&S. PB. $32.99

Available 1 October

Journalist Emily Voigt’s first book is

a thrilling deep dive into the strange and dangerous world of the Asian arowana or ‘dragon fish’. Inspired by a meeting with a pet detective tracking an

illegal alligator sale in the Bronx, Voigt sets out to learn more about the world’s most expensive aquarium fish and make sense of the cult that surrounds it. Renowned as a symbol of prestige, power and luck, from Malaysia to Wall Street, the arowana is the kind of fish people will even kill for. As Voigt writes, it’s also ‘one of the most dramatic examples of a modern paradox’ – bred by the hundreds of thousands in captivity, yet almost extinct in its wild habitats.

Voigt’s efforts see her traversing 15 different countries over the course of years. She clambers into infested swamps at night, boats along the Içá – or Putumayo – river, and toys with the possibility of becoming a fish smuggler for the glory of discovering a new species. She finds her growing obsession with arowana bewildering given her own ambivalence towards the creature. At one point in the book she asks herself: ‘How much was I willing to risk to risk to go after a fish I didn’t even think was good-looking?’

The Dragon Behind the Glass is a smart and witty adventure tale, filled with fascinating information and characters, such as Heiko Bleher, the ‘Indiana Jones of the tropical fish industry’, the woman who attempted to smuggle an arowana and other fish into Australia under her skirt, and the herpetologist who wrote a guide to ‘the dangerously venomous snakes of Myanmar’ – only to die of snakebite in Myanmar himself.

At the centre of Voigt’s book lies our very human desire to ‘own’ a piece of

wildness. As Voigt writes, ‘Fish have long been our last wild food and, together with reptiles and amphibians, our last wild pets.’ She writes about the impact of domestication on fish and does not spare herself her critique of the destruction this desire can cause. Reading this book, one cannot help hoping that the words of one Borneo tribal headman are true: ‘Arowana is just like a ghost – he can disappear. The arowana is not extinct but hiding.’Bronte Coates is the digital content coordinator

OWLS: A GUIDE TO EVERY SPECIESAnna ClaybourneIvy. HB. $59.99

Available 1 October

The charm and mystique of owls resonates through human history. From ancient myth and superstition to popular modern children’s stories, these beautiful, deadly birds are

harbingers of good and bad news, icons of fear, wisdom and magic. Yet uncovering the reality of their lives is a tremendous challenge  – new species are still being discovered, as are new insights into the habits of even the most familiar species. Owls brings together full descriptions and distribution maps as well as stunning colour photographs.

History

BLITZEDNorman Ohler

Penguin. HB. $49.99

Available 17 October

A bestseller in Germany, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany explores the murky, chaotic world of drug use in the Third Reich. The entire Nazi regime was permeated with drugs  – cocaine, heroin, morphine and

methamphetamines, the latter crucial to troops’ resilience. While drugs cannot explain Nazi ideology, Norman Ohler investigates how their promiscuous use impaired and confused decision-making, with drastic effects on Hitler and his entourage, who, as the war turned against Germany, took refuge in ever more poorly understood cocktails of stimulants.

MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MANUSCRIPTSChristopher de HamelAllen Lane. HB. Was $69.99

$59.99

Available 17 October

Christopher de Hamel invites the reader into intimate conversations with twelve of the most famous illuminated manuscripts in existence, exploring what they tell us about hundreds of years of medieval history,

and even the modern world. Part travel book, part detective story, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts explores religion, art, literature, music, science and the history of taste, and conveys the fascination and excitement of encountering some of the greatest works of art in our culture.

REVOLUTION: THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND VOLUME IVPeter AckroydPanMacmillan. PB. $34.99

Available 27 October

The fourth volume of Peter Ackroyd’s enthralling History of England begins in 1688, with William of Orange’s accession following the Glorious Revolution, and ends in 1815 with Napoleon’s defeat at

Waterloo. It was an era in which coffee houses and playhouses boomed, gin flowed freely and newspapers flourished. But it was also a time of extraordinary and unprecedented technological innovation, which saw England utterly and irrevocably transformed from a country of blue skies and farmland to one of soot and steel and coal.

Music

BORN TO RUNBruce SpringsteenS&S. HB. Was $49.99

$34.95

Available 1 October Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has devoted himself to writing the story of his life, with the same honesty, humour and originality found in his songs. A revelation for Springsteen fans and

newcomers alike, Born to Run is more than a music memoir, it is a story written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences. Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep.

I AM BRIAN WILSONBrian Wilson & Ben GreenmanH&S. HB. Was $45

$39.95

Available 11 October

As co-founder of the Beach Boys in the 1960s, Brian Wilson created some of the most groundbreaking popular music ever recorded. Derailed in the 1970s by mental illness, drug use, and the band’s shifting

fortunes, Wilson came back again and again over the next few decades. Now older, calmer and filled with perspective, he weighs in for the first time on the exhilarating highs and debilitating lows. I Am Brian Wilson unforgettably illuminates the man behind the music and the turbulent legacy.

Personal Development

[THE BEST OF] DEAR COQUETTEThe CoquetteIcon. PB. $29.99

Available 12 October

Taken from the immensely popular blog of the same name, Dear Coquette offers, for the first time between hard covers, Coquette’s searingly frank, helpful, profane and often brutal

advice on dating, relationships, health, sex and much more. Coquette is an enigmatic anonymous author about whom little is known, other than that she lives in LA and holds down a high-ranking job while also secretly authoring the Dear Coquette blog. Hers is an original and startlingly fresh voice – and she’s here to help.

Philosophy

AGAINST THE DOUBLE BLACKMAILSlavoj ŽižekPenguin. HB. $24.99

Available 17 October

As hundreds of thousands of people cross the Mediterranean to seek refuge in Europe, Slavoj Žižek examines the European response, identifying two versions of ideological blackmail:

either we open our doors as widely as possible; or we try to pull up the drawbridge. Both solutions, he says, merely prolong the problem, rather than tackle it. In this book, Žižek attempts to get to the heart of one of the greatest issues confronting Europe today, calling for global solidarity for the exploited and oppressed.

Politics

WE ARE NOT SUCH THINGSJustine van der LeunHarperCollins. PB. $34.99

Available now

In the final days of apartheid a young

American student, Amy Biehl, was murdered by a black mob in one of Cape Town’s townships. Three young men were convicted of her murder but the case

was a strange one that was full of contradictions. Van der Leun spent four years trying to piece together the mystery, hunting out all the protagonists. In a selfless act Amy’s parents embraced the new South Africa, setting up a Foundation to support young people in the townships and even employing two of the men convicted of Amy’s murder after they were released under the amnesty of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The story mirrors the trajectory of post-Apartheid South Africa: from the high hopes of Mandela’s Rainbow Nation to the current malaise of the ANC. Like Katherine Boo’s award-winning Behind the Beautiful Forevers, We Are Not Such Things immerses us in the lives of ordinary locals – in this instance the lives of black South Africans. It’s one of the most powerful books I’ve read this year.

Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Readings

THE EUROJoseph StiglitzPenguin. HB. $55

Available 17 October

Designed to bring the European Union closer together, the euro has actually done the opposite: after nearly a decade without growth, unity has been replaced with dissent and

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 15

From Number One bestselling picture book duo, David Walliams and Tony Ross,

comes this ssssspectacularly funny picture book.

From Syria to Germany in a wheelchair: the story of our times told through

one remarkable girl

The Incredible Untold Story of Scientology in

Australia

enlargements with prospective exits. Hoping to avoid the huge costs associated with current policies, Stiglitz proposes two other alternatives: a well-managed end to the common currency; or a bold, new system dubbed ‘the flexible euro.’ This important book, by one of the world’s leading economists, addresses the euro-crisis on a bigger intellectual scale than any predecessor.

VIKING ECONOMICSGeorge LakeyMelville House. HB. $44.99

Available 17 October

In America, many Democrats invoke Scandinavia as a promised land of equality, while most Republicans fear it as a hotbed of liberty-threatening socialism. But the left and right can usually agree on

one thing: that the Nordic system is impossible to replicate. But there’s nothing inherently Scandinavian about greater equality  – so why not try it? By explaining that even Scandinavia’s grandest experiments in social equality are rooted in recent political struggles, George Lakey shows how other countries can achieve equality too.

Science

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE BRAINSusan GreenfieldPenguin. PB. Was $32.99

$27.99

Available 3 October

In this groundbreaking book, internationally acclaimed neuroscientist Susan Greenfield brings together a series of astonishing, new, empirically based insights into consciousness as she

traces a single day in the life of your brain. From waking to walking the dog, working to dreaming, Greenfield explores how our daily experiences are translated into a tangle of cells, molecules and chemical blips, thereby probing the enduring mystery of how our brains create our individual selves.

EINSTEIN’S GREATEST MISTAKEDavid BodanisLittle Brown. PB. $35

Available 27 September

Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionised our understanding of the cosmos and helped to lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his

life he was ignored by most working scientists, his ideas opposed by even his closest friends. In this intimate and enlightening biography of the celebrated physicist, David Bodanis explores how Einstein’s confidence in his own powers of intuition proved to be both his greatest strength and his ultimate undoing.

