Gothic fiction has become the ideal genre for exploring the grotesque, frightening aspects of coming of age. And disruptive girls with supernatural powers have replaced the passive heroines of old.
Rozanna Lilley’s book Do Oysters Get Bored? explores the complexity of family life, contrasting her own unconventional childhood with caring for her autistic son.
The powerful ideological connection between Australia and agriculture is being increasingly scrutinised. A spate of recent books have recast basic assumptions about our relationship to the land.
A new book explores the complex and nuanced place the Bible has held in Australian culture since hundreds of copies arrived with the First Fleet in 1787.
Tracker Tilmouth was a central and visionary figure in Aboriginal politics. His life is captured in Alexis Wright’s Tracker through the voices of many, rather than the tradition of European biography.
The confidence to navigate between cultures and languages is essential in the world today. Start the education this holiday, with adventure stories from Guam to the North Pole.
Pierre Ryckmans - also known by his nom-de-plume, Simon Leys - was an inspirational teacher, the bête-noire of sinology and an outspoken public intellectual. A new biography tells his story.
The history of the library is replete with mechanical marvels. More than collections of books, libraries are social, cultural and technological institutions that house the very idea of a society.
What future the Great Barrier Reef? What future energy policy? Two new publications on the ongoing battles of climate politics deserve close attention.
Donald Horne saw Australia as a lucky country that was squandering its luck. His bold ideas captured the nation’s imagination. But being a public intellectual is no longer easy. Who will come up with the next grand ideas?
Tom Nichols’ book The Death of Expertise examines why the relationship between experts and citizens in a democracy is collapsing, and what can be done about it.
There are several ways into the book Shaping the Fractured Self: poetry of chronic illness and pain, edited by Heather Taylor Johnson. And there are many uses it might serve in the multiple worlds of poetry…