FREE JULY 2019

New books from Tara June Winch, Alice Bishop, Peter Goldsworthy, Catherine Jinks, Jo Nesbo and more

Read our review of the extraordinary Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

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BOOKS MUSIC FILM EVENTS

BUDDY & JULIE MILLER MAXINE page 22 BENEBA DESTROYER LENNY LISA TADDEO JESS HILL CLARKE page 21 BARTULIN page 12 page 12 page 18 page 7

CARLTON 309 LYGON ST 9347 6633 KIDS 315 LYGON ST 9341 7730 DONCASTER WESTFIELD DONCASTER, 619 DONCASTER RD 9810 0891 HAWTHORN 701 GLENFERRIE RD 9819 1917 MALVERN 185 GLENFERRIE RD 9509 1952 ST KILDA 112 ACLAND ST 9525 3852 STATE LIBRARY VICTORIA 285-321 RUSSELL ST 8664 7540 | SEE SHOP OPENING HOURS, BROWSE AND BUY ONLINE AT READINGS.COM.AU

NEWS July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 3

readers in the lead up to LYBD. The brief: in-stock items only, while stocks last. This previous books in the Treehouse series. design your dream bookshop. Andy Griffiths offer is not available online. Each of the previous books will be available July and Terry Denton are looking for inspiration for the special price of $9.99 (usually $14.99) for a suitably fun and imaginative treehouse for the month of July. This offer is exclusively bookshop to include as one of the levels in Puffin grants available in all Readings shops (except News their next Treehouse book. Get your pens, We are over the moon to be among Readings Carlton) and online, until 31 July pencils and most creative ideas and get the bookstores that received grants on in-stock items only, while stocks last. designing! To be notified first on release of from Penguin Random House Australia all the details for the competition, sign up to to nurture the young readers in our Winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for our enews: readings.com.au/newsletters- community. Our Kids, Hawthorn, Malvern, Melbourne International Film Festival 2019 Fiction and-e-news St Kilda and Doncaster shops were all The Melbourne International Film Festival Tayari Jones has been named this year’s recipients of a grant, and will be working has released the first glance at their winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, on special projects using the funds. All of 2019 programme. The 2019 Melbourne for her novel An American Marriage. This Events our children’s book specialists are very International Film Festival runs from 1–18 novel gives an intimate look into the souls We have some fantastic kids events coming excited to get these new plans underway. August. The festival features films of all of people who must reckon with the past up for the July school holidays, including We will be announcing further details of genres from both local and international while moving forward – with hope and pain launches, workshops, and story times, with these projects on our social media over the filmmakers. Tickets for selected special – into the future. The shortlist includes five authors including Maxine Beneba Clarke, coming months, so stay tuned! events including the Opening Night Gala are other books: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Sally Rippin, Bob Murphy and more. See on early sale now. The full program of over Barker; My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan pages 4 and 5 for the full details of our July 300 titles will be announced on Tuesday 9 Braithwaite; Milkman by Anna Burns; events calendar. Special offer on Treehouse series July, with public tickets on sale Friday 12 July. Ordinary People by Diana Evans and Circe To celebrate the release of The 117-Storey To find out more, buy passes or to become by Madeline Miller. The Women’s Prize for Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry a MIFF member, please visit miff.com.au. Fiction was launched in 1996 to celebrate the The Readings Podcast Denton, we have a special offer on the Readings is a proud sponsor of MIFF. best novel written by a woman in the English The Readings Podcast is a celebration of language. It is widely recognised as having books, music, film, TV and pop culture. had a huge impact on the promotion of Episodes feature author interviews, women’s writing worldwide, including being publisher interviews and event recordings. one of the key inspirations for Australia’s We’ve recently uploaded some fascinating very own Stella Prize. interviews with some of our favourite local and international authors, including Stan Grant, Ben Elton and Helen Garner. You Pre-order offer on The Testaments can find all our episodes on SoundCloud or We have a special pre-order offer on iTunes. For more information, visit Margaret Atwood’s follow-up to The readings.com.au/the-readings-podcast Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments (out in September). Pre-order the hardback edition of The Testaments to receive a giveaway 3 for 2 offer on Routledge Classics copy of Freedom, also by Atwood, from the Throughout July, we have a special offer on Vintage minis range. This special offer is a select range Routledge Classics. Buy two available online and in all our shops, and books, and choose a third book in the range will run until stock of Freedom runs out. (of equal or lesser value) for free! The range includes books by Carl Jung, Judith Butler, Mary Midgely, Michel Foucault and many Love Your Bookshop Day at Readings more. This offer is exclusively available in Love Your Bookshop Day is coming up next all Readings shops except Readings Kids, month on Saturday 10 August. This year, Readings Doncaster, and Readings State we’re running a competition for younger Library Victoria until 31 July on stickered,

READINGS MONTHLY EDITOR EVENTS & PROGRAMMING PRICES AND AVAILABILITY Free, independent monthly newspaper Elke Power Chris Gordon Please note that all prices and release published by Readings Books, Music & Film [email protected] dates in Readings Monthly are correct at ADVERTISING time of publication, however prices and SUBSCRIBE EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Ellen Cregan release dates may change without notice. You can subscribe to Readings Monthly Judi Mitchell and Ellen Cregan [email protected] Special price offers apply only for the and our e-news by visiting our website: month in which they are featured in the readings.com.au/sign-up PROOFREADERS GRAPHIC DESIGN Readings Monthly. Judi Mitchell, Ellen Cregan and Marie Cat Matteson DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Matteson Readings donates 10% of its profits each MAIL-ORDER PURCHASES FRONT COVER year to The Readings Foundation: $6 flat rate for anywhere in Australia KIDS/YA CURATORS The July Readings Monthly cover features readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation Angela Crocombe and Dani Solomon the cover image from Fortune by Lenny DELIVERY CHARGES FOR Bartulin. Book cover design by Sandy Cull ONLINE PURCHASES MUSIC CURATOR with images from Raw Pixel. Cover image $6 flat rate for anywhere in Australia for Dave Clarke courtesy of the publisher, Allen & Unwin. orders under $100. Free delivery on orders To find out more about the book see our $100 and over. CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR review on page 7. Phil Richards CARTOON DVDS CURATOR Oslo Davis Lou Fulco oslodavis.com 4 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 EVENTS

Readings St Kilda July 112 Acland Street, St Kilda Tuesday 9 July, 10.30am–11am Wednesday 10 July, 6.30pm Tickets are $5 per person, redeemable off the price of Playing with Collage by Jeannie Baker if KIDS RANJANA SRIVASTAVA IN purchased on the day. Suitable for children aged CONVERSATION Events 7–12 years old, all materials supplied. CRAFTING WORKSHOP Bookings essential at readings.com.au/events WITH MAXINE BENEBA Join us to hear renowned oncologist and writer Dr Ranjana Srivastava in CLARKE Event times and locations are subject to change. conversation about her new book, A Better Gather your budding artists and join us for Death. In A Better Death Srivastava draws For the most up-to-date information on events, Thursday 4 July, 10.30am a workshop with the one and only Maxine upon two decades of experience to share please check readings.com.au/events Beneba Clarke. Using her gorgeous new her observations and advice on leading KIDS picture book Fashionista as a starting point, a meaningful life and finding dignity and Beneba Clarke will guide your 3–8-year old composure at its end. SALLY RIPPIN IN through a crafting exercise. CONVERSATION WITH Readings Hawthorn DANI SOLOMON Readings Doncaster, Westfield Doncaster, 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn 619 Doncaster Road, Doncaster RIES Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events STO We are thrilled to have the best-selling, AN Tickets are $20 per family and include a signed LI A award-winning author Sally Rippin joining R copy of Fashionista and a crafting activity T S 50 Australian us to talk all things Polly and Buster with U suitable for children aged 3–8 years old. A Stories event series our very own Dani Solomon. They’ll be Bookings essential at readings.com.au/events Thursday 11 July, 10.30am celebrating the release of The Search for the Silver Witch, the third Polly and Buster book. KIDS Readings is celebrating our 50 year history in 2019. To honour the stories Readings Kids Tuesday 9 July, 10.30am–11.15am STORY TIME WITH NICKI 315 Lygon Street, Carlton that have emerged from the books on GREENBERG our shelves, we are hosting 50 special Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events KIDS Come along to hear local author and events that illustrate passion, artistry illustrator Nicki Greenberg reading from and Australian literature. MAKE YOUR OWN Bitsy, her delightful new picture book. Bitsy Thursday 4 July, 6.30pm KALEIDOSCOPE WITH is a cheeky little bat with daring dreams, ARTIST PILGRIM LEE and this is a joyous story about spreading To commemorate the 50th anniversary of your wings, meeting your monsters and Tuesday 2 July, ROBYN RAVLICH IN weaving the magic of friendship. 6.15pm CONVERSATION WITH the moon landing, we are delighted to invite 33 you and your 4–8-year olds to a wonderful Readings Kids RAMONA KOVAL kaleidoscope-making workshop with 315 Lygon Street, Carlton TARA JUNE WINCH To celebrate the publication of her new Readings’ own Pilgrim Lee. Join Lee as she IN CONVERSATION WITH book Skywriting: Making Radio Waves, takes us step-by-step through the process Suitable for children aged 3–6 years old. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE Robyn Ravlich will be in conversation with of creating our very own optical instrument. broadcaster, journalist and author Ramona We are thrilled to have novelist Tara June Koval. Ravlich’s Skywriting is a memoir of Readings Kids Winch joining us in Melbourne to talk about 315 Lygon Street, Carlton the acclaimed ABC broadcaster’s decades Thursday 11 July, 10.30am–11.15am her new book, The Yield, with Maxine Beneba of radio creativity and of a significant Tickets are $5 per child. Suitable for children Clarke. The Yield is a profoundly moving story contribution to Australian cultural life. aged 4–8 years old. Bookings are essential at KIDS of a people and a culture dispossessed. It is readings.com.au/events also a celebration of what can endure and a Readings State Library Victoria powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language 285-321 Russell Street, Melbourne MAKE YOUR OWN and the art of storytelling. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events KALEIDOSCOPE WITH Tuesday 9 July, 6.30pm ARTIST PILGRIM LEE Cinema Nova 380 Lygon Street, Carlton To commemorate the 50th anniversary of DAN BOX IN the moon landing, we are delighted to invite Tickets are $10 per person with proceeds going Friday 5 July, 10am you and your 4–8-year olds to a wonderful to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Bookings CONVERSATION ABOUT kaleidoscope-making workshop with essential at readings.com.au/events KIDS BOWRAVILLE Readings’ own Pilgrim Lee. Join Lee as she Come along to hear Dan Box, the creator takes us step-by-step through the process STORY TIME WITH CAZ of the Walkley Award-winning podcast of creating our very own optical instrument. Tuesday 2 July, GOODWIN Bowraville, discuss the podcast and his new 6.30pm 3 We are delighted to invite all 3–6-year olds book of the same name. Both address the Readings St Kilda 4 and their carers to join us as Caz Goodwin true story of a small Australian town, the 112 Acland Street, St Kilda DON WALKER IN reads from her gorgeous new picture book, murders of three Aboriginal children and a Tickets are $5 per child. Suitable for children Lazy Daisy. In Lazy Daisy, all of Jasper’s desperate fight for justice. In the book, Box aged 4–8 years old. Bookings are essential at CONVERSATION WITH dreams come true when he finds his very asks painful questions about what ‘justice’ readings.com.au/events MYF WARHURST own ‘puppy dog’ to walk. But Daisy the ‘dog’ means and how it is delivered, and reflects Come along to hear beloved Australian isn’t much of a walker – she would rather on what happened after the podcast ended. songwriter Don Walker in conversation with climb gumtrees and doze! Readings Carlton Sunday 14 July, Myf Warhurst about his memoir, Songs. 2pm Readings Doncaster, Westfield Doncaster, 309 Lygon Street, Carlton 3 For over forty years, from Cold Chisel to 5 619 Doncaster Road, Doncaster Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Catfish, Tex, Don & Charlie to his solo work, Walker’s song-writing has captured Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events NIKI SAVVA IN Australian experiences. Interspersed with CONVERSATION WITH autobiographical sketches and anecdotes, Wednesday 10 July, 2.30pm–3.30pm LAURA TINGLE Songs is a must-have for Walker fans. Monday 8 July, 10.30am–11am Plots and Prayers: Malcolm Turnbull’s KIDS Demise and Scott Morrison’s Ascension by Readings St Kilda KIDS 112 Acland Street, St Kilda Niki Savva is an enthralling sequel to her HISTORY FOR ALL AGES bestselling book, The Road to Ruin. Join us Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events CRAFTING WORKSHOP WITH BRUCE PASCOE to hear Savva discuss her book – and the WITH MAXINE BENEBA past political misdemeanours and future Following NAIDOC week, we are thrilled plans it covers – with Laura Tingle. CLARKE to have Bruce Pascoe joining us to discuss Thursday 4 July, 10.30am–11.30am Gather your budding artists and join us for Young Dark Emu: A Truer History. This new Readings Hawthorn KIDS a workshop with the one and only Maxine edition of the bestselling Dark Emu has 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn Beneba Clarke. Using her gorgeous new been adapted for younger readers and, as Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events PLAYING WITH COLLAGE picture book Fashionista as a starting point, with the original, offers a different version Beneba Clarke will guide your 3–8-year old of Australia’s history before European WORKSHOP through a crafting exercise. colonisation. Join our very own Kim Gruschow for a Sunday 14 July, 9pm–10.15pm collage-making workshop using Playing with Readings Kids Church of All Nations 315 Lygon Street, Carlton 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton Collage by Jeannie Baker as a guide. Jeannie MELBOURNE SKA Baker has perfected the art of collage in the Tickets are $20 per family and include a signed Tickets are $5 per person or $10 per family ORCHESTRA creation of picture-book classics such as copy of Fashionista and a crafting activity with proceeds going to the Indigenous Literacy Where the Forest Meets the Sea and Window. suitable for children aged 3–8 years old. Foundation. Bookings essential at Put on your dancing shoes, Melbourne Ska Bookings essential at readings.com.au/events readings.com.au/events Orchestra’s live performance is explosive EVENTS July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 5