HOW TO MAKE A SPACESHIPJulian GuthrieBantam. PB. $34.99

Available 3 October

From watching the moon landing at the age of eight, Peter Diamandis’s singular goal was to get to space. When he realised NASA was winding down manned space flight, he set out on one of the

great entrepreneurial adventure stories of our time. If the government wouldn’t send him to space, he would create a private space flight industry himself. The story of the bullet-shaped SpaceShipOne is an extraordinary tale of making the impossible possible, and the foundation for a new industry.

Architecture

THE ART OF THE AIRPORTAlexander Gutzmer et al.Frances Lincoln. HB. $49.99

Available 1 October

For most of us, airports are endured rather than appreciated, with little thought for the quality of the architecture. No matter how hard even the

world’s best architects have tried, it is difficult to make a beautiful airport. And yet such places do exist  – cathedrals of the jet age that offer something of the transcendence of flight even in an era of mass travel and budget fares. Here are 21 of the most beautiful airports in the world.

Sport & Recreation

THE ART OF CYCLINGCadel EvansABC. HB. Was $49.99

$44.95

Available 17 October

Cadel Evans is Australia’s greatest ever cyclist, and one of our greatest sportsmen. From 1995 to his final race in February 2015, Evans has had a spectacular career. Known as a meticulous trainer and

an athlete who prided himself on his ability to ‘put it all on the road’, Evans writes about the triumphs, the frustrations, the training, the preparation, the psychology of the sport, his contemporaries, past legends, how he maintained such amazing consistency and, always, his enduring love of cycling.

Reference

THE WORD DETECTIVEJohn SimpsonOrion. PB. $32.99

Available 11 October

Language is always changing. No-one knows where it is going but the best way to future-cast is to look at the past. John Simpson animates for us a tradition of researching and editing, showing us both the

technical lexicography needed to understand a word, and the careful poetry needed to construct its definition. He challenges both the idea that dictionaries are definitive, and the notion that language is falling apart.

16 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

CLAYAmber Creswell BellT&H. HB. $60

Available 1 October

The experience of making a clay pot couldn’t be further from our digitally driven lives where mass consumption has become the norm. The medium is expressive of the handmade

and of authenticity so it’s not surprising that pottery and ceramics are experiencing a revival of interest and enthusiasm last seen in the 1970s. This lovely book surveys 60 artisans with a behind-the-scenes approach. Emphasising the unique and eclectic within a global, contemporary framework, there is something to please and delight everyone.

ON THE LOOMMaryanne MoodieT&H. HB. $39.99

Available 1 October

Maryanne Moodie is an Australian who has made good in the world by bringing another 1970s favourite, the small hand-loom and weaving,

into the 21st century. Her book makes this age-old craft ever so appealing with projects and designs that speak to her interest in things vintage yet are also fresh and new. Weaving is a craft that may seem daunting to the uninitiated but everything in this book feels do-able in the most enjoyable way and there are a variety of projects to choose from.

ARTISTS’ CHOICEArt & AustraliaDott. HB. $110

Available now

From 1967 on Art & Australia magazine included an article by an artist responding to a work they admired in a public institution. This

collection from the magazine’s archives is richly rewarding and features a broad cross-section of art and artists. The pleasant recognition of a familiar work of art combined with the response of the artist who has chosen it because they admire/love/are inspired by it has a personal quality that elevates and relaxes, or presents a different perspective on a piece passed by.

PLANTPhaidon EditorsPhaidon. HB. $79.95

Available now

This fresh and stunning survey celebrates the extraordinary beauty and diversity of plants. It combines photographs and cutting-edge micrograph scans with

watercolours, drawings and prints to bring this subject to life. Carefully selected by an international panel of experts including botanists, horticulturalists, art historians and museum curators, the collection includes iconic work by artists, photographers, scientists, and botanic illustrators, as well as rare and previously unpublished images. It also includes a botanic art timeline, a glossary, biographies, an introduction to plant taxonomy and a reading list.

Art & Designwith Margaret Snowdon

MAD WORKS MAD ARCHITECTSMa YansongPhaidon. HB. $100

Available now

Internationally renowned for its futuristic, organic and technologically advanced designs, the work of Beijing-based young architecture studio

MAD embodies a contemporary interpretation of the Eastern affinity for nature and a preoccupation with creating a balance between humanity, the city and the environment. The book is illustrated with photographs, architectural drawings, and 3D visualisations to provide a thorough exploration of MAD’s international portfolio and future ideas.

FABRIC OF VISIONAnne HollanderBloomsbury. PB. $50

Available now

This beautiful book explores the work of great artists over six centuries to reveal how clothing and drapery have brought depth, emphasis and meaning to art. From Giotto

to El Greco, Matisse to Cindy Sherman, the author reveals through paintings, fashion plates, photographs and film stills how drapery in art evolved from Renaissance extravagance to Neoclassical simplicity at the end of the 18th century, and has extended to infinite uses in all genres of modern art. A subject that fascinates artists and viewers, this is a re-issue of the 2002 catalogue from the National Gallery in London with a new foreword by Valerie Steele.

SLIM AARONS: WOMENLaura HawkAbrams. HB. $110

Available 1 October

Slim Aarons: Women explores the central subject of Slim Aarons’s career  – the extraordinary women from the upper echelons of high society, the arts, fashion, and

Hollywood. The collection contains more than 200 images, the majority of which have not appeared in previous books, along with detailed captions written by one of Aarons’s closest colleagues. Showcasing beautiful women at their most glamorous in some of the most dazzling locations across the globe, this is a fresh look at the acclaimed photographer through the muses who inspired his most incredible photographs.

MILITARY STYLE INVADES FASHIONTimothy GodboldPhaidon. HB. $49.95

Available now

A celebration of military-inspired style in fashion and focusing on the 21st century, this book also acts as a reference guide and source of inspiration for designers and

fashion followers alike. The book is divided into thematic chapters such as Ceremony, Legionnaire, Nautical and Dazzle – which was a form of camouflage from WWI involving lots of stripes. Featuring more than 180 photographs showcasing the work of the world’s leading designers and brands, it brings new meaning to the expression ‘dressed to kill’.

AUSTRALIAN FISH AND SEAFOOD COOKBOOKJohn SusmanMurdoch. HB. Was $79.99

$69.99

Available 1 October

This enormous book is the definitive guide to cooking and buying great, sustainable fish. Written by the most respected authorities on seafood in the country, this

remarkable tome contains all you need to know about selecting and preparing over 60 types of fish and seafood found here in Australia, including catching methods (if that’s your thing), notes on sustainability (so important), and recipes for everything from frying fish to the most scrumptious and easy fish soups. This type of collection holds imperative knowledge for all of us that cherish our environment. Think Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion, but fishy!

JAMIE’S CHRISTMAS COOKBOOKJamie OliverPenguin. HB. Was $55

$49.95

Available 20 October

Jamie Trevor Oliver is the author of over 20 cookbooks and one may wonder if there is anything left for him to write about. Jamie’s Christmas Cookbook shows

us that there is. This collection is packed with all the classics you need for the end of the year, as well as loads of delicious recipes for edible gifts, party food and innovative means for leftover meats and cakes. There are vegetarian options and a whole chapter dedicated to the humble potato, but my favourite is the comestible gifts you can make. Just reading his ideas fills me with hope for the end of the year.

GROWN AND GATHEREDMatt Purbrick & Lentil PurbrickPlum. PB. $45

Available 27 September

This book is a nod to our agricultural past and indeed to our future. It is more than your average cook or gardening volume, it’s an illustrated guide to living

sustainably and with integrity. The first part of the book is Matt and Lentil’s guide to producing your own food. The information, advice and projects can be used whether you have a farm or a courtyard with planter boxes. The second part of the book features over 100 delicious and nurturing recipes. Beautifully presented with romantic images throughout, this wonderful, quirky book is full of philosophies and positive vibes.

LOOSE LEAFWona Bae & Charlie LawlerHardie Grant. HB. $45

Available 1 October

It’s possible you’ve heard about this extraordinary Melbourne couple and their design and botanic expertise. Their book is a beautifully presented guide to living well

and with grace; and, more specifically, how to do so alongside your indoor plants. The

pages are filled with the hows and whys of unique floral sculptures and botanic installations. Spring is here and it’s time to celebrate nature. First step: this book.

SWEET GREEK LIFEKathy TsaplesMelbourne Books. HB. $49.95

Available 1 October

There is something magic about Kathy Tsaples: she’s all heart and it shows. This book, a follow-up to her excellent Sweet Greek, is full of recipes that will feed your street, your

family and yourself. The recipes are curated with easily found ingredients and simple steps to follow. Classics receive stunning makeovers, Western favourites are given a Hellenic twist and all are easily achieved. And of course there are pictures that will fill you with happiness and hunger!

PROVENCE TO PONDICHERRYTessa KirosQuadrille. HB. $49.99

Available 1 October

What is there not to love about Tessa Kiros? She is already renowned for her excellent travel-based cookbooks and this particular collection takes us

through the very romantic voyage across the world to discover French culinary influences in other destinations. Beautifully presented, as always, Kiros’s latest book is a delight, and again illustrates her leadership in exploring the development of tastes and cuisines.

