Windfall - What Can the World Learn from Australia's Mistakes - and Opportunities? by Ketan Joshi

$30.00 AUD

Category: Climate

The World According to Coco - The Wit and Wisdom of Coco Chanel by Jean-Christophe Napias; Patrick Mauriès

$25.00 AUD

Category: Gifts & Humour

One of the most recognizable and revolutionary names in twentieth-century women's fashion, Coco Chanel created an empire that continues to be one of the biggest names in the industry today. Famous for innovations such as the Chanel suit, shoulder bags, and the iconic "little black dress," Chanel's timel ess and elegant style reflected her ideas of what a modern woman should be--ideas she was never shy about expressing. This thematically organized collection of quotations by Coco Chanel pays homage to the legendary designer, sharing her witty and wise views on matters of fashion, style, women, and life. Bold, amusing, and unapologetic, Chanel's insight is impossible to ignore.   ...Show more

Bland Fanatics - Liberals, the West and the Afterlives of Empires by Pankaj Mishra

$35.00 AUD

Category: Political

Decades of violence and chaos have generated a political and intellectual hysteria ranging from imperial atavism to paranoia about invading or hectically breeding Muslim hordes that has affected even the most intelligent in Anglo-America. In Bland Fanatics, Pankaj Mishra examines this hysteria and its f antasists, taking on its arguments and the atmosphere in which it has festered and become influential. In essays that grapple with colonialism, human rights, and the doubling down of liberalism against a background of faltering economies and weakening Anglo-American hegemony, Mishra confronts writers from Jordan Peterson and Niall Ferguson to Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. With a newly written introduction, these essays provide a vantage point from which to look seriously at the current crisis. ...Show more

Reproduction by Ian Williams

$33.00 AUD

Category: Fiction

WINNER OF THE 2019 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE AND CBC'S BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR, this best-selling debut novel is an energetically told, funny, and moving book about how strangers become family.Reproduction tells a crooked love story in which love takes strange, winding paths and grows in a context shaped b y community, family, longstanding friendships, and fleeting interactions that leave their mark on us forever.Felicia, a nineteen-year-old student from a West Indian family, and Edgar, the lazy-minded and impetuous heir of a wealthy German family, meet by chance when their ailing mothers are assigned the same hospital room. After the death of Felicia's mother and the recovery of Edgar's, Felicia drops out of high-school and takes a job as caregiver to Edgar's mother. The odd-couple relationship between Edgar and Felicia, ripe with miscommunications, misunderstandings, and reprisals for perceived and real offenses, has some unexpected results. Years later, Felicia's son Armistice--"Army" for short--is a teenager fixated on a variety of get-rich-quick schemes that are as comic as they are indicative of the immigrant son's fear of falling through the cracks. When Edgar re-enters Felicia's life at a typically (for him) inopportune moment, the book's exhilarating final act is set in the motion and the full import of its title is revealed."This gorgeous novel vibrates with life...Stylistically inventive and narratively compelling, Reproduction is stunning."--Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love ...Show more

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time by James Suzman

$30.00 AUD

Category: Contemporary Thought

We live in a society where work defines who we are, what we do and who we spend our time with. But this wasn't always the case. For 95% of our history, our ancestors had a radically different view of its importance; hunter gatherers rarely worked more than fifteen hours per week. How did work become the central organisational principle of our societies? What are the social, economic and environmental consequences of a culture of work? And what might a world where work plays a far less important role look like? In this major book, James Suzman charts a natural and cultural history of work. Drawing on field work at the interface between hunter gatherer societies, simple agricultural societies and the industrialised world, and integrating new insights from epigenetics, ethology, genomics, social anthropology, economics and evolutionary theory, it challenges the way we think about work today o and shows why automation may be the key to unlocking a more sustainable future. ...Show more

Pew by Catherine Lacey

$25.00 AUD

Category: Fiction

An eerie modern tale for fans of Shirley Jackson and Sarah Hall from a young American writer hailed as one of the finest of her generation

Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar

$33.00 AUD

Category: Fiction | Series: Planet Omar Ser.

'Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable' Salman Rushdie 'Urgent, intimate... does nothing short of laying bare the broken heart of our American dream turned reality TV nightmare' A.M. Homes An American son and his immigrant father search for belonging and reconciliation in the age of Trump. A deeply per sonal novel of identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, HOMELAND ELEGIES blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part satire, part picaresque, at its heart it is the story of a father and son, and the country they call home. Ranging from the heartland towns of America to palatial suites in Davos to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, Akhtar forges a narrative voice that is original as it is exuberantly entertaining. This is a world in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear and the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to wreak havoc. HOMELAND ELEGIES is a novel written in love and anger, which spares no one, least of all the author himself. ...Show more

The Secret Life of the Savoy by Olivia Williams

$33.00 AUD

Category: British

The story of the Savoy's founders, through three generations and a hundred years of luxury In 1889, Victorian impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte opened The Savoy, Britain's first luxury hotel. Allowing the rich to live like royalty, it attracted glamour, scandal and a cast of eccentric characters, with th e D'Oyly Carte family elevated to a unique vantage point on high society. THE SECRET LIFE OF THE SAVOY tells their story through three generations: Richard (a showman who made his fortune from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas), Rupert (who expanded the D'Oyly Carte empire through two world wars and the roaring twenties), and Bridget (the reluctant heiress and last of the family line). In this, the first biography of the family, Olivia Williams revives their extroardinary cultural legacy, told through the prism of their iconic hotel and its many distinguished guests. ...Show more

The Carbon Club: How a Network of Influential Climate Sceptics, Politicians and Business Leaders Fought to Control Australia's Climate Policy by Marian Wilkinson

$33.00 AUD

Category: Climate

The inside story of how a network of influential climate sceptics, politicians and business leaders fought to control Australia's response to the climate crisis. As the climate crisis threatens more extreme bushfire seasons, droughts and floods, many Australians are demanding their leaders answer the q uestion: 'Why didn't you do something?' The Carbon Club reveals the truth behind Australia's two decades of climate inaction. It's the story of how a loose confederation of influential climate-science sceptics, politicians and business leaders sought to control Australia's response to the climate crisis. They shared a fear that dealing with climate change would undermine the nation's wealth, jobs and competitive advantage - and the power of the carbon club. Central to their strategy was an international campaign to undermine climate science and the urgency of the climate crisis. The more the climate science was questioned, the more politicians lost the imperative to act. The sustained success of the carbon club over two decades explains why Australian governments failed to deal with the challenge of climate change. But at what cost to us and the next generation? One of Australia's most respected investigative journalists, Marian Wilkinson has tracked the rise and rise of Australia's carbon club in brilliant detail, with extraordinary access to key players on all sides. The result is a book that is both essential and disturbing reading.   ...Show more

Monocle Manifesto for a Gentler Life by Tyler Brule; Andrew Tuck; Josh Fehnert; Joe Pickard

$70.00 AUD

Category: Design

Monocle has always been a champion of taking it slow. Past issues have encouraged readers to dive into a lake and go for a run. To sleep well. To eat food made with love. Even today, in a tense moment in history, the magazine has done its bit to argue for a new modern etiquette where communities are gen erous with their time, hospitality, and forgiveness. Now its editors and correspondents have brought all of this together into one volume with The Monocle Manifesto for a Gentler Life, a book that urges us all to slow down, reconnect, make good things, and think about the spaces we call home.Some of the highlights of this volume include: An illustrated guide to being nice, respecting your neighbors, and controlling your social media rants; practical tips on how to design a house that's good for you and your family; Q&As with the people who have decided to take a gentler approach to work and living; and a celebration of locally made food--with featured recipes--as well as the chefs that bring people together. The helpful tips and insights in this guide make it the perfect handbook for anyone looking to slow down and enjoy life. ...Show more

All the Devils Are Here (#16 Inspector Gamache) by Louise Penny

$33.00 AUD

Category: Crime | Series: Chief Inspector Gamache Ser.

The 16th novel by #1 bestselling author Louise Penny finds Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Suret du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in the City of Light On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowit z. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life. When a strange key is found in Stephen's possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the S ret , Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d'Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art. It sends them deep into the secrets Armand's godfather has kept for decades. A gruesome discovery in Stephen's Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized. Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family. For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.  ...Show more

Beethoven - A Life in Nine Pieces by Laura Tunbridge

$40.00 AUD

Category: Music

2020 marks 250 years since Beethoven's birth Ludwig van Beethoven: to some, simply the greatest ever composer of Western classical music. Yet his life remains shrouded in myths, and the image persists of him as an eccentric genius shaking his fist at heaven. Beethoven by Oxford professor Laura Tunbridge cuts through the noise in a refreshing way. Each chapter focuses on a period of his life, a piece of music and a revealing theme, from family to friends, from heroism to liberty. It's a winning combination of rich biographical detail, insight into the music and surprising new angles, all of which can transform how you listen to his works. We discover, for example, Beethoven's oddly modern talent for self-promotion, how he was influenced by factors from European wars to instrument building, and how he was heard by contemporaries. This tour de force - published for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth - provides a fresh overview and a wealth of material that has never been revealed to the wider public before. It's a compelling, human portrayal of Beethoven and a fascinating journey into one of the world's most amazing creative minds. ...Show more