and infectious and it’s coming to Readings! of the farming practices behind our food will be launched by comedy writer and Their unique take on the genre has wowed and has written a scorching manifesto, performer Lee Zachariah. audiences young and old all over the world On Eating Meat. Come along to hear him Coming Thursday 4 July, 6pm from Montreal to New York, Istanbul to in conversation about his book with Good Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. London and now you can see and hear Food editor Roslyn Grundy. See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill them for yourself, with a drink from the bar up Join investigative journalist Jess Hill for the in hand, at this one-off performance. Readings Hawthorn 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn launch of her extraordinary book, See What Readings Carlton Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events You Made Me Do, which radically rethinks 309 Lygon Street, Carlton * how to confront the national crisis of domestic Sunday 4 August, 11am Tickets are $35 per person and include a copy abuse in Australian homes and families. of Melbourne Ska Orchestra’s new recording on Wednesday 10 July, 6.30pm KIDS vinyl. Tickets are strictly limited and bookings Thursday 18 July, Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. are essential at readings.com.au/events 6.30pm 3 7 Mirka Mora: A Life Making Art by Sabine * Please enter via the door on the Tyne Street AN A–Z OF ENDANGERED Cotte laneway, not the main shop entrance. STEPHANIE WOOD ANIMALS WITH JENNIFER Myriam Boisbouvier-Wylie will launch ON LOVE IN A WORLD COSSINS Sabine Cotte’s Mirka Mora: A Life Making OF LIARS, CHEATS & Jennifer Cossins is a 2017 Children’s Book Art, an intimate portrait of one of Australia’s best-loved artists. Tuesday 16 July, 6.30pm MORE Council of Australia Honour Book-winning Tasmanian artist and writer with a passion Wednesday 10 July, 6.30pm Come along to hear Stephanie Wood for nature. Come along for this special visit Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. discuss her book, Fake: A Startling True MARK ISAACS IN from Cossins, at which she’ll talk about Story of Love in a World of Liars, Cheats, A Constant Hum by Alice Bishop CONVERSATION WITH her books, including the gorgeous A-Z of Narcissists, Fantasists and Phonies. It’s a Tony Birch will launch Alice Bishop’s debut JULIAN BURNSIDE Endangered Animals. powerful investigative story that draws short-story collection, A Constant Hum, which Join us to hear refugee advocate, activist grapples with the aftermath of disaster. on Wood’s own experiences and those of Readings Kids and acclaimed author Mark Isaacs in other women who have been drawn into 315 Lygon Street, Carlton Friday 12 July, 6.30pm conversation with Julian Burnside about his Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. relationships based on duplicity. Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events book, The Kabul Peace House, which takes Economics in Two Lessons by John Quiggin the reader through the streets of Kabul Readings Carlton Join Professor John Quiggin for the launch to meet the young people who formed a 309 Lygon Street, Carlton of Economics in Two Lessons, which community with a vision of how a new and Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events Tuesday 6 August, explains why market prices often fail to peaceful Afghanistan could be. 6.30pm–9pm 3 9 reflect the full cost of our choices to society Readings Hawthorn SPECIAL EVENT as a whole. 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn Monday 22 July, 6.30pm Wednesday 17 July, 6.30pm Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events A MARRIAGE Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. WINTER POETRY READING OF FLAVOURS FEAST From Here On, Monsters by Elizabeth Bryer Join Luke Beesley for a cosy winter poetry WITH SCOTT PICKETT Join Elizabeth Bryer for the launch of her brilliant novel, From Here On, Monsters, Wednesday 17 July, 6.30pm–7.30pm reading with multi-award-winning poet and Join us at Estelle Bistro in Northcote for which stretches the boundaries of what novelist Lisa Gorton (Empirical), poet and a glass of wine, tasters from chef Scott we consider fiction in weird and totally scholar Matthew Hall (False Fruits), and poet Pickett’s delightful new cookbook, Marriage COREY WHITE IN wonderful ways. CONVERSATION WITH and editor Elena Gomez (Body of Work). of Flavours, a two-course meal and a talk from the chef himself. Pickett’s highly Tuesday 23 July, 6.30pm Readings Carlton Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. DENISE SCOTT acclaimed restaurants include Estelle 309 Lygon Street, Carlton Award-winning comedian Corey White’s Bistro, Saint Crispin, Pickett’s Deli & Engelboc by Robert DiNapoli Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events memoir, The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Rotisserie, and Matilda. Join us to celebrate Linguist and ABC-regular Kate Burridge will Factory, is a staggeringly personal story of the release of his second book. launch Robert DiNapoli’s poetry collection, his experience growing up in foster care, Engelboc, which explores the frontiers Estelle Bistro surviving domestic violence, recovering between language, history and memory. Tuesday 23 July, 4.30pm 243 High Street, Northcote from drug addiction and dealing with Thursday 25 July, 6.30pm mental illness. Come along to hear White KIDS Tickets are $125 per person and include a glass Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. in conversation about his book with fellow of wine, a two-course meal and a signed copy of award-winning comedian Denise Scott. Marriage of Flavours; or $210 per couple which Gum Tree Burning by Joe Pascoe ANDY GRIFFITHS ON THE includes a glass of wine each, two two-course Join us as art critic and academic Robert Cinema Nova 117-STOREY TREEHOUSE meals and one copy of Marriage of Flavours. Nelson launches Joe Pascoe’s latest poetry Bookings essential at readings.com.au/events 380 Lygon Street, Carlton Goodness gracious, Andy Griffiths is collection, Gum Tree Burning. Tickets are $35 per person and include a signed back with the latest amazing Treehouse Saturday 27 July, 2.30pm copy of The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory. adventure: The 117-Storey Treehouse! Join us Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. Bookings essential at readings.com.au/events as Andy shows us what happens when you Sing This at My Funeral by David Slucki get higher and higher in the sky. July Following an introduction by John Safran, Deakin Edge, Federation Square Arnold Zable will launch David Slucki’s Thursday 18 July, 6.30pm memoir, Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir Tickets are $25 per adult and $20 per child. Launches of Fathers and Sons. Limited seats available. Bookings essential at KILL YOUR DARLINGS readings.com.au/events Monday 29 July, 6.30pm Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. BOOK CLUB: Please note that unlike in previous years, tickets do not include a copy of The 117-Storey A Boy Called Bob Becomes an AFL Writing Speculative Fiction by Eugen Bacon ALICE BISHOP’S Footballer by Bob Murphy with Tony Treehouse, but all of Andy Griffiths and Terry Join Eugen Bacon for the launch of A CONSTANT HUM Wilson Denton’s books will be for sale on site and Andy Writing Speculative Fiction: Creative and A Boy Called Bob Becomes an AFL Join Readings’ own Ellen Cregan as she and will be available for a photo opportunity and to Critical Approaches, her engaging guide to sign books after the event. Footballer by Bob Murphy with Tony Wilson Alice Bishop discuss Bishop’s debut short- contemporary speculative fiction. story collection, A Constant Hum. Addressing is the true story of how Bob Murphy became Thursday 1 August, 6.30pm the aftermath of the Black Saturday one of the greatest AFL captains of all time. Readings Hawthorn | Free, no booking required. bushfires, A Constant Hum introduces a Join us to celebrate the release of this book Thursday 25 July, memorable new voice in Australian literature. for footy-mad kids aged 9–12 years. I Am Change by Suzy Zail 6.30pm 38 Tuesday 2 July, 2pm Inspired by and written in consultation with Readings State Library Victoria Readings Kids | Free, no booking required. young Ugandan women, Suzy Zail’s YA 285-321 Russell Street, Melbourne novel, I Am Change, is a timely and moving THE READERS WE A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man by Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events WERE, THE WRITERS WE Ender Baskan story of one girl’s struggle for her voice and BECAME Join Ender Baskan for the launch of his for change. memoir, A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man, Thursday 1 August, 6.30pm Together with Nova Weetman, Allayne which follows Ender on a memorable Readings St Kilda | Free, no booking required. Thursday 18 July, Webster, Vikki Wakefield and Emily Gale, journey with his pregnant girlfriend, Sophie, 6.30pm–7.30pm 3 please join us for a lively discussion about We’ll Stand in That Place and Other 6 and their friend, Gabriel, to Alice Springs. Stories edited by Margaret River Press YA writing, reading, and readers. This event Wednesday 3 July, 6.30pm is suitable for all YA fans, all teachers, all Join us for the Victorian launch of We’ll MATTHEW EVANS IN Readings Carlton | Free, no booking required. CONVERSATION WITH librarians and all readers! Stand in That Place and Other Stories, the Nailed It! by Mel Campbell & Anthony latest anthology in the annual Margaret ROSLYN GRUNDY Readings Hawthorn Morris River Short Story Competition series. 701 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn Matthew Evans, aka The Gourmet Farmer, Nailed It!, the latest laugh-out-loud romance Thursday 1 August, 6.30pm has an intimate, expert understanding Free, but please book at readings.com.au/events by Mel Campbell and Anthony Morris, Readings SLV | Free, no booking required. 6 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 COLUMNS Mark’s Dear Say Reader