RIVER COTTAGE A TO ZHugh Fearnley-Whittingstall et al.Bloomsbury. HB. Was $85

$69.95

Available 1 October

The new rite of passage for a chef is to produce their ultimate collection of recipes. However, here Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is not alone in this awe inspiring

encyclopaedia, but rather in true egalitarian style, he is joined by the entire River Cottage team and they have produced the guide to end all guides to nourishing and delicious food. Each expert in their field has a chapter in this collection. (For example Nick Fisher covers the seafood chapter.) There are over 300 entries on vegetables, fruits, herbs, spices, meat, fish, fungi, foraged foods, dairy, oils, vinegar and much more. Each entry includes information and a huge range of recipes suitable for any occasion. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has a huge following worldwide and this impressive book shows us how deserving he is of his fame.

DELICIOUS EVERY DAYAnna GareMurdoch. PB. $39.99

Available 1 October

This book is not for ‘food snobs’, but rather for busy people wanting to produce meals that the whole family will enjoy. These drama-free

recipes show you how to produce meals in one pot, what to do with leftovers and how to finish your meal off with something sweet or something healthy. Gare believes you can eat your cake as well as providing meals for fussy, ungrateful children, adults and friends. I love the ease that this collection gives every busy provider.

Food & Gardeningwith Chris Gordon

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 17

New Young Adult FictionSee books for kids, junior and middle readers on pages 18–19

THE OTHERLIFEJulia GrayAndersen Press. PB. $19.99

Available now

Julia Gray’s The Otherlife is an

extraordinary read that defies expectations. Norse mythological themes are at work here but this is not a mythic adventure story in the

tradition of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. This book is firmly grounded in reality; myth brings meaning to this work and to the struggles and complexities encountered by the lead characters.

The narrative focuses on the unlikely friendship between two boys, Ben and Hobie, who come from very different social backgrounds. Their friendship is founded on a mutual goal to secure a scholarship to an elite private school. Both boys must submit to a gruelling study program overseen by personal tutors employed to raise the boys’ academic standard to the highest level.

Several years pass and Ben is struggling to maintain the standard of excellence required in order to hold onto his scholarship. His mother’s expectations, too, weigh heavily on him. For respite, Ben channels his anger and frustration though heavy metal music and develops an addiction to painkiller medication. A chance encounter with Zara, Hobie’s younger sister, triggers Ben’s recall of the competitive envy that once characterised his friendship with Hobie. It has been years, too, since the Norse gods made their presence known to Ben and they return with an important message to deliver: ‘He is dead’. But they don’t say who.

It is at this point that the narration shifts to Hobie, a disturbed character who finds depraved amusement in unbalancing the equilibrium of those around him. Hobie’s preferred target is his sister Zara and he manipulates her cruelly, causing her great distress. But it is the fate of Ben’s former mentor and tutor, Jason, that really provides the mystery and tension.

Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster

HOLDING UP THE UNIVERSEJennifer NivenPenguin. PB. $19.99

Available 4 October

When I was first given Holding Up The

Universe to review I wasn’t overly taken with what the blurb had to offer. I can’t put my finger on why I felt this way exactly, but as I started

reading I realised it was because I was worried this was just going to be another bullying book about an overweight girl. And it is that, to an extent, but it is so much more.

Libby Strout is overweight. After the death of her mother, Libby’s weight skyrocketed to the point that she couldn’t roll over in bed anymore. But, she has lost 302 pounds (approx 137kg) and is set to go back to school and face her demons. Libby knows it isn’t going to be easy. People know what happened to her and she is ready for the bullying and the nastiness. What she isn’t ready for is Jack Masselin.

Jack Masselin is a bit of a clown. Coming across as confident and slightly arrogant, Jack hangs out with a couple of friends who get up to no good and find the idea of harassing and belittling people funny. But, to an extent, this is all an act for Jack, he’s just trying to protect himself from people finding out his secret. But when Jack decides to involve Libby in a really cruel game he unintentionally throws himself into the spotlight.

This is a brilliant novel about bullying. The character of Libby has been done perfectly, showing a teenage girl who is bullied horribly because of her weight still stick to her guns and stand up for herself. She isn’t perfect, we all have flaws, but she is human. And while, at times, I found it hard to warm to Jack because of his behaviour, you see a young man with troubles of his own.

Move over Katniss, a realistic heroine is taking your place. Highly recommended for ages 13 and up.

Katherine Dretzke is a friend of Readings

GOLDENHANDGarth NixA&U. PB. $24.99

Available 1 October

When it was announced that

Garth Nix’s excellent Old Kingdom series would be continuing after a lengthy hiatus, fans were overjoyed to learn that there was not only a prequel in the

works, but a sequel too. Goldenhand is that sequel, the fifth book in what was originally a trilogy. It introduces us to old characters and new, while immersing readers in a darkly thrilling world of death and magic.

Lirael fans will be pleased to learn that our favourite Second Assistant Librarian (now Abhorsen/Remembrancer) is back. With Sabriel on a much-needed holiday, Lirael is forced to face the Old Kingdom’s undead creatures on her own. While she’s answering one such call, Lirael comes across her old friend Nick, as well as a nefarious Free-Magic creature. After binding the creature, Lirael decides to take Nick to her old home in the Clayr glacier to see if something can be done about the Free Magic running amok in his system.

At the same time, a young tribe member named Ferin is on the run from the terrifying Witch With No Face and her sorcerous minions. Ferin has a message for the Clayr, and will stop at nothing to get there, but how can one girl hope to outrun the collected might of the Free Magic tribes?

Goldenhand is definitely one for the fans  – if you haven’t read the previous books in the series, you’ll need to before picking up this latest entry. And even if you have read the others, a re-read is a good idea because the worlds Nix crafts are so intricate that you won’t want to miss even the smallest of details. If you have a fantasy reader at home aged 12 and up, this is one of the must-read series to introduce them to.

Holly Harper is from Readings Kids

EVERYTHING IS CHANGEDNova WeetmanUQP. PB. $19.95

Available 3 October

There are many ways to tell a story,

but reverse chronology must be one of the least common  – there has to be a good reason for writing a story backwards. Nova Weetman had one such

reason and in Everything Is Changed theme and structure are perfectly complemented. This tale of two boys whose lives undergo dramatic, slow-burning change in the months following a split-second decision is an excellent read for teenagers.

Tension is high from the start as we meet Ellie, girlfriend of one of the boys, who hints at the seriousness of what has occurred, how her own life is different by association. Then Alex enters the scene and something about his attitude is off; he’s keeping his cool while around him everyone else is losing theirs. And then we hear from Jake, terrified, remorseful: ‘We killed him’. The reader sympathises with sorrowful Jake, the more emotionally engaged boy. For now. Because at this point

Young Adult Book of the Month

OUR CHEMICAL HEARTSKrystal Sutherland Penguin. PB. $19.99

Available 3 October

There’s already quite a bit of buzz about Krystal Sutherland’s debut novel, with comparisons being drawn to John Green and Rainbow

Rowell and a movie already in the works. It’s a big vote of confidence in this young Queensland writer, and a good indicator of what’s to come from

her. Our Chemical Hearts is a funny and heartfelt story about first love and, of course, a story about first heartbreak. Henry Page is a smart and self-aware teenager who’s happily managed to make it to the ripe old age of seventeen without losing his heart to anyone. Content to hang out with his friends (Murray, the Australian Steve Irwin parody; and Lola, the gay Chinese/Haitian ‘diversity triple threat’), avoid the scandal that dogged his older sister’s senior year, and secure his position as editor of the yearbook, Henry is totally unprepared for Grace Town.

Greasy-haired, shrouded in men’s clothing, and burdened with a cane to help her walk, Grace is an unlikely romantic interest; but her closely-held secrets, enigmatic behaviour, and quick wit soon has Henry smitten. But is he falling in love with the girl, or the idea of one? Sutherland isn’t writing in a vacuum, and there’s a slightly manic immediacy to Our Chemical Hearts that will be appealing to young readers who live in a fast-paced digital world. It’s peppered throughout with pop-culture references and in-jokes, sly little nods and winks for experienced readers who are familiar with the tropes that crop up again and again in YA fiction. Our Chemical Hearts acknowledges and pays tribute to the ever-popular genre of Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girls-and-the-men-who-love-them, but turns it gently on its head by developing into a story that proves that love is complicated and people more so. This is an accomplished first novel and an enjoyable read that blends humour with heart.

Lian Hingee is the digital marketing manager for Readings

the author is like a card-turner, coolly revealing each new scene, which puts the previous one into a new, more complex light.

The theme of cause-and-effect is put to great use as we observe the boys see-saw emotionally. Each new (but chronologically older) conversation or action has led to the situation we read about in the previous chapter. Confused? You won’t be  – Weetman tells this story plain and true with lean sentences and you soon get used to the backwards structure. The penultimate chapter is worth waiting for, and the final one absolutely sad. A great read about the complexity of male friendship, perception, and consequences.

Emily Gale is a friend of Readings

ZEROES 2: SWARMScott Westerfield, Margo Lanagan & Deborah BiancottiA&U. PB. $19.99

Available 1 October

I have been desperately

awaiting the next instalment in this series since I finished the first book, Zeroes, late last year, and I have definitely not waited in vain. Flicker,

Anonymous, Crash, Scam, Glorious Leader, and Mob have been lying low, developing and testing their powers in their underground nightclub. But the relative peace and quiet is not meant to last, as they begin to discover that more and more Zeroes exist. As new powers emerge and new characters bring trouble to the group of super-powered teens, the realisation that some of the group’s abilities may not be as pure as they think they are brings devastation and chaos in its wake. The nerve-racking adventures continue at the same breakneck pace as the first novel, and keeps your heart beating at matching speed from start to finish. I literally gasped as I read the final line  – while it is a painfully massive cliffhanger that will haunt me as I wait for the next book, it does mean that there will need to be more books in the series!

Westerfeld, Lanagan and Biancotti have expertly interwoven their own writing styles and the differing arcs of the characters into a seamlessly epic story. The plot flows flawlessly from character to character: while each voice is completely distinct and they vary greatly, it seems impossible that three very different authors have written the Zeroes books. Highly recommended for lovers of The Hunger Games, Divergent and Uglies series.

Jo Boyce is from Readings Kids

GIRL IN PIECESKathleen GlasgowHarperCollins. PB. $19.95

Available 1 October

Charlotte Davis has already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget it. The thick glass of a mason jar cuts deep and the pain washes out the sorrow until there is

nothing but calm. Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen to find your way back from the edge.

18 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

Picture BooksMOLLY & MAEDanny Parker & Freya BlackwoodLittle Hare. HB. $24.99

Available 1 October

The vicissitudes of friendship are perfectly portrayed in

Molly & Mae: the fun, frivolity and sometimes the discord. As the two girls embark on a long train journey from the country to the city, their

playful antics are disrupted by a squabble. Oh dear, a sulky silence can make a lengthy trip seem so much longer. The illustrations perfectly illuminate the excitement and boredom of a train trip. Freya Blackwood is one of the best artists at depicting children in all their wonderful ways and Daniel Parker’s succinct text allows for her to fill out the story beautifully. A lovely story for 3 and up.

Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn

THE SOUND OF SILENCEKatrina Goldsaito & Julia KuoLittle Brown. HB. $28.99

Available now

In a busy city like Tokyo the idea of silence is almost

ridiculous. The Japanese have the word ‘Ma’ to explain the silence between sounds and it is this notion that inspires this quite

lovely picture book. As young Yoshio revels in the sounds of the city while he wanders about, he comes across the wonderful music of a koto player. He asks the musician what she considers the most wonderful sound to be and she replies, ‘ma’. Yoshio is perplexed: where can he find silence? He finally understands that it is found in the moment of stillness when your mind is free from your surroundings.

The Sound of Silence depicts Japanese culture superbly and the colours and vibrancy contrast perfectly with the muted shades when Yoshio finds his silence. I love the way it describes such an elusive concept and introduces young people to the idea of contemplation and that they can find a peaceful place in a noisy world. Highly recommended for 4 and up. AD

WE FOUND A HATJon KlassenCandlewick Press. HB. $24.99

Available 11 October

Jon Klassen is back with another hat book! This time two turtles find

a hat. And the hat looks good on both of them. But there are two turtles and only one hat. Both turtles agree that it’s only fair to leave the hat. Unlike the first two in the hat trilogy, We Found a Hat has a much happier ending! Despite this, We

Found a Hat is still as hilarious and naughty as all Klassen’s hat books. And his simple but effective illustrations meant I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the shifty eyes of the turtle who is clearly intending to take the hat as soon as the second turtle is asleep. I loved this book, hopefully there are still more Jon Klassen hat books to come but if this really is the last, it’s an excellent one to end on.

Dani Solomon is from Readings Carlton

OI DOG!Kes Gray & Jim FieldHodder & Stoughton. HB. $24.99

Available 11 October

Cat insists that there are rules  – only mules sit on stools, hares sit on chairs and dogs must sit on frogs. But Frog’s had enough  – he’s changing the status quo! Will Cat want to sit on gnats instead of cushy mats? Will spiders like sitting on gliders? Will whales be

happy to sit on nails? And, most importantly, where is Frog going to sit? The hilarious sequel to the bestselling Oi Frog! will have children rolling around with laughter.

THREE LITTLE MONKEYSQuentin Blake & Emma Chichester ClarkHarperCollins. HB. $24.99

Available 1 October

Hilda Snibbs had three little monkeys. Their names were Tim, Sam, and Lulu. They were very lively! This remarkable collaboration brings together two giants of the picture-book world to create a funny, anarchic and utterly delightful picture book that is sure to become a classic of the future.

NonfictionIN FOCUS Libby WaldenLittle Tiger Press. HB. $29.99

Available 1 October

In Focus is a classic encyclopaedia with a

modern design twist; each of the 10 chapters is brought to life by a different illustrator and includes double-page spreads that open up to reveal cross sections, cutaways and close-ups so the

reader gains a different perspective and greater appreciation of their world.

From buildings to blue whales, from toilets to space ships there’s a diverse but fascinating amount of introductory material for the curious child, the budding scientist or engineer in the family. This is a book that will appeal to a wide age range – ages 5 and up to 10 and possibly beyond, as curiosity has no age limit. I loved this layout and was especially taken with the sections on everyday objects, and fruit and vegetables.

Highly recommended and definitely one to share with the whole family.

Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern

LOTSMarc MartinViking. HB. $24.99

Available 3 October

Even the end pages are perfection in Martin’s latest

offering Lots, an exploration of prevalent people, creatures and things in various places around the world, depicted in vibrant illustrations. The usual fare of Paris (lots of dogs), New York (taxis) and Tokyo (vending machines) are

included, but excitingly enough, they’re joined by less common places like Ulaanbaatar (yaks) and Reykjavik (people named Jon and Anna). Beautifully illustrated with very funny notes, Lenin is ‘accidentally’ almost described as a member of The Beatles on the Moscow page, this is an enjoyable addition to any budding adventurer’s bookshelf.

Isobel Moore is from Readings St Kilda

THE BOOK OF BEESPiotr SochaThames & Hudson. HB. $35

Available 1 October

A lavishly illustrated bee encyclopedia for children 6 and up. Learn about beehive design, honey harvesting, honeycomb and most importantly, bees themselves. How do bees communicate? What does a beekeeper do? Who survived being stung by 2, 443 bees? This book answers all these

questions and many more, tracking the history of bees from the time of the dinosaurs to their current plight.

Junior FictionTHE BAD GUYS EPISODE 4: APOCALYPSE MEOWAaron BlabeyScholastic. PB. Was $12.99

$9.99

Available 1 October

Mr Wolf, Mr Piranha, Mr Snake and Mr Shark are back  – this time around, it’s a zombie kitten apocalypse! Should you panic? Should you cry? Should you poop your pants? No! Just sit back and watch the fur fly as the world’s baddest good guys take on Mad Marmalade’s meowing monsters!

Middle FictionARTIE AND THE GRIME WAVERichard RoxburghA&U. PB. $16.99

Available 1 October

Well-loved Australian actor Richard Roxburgh’s first children’s

book is a completely unhinged adventure and a celebration of friendship. Artie and his friend Bumshoe discover evidence of dodgy criminal behaviour happening in their town and are soon caught up in a whole lot of madcap danger among a cast

of absurd, cartoonish baddies. The two friends are used to dealing with bullies, but taking on the villains who have been on a thieving spree in Grime and rescuing the town’s pets certainly requires some extraordinary efforts, industrious thinking and a very painful wedgie. Lively illustrations and plenty of dark and extremely gross humour will certainly make this a very good choice for readers who have been loving David Walliams’ books.

Kim Gruschow is from Readings Hawthorn

A MOST MAGICAL GIRLKaren FoxleePiccadilly Press. PB. $19.99

Available 1 October

A Most Magical Girl is an imaginative and beguiling tale set in

Victorian London, where the city’s ageing witches and wizards struggle against a malevolent villain in a quintessential battle of good and evil. Naturally, they turn to a magical girl to save the world.

A reluctant and apprehensive heroine, Annabel believes herself an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances. But she and the ‘wild’ girl Kitty (a magical girl in her own right) are incredibly endearing; vulnerable yet strong while battling both their internal fears and external challenges. There’s a wonderful juxtaposition between prim and proper Annabel and tough and gritty Kitty, and their fractious friendship borne of necessity but (ultimately) mutual respect.

Karen Foxlee successfully draws the reader in with wonderfully appealing characters and a deliciously tense story line injected with a deft touch of wry humour.

This is a magical adventure exploring the search for identity, family and friendship that is perfect for independent readers aged 9, and it’s also an ideal read-aloud for the whole family. Highly recommended. Athina Clarke

315 Lygon Street, Carlton

Featuring a handpainted mural by Marc Martin (pictured here).

OPENS SATURDAY 8 OCTOBER

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 19

NewKids’Books

THE SECRET HORSES OF BRIAR HILLMegan Shepherd & Levi PinfoldWalker. HB. $19.99

Available 1 October

This beautifully produced hardback book, with stunning

illustrations by Levi Pinfold, portrays the imaginative world of childhood with incredible perception.

It is 1941 and Emmaline is in Briar Hill hospital, a home in the country for children who have tuberculosis.

Emmaline has a secret and she won’t tell the other children, but she will tell us. Only she can see the beautiful winged horses hidden in the mirror in the old mansion and only she can communicate with them. One day a winged horse crosses worlds to hide in the garden of Briar Hill, recovering from a terrible blow to its wing. Emmaline races against time to protect the wounded horse, guided by letters from the enigmatic Horse Lord. But as she takes risks to hide the horse from the Black Horse chasing it, her health deteriorates and her world darkens.