My good friend Robert I read in The Guardian Gott is an exceptional recently that Han Kang is crime writer with six the latest writer to books under his belt. I contribute work to artist first came across Robert Katie Paterson’s Future when he was an English teacher at Princes Library project, a collection of manuscripts Hill High School. He later emerged as the that are being sealed away unread until 2114. originator and perpetrator of the famous Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell have ‘Naked Man’ cartoons in The Age. His already deposited work at this library, brother Ted is a senior curator at the NGV housed in Norway. The idea of this and responsible for many of its blockbuster incredible project is both thrilling and exhibitions of European art. Both the distressing to me; these novels gifted by Gotts are pretty modest about their their writers to readers of the future wait in achievements. Last month, Readings was stasis for their emergence into a time I won’t privileged to host the launch of Robert’s be around to see. Thank goodness you’ll latest book, The Autumn Murders, which is only need to wait a couple more weeks to the third in his Detective Joe Sable series. read our Nonfiction Book of the Month – the Set in Melbourne during the Second World incomparable Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, War, it explores the underbelly of which will be released worldwide on 9 July. Melbourne at that time. Acclaimed crime Read my full review on page 12. writer Jock Serong launched The Autumn In the meantime, look out for Jess Murders to a large crowd that included Hill’s investigation into domestic violence fellow crime writers Sulari Gentill and in Australia, See What You Made Me Do, Mark Brandi. US crime fans can look Daniel Ziffer’s brilliantly titled book about forward to visits from several of these the Hayne Royal Commission, A Wunch of authors later this year. With a grant from Bankers, and Dan Box’s account of a series the Australia Council to promote of unsolved homicides, Bowraville, and new Australian crime writing, Gott, Serong, books from Niki Savva, Don Walker, Donald Gentill and Emma Viskic will tour the US Sassoon, Eve Ensler, James Lovelock, and in November. They will travel to LA, New Peter Wohlleben. There could be no better York, Boston, Arizona and Texas to meet evidence of the ways in which music feeds with publishers, booksellers and readers. the soul and shepherds us through life than US publishers are breathing a sigh of Andrew Stafford’s Something to Believe In, relief at the news that ailing bookseller which joins notable memoirs by Stephanie Barnes & Noble has been purchased by Wood (Fake), Corey White (The Prettiest Elliott Management Corporation, the hedge Horse in the Glue Factory), and Jessica fund that owns UK chain Waterstones. White (Hearing Maud), and an artistic Waterstones was rescued on the eve of its biography of Mirka Mora. collapse in 2011 by Russian businessman You may have heard that 2019 is the Alexander Mamut, who appointed International Year of Indigenous Languages, independent bookseller James Daunt (of so it seems fitting that Tara June Winch’s Daunt Books) to run the business. Upon novel, The Yield, is published this year. taking the position, Daunt famously This is a beautiful and devastating piece of declared that if Waterstones had collapsed writing, which has the survival of Wiradjuri then Amazon would have totally dominated language at the heart of its narrative. It the UK book market. Daunt radically comes very highly recommended: our restructured Waterstones and turned it reviewer calls it a ‘big hearted, hopeful around. In 2018, Mamut sold a majority of novel’, and it’s our Fiction Book of the his holding to Elliott Management, and Month. Also out this month are Lenny Daunt will now become the new CEO of Bartulin’s Fortune, which our reviewer calls Barnes & Noble while retaining his position ‘extraordinary’, Alice Bishop’s gorgeous at Waterstones. US publishers and authors elegy to the Black Saturday bushfires, A will be hoping that he can weave his magic Constant Hum, and new works from Peter on the Barnes & Noble chain. Goldsworthy and Catherine Jinks. Last month saw the passing of two International releases I must catch up great book people. Dorothy Reading on this month include Colson Whitehead’s OAM, one of the founders of Readings, The Nickel Boys, Hiromi Kawakami’s The passed away suddenly. Dorothy, her then Ten Loves of Mr Nishino, Karen Russell’s husband, Ross, and Peter Reid founded short story collection Orange World, and Readings in 1969. They laid the foundation celebrity profiler Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s for what Readings has become today. debut novel, Fleishman is in Trouble. I Dorothy went on to work in senior roles shared our reviewer’s nostalgic pleasure at the Cancer Council Victoria, but she in my own reading of Anna Hope’s debut, always maintained an interest in Readings Expectation. Vasily Grossman’s recently and was an honoured guest at the recent translated Stalingrad is the prequel to celebration of Readings’ 50th birthday. Life and Fate, and is being called one of Philip Robinson, the founder of the masterpieces of twentieth century Robinsons Bookshop in Frankston, died literature. Fate would have it this month peacefully at home. An Englishman, that two similiarly titled novels appear at Robinson came to Australia in the late the same time, Travellers by Helon Habila, ’50s to run his family’s carpet factory. It and The Travelers by Regina Porter. was an occupation to which he happily And finally, dear reader, Rachel Cusk admitted he was not suited. In 1963, he has accrued many fans amongst Readings and his wife, Moira, started Robinsons. staff and customers with her recent Thanks to their shared passion and trilogy, Outline, Transit, and Kudos. She commitment to books, it became one has previous work that readers may need of Melbourne’s leading independent to catch up on: look out this month for bookshops. Philip’s legacy is continued by reissues of The Country Life, Arlington the current owner, Susanne Horman. Park, A Life’s Work, and Aftermath. FICTION July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 7

the head of the victorious French army. We a much more successful route, a collection quickly zero in on luckless poet Johannes linked together in tone. New Meyer who gets dragooned into the army, Chris Somerville is from Readings online and whose fortunes we breathlessly follow Fiction throughout this rollicking tale. The surrounding cast of sharply drawn Shepherd characters are introduced via the compelling Catherine Jinks structure of the book, which introduces Text. PB. $29.99 Available 2 July The Yield, Tara June Winch’s inspired second novel, begins every new scene, each of a couple of pages or so, with a new title. The effect is of silent Back in England, BOOK OF THE and ends with an injunction: ‘Every person around should learn the word for country in the old language’ Albert movie intertitle cards combined with fourteen-year-old MONTH Gondiwindi says. In Wiradjuri, a language once thought modern cinematic jump-cutting. Each scene Tom Clay was a talented Fiction extinct, that word is Ngurambang. ‘Can you hear it now?’ sets up a new mystery, danger or dalliance poacher. In 1840, in the Albert asks, ‘Say it – Ngu-ram-bang!’ and ends in a cliffhanger so that another British colony of New South Wales, Tom finds Albert Gondiwini was raised in an Aboriginal Boys Home, character’s story can be updated. Keeping himself convicted and cut off from his people and his culture. He learnt to like the these parallel stories up in the air, and sentenced to work as a Bible, but he was also a visionary, in league with the ancestors. wondering where the next dextrous plot turn shepherd. Surrounded by violent and With them he did things humans could not do. They taught will take us, makes this an exciting narrative dangerous men, Tom must use his wits him the old ways: ancient farming practices, dances, stories, to assemble, even as we’re enjoying and his poaching skills to survive in the language. He flew, and travelled in time. In his old age, he began Bartulin’s pungent and poetic language. bush. A dramatic chain of events has compiling an eccentric English–Wiradjuri dictionary, in which From Berlin to South America to Hobart brought a fellow shepherd, the terrifying he tells of yura – wheat; bunhaan – ashes; ngiyawaygunhanha to the slaughter of the First World War, and vicious Dan Carver, back into his life. – always be; and Biyaami – the spirit who ‘came upon the Fortune leads us on a merry dance, with a Accompanied by his loyal dog Gyp and the earthand decided to make it a beautiful place to live.’ It was sardonic, joyful narrator calling the tunes. new Irish man, Rowdy, Tom is soon on the once forbidden to speak Wiradjuri and the fact that any of these This book reads like a carnival, and Bartulin run, fighting for his life. words exist at all is the central miracle of the novel. has a strong sense of the physicality of the lives of his characters. They suffer the Catherine Jinks’ latest book is a bleak The Yield crudity of violence. They have some great portrayal of life in the Australian colonies. It’s hard not to see this scenario as Tara June Winch sex. The voice of the ringmaster narrator The novel covers only a few short days Hamish Hamilton. PB. the emblematic Australian story. The rings out over their outrageous fortunes in the Australian bush, and moves at a Was $32.99 mine is just the latest in a long list of and gives shape to their unruly lives. This breakneck speed that matches the panic and $29.99 expropriations that includes Land, Culture, is an exciting book, excitingly written and movements of the protagonist. Alongside the Available 2 July and Children. daringly executed, stuffed with history, and elements of colonial history, we also begin adventure, and eventually, Tasmania. to understand the chain of events back in England that led to Tom’s conviction and It is Albert’s death at the start of the book that sets the story in motion. His Bernard Caleo is a member of the Readings sentencing to labour in the distance colonies. granddaughter, August, returns home from England for his burial to find her events team At times, some of the people from Tom’s past grandmother in the process of being evicted. There’s tin under the ground and the seem almost reflected in some of the people impoverished town has rolled out the red carpet for a giant mining corporation. It’s hard A Constant Hum he has met in the bush of New South Wales. not to see this scenario as the emblematic Australian story. The mine is just the latest in a Alice Bishop Without going into too much detail, Jinks long list of expropriations that includes Land, Culture, and Children. Text. PB. $29.99 also ties in elements of the genocide that One of the novel’s many powerful scenes finds August and her Aunt Missy rushing Available 2 July was perpetuated against Indigenous peoples through the Historic Museum of Australia, searching for the cultural objects that might ‘I learned pretty by colonial farmers. She depicts a violent prove their Native Title Claim in time to stop the bulldozers. August likes the museum, quickly that people colonial landscape. Shepherd is the latest but her auntie is sickened by the tokenism. ‘They should work out how many of us they don’t like talking about my edition to the Australian outback horror murdered and have a museum of tanks of blood’ she says, ‘There’d be signs that said work,’ a character says genre and will appeal to readers of Jock Bloodshed – 1788 to Yesterday – Stay Tuned!’ midway through Alice Serong and Garry Disher. For all its sorrow, this is a big hearted, hopeful book. More hopeful, maybe, than we deserve. Bishop’s debut, A Constant Julia Gorman is from Readings Carlton Miles Allinson is from Readings St Kilda Hum. The character continues, ‘Unless there’s an unusually gruesome or TV-worthy Fabulous Lives happy story: the more regular gory stuff, it’s Bindy Pritchard Margaret River Press. PB. $27 ex-wife, the margarita-drinking nurse. just a reminder of the uncomfortable Australian His best mate who is also his boss, who ordinariness of disaster.’ The works she’s Available 1 July Fiction may or may not be his enemy. The crim, referring to is her job as a nurse and the Fabulous Lives is a escaped from jail after a botch-up by the disaster is the Black Saturday fires that collection of short stories feds, out for revenge against Rick for his ravaged Victoria just over a decade ago, spanning Australia and Minotaur incarceration. His dog Scout, who, being Set in the aftermath of these fires, A other continents. It Peter Goldsworthy in Rick’s care, is at once a character we feel Constant Hum is a story collection that embraces people with all Viking. PB. Was $32.99 sorry for. The shady tattooist. And Siri. draws from those affected by the disaster. their frailties and $29.99 What to do if you’re a pill-popping, beer- Along with the longer stories are some strengths, failures and Available 16 July swilling, dumped, blind ex-cop with a crim as short as a paragraph, and this, at its hopes, as they reach critical junctures in their lives. Both funny ‘Minotaur (def) – on your tail? Well, you build a labyrinth most successful, has a cumulative effect. and heart-rending, these sixteen stories Trapped in a in your home to trap your escaped crim. We witness the full impact of the fires, follow the struggles of life’s outsiders – the labyrinth, he is a symbol of Simple. What could possibly go wrong? from stories of those mourning their dead sick, the lonely, the poor and the ugly – as power and a tool for death If you want classic literature, stay husbands, to the strained awkwardness of they try to find hope and belonging in a and torture.’ This gritty, away. If you want good old-fashioned fun being forced into social situations with other hostile world. action-packed cop drama with a side of suspense then this is your survivors, and while the characters change, unfolds as we see our hero book. You will love it. we’re always mindful of their context. at his lowest point. Rick Dianna Jarnet is from Readings Hawthorn A Constant Hum’s other strength is at Nailed It! Zadow, angry, tattooed, separated from his the sentence level, and Bishop’s descriptions Mel Campbell & Anthony Morris wife, drives a Ducati motorbike – well, he Fortune have both an other-worldly and strong, Echo. PB. $29.99 used to. He’s now blind due to a mishandled Lenny Bartulin realistic typicalness to them: ‘The Town Available 1 July hostage situation. He’s hankering for A&U. PB. $29.99 Hall’s floors have been swept and mopped Talented tradie Rose lands revenge. And he’s a cop. Available 1 July for midyear primary-school performances: a job on reality TV show, This tale of revenge by both sides is An extraordinary for kids dressed in pipe-cleaner headbands where she aids contestants at once action packed, ridiculous and performance by and cardboard-box costumes doing dance in turning shells of houses an absolute hoot. What a ride! Peter Lenny Bartulin, this routines.’ Or, ‘His forest fresh aftershave into glorious mansions. Goldsworthy, author of the hugely thrilling historical novel makes me think, for a moment, about what Despite this glamorous gig, entertaining schlock classics Honk If You’re jumps, skitters and clatters his bathroom looks like at home.’ she struggles to make Jesus, Maestro and Three Dog Night comes across the page under your It’s easy to take a cynical view of the friends, and her artistic away again with a hugely entertaining eyes. A vaudevillian connected short-story collection since, apart parents are disappointed with her practical rollercoaster of a story. I had an absolute juggling act of from a few exceptions, they often feel like a career choices. The only person making time blast reading this tale of two guys out for entertainment, history and intrigue, the hesitant move by a publisher, an attempt to for her is one of the attractive, but unhappily revenge in the most unclassy ways possible. story is as much declaimed as written. The shove the less popular form of the short- married, contestants. Will their stolen The characters are a who’s who of action begins in Berlin in 1806 as Napoleon, story collection into the more popular shape moments off-camera put them in danger? Aussie cop shows from times past. His munching on liquorice, arrives in triumph at of the novel. Alice Bishop’s collection takes Equal parts sweet and funny, this novel 8 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 FICTION