This captivating novel is perfect for readers of wartime stories such as The War that Saved My Life and anyone who enjoys wonderful, imaginative storytelling. It deserves to become a contemporary classic and I highly recommend it for readers aged 10 and up. Angela Crocombe

THERE MAY BE A CASTLEPiers TordayQuercus. HB. $26.99

Available 11 October

Mouse Mallory is 11 years old and he’s very little for his age. It’s

Christmas eve and Mouse’s mum is hassling him to please help her out by packing his bag and getting ready for the short drive across the moors to visit Granny and Gramps. Finally, everyone is ready and in the car, Mouse still in his pyjamas sulking with his old stuffed toy

horse, Nonky, and they’re off. Just as the blizzard starts.A short time later several things, none of them good,

happen all at once. Mouse is flung from the wreckage. He wakes up in the dark, the snow hiding all traces of humanity, totally alone except for a sheep and Nonky, but not a worn out old toy Nonky, a magnificent real-life (talking) horse! Mouse cannot remember how he got there or what happened, all he knows is that, according to Nonky, he has to find a castle. Now wearing a fine knight’s outfit, and with vague memories of a route he shouldn’t know about, Mouse, Nonky and the sheep march on through the snow.

There are lots of stories that talk about the mystery and power of imagination, but none capture its capabilities and limitations quite so well as this beautiful and moving story. Recommended for kids aged 10 and up. Dani Solomon

HENRY AND THE GUARDIANS OF THE LOSTJenny NimmoEgmont. PB. $16.99

Available 1 October

Henry has a secret. He is twelve, but he hasn’t aged a day since the moment he was thrust a hundred years into the future. Now his secret has put him in danger – Less than 10 minutes after the arrival of a mysterious yellow letter, Henry is on the run with his Auntie Pearl, possibly never to return home. His only

hope is the protection of the Guardians of the Lost. A spellbinding new tale from one of Britain’s best-loved authors of fantasy adventure.

Classic of the Month WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBITJudith KerrHarperCollins. HB. $24.99 and PB. $14.99

Available now

This story was a childhood favourite, so it was exciting to delve back in

again recently to see how it stood the test of time.

Based on the author’s own childhood, the story begins in Berlin in 1933 when Anna is nine and her brother Max is twelve. The Nazi party is on the rise and

it looks as if they will win the upcoming election. Anna’s father is a political journalist and a Jew, who gets a tip-off that the police may be coming to take his passport, so he escapes for Prague during the night. When the Nazis do win the election, Anna, her brother and mother pack up their whole lives into two suitcases and leave for Switzerland. Anna is only allowed to take a few things and leaves behind her beloved pink rabbit.

The family settles in Switzerland and the children go to the local school, where they speak German. But Anna’s father cannot find work as a journalist because the newspapers are too scared of the Nazi regime to print his writing. Eventually, they decide to move to Paris, where Anna and Max find life a lot harder. They must learn a new language and go to a school where lessons are taught entirely in French. Eventually, they learn enough French to feel less alien, only to discover they must now move to England.

Many Holocaust stories can be terribly harrowing and unsuitable for younger readers, but this is a gentle introduction to the horrors wrought by Hitler’s regime. The reader is spared the more graphic aspects as Anna’s family escapes just in time and only occasionally get bad news back from Germany. In truth, this book can be read more as a refugee story. The sudden, dangerous dash for safety in a foreign country, the necessity of taking only what you can carry, the need to constantly start again. The story is really about the challenges of assimilation into different cultures, different languages and the difficulties of finding new friends. Anna is a stranger in a strange land and must adapt, as so many children must.

Written entirely from Anna’s perspective, this is a wonderful true adventure by a master storyteller. Children aged 7 and up will enjoy having it read to them and readers aged 10 plus can read it themselves. This is a classic that is definitely worth revisiting. Angela Crocombe

Book of the Month

HOME IN THE RAINBob Graham

Walker. HB. $24.99

Available 1 October

One of the many reasons I love Bob Graham’s books is that, for all their simplicity, his observations of the natural world and family life are always profound and loving, and

children, ‘reading’ the pictures, see the wonder of their ordinary lives illuminated for them. This story of a drive home in the buffeting rain on the freeway is no exception.

Francie and her Mum leave all the trucks and pull over into a rest area for a picnic in the car, where the windows steam up and Francie writes the family names on the windows. Daddy,

Mummy, Francie, but who will the new baby sister be? There’s a blank rear window.

Later, they stop at a service station and while Francie is dancing in a little puddle and Mum is filling the car, a name comes to her. The perfect name in a timeless moment, to

be shared with Dad later as they tumble in their front door.That’s it. An unremarkable little tale. But filled with radiance.

Share it and pore over it with children aged 3 and up. It is quite special.

Kathy Kozlowski is from Readings Carlton

20 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

JAMIE’S COMFORT FOOD Jamie OliverHB. Was $55 Now $14.95

Jamie’s new cookbook brings together 100 ultimate comfort food recipes from around the world. Inspired by everything from childhood memories to the changing of the seasons and sweet indulgences, it’s brimming with exciting recipes for treating yourself and the ones you love. Recipes include everything from mighty moussaka, steaming ramen and katsu curry to super eggs Benedict and scrumptious sticky toffee pudding.

OTTO IN THE CITY Tom SchampBB. Was $29.95

Now $15.95

Otto and his father spot some weird and wonderful sights as they drive through the village, along the highway, and into the dazzling heart of the city. A bus carrying a school of fish; Santa’s reindeer at the shopping mall; pencil and pen-shaped cars! Taking in a cross-cultural mix of city sights, Otto in the City is a charming celebration of metropolitan life and the personalities who inhabit it.

STUART RATTLE’S MUSK FARM Paul Bangay, Earl Carter, Simon Griffiths

HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95

In 1998 Australian designer Stuart Rattle purchased the dilapidated Musk schoolhouse and surrounding grounds. Over the following few decades it was to become his sanctuary – a true labour of love, with every detail of the buildings and grounds carefully considered. Now, this tribute to the much-loved designer takes you through every room and garden, with stunning photography by Earl Carter and Simon Griffiths. A beautiful memento of an extraordinary person.

PIET MONDRIAN: LIFE AND WORK Cees De JongHB. Was $80 Now $39.95

Piet Mondrian’s rigorously geometric paintings in primary colours are icons of the 20th century that had a powerful impact on popular taste in art and design. This volume brings together more than 240 superb paintings with documentary images from the artist’s life. The book includes rare photographs of Mondrian’s studios in Paris and New York City as well as reproductions of more than 1,  200 of Mondrian’s known works.

THE SOURCEBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN DESIGNFrancesc Zamora Mola

HB. Was $69.99 Now $19.99

The Sourcebook of Contemporary Urban Design is the first large-scale book of its kind to showcase a complete and diverse range of urban architectural innovations worldwide. More than 300 case studies incorporate a diversity of urban space projects, indoor and outdoor, making this lushly illustrated, information-rich book an invaluable resource that architects, architectural students, and urban planners will turn to again and again.

THE RIVER COTTAGE AUSTRALIA COOKBOOK Paul WestHB. Was $45 Now $19.95

Featuring recipes from the first three series of River Cottage Australia, this is the cookbook that will reveal the delicious dishes which presenter Paul West has been creating on the farm. The book is divided into seven chapters and includes more than 120 recipes such as pumpkin scones, baked salmon, spiced aubergine salad, pig on a spit, raw courgette salad and warm curb cake with honey rhubarb.

THE STORY: LOVE, LOSS & THE LIVES OF WOMEN Victoria HislopHB. Was $45 Now $29.99

Witty, heartbreaking, shocking, satirical: the short story can excite or sadden, entice or repulse. The one thing it can never be is dull. Now Victoria Hislop, one of Britain’s best loved novelists, has collected 100 stories from her favourite women writers into one volume. Featuring well-known feminists and famous wits, national treasures and rising stars, The Story is the biggest and most beautiful collection of women’s short fiction in print today.

PARIS Edward RutherfurdHB. Was $39.95 Now $14.95

From the grand master of the historical novel comes a dazzling, epic portrait of

the City of Light. Moving back and forth across centuries, the story unfolds through intimate and vivid tales of self-discovery, divided loyalties, passion, and long-kept secrets of characters both fictional and real. With his unrivalled blend of impeccable research and narrative verve, Rutherfurd weaves an extraordinary narrative tapestry that captures all the glory of Paris.

PRISCILLANicholas ShakespeareHB. Was $40 Now $14.95

As a young boy, Nicholas Shakespeare had always believed that his aunt was

a member of the Resistance and had been tortured by the Germans. The truth turned out to be far more complicated. Piecing together fragments of his aunt’s remarkable and tragic story, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.

THE TWELVE CAESARS Matthew DennisonHB. Was $49.99 Now $14.95

An unforgettable depiction of the Roman Empire at

the height of its power and reach, and an elegantly sensational retelling of the lives and times of the twelve Caesars. Matthew Dennison explores the luxury, license, brutality, and sophistication of imperial

Rome at its zenith, the city transformed from a republic to an empire, whose model of regal autocracy would survive in the West for more than a thousand years.