appeals to lovers of comedy and those spreads out long and wide like an endless differently: his PhD is floundering, Gina are within her characters’ control. The looking for a satisfying romantic read. summer afternoon. has become immersed in her art. Maybe Travelers is a timely and memorable novel Expectation’s evocation of place, time, Berlin will help them. from a talent to watch. The Warming and the different stages of women’s lives, is Gina is doing a series of portraits on Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly Craig Ensor vivid and true. I loved how weirdly similar displaced persons, ‘Travellers’, and the Ventura. PB. $29.99 the women’s conversations at university in narrator unwittingly becomes drawn into Confession with Blue Horses Available 1 July 1995 – about books, films, music, sex, and their stories and lives. Through seven Sophie Hardach The year is 2221 and the politics – are to those I was having then; how interconnected stories we learn about a Head of Zeus. PB. $32.99 world is dying. The rising their uncertainties and desires are similar to series of different lives, pulled apart by Out now those of many women I know now. We live in wars, by societal breakdown, by factors sea and the sun’s intensity Tobi and Ella’s childhood a complicated era that frequently asks us to that are beyond their control. We also see has turned major cities in East Berlin is shrouded conceal our confusion, disappointment, and the impact they have on the societies of into wastelands. In an in mystery. Now adults pain behind a glossy mask of composure and which they have accidentally, and often isolated coastal town living in London, both success. With Expectation, Hope removes unwillingly, become a part. Each of their south of Sydney, Finch remember their family’s the mask. She finds beauty in the chaos stories is written with compassion and Taylor is captivated by the daring and terrifying too, in this elegant, empathetic novel about insight; one can’t help but feel moved. mysterious beauty April and her pianist attempt to escape, which messy, ordinary, brave women who aren’t husband William when they move into a The narrator himself becomes part of ended in tragedy; but the trying to change the world, but just do their nearby beach house. Finch soon begins a the story when, returning from a trip to fall-out from that single event remains best to live happily in it. lifelong love affair with music, and with Basel, he loses his papers and is sent to elusive. Where did their parents disappear April. Hauntingly beautiful, The Warming Joanna Di Mattia is from Readings Carlton an internment camp in Italy. The camp to, and why? What happened to Heiko, their depicts a nomadic existence, where love and its stream of inhabitants have helped little brother? Devastating and beautifully and hope are the only means of enduring a The Nickel Boys change the town; the economy is bad and written, funny and life-affirming, world that has turned against humanity. Colson Whitehead the traditional jobs have gone, people Confession with Blue Horses explores are leaving the town and the refugees Fleet. PB. Was $32.99 intimate family life and its strength in the sometimes outnumber the locals. While You Were Reading $29.99 most difficult of circumstances. This marvellous novel, without being Ali Berg & Michelle Kalus Available 16 July polemical, returns humanity to people who S&S. PB. $24.99 Colson Whitehead’s Everything You Ever Wanted are often faceless, stripped of their humanity. Available 1 July first novel since his Luiza Sauma After ruining her best Pulitzer prize-winning The Mark Rubbo is the managing director of Viking. PB. $32.99 friend’s nuptials, Bea Underground Railroad, Readings Available 2 July relocates to the other side The Nickel Boys is You wake up, you go to of the country in search of historical fiction. The Travelers work. You don’t go outside a fresh start. But after a Whitehead based the Regina Porter for twelve hours at a time. few months, life is more setting on the Dozier Jonathan Cape. PB. $32.99 You have meetings about stagnant than ever. Then School for Boys and drew on interviews with Available 2 July how to use hashtags. Then Bea stumbles across a former students to write this novel. Iowa Writers’ you hear about ‘Life on second-hand novel. Besotted with its Whitehead tells their story with precision Workshop alumna Nyx’, a programme that poetic inscriptions, Bea is determined to and rigour, foregoing the use of any of the Regina Porter has an allows one hundred lucky find the author. Funny, poignant and surreal flourishes he employed in The award-winning winners the chance to escape it all, move insightful, While You Were Reading reveals Underground Railroad. The Nickel Boys reads background in to another planet and establish a new life that there’s no such thing as perfection, like a novel written in the time in which the playwriting, and it shows with meaning and purpose. One without and the power of not living in fiction, but story is set: a classic novel of the 1960s. The in every line of her social media. There’s one caveat: if you go, still reading it … often. crimes committed by the teachers against much-anticipated debut you can never come back. But you aren’t their wards are told straight; Whitehead lays novel, The Travelers. Pitched as an worried. After all, what on Earth could out these unthinkable tragedies for the intergenerational multi-family saga, The there possibly be to miss? International reader to see plainly. Travelers is certainly that, and more, but Fiction Elwood Curtis is an African American the writing has an uncommon, boiled- The Other Half of Augusta boy trying to make his way in Jim Crow- down intensity. It’s no stretch to imagine Hope era Florida. His parents have left him in Porter’s somehow effortless and precise Joanna Glen Expectation the care of his grandmother, and despite dialogue on stage or screen. HarperCollins. PB. $32.99 Anna Hope the many hardships Elwood has faced, he This novel has a complex plot that Out now Doubleday. PB. $29.99 works hard at his schooling, determined jumps between people, places and times. Augusta Hope has never Available 16 July to rise above. Aided by a keen intellect and The narrative also incorporates occasional felt like she fits in. At six, Now in their mid- inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther photos, scripts and letters, underscoring she’s memorising the thirties, Cate and King, Elwood is on the verge of doing how similar everyday artefacts – a dictionary. At seven, she’s Hannah, friends since high the unthinkable: going to college on a bowler hat; a newspaper cutting about correcting her teachers. school, are drifting apart. scholarship. But through some bad luck, a aviator Bessie Coleman; a stolen copy of At eight, she spins the Oxford-educated Cate is a prejudicial legal system and a miscarriage Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; globe and picks her new mum who has of justice, Elwood finds himself shipped off or an iron – assume great importance in favourite country on the relocated to Canterbury in to reform school, The Nickel Academy, and various characters’ lives. These structural sound of its name: Burundi. And now that a house purchased by her his life’s trajectory is irrevocably altered. ploys could be disengaging, but in Porter’s she’s an adult, Augusta has no interest in in-laws. She’s worried that the life she’s Whitehead illuminates the systematic hands they add interest. the goings-on of the small town where she living is no longer her own. Beautiful persecution the African American Primarily set in several states across lives. When an unspeakable tragedy Hannah seems to have it all – a cool London population faced in Jim Crow South, and the US, The Travelers also takes the reader upends everything in Augusta’s life, she’s apartment, a meaningful career, an adoring the persistent negation of their right to to Vietnam, Germany and France as it determined to find where she belongs – but husband. But she’s desperate for a baby and a safe and free existence. This can be spans the mid-1950s to 2010, and crises what if her true home is half a world away? embarks on another punishing round of a hard book to read, but it is absolutely both international and personal. Porter’s IVF. Meanwhile, their friend Lissa barely necessary. And given the strange turn cast is too numerous to detail here, but Let’s Hope for the Best makes ends meet as a frequently out-of- the USA is taking, timely. It’s also a story there are several central, interconnected Carolina Setterwall work actor, longs for a man she can’t have, of indomitable spirit, sacrifice and the families, and a wealth of other characters, Bloomsbury Circus. PB. $29.99 and thinks she’s a failure. Each woman surprising friendships that bloom under all of whose lives are influenced by the Available 1 July the thumb of tyranny. wants a bit of what the other has got. ricocheting effects of decisions – some One evening, Carolina says With this incisive and brutally honest Joe Rubbo is the manager of Readings Carlton of which appear momentous at the time goodnight to her partner, novel, Anna Hope asks what it feels like and others that only later reveal their Aksel. There’ll be time when the expectations you had for your Travellers significance. Taking the wrong road home tomorrow – time to work on life as a younger person don’t materialise? Helon Habila after a concert changes young Agnes and their relationship, to calm She answers that question by shifting Hamish Hamilton. HB. $26.99 Claude’s lives forever, but, had they been their nine-month-old son, to deftly between Cate, Hannah, and Lissa’s Out now White, it would have been a different story. embark on a new chapter as perspectives, and back and forth between A unnamed narrator The crisscrossing tales that coalesce in a family. But then Aksel dies the constraints of the present day (the accompanies his Porter’s novel are concerned with racism, unexpectedly in the night. Carolina unpacks novel is set mostly around 2010) and a more artist wife who’s been love, and loyalty. Identity constraints the small details of life before tragedy, fearless, less compromised past. A repeated awarded a fellowship in and expectations trouble many of her determined to find some explanation. When idyllic flashback to when the women shared Berlin. She is American, he characters, and Porter explodes illusions an opportunity for new romance presents a house on the edge of London Fields has is Nigerian. After a of choice and destiny, especially for itself, she finds herself assuming the reticent the faded beauty of a Polaroid, imagined as miscarriage they both feel African American women, even as she role Aksel once held. She’s been given the gift a time when the world and its possibilities unmoored; they both react explores those elements of life that of love again. But will she take it? FICTION July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 9

The Golden State The Rapture Lydia Kiesling Claire McGlasson Text. PB. $29.99 Faber. PB. $29.99 Available 2 July Available 1 July In Lydia Kiesling’s The Panacea Society is a razor-sharp debut novel, terribly English cult, we accompany Daphne, a populated almost young mother on the entirely by virtuous edge of a breakdown, as single ladies. With the she flees her sensible but Great War having strained life in San claimed so many Francisco with her brothers, husbands and toddler, Honey. Buckling under the sons, women flock to join the Society and weight of being a single parent, Daphne follow its charismatic leader Octavia’s takes refuge in a mobile home left to her teachings. A wonderful and strange tale of by her grandparents in hope that the devotion, sexual frustration, sublimated quiet will bring clarity. Keenly observed desire, religious ecstasy and mental and bristling with humour, The Golden ill-health, this novel is based heavily on a State is about class and cultural real religious society. It is quietly breakdowns, and desperate attempts to compelling and as crisp and tart as a bridge old and new worlds. Granny Smith.

Home Remedies: Stories Orange World Xuan Juliana Wang Karen Russell Atlantic. HB. $29.99 C&W. HB. $32.99 Available 1 July Available 16 July The twelve stories in Xuan Karen Russell’s comedic Juliana Wang’s debut genius and mesmerising collection capture the talent for creating unheard voices of a new outlandish predicaments generation of Chinese that uncannily mirror our youth. A generation for inner lives are on display whom the Cultural in these exuberant, Revolution is a distant unforgettable stories of memory, WeChat is king and life glitters survival, love and of surreal and with possibility. Whether at home or magnificent transformation. Just as many abroad, her stories catch their characters of the characters make a leap – whether to at the threshold of bold and uncertain a different world or a different state – we go futures, navigating between cultural along for the ride, and Russell takes us to heritage and the chaos of contemporary strange and exhilarating new heights. This life. In dexterous, electric prose, these is haunting and beautiful work from one of stories announce the arrival of a beguiling America’s most gifted writers. new voice in American fiction. The Ten Loves of Mr Nishino Live a Little Hiromi Kawakami & Allison Markin Howard Jacobson Powell (trans.) Jonathan Cape. PB. $32.99 Granta. PB. $24.99 Available 2 July Available 8 July At the age of ninety- Who loves Mr Nishino? something, Beryl Bereaved Shiori is tempted Dusinbery is forgetting by his unscrupulous everything – including advances. His colleague her own children. Unlike Manami should know Beryl, Shimi Carmelli better. His conquest Reiko forgets nothing – treasures her especially not the independence above all THE NEW KID: HEAL childhood incident that has followed him else. Friends Tama and Subaru find VERY POPULAR ME Pete Evans shares some of his through life like an oppressive cloud. themselves playing Nishino’s game, but favourite ways to live well. Take The second hilarious novel in the charge of your life with these 101 There’s very little life remaining for either Eriko loves her cat more. Sayuri is older, middle-grade series written by comedian simple, practical ways to be healthier James O’Loghlin and illustrated of them, but perhaps just enough to heal Aichan is much younger, and Misono has and happier in today’s world. some of the hurt inflicted along the way, her own conquests to make. For each of by award-winning cartoonist Matthew Martin. and find new meaning in what’s left. Live a them, an encounter with elusive Little is a novel to make you consider all womaniser Mr Nishino will bring the paths not taken, and whether you torments, desires and delights. could still change course. Whisper Network Bunny Chandler Baker Mona Awad Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 Head of Zeus. PB. $32.99 $29.99 Available 1 July Out now Samantha Heather Sloane, Ardie, Grace, and Mackey couldn’t be more Rosalita have worked at of an outsider in her small, Truviv, Inc. for years. A highly selective MFA sudden death means their program at New England’s boss, Ames, will likely Warren University. She is take over the entire ROGUE THE EMERALD TABLET utterly repelled by the rest company. There have In a striking dystopian world, has A fast, action-packed adventure of her fiction writing always been whispers Hayley finally found somewhere she with political overtones, conspiracy can belong? The thrilling sequel to and intrigue. This is a gripping read cohort – a clique of rich girls who call each about his poor treatment of women, and Hive from award-winning and from Meaghan Wilson Anastasios, other ‘Bunny’. But everything changes they’ve largely been swept under the rug. bestselling author A.J. Betts. the bestselling author of when Samantha receives an invitation to But the world has changed, and the women The Water Diviner. the Bunnies’ fabled ‘Smut Salon’. As are watching this promotion differently. Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into When they find out Ames is behaving the sinister yet saccharine world of the inappropriately, they aren’t willing to let it Bunnies, the boundary between fiction go. Lies will be uncovered. Secrets will be and reality begins to blur. exposed. And not everyone will survive. 10 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 FICTION

Supper Club her, and tries to pull herself together. But Lara Williams her worlds of work and home are about to Hamish Hamilton. PB. $29.99 collide. The Need is a compulsive, reality- ‘The stories in Don’s songs Available 16 July warping novel that makes us rethink our open up to wider stories back Twenty-nine year old world, and question how far we would go to and beyond. His lyrics are protect the ones we love. Roberta has spent her whole lean, clear-eyed, love-thirsty life hungry, until the day she invents Supper Club: a Sweet Sorrow and lonesome. A bullseye secret society for hungry David Nicholls straight to the human heart.’ women. Women who are H&S. PB. $32.99 —PAUL KELLY sick of bad men and bad sex, Available 9 July of hinted expectations to be Charlie Lewis is the kind of ‘Walker is one of our great thinner, smile more, talk less. So they gather boy you don’t remember in at night to feast and drink and dance, seeking the school photograph. storytellers. As much a the answer to a simple question: if you feed a Then Fran Fisher bursts keeper of the flame as starving woman, what will she grow into? into his life and despite Lawson, Carey or White. himself, Charlie begins to But he cuts to the burning Stalingrad hope. But if Charlie wants heart with far fewer words.’ Vasily Grossman to be with Fran, he must JOHN BIRMINGHAM Harvill Secker. HB. $55 join the Company. And if the Company — Out now sounds like a cult, the truth is even more In April 1942, Hitler and appalling: the price of hope, it seems, is Mussolini plan the huge Shakespeare. Poignant, funny, enchanting, offensive on the Eastern devastating, Sweet Sorrow is a tragicomedy Front that will culminate about the rocky path to adulthood. in the greatest battle in human history. Stalingrad Fleishman is in Trouble From Cold Chisel to Catfish, Tex, is a magnificent novel not Taffy Brodesser-Akner only of war but of all Wildfire. PB. $32.99 Don & Charlie to his solo work and human life: its subjects are mothers and Out now many other writing collaborations, daughters, husbands and brothers, generals, Finally free from his nurses, political officers, steelworkers, nightmare of a marriage, these are the collected lyrics of tractor girls. It is tender, epic, and a Toby Fleishman is ready Don Walker, one of Australia’s testament to the power of the human spirit. for a life of online dating and weekend-only parental greatest songwriters Stand By Me duties. Then his life turns Wendell Berry upside-down as his ex-wife, Allen Lane. HB. $22.99 Rachel, suddenly Available 16 July disappears. While Toby tries to find out what These are farmer and happened, his tidy narrative of a spurned writer Wendell Berry’s husband is his sole consolation. But if he OUT NOW blackincbooks.com tales of Port William, a ever wants to really understand where little farming community Rachel went, he is going to have to consider nestled deep in the that he might not have seen his marriage all Kentucky River valley. that clearly in the first place. Shots & Songs Readings Monthly.indd 1 14/6/19 10:38 am They unravel the story of a town over the course of Rules for Visiting four generations, lovingly chronicling the Jessica Francis Kane intertwined lives of the families who call it Granta. PB. $29.99 home. Affectionate, elegiac and wry, these Available 1 July uplifting rural fables invite us to witness May is at a crossroads. the beauty and quiet heroism at the heart Although her career is of each ordinary, interconnected life. flourishing, the rest of her life has narrowed to a Crossing parched routine. Her father Pajtim Statovci is elderly, her brother Pushkin. HB. $32.99 estranged, and she keeps her Available 1 July neighbours at arm’s length. A compelling true story Bujar’s father is dying and his The missing element, she realises, might be The mega-bestselling homeland, Albania, bristles friendship, so she sets off on a journey to visit of homicide and injustice with hunger and unrest. four neglected friends one-by-one, in the Funny Kid is back ... in an outback town When his fearless friend process confronting the pain of her past and because every kid Agim is beaten for wearing imagining a different kind of future. May’s loves to laugh! his mother’s red dress, he quest becomes an exploration of the power, persuades Bujar that there is and perhaps limits, of modern friendship. no place for them in their country, and they flee. Together they journey The Hiding Game across cities, borders and identities, Naomi Wood searching for acceptance and love. But Picador. PB. $29.99 pursued by memories of home and echoes of Available 9 July folk tales, they risk losing themselves in the In 1922, Paul Beckermann struggle to leave their pasts behind. arrives at the Bauhaus art school and is immediately The Need seduced by both the Helen Phillips charismatic teaching and Viking. PB. $29.99 his fellow students. But as Available 16 July political tensions escalate Molly is exhausted, in Germany, the Bauhaus anxious, losing her grip finds itself under threat, and the group of Set in Berlin during the dying on reality. Her husband is students Paul has fallen in with begins to days of communism, this is an A story for anyone away and she is running disintegrate under the pressure of its own exploration of a family cruelly who has ever felt like between her children and betrayals and love affairs. Beautifully torn apart, and the consequences they don't belong her job, where things are written and suspenseful, Naomi Wood’s that seep through generations. unravelling. At home, as The Hiding Game is a novel about the fine dusk falls, she gets jumpy. line between love and obsession, set against She holds her two small children close to the most turbulent era of our recent past. CRIME July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 11

This is Gomorrah Shoot Through Dead Tom Chatfield J.M. Green H&S. PB. $29.99 Scribe. PB. $29.99 Available 9 July Available 2 July Write If domestic murder and In the third Stella Hardy with Fiona Hardy kidnapping is far too book, things already seem mellow for your literary quite chaotic: her brother is needs, look no further than in jail, his girlfriend is I picked this up because the name ‘Petronella McGovern’ is the gritty and highly pregnant, and Stella’s own BOOK OF THE absolutely far too delightful to avoid, and kept reading because readable This is Gomorrah: boyfriend is acting out of MONTH I was hooked. Three-year-old Bella – days shy of her fourth internet nightmares made character. But when a visit Crime birthday – is at her playgroup, being minded by four mothers real, online carnage there to Ben in jail is abruptly while her own ducks out to buy biscuits, when she vanishes. for the watching. It’s 2014, and in Syria, a curtailed by the death of prisoner Joe How could she have gone missing when four other mothers young man with a bad job is using the horrors Phelan, suddenly Stella, a social worker also were there looking out for her? And where is she now? of war for media glory, while in England unfairly competent in other investigative another young man with an electrically areas, is looking into who killed Joe, while McGovern’s debut novel is a suspenseful overwrought outdoor shed is using the telling her best friend (and police detective) suburban thriller that steals your time and backdoors of the internet for some well- Phuong Nguyen that she is doing no such intentioned trolling. When his connections thing. The investigation gets heavy when a won’t give it back … a nailbiter that should lead to a real-life interaction – one that ends dangerous old friend of Joe’s insists Stella absolutely not be gifted to any new parents. with the kind of request you can’t say no to find the killer if she wants to avoid a similar – the man known as AZ is thrown into a fate, and he’s not the only one putting the While this is, of course, the frantic, terrifying question, partnership with Sigma, an online pal and hard word on her to figure every bloody more curiosities snake through the book’s pages: why was now a human person who’s forcing him to thing out for everyone. J.M. Green’s clever, Bella’s mother, Lexie, so loathe to leave her in the first place? witness some unpleasant facts about the witty noir style is about as hard to resist as What was the shared history of Lexie and her husband world. When all leads point to the secretive the characters themselves – and in this, Six Minutes Marty that they were so willing to run to a small Canberran Gomorrah – an internet marketplace only for Stella’s final adventure, all bets are off. Petronella town to avoid? And when everybody connected to them has the planet’s worst people – it’s suddenly time McGovern something to hide, then who can be trusted? The enjoyable to see if people are as tough in person as they Mandatory Murder A&U. PB. $29.99 answer to that last question is, of course, ‘nobody’. can be behind the anonymity of a screen. Steven Schubert Available 1 July McGovern’s debut novel is a suspenseful suburban thriller ABC Books. PB. $32.99 that steals your time and won’t give it back. Tapping into any Those People Out now parent or guardian’s primal fear – that the second you turn Louise Candlish A wrenching true story away from your child, they’ll disappear – Six Minutes takes that anxiety and pours it into S&S. PB. $29.99 about a murder in the the pages. As days pass and Bella still hasn’t been found, we follow Lexie’s disintegration, Available 1 July Northern Territory, Marty’s anguish, and the unhinged actions of too many people around them until your The residents of Lowland Mandatory Murder reflects suspicions lie on almost everybody in town. This is a nailbiter that should absolutely not Way have long enjoyed on mandatory sentencing be gifted to any new parents. their lifestyle: a beautiful, laws – and how their power calm street with lovely doesn’t always see justice large houses and a rule that served fairly. Schubert was The Chain unstable to be given the real cases. And so on Sundays all cars are living in Katherine when the body of Ray Adrian McKinty Harry drinks, goes out, wakes up the next removed so the children Nicefero was discovered outside of town, Hachette. PB. Was $32.99 morning unsure where he’s been but sure it’s can enjoy some blissful and when three men were brought in, $29.99 not been good. He’s determined that a new outside play. Terribly wonderful, until the accused of his murder: Chris Malyschko, the Available 9 July killer on the loose is not new at all, but is a owner of number one passes away and son of Ray’s former partner; Darren ‘Spider’ man Harry helped imprison decades before, The hype for Adrian somebody else moves in. Darren Booth does Halfpenny; and a younger Indigenous man who is now free, and who once asked Harry: McKinty’s standalone not fit into the Lowland Way lifestyle, nor called Zak Grieve. The three were convicted do you feel safe? To be honest, Harry is full ‘fiendishly clever’ (Lou does he want to: he plays loud music, parks of Nicefero’s murder, despite Zak not being of a lot of feelings at the moment, none of Berney) new book is really his numerous scrappy cars in other people’s there when it occurred, and yet his sentence them good and most of them about booze, something else. Brace spots, and is completely unwilling to – twenty years in jail – was the highest of the but it barely matters when it’s a case Harry is yourself for ‘a monster hit, negotiate with everyone’s very practical three. It’s a chilling case of a botched allowed nowhere near. And when it feels like including a terrifying demands. So when a terrible accident occurs murder, domestic violence, and how the nothing can get worse, a tragedy so all- premise’ (Mick Herron), in at number one and the police are calling on hands of those who have to dispense the encompassing threatens the very small which one morning Rachel O’Neill goes to an the neighbours, it’s obvious to all of them sentences are tied despite the facts. amount of sanity that Harry is clinging onto. oncology appointment and then receives a that Booth is to blame – except that the This book is as dark as a Norwegian winter Also out this month phone call: her daughter has been abducted, police have a few more questions. A thrilling, and as sharp as its namesake. A peaceful Tasmanian town may be more and the only way to save her is to pay a multi-narrative story where expectations, than it seems in Sarah Barrie’s Devil’s Lair $25,000 ransom and then kidnap someone suburban secrets and neighbouring (HQ Fiction, PB, $32.99); more queer crime else’s child. Now, they’re part of the Chain. windows are frequently broken. The Last House Guest with Tim MacGabhann’s Mexican cartel Like ‘Jaws for parents’ (Don Winslow), ‘this Megan Miranda tale, Call Him Mine (W&N, PB, $32.99); a nightmarish story is incredibly propulsive Corvus. PB. $29.99 Inspection nanny gets more than she bargained for in and original’ (Stephen King), and the Available 1 July Josh Malerman Kelsey Rae Dimberg’s Girl in the Rearview writing, ‘sharply observant, intelligent and In Littleport, Maine, the Orion. PB. $32.99 Mirror (Pan Mac, PB, $29.99); a profiler sees shot through with black humor – should be summers are heady and Out now a connection between an old crime and a savored’ (Tana French). Some say ‘I may not long, full of wealthy The author of Bird Box – new one in Katarzyna Bonda’s Polish crime read a better thriller in my lifetime’ (Steve holidaymakers and the made into a Netflix movie book Girl at Midnight (H&S, PB, $32.99); the Cavanagh) while others say, ‘I can’t believe locals that thrive on the you and millions of other K names continue a good crime month with what went through my mind while reading it visitors’ deep pockets. people probably watched – Karen Cleveland’s Keep You Close (Bantam, – the things I might be willing to do to save Two separate worlds, returns with Inspection, PB, $32.99) and Karin Slaughter’s The Last my child’ (Attica Locke). In the meantime, ‘I uniting briefly: except in where, deep in a forest, an Widow (HarperCollins, PB, $32.99); a high think I’m going to hug my child and never the case of Avery Greer and Sadie Loman. elite school for boys teaches school reunion unearths some secrets in trust anyone again’ (Fiona Hardy). Avery is a local with a thorny, lonely past the twenty-six students Guillaume Musso’s The Reunion (W&N, and Sadie the rich vacationer whose family there all the things they need to know. For PB, $29.99); a family keeps the truth from Knife (Harry Hole, Book 12) Avery works for, and until Sadie dies on instance, that the school’s founder is their everyone in M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Jo Nesbo Breaker Beach at the last party of summer, father, that they are going to be the cleverest Normal Family (Pan Mac, PB, $29.99); a Harvill Secker. PB. $32.99 they are the very best of friends. Then, a people in the world – and that girls do not gangster’s wife runs for her life in Luca $29.99 year after Sadie’s death, everyone returns exist. But eleven-year-old J is starting to D’Andrea’s Sanctuary (MacLehose, PB, Available 16 July again to Littleport – and suspicion comes realise that these ‘truths’ are perhaps not $32.99); and your favourite authors return Harry Hole is in a bad with them. Though Sadie’s death had been reality – just at the same time as K, a student with new books: Heidi Perks’ Come Back For place. Rakel, his wife, has deemed a suicide, there are those who at an elite school for girls who was never told Me (Century, PB, $32.99); Oliver Bottini’s left him. He’s been believe otherwise, and that Avery, efficient about the existence of boys, realises that she The Dance of Death (MacLehose, PB, $29.99); relegated by his boss to the in the business as she is elsewhere, is to is not so alone in this world. So what happens Robert Crais’ A Dangerous Man (S&S, PB, cases that have already blame. In the face of a town closing ranks to your life – and that of those around you $29.99); Riley Sager’s Lock Every Door (Ebury, been solved, and just need and the powerful closing in, Avery must do – when the world finally comes into focus? A PB, $32.99); Haylen Beck’s Lost You (Harvill tying up by someone too all she can to prove her innocence. A highly original and slow-burning suspense Secker, PB, $32.99); A.L. Gaylin’s Never Look talented to fire but too stormy, ocean-deep thriller. thriller with an ending to brace for. Back (Orion, PB, $32.99) … and more! 12 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 NONFICTION