THE STORY OF SPANISH Jean-Benoit Nadeau, Julie BarlowHB. Was $49.95 Now $14.95

The Story of Spanish is the first full biography of a language that shaped the world we know, from the dollar sign to barbecues, ranching, and cowboy culture. The authors give us a passionate and intriguing chronicle of a vibrant language that began as a dialect spoken by a handful of shepherds in northern Spain, to become the world's second most spoken language.

SILENCE: A CHRISTIAN HISTORYDiarmaid MacCullochHB. Was $39.99 Now $14.95

Religion is, for many, a haven from the clamour of everyday

life, allowing us to pause for silent contemplation. But as

Diarmaid MacCulloch shows, there are many forms of religious silence, from contemplation and prayer to repression and evasion. MacCulloch discusses the complicated fate of

silence in Protestant and evangelical tradition, as well

as confronting the more sinister institutional forms of silence.

MY NEW ROOTS Sarah BrittonHB. Was $44.99

Now $19.99

Based on Sarah Britton’s successful healthy eating

blog, the My New Roots cookbook is packed with over 100 simple and mouth-watering vegetarian recipes that embrace all-natural ingredients, so you can have as much as you want and know that it’s good for your body. With options that are free from dairy, sugar and gluten, low carb and alkaline rich, these seasonal, healthy recipes are designed to satisfy your appetite and make you feel fantastic.

RUSSIANS: THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE POWERGregory FeiferHB. Was $49.95 Now $14.95

Russians explores the seeming paradoxes of life in Russia by unravelling the nature of its people: what is it in their history, their desires, and their conception of themselves that makes them baffling to the West? Using the insights of his decade as a journalist in Russia, Feifer corrects pervasive misconceptions about the country and its people, creating a rare portrait of a unique land of extremes.

WORLD WAR ONE: A HISTORY IN 100 STORIES Bruce Scates, Rebecca Wheatley, Laura James

HB. Was $59.99 Now $24.95

This book remembers not just the men and women who lost their lives during the battles of World War I, but those who returned

home as well: the gassed, the crippled, the insane – all those irreparably damaged by war. Drawn from a unique collection of sources, including repatriation files, these heartbreaking and deeply personal stories reveal a broken and suffering generation, and an unflinching and remarkable social history.

BOAT Simon GriffithsHB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95

The boat – a vessel for escape, adventure, trade and

travel. This mode of transport is one of infinite variety and inspires serious passion, whether made of workmanlike bolted steel, sleek modern fibreglass or lovingly hand-burnished timber. Photographer Simon Griffiths brings us a stunning salute to the character and craftsmanship of all sorts of boats and boatbuilders – from old whaling boats to elegant yachts, to paddle steamers, rowboats and ferries.

SWEET Alison ThompsonHB. Was $49.99 Now $19.95

This new collection from Alison Thompson, best-

selling author of Bake, celebrates desserts in every delicious form: creamy, fudgy, gooey, molten, fruity, refreshing, chocolatey, crunchy, chewy, light-as-air or sinfully rich. From elaborate show-stoppers to comforting family puddings, Alison’s clear, straightforward recipes guarantee sweet success, every time.

A PERSONAL GUIDE TO INDIA AND BHUTAN Christine ManfieldPB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95

Indians are renowned for their generosity and hospitality, and the delights of travelling in India are infinite. This personal tour from well-loved chef Christine Manfield is the result of years exploring India, the Himalayas and Bhutan  – the perfect companion for travellers who want to find the really special places to eat and stay. Each chapter contains essential sights, local eats, top places to stay and the best places to shop.

VEGETABLES, GRAINS AND OTHER GOOD STUFF Simon BryantPB. Was $39.99

Now $16.95

Simon Bryant’s recipes are delicious proof that vegies and grains are never boring. Here, he shares his original takes on everyday dishes, and sweet delights, as well as recipes for when you’re inspired to take things up a notch. What’s more, Simon gives you the lowdown on legumes, ancient grains, seaweed and sprouting, all while revealing how to shop wisely and with heart.

THE I HATE KALE COOKBOOK Tucker ShawHB. Was $17.99 Now $10

The book includes 40 easy recipes that take into account what kale haters dislike – texture, smell, taste – to help them open up their minds and change a hate into a love. Or at least a like. With recipes that deliver on kale’s promise of deliciousness, collected in a slim, attractive, and giftable volume, salvation is at hand.

BargainTable

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 21

Film

MILES AHEADAvailable now.

Was $34.95 $19.95

‘[Don] Cheadle demonstrates some talent behind the camera, especially in the film’s

deliberately jagged leaps from present to past and back again [in an] almost wholly fictional storyline  … He’s also predictably charismatic as [Miles] Davis, capturing the man’s raspy voice, hard stare, and infinite swagger.’  –  AV Club

TV

INSPECTOR MONTALBANO: VOL. 7Available now. $29.95

‘The comic element might be broad, but the mysteries

are rich, intriguing and tightly plotted. Montalbano’s Sicily may look idyllic  – but it retains the rough edges of the real Sicily. The idyllic settings and tightly plotted mysteries … have made [the] Italian detective series a sun-drenched pleasure.’  –  The Guardian

New Film & TVwith Lou Fulco

JORDSKOTTAvailable 5 October.

$29.95

‘Produced by Sweden’s state broadcaster, SVT, and set in the ancient forests that cover more than half the country,

10-part mystery thriller Jordskott … draws heavily on deep, dark Norse mythology to set itself apart from its contemporaries. This is no ordinary murder-mystery weekend.’  –  The Guardian

THE SECRET: SEASON 1Available now. $34.95

‘James Nesbitt is credibly creepy in a devastating true-life tale … of an adulterous affair gone

terribly wrong, [offering a] masterclass in the kind of overconfident, small-town charm that falls well short of charisma. As a study of mutually reinforced delusion The Secret was masterly.’  –  The Telegraph (U.K.)

WALLANDER: THE FINAL CHAPTERAvailable 5 October.

$29.95

‘It was gratifying to see Wallander get a suitably

powerful send-off in a final chapter that pitted the thoughtful Swedish cop not only against some Cold War-era treachery [but also] early onset Alzheimer’s disease  … [Kenneth] Branagh was stupendous, and brought a real thump of emotion at close.’  –  The Telegraph (UK)

LES HOMMES DE L’OMBRE (THE SHADOW MEN)Available now. $39.95

‘[When] the French President

is assassinated  … Simon Kapita, the president’s spin doctor, [backs] the Minister for Social Affairs for the presidency. But the Prime Minister wants

the presidency for himself and has a spin doctor of his own. This classy and absorbing political thriller lays bare the machinations of government as rivals vie for power.’  –  ABC

Documentary

THE FIRST MONDAY IN MAYAvailable now. $29.95

‘A behind-the-scenes peek at the making of

the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2015 exhibition ‘China: Through the Looking Glass’. Director Andrew Rossi charts the clash between a variety of old and new world forces … quietly and convincingly [affirming] fashion’s legitimacy as an art form akin to that of other expressive mediums.’  –  Variety

FORCES OF NATURE WITH BRIAN COXAvailable 5 October.

$29.95

‘[Professor Brian] Cox’s new series, which was

three years in the making, also features some extraordinary footage … Using spectacular photography of some of the most astonishing sights on Earth and erudite commentary, Cox reveals how our planet’s beauty is created by a handful of forces.’  –  The Australian

LOUIS THEROUX: MY SCIENTOLOGY MOVIEAvailable 5 October. $24.95

‘Louis Theroux turns lack of access into a virtue with funny, sinister results  … [using] actors to replay incidents people claim they experienced. It’s all slightly silly, but also sinister, painting a picture of a controlling organisation that is very hard to leave once you’re a part of it.’   –  SBS Movies

380 Lygon Street Carltoncinemanova.com.au

Based on Helen Garner's multi-award-winning book Joe Cinque's Consolation: A True Story of Death, Grief and the Law, Sotiris Dounoukos directs a riveting true crime drama set in Canberra.University student Anu Singh is studying Law when she starts toexperience physical and mental health issues. While caring boyfriendJoe Cinque is unable to improve Anu’s condition, she increasinglyspeaks of taking her own life while also not wishing to die alone. These ideas soon become more than just threats as Anu puts intomotion a plan that would come to shock her friends, fellow studentsand the tight-knit community.Season Premiere Q&A screening with director Sotiris Dounoukos & star Maggie Naouri, Friday October 7: 6.45pmBook now online or at the Cinema Nova Box Office.