bank chiefs uncomfortably tightening within the justice system, and Box’s efforts their own nooses while an incredulous to draw the case back into the public eye. New Commissioner Hayne and the inscrutable But this book is an admirable gesture in QC Rowena Orr calmly feed them the acknowledging how these children and Nonfiction rope. There are ‘gotcha’ moments galore, their families were wronged, and why and it’s barely enough. we must always strive to do better by the But beyond the gleeful depiction of some marginalised people in our community. very rich people caught in compromising Ellen Cregan is the marketing and events It’s safe to say that you’ll be reading (or have already read) a positions – I’m not above schadenfreude, coordinator for Readings BOOK OF THE lot of breathless and emotional endorsements for this book and neither are you, my friend – Ziffer’s from readers far and wide – and this extraordinary piece of book draws attention to a serious problem MONTH See What You Made Me Do: nonfiction deserves every single one. I really haven’t ever we have on our hands.Australians have Power, Control and Domestic Cultural read anything like it. To produce this incredible piece of more household debt than almost any Abuse Studies work, writer Lisa Taddeo embarked upon a unique immersion other nation. Bankers controlling trillions Jess Hill project, following the lives of three women over the course of of dollars are more than happy to let us Black Inc. PB. $32.99 eight years. In the compassionate embrace of Taddeo’s very take on more. But an ABS survey found Out now that a whopping fifty per cent of the adult fine prose, readers will come to know and feel the heartbreak Sometimes you population is not literate or numerate of Lina, Maggie, and Sloane, and their basic needs to be loved begin reading a book enough to meet the demands of everyday and wanted. The writer moved to the towns where they lived, and everything else you life, such as reading maps and payroll forms. she talked and corresponded with them for thousands of need to do or think about hours, and was sometimes witness to the events she describes. Ziffer’s book recounts sunlight falling instantly recedes. See on some of the labyrinthine financial What You Made Me Do by This work is a masterclass in empathy and traps set to ensnare many of these fifty- Jess Hill is one such book. percenters. Some of the personal accounts shows how writing can be an act of and Hill is a Walkley Award- included here of financial hardship for humanity. winning investigative journalist who has experienced by the most vulnerable make been researching and writing about for chokingly difficult reading. domestic violence since 2014. See What You The result of this extensive research and the testimonies Ziffer’s doom, gloom and snark Made Me Do is her first book, and to call it of its subjects is Three Women, an intense and brutally honest Three Women sums up our twenty-first century tastes courageous is a gross understatement. portrait of female sexual desire, pain, disappointment, longing, Lisa Taddeo perfectly. Enjoy this real-life Dickensian This book is a devastating exposé of and despair, which documents the lasting impact of childhood Bloomsbury Circus. PB. nightmare, and despair! the horrors of the many forms of domestic trauma, and the structures of patriarchy (yes, it’s still a thing) Was $32.99 Chris Dite is from Readings Carlton abuse that occur in our society every single which provide the architecture for the small and large losses $29.99 day. Hill demonstrates, with a preoccupying endured by women everywhere every single day. This book Available 9 July synthesis of data, expert interviews and is for women to know themselves, but for men to know and Bowraville sickening case studies, that many of the understand the pain and embodied experience of being female. Dan Box systems meant to protect victims are not It’s testament to what the feminists of the 1970s wanted us to know too: that the personal Viking. PB. $34.99 only comprehensively failing to help them, is political; that the experiences of the individual contribute to collective oppression; that Available 2 July but also making victims’ situations more acknowledging women’s sexuality and desire is central to true emancipation. Twenty-nine years dangerous and are causing lasting harm of It must be pointed out that this is Taddeo’s debut, which in itself is astonishing given ago in the tiny, rural terrifying proportions. She calls for a Royal the book’s many accomplishments. This work is a masterclass in empathy and shows how NSW town of Bowraville, Commission into the current functioning writing can be an act of and for humanity. Three Women is a significant book, and I hope three Aboriginal children of the Family Court and its theoretical many fruitful long-overdue conversations will follow its release. It is undoubtedly one of were killed within six underpinnings; her well-considered the books of the year. months of each other: arguments could not be more compelling. teenagers Colleen Alison Huber is the head book buyer for Readings No examination of domestic abuse Walker-Craig and Clinton would be useful or complete without Speedy-Duroux, and four-year-old Evelyn a thorough interrogation of the social Greenup. One white man was connected to contexts in which it occurs. Hills’ writing all three murders, but no one was ever and clear-sighted, this collection reveals about those who abuse, who they abuse, Anthologies convicted for the crimes. Each investigation the emotional untidiness that lies below the and why they do it is meticulous and was unforgivably sloppy in its crucial early shiny surface of modern life and reminds us reframes the questions in a way that is long days, and the behaviour of the police of the power of real conversation to overdue: why do abusers (the vast majority My First Memory: Icons, oftentimes offensive (the officers who first enlighten, heal and transform. of whom are men) stay? Why do they abuse? Thinkers and Heroes on Their responded to Evelyn’s disappearance See What You Made Me Do is not a Earliest Recollections actually suggested this small child had book about blame or recriminations. It is Ben Holden (ed.) gone ‘walkabout’). Later, better and fairer Australian Studies a manifesto for change. As Hill points out, Scribner. HB. $32.99 cops were put on the case, but irreparable when our government wanted to reduce Available 1 July damage had been done. The already-fragile tobacco use in this country, a plan with In My First Memory, A Wunch of Bankers: A Year in relationship between the police and the measurable goals and outcomes was formed bestselling anthologist the Hayne Royal Commission families of the victims had been shattered. and very effectively implemented. Citing Ben Holden explores the Daniel Ziffer Journalist Dan Box learnt about this case recent successful examples, Hill makes an power of memory via the Scribe. PB. $32.99 from Gary Jubelin, a homicide detective urgent case for recognising that not only is watershed experiences of Available 2 July who had worked it. He was shocked by the change essential, it is possible right now. some of the greatest You can thank the way this story had faded into obscurity. A figures of our age. Along Trump serial killer had likely gone free, and nobody Elke Power is the editor of Readings Monthly the way, he lightly administration for the cared. Box created a six-part podcast about explores how memory and childhood rebirth and soaring the murders, and this book is the expansion Refugee Rights and Policy merge to form identity. How, in the popularity of the behind- of that series. While the podcast did come Wrongs: A Frank, Up-to-Date process, we not only create individual the-scenes political first, and I do highly recommend listening to Guide by Experts origin-stories but also, on a broader level, hatchet job. From Bob it, you can read this book as a standalone: it Jane McAdam & Fiona Chong fashion human history. This timeless Woodward’s artful Fear to covers the case with both scope and forensic UNSW Press. PB. $29.99 collection unforgettably proves that there Michael Wolff’s tawdry Fire and Fury, the attention to detail. Available 1 July is always a first time for everything. public can’t get enough of watching the At one point in the book, Box quotes Everyone has the right to guilty powerful try to squirm out of trouble Michelle Jarratt, aunt of four-year-old seek asylum under The Sunday Story Club and embarrass themselves while doing it. Evelyn. She tells him: ‘We are never going international law. Doris Brett & Kerry Cue ABC reporter Daniel Ziffer’s rollicking to get true justice because we wasn’t However, successive Pan Mac. PB. $32.99 blow-by-blow of the Hayne Royal accorded the right of a proper investigation governments in Australia Out now Commission into banking is a welcome and respect, like any other family in have declared the need to These are the real-life addition to the genre. Instead of one Australia’. This comment is sobering, ‘stop the boats’ whatever stories that a group of megalomaniac and his contemptible and entirely correct: the racism of the the cost, be it human, women tell each other minions, we are presented with an police, the non-Aboriginal community of economic, moral or legal. Bringing facts when they gather for a Hieronymus Bosch-like cast of thousands. Bowraville, and various other powers that to bear on a highly politicised debate, deep and structured The scale of the banks’ ‘bastardry’, as be surrounding the murders is undeniable. Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong explain conversation – once a Ziffer puts it, is jaw-dropping. This book has no neat ending; the why Australia falls short of its own month in a suburban The subject matter lends itself victim’s loved ones get no closure. A killer international commitments. This living room – about the to Machiavellian courtroom drama. still walks free, despite the campaigning up-to-date account of Australia’s refugee things that really matter. Profound, layered Ziffer delights in transcribing sweating of the families, the hard work of advocates laws and policies is crucial and NONFICTION July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 13

compelling reading for anyone seeking to was defiant, fragile – and, yes – vengeful. as a look at the corruption and tumult personality disorders; lists the traps, clues, understand the human impacts of This is the inside story of what happened during the time of the Bjelke-Petersen and signs that someone isn’t to be trusted; Australia’s practices. – and what happened next. government in Queensland. and interviews other women (and men) The introduction gives the reader the who have been broken emotionally by the Australia’s Original Quarterly Essay 74: immediate sense of what’s to come, which manipulations of these people. Languages: An Introduction The Prosperity Gospel – How is basically a warts-and-all memoir of a While reading this story, I was tempted R.M.W. Dixon Scott Morrison Won and Bill very talented writer who happens to suffer to feel that I knew better, that I wouldn’t A&U. PB. $32.99 Shorten Lost from depression. It begins with an aborted be caught out by someone like this, but Available 1 July Erik Jensen suicide attempt in New Zealand, which who hasn’t wanted to believe the best of Before British colonisation, Quarterly Essay. PB. $22.99 was ultimately unsuccessful due to the the person they’ve fallen in love with? 250 distinct languages Out now writer’s impending deadline for a review And it wasn’t just her: it was businessmen, were spoken across the In Quarterly Essay 74, of the new Neil Finn album which he felt real estate agents, any number of people continent of Australia. Yet Erik Jensen considers obliged to finish. It is both unbelievable who trusted this guy. This is a cautionary these languages actually what went wrong for and vividly real at the same time. tale, but it’s also the story of a woman share many common Labor and how Scott The memoir takes the reader from who came out stronger – and wiser – in features. Bob Dixon has Morrison won his Stafford’s days in the eastern suburbs of the end. If you’re single, read it. And if been working with elders remarkable victory. Who Melbourne as an awkward, quiet teenager you’re in a relationship, you’d better read to research Australian languages for half a are Morrison’s ‘quiet who loved birds, to his family’s move to it too (because as Stephanie Wood found century, and he draws on this deep people’? What did Brisbane, and the slow beginning of his out, being coupled up is not necessarily experience here. With examples from over Shorten fail to see? And will fear always love affair with music. Like many, he insurance against lying cheats). thirty languages and anecdotes illustrating trump hope in politics? Through interviews had no real idea of what to do at the end Gabrielle Williams is from Readings Malvern language use, and avoiding technical terms, and close observation, Jensen considers of his schooling and he fell into music journalism. Stafford skillfully takes us on Australia’s Original Languages is the how each man reflects and challenges the Hearing Maud: A Journey for a a musical journey of his life. The chapters indispensable starting point for anyone national character. This is a fresh, urgent Voice are themed around a particular song or interested in learning about Aboriginal and look at the meaning of the 2019 election. Jessica White album or artist. Like me, many of Stafford’s Torres Strait languages. UWAP. PB. $27.99 early musical influences came from A Stolen Life: The Bruce Available 1 July watching Countdown, but before long he How to Defend Australia Trevorrow Case Hearing Maud is a veers into a much less safe musical path. Hugh White Antonio Buti compelling work of The honesty with which he writes La Trobe University Press. PB. $34.99 Fremantle Press. PB. $32.99 creative nonfiction. In about his parents, their relationship Available 2 July Available 2 July many ways, this is a book breakdown and particularly his mother’s In this groundbreaking On Christmas Day 1957, about the power of decline into dementia, is very tender. He book, Hugh White Joe Trevorrow walked language, of writing, and also writes very candidly about his own considers the defence of through the blistering of finding one’s own voice. difficult relationships and personal mental Australia in the twenty- heat to seek help for his Jessica White lost all of health issues. first century. Along the sick baby boy, Bruce. her hearing in her left ear, and half in her Even though this book is a memoir, way he offers intriguing When relatives agreed to right, after contracting meningitis at four fans of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity will find insights into history, take the child to hospital, years old. In a country town with little much to like here. As an added extra, at technology and the Joe was relieved – his son support for deaf students, she turned to the end of the book he has devised a handy Australian way of war. White believes that was in safe hands – but, within days, Bruce books. As a university student, White is playlist for people wanting to follow on his in an age of power politics and armed would be living with another family, and enthralled by the writing of Rosa Praed, a musical path or maybe just discover a new rivalry in Asia, it is time for fresh thinking. Joe would never see his son again. At the nineteenth and twentieth century artist for themselves. Highly recommended. In this controversial and persuasive age of ten, Bruce would be returned to his Australian-British writer. She then contribution, White sets new terms for one family, sparking a lifelong search for an Dave Clarke is the music and DVD manager discovers Praed’s daughter, Maud, who of the most crucial conversations Australia identity, and a court case that made history. for Readings was deaf from infancy. needs to have. Maud struggled with the social Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Fake: A Startling True Story expectations placed upon her to behave as Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Australia and the Occupation of Love in a World of Liars, if she were a hearing woman. She loved to Ben Pobjie of Japan Cheats, Narcissists, Fantasists socialise but found satisfaction through Affirm Press. PB. $32.99 Robin Gerster and Phonies writing letters. Writing became a way Out now Scribe. PB. $35 Stephanie Wood to express her thoughts to friends and Ned Kelly’s tin helmet Available 16 July Vintage. PB. Was $34.99 family when socialising face-to-face was looms large over Australia’s In February 1946, the $29.99 tiring and challenging. For both women, bushranging past, but Australians of the British Available 2 July family was a deeply important part of Commonwealth what about all the unsung Boy meets girl. Boy their lives, and this forms a large part of Occupation Force (BCOF) outlaws of the Australian kisses girl. Boy lies the book. White’s fascination with and moved into western Japan bush? What about Black to girl, manipulates her research about Maud reminds her that to ‘demilitarise and Caesar, who escaped his emotionally, and comes words and writing are central to her life, democratise’ the atom- tyrannous British up with countless and to her deafness. bombed Hiroshima overlords four times and invented the great outlandish excuses for Much of the captivating parts of the Prefecture. For over six years, up to 20,000 Australian tradition of bushranging? Or cancelled dates (all while book draw on the history of educating Australian servicemen, including their Mary Ann Bugg, bushranging’s greatest having at least one other deaf children. In the past, deaf children wives and children, participated in an queen? In Mad Dogs and Thunderbolts Ben woman on the side for the duration of their were forced to learn to speak and were historic experiment in nation-rebuilding Pobjie celebrates the wild colonial boys and relationship). Welcome to the world of not allowed to sign. This attitude remains dominated by the United States. This book girls who raided our towns and stole our modern dating, where Tinder is the place influential, that deaf people should tells the story of how the occupation of hearts, all while wearing sensible headgear. you meet, and even a top-grade journalist conform to the hearing world. This deeply Japan became an unprecedented domestic has trouble sifting the truth from the lies. affected Maud as she was forced into encounter between peoples with apparently Plots and Prayers: Malcolm Stephanie Wood was a features speaking, and White too as she attended incompatible traditions and temperaments. Turnbull’s Demise and Scott journalist for the Good Weekend magazine school with hearing children. White’s Morrison’s Ascension and in this, her first foray into book writing, work reaffirmed my decision to begin Niki Savva Biography she uses her journalistic chops to dig learning Auslan, to communicate better Scribe. PB. Was $35 deep into the character and stories of the with those around me. $29.99 man she fell in love with. The extent of Quoting the late disability activist Available 2 July Something to Believe In his lying was impressive – on at least one Stella Young, White notes that she In an enthralling sequel to Andrew Stafford occasion Wayne Swan the former Treasurer shouldn’t be viewed as an inspiration. her bestselling The Road UQP. PB. $32.95 of Australia was used as an excuse, at She is just a person going about her life, to Ruin, Niki Savva reveals Available 2 July other times the President of China was his ‘a partly deaf, partly hearing woman the inside story of a Something To fallback guy. And while the object of her who travels between worlds, and whose bungled coup that Believe In is a affection concealed himself behind an travelling made her a writer’. This is overthrew the Liberal memoir of music, enormous construct of lies, Stephanie Wood precisely why this book is a superb prime minister, Malcolm madness and love, all lays herself bare with personal truths that contribution to Australian deaf/Deaf Turnbull. Turnbull’s road wrapped in one can at times be painful to read. She knows writing, the exploration of the self as ended in ruins, as he predicted to Savva beautifully written book. her audience though, and she never bores a writer, and to researching those who less than three years before it happened. Andrew Stafford’s first us by simply recounting her relationship resemble ourselves, even if a hundred But when his end was imminent, he could book, Pig City, was both a with this guy. She speaks to psychiatrists years apart. not bear to let go. And when it was over, he history of the Brisbane music scene as well and relationship counsellors; researches Clare Millar is from Readings Hawthorn 14 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 NONFICTION

The Prettiest Horse in the Glue The Apology and a host of regional states. Environment Factory Eve Ensler Corey White Bloomsbury. HB. $37.99 King of the World: The Life of Studies Hamish Hamilton. PB. Was $32.99 Out now Louis XIV $29.99 Eve Ensler has been Philip Mansel This Is Not A Drill: An Available 16 July waiting much of her Allen Lane. HB. $69.99 Extinction Rebellion Handbook After losing his father to lifetime for an apology. Available 16 July Extinction Rebellion jail and his mother to Abused from the age of Louis XIV wanted to Penguin. PB. $19.99 heroin, Corey White five by her father, Ensler conquer – to push the Out now entered the foster system, has suffered her whole borders of France out into Extinction Rebellion is a eventually developing life from this betrayal, Flanders, Burgundy and mass movement of crushing depression and a longing for an honest Alsace, and beyond, to peaceful people, drug addiction of his own. reckoning from a man who is long dead. expand French dominion demanding radical action But through it all, he kept The Apology, written by Ensler from her in the Americas and the on our global climate thinking – sometimes hoping, sometimes father’s point of view in the words she East. He became the crisis. This is a book of fearing – that he was destined for longed to hear, attempts to transform the epitome and exemplar of monarchy, the action. With pages to rip something bigger. The Prettiest Horse in abuse she suffered, with unflinching king all his contemporaries and successors out and pages to fill in, the Glue Factory is a powerful, lyrical and truthfulness and an expansive vision for imitated, envied, or fought against. King of and instructions on how to rebel, by the darkly funny memoir of trauma and the future. the World is a magnificent and startlingly time you finish this book you will have survival that will break your heart and insightful account of the man who become an Extinction Rebellion activist. then show you how to rebuild it. Made in Sweden: 25 Ideas dominated the seventeenth century more Act now before it’s too late. You are now That Created a Country than any other. part of the movement. Now you have a Elisabeth Åsbrink The Master Plan: My Journey chance to make history. from Life in Prison to a Life of Scribe. HB. $29.99 Out of Our Minds Purpose Available 2 July Felipe Fernández-Armesto Chris Wilson with Bret Witter In recent times, we have Oneworld. PB. $32.99 Natural History Scribe. PB. $35 come to favour all things Available 15 July Available 2 July Scandi. But what if we To imagine – to see that Like a lot of people, Chris have invested all our faith which is not there – is the Walks in the Wild: Wilson didn’t have an easy in a fantasy? What if startling ability that has A Guide Through the Forest start in life. But he has Sweden has in fact never fuelled human with Peter Wohlleben managed to overcome been as egalitarian or development and Peter Wohlleben severe setbacks to achieve tolerant as we think? innovation through the Rider. HB. $29.99 a life defined by material Here, Swede Elisabeth Åsbrink, who loves centuries. As a species we Available 2 July success and personal her country ‘but not blindly’, presents stand alone in our Bestselling author of The meaning. When he was twenty-five of her nation’s key words and remarkable capacity to refashion the world Hidden Life of Trees, Peter incarcerated at the age of seventeen, Wilson icons afresh, in order to give the world a after the pictures in our minds. Traversing Wohlleben, lets you in on set off on a journey of self-improvement. In clearer-eyed understanding of this the realms of science, politics, religion, the quintessentials of his this memoir, he tells his story and explains fascinating country. culture, philosophy and history, Felipe forestry knowledge. Learn techniques he used to go from being in Fernández-Armesto reveals the thrilling to find your way around the prison with no hope of parole to being a free and disquieting tales of our imaginative woods without a compass man, a successful social entrepreneur, and History leaps – from the first Homo sapiens to the or GPS, or how to read a respected mentor. pioneers of the digital age. animal tracks and what it’s like to spend a Empire of Democracy: night alone in a forest. Walks in the Wild has The Ungrateful Refugee The Remaking of the West The Anxious Triumph: The everything you need to make a woodland walk – be it spring, summer, autumn or Dina Nayeri Since the Cold War, 1971–2017 Making of Global Capitalism, winter – into a very special experience. Canongate. PB. $32.99 Simon Reid-Henry 1860–1914 Available 1 July John Murray. PB. $34.99 Donald Sassoon What is it like to be a Out now Allen Lane. HB. $69.99 Philosophy refugee? It is a question Half a century ago, the Available 2 July few in the West give much Western democracies Capitalism has co-existed thought, and yet to be a were forced to undergo a with many different kinds The History of Philosophy refugee – or an immigrant profound transformation. of states, from Victorian A.C. Grayling – is to grapple with your Against what some saw as Britain to republican Viking. PB. $32.99 place in the world. The a full-scale ‘crisis of France, from Fascist and Available 2 July Ungrateful Refugee offers a democracy’ – with race Nazi regimes to post-war The story of philosophy is new narrative of resettlement, and tells the riots, anti-Vietnam European democracies, an epic tale. But since the human stories of what it is like to flee your marches and a wave of worker discontent from post-Meiji Japan to long-popular classic, home in hope of a better, safer life, and the – a new political-economic order was south-east Asian and Latin American Bertrand Russell’s History struggle to start afresh in a new culture. devised and the post-war social contract dictatorships, communist China and even of Western Philosophy written anew. In this epic narrative of the Russia. Today, the march of capitalism (1945), there has been no events that have shaped our own times, appears inexorable – but it was not always comprehensive and Cultural Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal so. In this riveting account of the rise of entertaining history of Studies democracy, and Western history with it, global capitalism from the 1880s until this great intellectual journey. With his was profoundly re-imagined when the 1914, Donald Sassoon encompasses the characteristic clarity and elegance A. C. post-war golden age ended. first great modern economic globalisation, Grayling takes the reader from the Future Histories forerunner to today’s consumer society. world-views before the age of the Buddha, Lizzie O’Shea India in the Persianate Age: Confucius, and Socrates, through to Verso. HB. $39.99 1000–1765 The Russia Anxiety philosophy today. The first authoritative Available 1 July Richard M. Eaton Mark B. Smith and accessible history of philosophy for In Future Histories, Lizzie Allen Lane. HB. $69.99 Allen Lane. HB. $55 decades, this is a landmark work. O’Shea argues that we Available 16 July Available 16 July need to stop looking Richard M. Eaton’s Time and again, we judge Live Like a Stoic: 52 Exercises forward and start looking wonderful new book tells Russia by unique for Cultivating a Good Life backwards. Weaving this extraordinary story standards. We have Massimo Pigliucci & Gregory together histories of with relish and assumed that it possesses Lopez computing and social originality. His major higher levels of cunning, Rider. PB $32.99 movements with modern theme is the rise of malevolence and Available 2 July theories of the mind, society, and self, ‘Persianate’ culture – a brutality. Yet the country The answers to our daily O’Shea constructs a ‘usable past’ that can many-faceted has more often than not worries and anxieties – help us determine our digital future. In transregional world informed by a canon been a crucial ally. We admire its music big or small – lie at the engaging, sparkling prose, O’Shea shows of texts that circulated through much of and its writers. We lavish praise on the heart of Stoic philosophy. us how very human our understanding of Asia. The book describes the complex Russian soul. And still we think of Russia Live Like a Stoic is the technology is, and what potential exists for encounter between India’s Sanskrit culture as a unique menace. Mark B. Smith’s essential guide to help us struggle, for liberation, for art and poetry and Persian culture, which helped shape remarkable new book is a history of this live the good life. Full of in our digital present. the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, anxiety around an extraordinary country. practical lessons and NONFICTION July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 15