JOE CINQUE’S CONSOLATION October 13 (CTC) THE HANDMAIDEN October 13, exclusive (R18+)

When aspiring model Jesse (Elle Fanning) moves to Los Angeles,her youth and vitality are devoured by a group of beauty-obsessedwomen who will use any means necessary to get what she has.From the visionary director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive), THENEON DEMON is a visceral, stylish and wickedly original feast forthe eyes with a supporting cast including Jena Malone, Abbey Lee,Bella Heathcote, Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves.★★★★★ "A glittering, etherised nightmare, drenched in coldsweat, with a dark, coiled-panther energy… jaw-dropping"The Telegraph

THE NEON DEMON October 20, exclusive (CTC)

The new film from Korean auteur Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Stoker),THE HANDMAIDEN has been adapted from Sarah Waters’ novelFingersmith, transposed from its Victorian setting into 1930s Koreaduring the Japanese occupation. A dangerous and sexually devioustale filled with Park’s razor-sharp humour, THE HANDMAIDEN is adelicious pleasure that will leave you gasping. Korean language,English subtitles.★★★★ ‘An erotic thriller that prioritises female sexuality, and exquisite set design, to intoxicating effect’The Guardian

Melbourne’s home of quality arthouse and contemporary cinema

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLEAvailable now. $29.95

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the fourth feature by Kiwi writer–director Taika Waititi (Eagle vs. Shark, Boy, What We Do in the

Shadows). Ricky Baker is one foster house away from a juvenile detention centre. He is granted his last chance at a home when he is placed with two nomads, Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and Hec (Sam Neill), a couple who live self-sufficiently at the mouth of vast bush land, hunting

wild pigs and birds for food. Despite his social worker’s insistence that he’s a troublemaker, Ricky’s sharp

intelligence is only limited by a childish naivety; his crimes are acts of petty rebellion like ‘loitering’ and ‘kicking things’. But it is obvious early on that Ricky’s lack of survival instincts and nagging curiosity pose a threat to Hec’s zen-like autonomy, and when the two are suddenly on the run in the wilderness from police, social services, and bounty hunters, Ricky and Hec must get along in order to survive.

‘Wilderpeople is [Waititi’s] BEST film, and one that you will want to watch over and over.’

The film is full of surprises, yet also pays homage to the likes of Terminator and Thelma & Louise. Julian Dennison’s Ricky has enough charm and personality to make Spielberg blush, and Neill’s tragic Hec is his best performance in many years.

Waititi’s sense of humour is a flirtation with opposites: innocence paired with slaughter; nurture with gross negligence; and Ricky’s softness and colourful dress with Hec’s grey roughness. Waititi is a sentimentalist (though it is his least sentimental film) and no matter the meanness of his antagonists, he always gives them a simulacrum of malice underpinned by doubt, a self-conscious misstep to endear each of them to you. His films have an exponential nature, each project expanding in production and scope, along with the director’s self-certainty. I can say with certainty that Wilderpeople is his BEST film, and one that you will want to watch over and over.

Jemima Bucknell is the online fulfilment manager for Readings

DVD of the Month

22 READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016

New Music

Album of the Month

SHINE A LIGHTBilly Bragg & Joe Henry$21.95

Available now

I must confess I expected this album to be another version of Mermaid Avenue, the wonderful set of albums released

by Bragg and Wilco all those years ago using the lyrics of Woody Guthrie. I was a fair way off with my expectations. What takes

place here is a lesson in timing, acoustics, history and harmony.

‘Billy Bragg and Joe Henry (one of my favourite artists) jumped onto the train Texas Eagle at Union Station, Chicago, and rode its 2, 728

miles all the way down to San Antonio, Texas and then across to Los Angeles, California.’

Billy Bragg and Joe Henry (one of my favourite artists) jumped onto the train Texas Eagle at Union Station, Chicago, and rode its 2, 728 miles all the way down to San Antonio, Texas and then across to Los Angeles, California. At stops along the way they would get out, set up shop and record a song or songs, depending on how long they had to wait for their train to leave. Ambient noise and the recordings’ casual approach are the strength behind this album. The partnership is loose and gives the album a campfire, sing-a-long feel. I do feel that Joe Henry is the strength behind this album, but you can’t help getting caught up in Billy Braggs’ sense of love for American stories and history, and there is no more important story that helped shape modern America than that of the development of the railroad. Small-town America was suddenly connected to the big cities. East coast was connected to west coast and north to south. All of sudden, people had hope. Hope that they could move to a better life: jump on a train and you never know where you may end up or what you may end up doing.

The pair cover classic train songs by Lead Belly, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Glen Campbell, Woody Guthrie, The Carter Family, Doc Watson and Gordon Lightfoot, to name a few, and tell stories steeped in the history of the railroad. These are the stories of love, hope, freedom and the search for a better life. It’s all about connecting.

Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn

Pop & Rock

KEEP ME SINGINGVan Morrison$21.95

Available 30 September

The legendary Van Morrison returns with Keep Me Singing, his

much-anticipated 36th studio album. The record consists of 12 original songs written and performed by Morrison, as well as a cover of the blues standard ‘Share Your Love with Me’, previously recorded by artists such as Aretha Franklin and Kenny Rogers.

DEATH’S DATELESS NIGHTPaul Kelly & Charlie Owen$21.95

Available 7 October

On the way to a mutual friend’s funeral last

year, Paul Kelly and Charlie Owen found themselves discussing the songs they had played at other funerals, separately and together. Death’s Dateless Night primarily features songs written by others, such as Cole Porter, Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen, Hank Williams, Lennon/McCartney, but also includes traditional funeral songs.

CHAPTER & VERSEBruce Springsteen

$19.95

Available now

Chapter and Verse, the audio companion to Bruce Springsteen’s

extraordinary forthcoming autobiography Born to Run, features 18 tracks, five of which have not been previously released. From teenaged Springsteen’s recordings

with The Castiles to 2012’s Wrecking Ball, the collected songs trace Springsteen’s musical history from its earliest days, telling a story that unfolds parallel to the tales in the book.

HEADS UPWarpaint$24.95

Available now

After spending 2015 apart working on solo projects, Warpaint

reunited in January to record their third studio album, Heads Up. Teaming up once again with producer Jacob Bercovici, with whom they had previously worked on their debut EP Exquisite Corpse, the album was recorded in pairs and alone rather than as a full band, making for more creative freedom and an evolution for the band.

UNSEENThe Handsome Family$29.95

Available now

Husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks

blend Appalachian holler, psych-rock and Tin Pan Alley-inspired melodies on their tenth studio album, Unseen, the follow-up to 2013’s Wilderness and their first new record since their True Detective theme song ‘Far From Any Road’ introduced them to millions of new fans across the world.

AWAYOkkervil River$21.95

Available now

The eighth studio album from Texas band Okkervil River

represents a turning point for Will Sheff,

the band songwriter, who worked with an almost entirely new cast of musicians for this album, most of them coming from the jazz and avant-garde world. This changing sound reflects the album’s writing, which came during a time of loss and change in Sheff ’s life.

DAY BREAKSNorah Jones$21.95

Available 7 October

Nine-time Grammy Award-winner Norah Jones returns with

Day Breaks, a remarkable new solo album that finds her returning to her jazz roots while also proving her to be this era’s quintessential American artist, the purveyor of an unmistakably unique sound that weaves together the threads of several bedrock styles of American music: country, folk, rock, soul, and jazz.

22, A MILLIONBon Iver$19.95 Available 30 September

22, A Million is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of

searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding. The album’s 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, intense memories, and examinations of signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence.

THE COMPLETE BBC SESSIONS

Led Zeppelin3CDs. $29.95

Available now

The Complete BBC Sessions is an updated collection of live

recordings selected from the band’s appearances on BBC radio between 1969 and 1971. Newly remastered with supervision by Jimmy Page, the collection includes eight unreleased BBC recordings, including three rescued from a previously ‘lost’ session from 1969, and extensive session-by-session liner notes written by Dave Lewis.

AMERICAN BANDDrive-By Truckers$21.95

Available 30 September

One of the most well-respected alternative country-rock acts

of the 2000s, Drive-By Truckers’ new album American Band is a powerful and provocative work, hard-edged and finely honed. Fuelled by a just spirit of moral indignation and righteous rage, American Band is protest music fit for the stadiums, designed to raise issues and ire as the nation careens towards its most momentous election in a generation.

HUSH VOLUME 16: A PIECE OF QUIET

Lior, The Idea of North and Elena Kats-Chernin$24.95

Originally developed to reduce stress and anxiety

felt by both patients and their families

in hospitals, the 16th volume in Hush’s acclaimed series is an album of unrivalled musical delight: a collection of songs featuring the words of Australian children, set to music and performed by Lior, The Idea of North and Elena Kats-Chernin.

LIVE IN SAN DIEGO Eric Clapton $24.95

Live In San Diego is a fantastic, previously unreleased live recording of Eric

Clapton and his band, recorded in March 2007 in San Diego, California. Clapton’s long-time friend and collaborator, the late JJ Cale, features as a special guest on five tracks, ‘Anyway The Wind Blows’, ‘After Midnight’, ‘Who Am I Telling You’, ‘Don’t Cry Sister’ and ‘Cocaine’.

Jazz & Blues

CLIMBChris Abrahams$24.95

Available now

The Necks’ pianist Chris Abrahams releases his fifth solo

piano album, Climb, a stunning album of meticulously curated pieces that stretch over a decade of solo piano work from one of Australia’s most highly regarded pianists. Characterised by Abrahams’ free-flowing modal legato and psychedelic, cascading phrasing, Climb unfolds through its seven tracks with a gorgeous fluidity that is both ambient and emotional.

SECULAR HYMNSMadeleine Peyroux$21.95

Available now.

Madeleine Peyroux continues to explore beyond the ordinary

with Secular Hymns, a spirited and soulful masterwork of sassy, feisty and sexy tunes delivered in a captivating mélange of funk, blues and jazz. With her seductive, expressive voice, Peyroux and her trio set out to record in a live setting a collection of songs that have their own hymn-like consciousness and a spiritual essence.

Music Event

21October

GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS LIVE AT READINGS ST KILDA

For more than 25 years Grant-Lee Phillips’ music has been a river running through the American music landscape. The assured, contemplative alt-country of his freshly minted album The Narrows is evidence enough that he has secured a position among the American music greats. Come along to our St Kilda shop to hear him perform at an intimate gig.

Free, but please book at readings.com.au/eventsFriday 21 October, 6pmReadings St Kilda

READINGS MONTHLY OCTOBER 2016 23

New Classical Music

Classical Album of the Month

VERISMOAnna NetrebkoDG. 4795013 CD and DVD. $24.95

Available now

In 2001, aged only 30, Anna Netrebko made a cameo appearance as ‘opera’s new rising star’ in the film The

Princess Diaries, singing Verdi’s ‘Sempre Libera’. She is now among the top flight of opera singers in the world, and while she still possesses the same warm tone as she did fifteen

years ago, her voice has developed to become larger and more present. Verismo  – Netrebko’s latest album  – is a selection of dramatic soprano arias, most of which have been recorded by Maria Callas, Angela Gheorghiu and Renee Fleming.

‘Netrebko is sensitive to the risk of comparisons, which she articulates well in the accompanying

DVD … her individual interpretation will undoubtedly move listeners.’

When listening to Netrebko, it’s hard not to draw comparisons with other singers, especially in Catalani’s ‘Ebben? Ne andrò lontana’. Netrebko is sensitive to the risk of comparisons, which she articulates well in the accompanying DVD: ‘When you are touching this repertoire, it is almost like you are about to lose the battle. You probably will not be better than [the other sopranos], but what you have to try to do is to bring something from yourself. Be very truthful to the musical text, and try to understand how to perform it your own way.’ Does Netrebko succeed? I think yes. She imbues ‘Ebben?’ with grief and longing, and her individual interpretation will undoubtedly move listeners.

Netrebko possesses an immediately distinctive, rich and broad tone, which is given full reign in Puccini’s ‘Un bel dì vedremo’. Although she occasionally pushes sharp and her vibrato sometimes undulates too wildly, she sings with conviction into the sweeping phrases, and commits to the drama of the text. Her ‘wildness’ is, therefore, a worthy sacrifice in her pursuit of operatic truth. Tenor Yusif Eyvazov  – Netrebko’s husband  – joins her in extracts from Manon Lescaut, which is a highlight of the CD. Their voices together are exciting and fearless, just as great opera should be.

Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton

MOZARTRichard GallianoDG. 4812662. $26.95

Available now

Have you ever wondered

what might’ve happened if Mozart

had been born a Parisian busker rather than an Austrian composer? Neither had I until I heard virtuoso French accordionist Richard Galliano’s Mozart album. Normally I am a purest, and find that any attempt to ‘improve’ Mozart’s music is in fact to vitiate it. However, I have been unexpectedly charmed by Galliano’s Mozart arrangements. Surprising, considering that I wasn’t a big fan of his previous Vivaldi album: I found the accordion too cumbersome an instrument for the sprightly and brilliant Four Seasons.

Rondo alla Turca  – the third movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11  – is probably one of the most recognisable pieces of classical music in the Western canon, and it has been performed, arranged and rearranged practically to death. Its overuse in no way lessened my utter, undefiled enjoyment at Galliano’s version of it, performed by Galliano with vim and vigour. The accordion lends itself particularly well to the solo part in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Here, the orchestral accompaniment has been arranged for string quintet, and the resulting texture is similar to that of the Clarinet Quintet. Galliano’s Mozart is the perfect blend of joie de vivre and classical elegance. AM

BACHNemanja RadulovicDG. 4795933. $21.95

Available now

Bach has been recorded,

re-recorded and then re-done, re-worked and re-recorded again. But never have I heard such an arrangement of J.S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor as this on Nemanja Radulovic’s latest album. I’ve heard this work done for wind band, piano and many unlikely combinations, but this particular arrangement is engaging and uses all the string instruments to their full potential in a fascinating new prism through which to experience Bach’s most famous work. Along with new arrangements of the Chaconne and Air on a G String, this is also Radulovic’s debut as a viola soloist.

In the early twentieth century, two brothers made many ‘startling’ discoveries of lost works of some of the great composers, including Johann Christian Bach’s Viola Concerto. However not all was as it seemed, as it turns out these brothers, Henri and Marius Casadesus were writing the works themselves in the style of their purported composers. Although complete frauds, this does not detract from the interesting compositional take they had on the style of the period. Before I did my research I thought there was something odd but interesting about this concerto and now I know why and it’s worth visiting.

Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings

SCHUBERT: LIEDERFlorian Boesch & Malcolm MartineauOnyx. ONYX4149.

$29.95

Available now

‘Boesch confirms himself as the baritone’s answer to pianist Mitsuko Uchida, daring a range of hushed dynamics in Schubert that seem to echo the composer’s reported words: “Sometimes it seems as if I do not belong to this world at all.” … In tandem with the ever-perceptive Malcolm Martineau (a model of clarity, and especially good at animating and colouring Schubert’s bass-lines), Boesch’s concentrated Innigkeit can be haunting, above all in the many songs of loneliness, alienation and sorrowful regret.’

– Gramophone

JS BACH: THE ART OF FUGUE

Rachel Podger & Brecon BaroqueChannel Classics.

CCSSA38316. $32.95

Available now

‘A new recording from violinist Rachel Podger is always worth attention. And before you even get to appreciating the first-class performances  – faithful realisations of Bach’s Art of Fugue skilfully arranged for strings    – you notice the immediate, vibrant presence of the instruments … Channel Classics has been doing this forever; we just may have forgotten how special it is when it’s done right.’ – Classics Today

AGONY AND ECSTASYEmma MatthewsABC Classics. 4814236.

$21.95

Available now

Emma Matthews  – renowned as the finest

Australian soprano of her generation  – unveils her triumphant third album: Agony and Ecstasy. Inspired by words from Verdi’s opera La Traviata, the album presents a rich and timeless journey through the many faces of love, drawing on an opera that employed the power of music to bring alive experiences of the heart as never before.

LEYENDAS: WORKS FOR SOLO GUITAR

Thibaut GarciaErato. 9029595463.

$19.95

Available now

A Frenchman with Spanish blood, 22-year-

old guitarist Thibaut Garcia makes his Erato debut with Leyendas (Legends), an atmospheric recital of music by Spanish and Argentinian composers: Albéniz, Falla, Rodrigo, Tárrega (his famous, shimmering Recuerdos de la Alhambra), Manjón and Piazzolla.

CPE BACH: CELLO CONCERTOS

Nicolas Altstaedt, Jonathan Cohen & ArcangeloHyperion. CDA68112.

$29.95

Available now

‘Nicolas Altstaedt and the sinewy warmth of his 1760 Gigli are a great fit for this often rather wild music  … Arcangelo under Cohen breathe the music, capturing the frequent storminess but also bringing

substantial dignity, their zing coming from their actual tone and lucid textural balance  … a great listen’ – Gramophone

LOVE STORY: PIANO THEMES FROM CINEMA’S GOLDEN AGE

Valentina LisitsaDecca. 4789454. $21.95

Available now

Valentina Lisitsa explores the glorious music of cinema’s

unparalleled golden era. Valentina looks back to the cinematic glory days of the big screen, performing the finest piano concerto music composed especially for film. A genre originally influenced by Rachmaninov’s popular piano concertos, these pieces are arresting original scores for piano and orchestra composed for movies of the 1940s and 1950s including Dangerous Moonlight, Stagefright, and The Apartment.

REICH: DOUBLE SEXTET & RADIO REWRITE

Brad Lubman & Ensemble SignalHarmonia Mundi.

HMU907671. $29.95

Available now

‘Ensemble Signal’s playing in Double Sextet is so crisp and precise that it’s easy to forget its rhythmic and contrapuntal complexities. At the same time the harmony’s slightly gritty qualities are preserved, and just the right amount of articulation given to the sustained pitches and chords, which quite literally bind each section together.’  – Gramophone

GERSHWIN: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS & PIANO CONCERTO IN F

Steven Richman, Lincoln Mayorga & Harmonie Ensemble/ New YorkHarmonia Mundi.

HMU907658. $29.95

Available now

‘The Concerto in F hasn’t sounded so fresh, so idiomatic and so rhythmically alive since Earl Wild’s classic RCA recording, no small thanks to piano soloist Lincoln Mayorga’s ability to fuse his brilliant classical technique with a genuine feeling for Gershwin’s syncopated language and bluesy inflections  … No Gershwin fan should miss this disc.’ –  Gramophone

Reissue of the Month

BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE PIANO SONATAS

Artur SchnabelWarner Classics. 8CDs.

9029597505. $36.95

Available now

Artur Schnabel’s complete Beethoven

Piano Sonatas, recorded between 1932 and 1938, constitute a monument of the catalogue. In 1937 Gramophone wrote: ‘To [his] technical mastery Schnabel adds and fuses an intensely intelligent, not merely ‘intellectual’ mind … The result is a perfectly blended interpretation of the music as a spiritual expression and as a musical organism.’ Newly remastered from the original 78s, these legendary recordings can now be enjoyed in audio of unprecedented truthfulness and quality.