sections for journaling, it provides all the telecommunications, spaceflight and tools needed to overcome any life super-computing. In this gripping obstacles we might face. This is a unique, investigation, Andrew Blum takes us on a personalised Stoic curriculum for a global journey to explain this awe-inspiring lifetime of practice, showing how relevant feat – from satellites circling the Earth, to this ancient philosophy is to modern life. weather stations far out in the ocean, through some of the most ingenious minds Science and advanced algorithms at work today. Politics The Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence James Lovelock The Breakdown: Making Allen Lane. HB. $29.99 Sense of Politics in a Messed- Available 16 July Up World James Lovelock, creator Tatton Spiller of the Gaia hypothesis, Elliott & Thompson. HB. $29.99 has produced an Available 1 July astounding new theory We’re in a time of about the future of life on enormous political Earth. He argues that the engagement, but most of anthropocene – the age in us are ill-equipped to truly which humans acquired understand and debate planetary-scale technologies – is coming the issues rocking our to an end. A new age – the novacene, when world. Instead, we become new beings will emerge from existing entrenched in echo artificial intelligence systems – has chambers, convinced that those with a already begun. Maybe, he speculates, the different viewpoint are awful human novacene could even be the spread of beings whose actions must be stopped. This intelligent life to the cosmos. At the age of light-hearted and judgement-free book will 100, Lovelock has produced the most equip readers with the tools they need to important and compelling work of his life. understand the different arguments, to work out what is happening and why – and A searing investigation that challenges Fire in the Sky: Cosmic then to do something about it. Collisions, Killer Asteroids, everything you thought you knew about and the Race to Defend Earth Shortest Way Home domestic and family violence. Gordon L. Dillow Peter Buttigieg Scribner. HB. $39.99 John Murray. PB. $32.99 Available 1 July Out now One of these days, warns Once described by the blackincbooks.com Gordon Dillow, the Earth Washington Post as ‘the OUT NOW will be hit by a comet or most interesting mayor asteroid of potentially you’ve never heard of’, catastrophic size. The Pete Buttigieg, the only question is when. In thirty-seven-year-old the meantime, we need to mayor of South Bend, get much better at finding Indiana, has now objects hurtling our way, and if they’re It starts with science. emerged as one of his country’s most large enough to penetrate the atmosphere visionary politicians. Elected at twenty- without burning up, figure out what to do nine, Buttigieg immediately recognised about them. Fire in the Sky is a riveting that ‘great cities, and even great nations, work of popular science and a testament to are built through attention to the our universe’s celestial wonders. everyday’. While Washington reels with scandal, Shortest Way Home, with its The Secret Lives of Planets graceful, often humorous, language, Paul Murdin challenges our perception of the typical H&S. HB. $32.99 American politician. Available 9 July We have the impression that the solar system is Personal perfectly regular like a Development clock, or a planetarium instrument. On a short timescale it is. But, seen in No Worries: A Guide to a longer perspective, the Releasing Anxiety and Worry planets, and their Using CBT satellites, have exciting lives, full of events. Sarah Edelman The culmination of a lifetime of astronomy ABC Books. PB. $32.99 and wonder, Paul Murdin’s enchanting new Out now book reveals everything you ever wanted to Sarah Edelman is a know about the planets, their satellites, and teacher, author and our place in the solar system. clinical psychologist in private practice. Her The Weather Machine: How writing is based on the We See Into the Future principles of cognitive Andrew Blum behaviour therapy (CBT), Bodley Head. PB. $35 the psychological Available 2 July approach used by therapists all over the The skill of modern world. Edelman’s first bestselling book, weather scientists is Change Your Thinking, was an accessible unprecedented in human and reassuring guide to overcoming history and draws on self-defeating thoughts and behaviours, Visit the CSIRO Publishing website for more quality nearly every major using CBT. In this new book, No Worries, science books, journals and magazines invention of the last two Edelman offers a clear, compassionate and centuries: Newtonian practical guide to understanding and www.publish.csiro.au physics, managing anxiety and worry. 16 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 NONFICTION

Perfect Motion: How Walking classics such as ‘Khe Sanh’, ‘Flame conservation work on Mora’s wonderful Makes Us Wiser Trees’, ‘Cheap Wine’ and ‘Harry was a Flinders Street mural. (Readings is Jono Lineen Bad Bugger’, this collection reveals the proud to safeguard another of Mora’s At Ebury. PB. $34.99 breadth of Walker’s vision and the murals at our St Kilda shop.) Cotte is a Available 16 July precision of his prose. Interspersed with French-Australian painting conservator home autobiographical sketches and and, while initially sceptical, Mora After the tragic loss of his with Chris Gordon younger brother, Jono anecdotes, Songs is a must-have for fans worked with her to re-create the Lineen set off on a solo of Walker’s brilliant, razor-sharp original brilliance of the mural. By the trek across the Himalayas. storytelling. time the project was finished the two On Eating Meat He walked for months had become close friends. Cotte was Matthew Evans until his legs ached and attracted to Mora’s artistic knowledge, Murdoch. PB. $32.99 his feet blistered, and by Psychology her inquisitive mind and wish to leave Available 1 July the end of the expedition her mark on the Australian art scene. In On Eating Meat, food She was struck by the breadth of Mora’s something had changed in him. He was The Heartland: critic, chef, farmer, endeavours: her teaching roles, her stronger – not just physically, but Finding and Losing television presenter and innovative way of approaching materials psychologically and emotionally. Now, Schizophrenia restaurateur Matthew weaving together his own remarkable (plaster dolls, for example) and her need Evans grapples with the Nathan Filer to anchor her praxis in the tradition personal stories with evolutionary research, Faber. PB. $29.99 contentious topic of the of the masters. All of these particular psychology, neuroscience, anatomy and Available 1 July means of producing and philosophy, Lineen reveals for the first attributes are discussed, alongside consuming animals. He ‘Schizophrenia’ is a word time the powerful effect that walking can Mora’s history, the delicate means of examines feedlots and abattoirs, organic we all have a view on. have on us. conservation used on her mural, the farms and his very own farming practices Nathan Filer, mental occasional photo and the reasoning to appreciate what we are doing and why. health nurse and award- behind various repetitive motifs. This book could be placed in the same winning writer, takes us Sport Cotte has succeeded in writing a bucket as Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating on a journey into the serious investigation into art techniques Animals, but here we are being guided by psychiatric wards he once that realises and commemorates Mora’s our very own beloved Matthew Evans. worked on. Along the Hoop Dreams Down Under impact and authority on Australia way, he helps us open our minds to new Matt Logue without using convoluted terminologies. ways of thinking about mental health, Lunchbox Express HarperCollins. PB. $34.99 Rather, the language is welcoming and about each other, and about ourselves. George Georgievski Available 1 July allows easy reading for those that want The Heartland debunks myths, Plum. PB. $24.99 Ever since Luc Longley lit information about an idiosyncratic challenges assumptions and offers fresh Out now up the court as the first woman and artist. Vale Mirka Mora. Australian to play in the insight into what it means to be mad, and George Georgievski is a what it means to be human. Chris Gordon is the events and programming ‘hands on’ parent that NBA in 1991, Australians manager for Readings have made an indelible has surpassed any of us Never Enough: mere mortals by impact on the world’s Margaret Olley: The Neuroscience and producing lunchbox best basketball A Generous Life competition. Longley’s Experience of Addiction feasts for his daughters QAGOMA journey from Perth to the NBA paved the Judith Grisel that would make any Queensland Art Gallery. HB. $49.95 way for a generation of players to follow in Scribe. PB. $29.99 child, parent and Out now his footsteps. Hoop Dreams Down Under Out now teacher in the vicinity envious. Georgievski Margaret Olley was a documents the behind-the-scenes stories Judith Grisel was a daily started his lunchbox odyssey by conceiving deeply charismatic of twenty-five Australians who have drug user when she began the now hugely popular School Lunchbox figure, mentor and played on basketball’s greatest stage. to consider that her blog that celebrates healthy, fun and easy friend, and exerted addiction might have a lunches for school children. This book, with an enduring cure, one that she herself over seventy recipes grown from that very influence on a Theology could discover by blog, will inspire your children and you. number of Australian studying the brain. Now, artists, particularly after twenty-five years as Only in Tokyo Buddhism for Meat Eaters: in Queensland. This richly illustrated a neuroscientist, she shares what she and Michael Ryan & Luke Burgess Simple Wisdom for a Kinder gift book pays tribute to Olley’s art, other scientists have learnt about Hardie Grant. HB. $39.99 World friendships and philanthropy, and addiction. Set apart by its colour, Available 1 July Josephine Moon demonstrates her ongoing legacy. candour, and clarity, Never Enough is a The premise of this S&S. PB. $24.99 Margaret Olley: A Generous Life features revelatory look at the roles drugs play in beautifully presented Available 1 July not only works spanning Olley’s entire all of our lives. travel cookbook is that career but also portraits of her by fellow For many years Josephine you have only twenty- artists, and ephemera from Olley’s Moon struggled with the four hours to eat your colourful life. question of eating meat, Visual way around Tokyo, fervently wishing to live Arts from daybreak to late as a vegetarian yet night. Intrepid chefs requiring meat in her Design Michael Ryan and Luke Burgess discover diet. Open, honest and Mirka Mora: the creative people and compelling stories utterly without A Life Making Art Queer X Design: behind the restaurants, bars and tea houses judgement, Buddhism for Meat Eaters Sabine Cotte 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, of one of the world’s most exciting food encourages readers to be more mindful T&H. HB. Was $49.99 Banners, Logos and Graphic destinations. This cookbook is ideal for about their choices, rather than berating $44.99 Art of LGBTQ those who want their recipes to have a sense themselves for them, and offers ways for Available 1 July Andy Campbell of history, time and place. people to live ethically, honestly and I adore Mirka Black Dog & Leventhal. HB. $35 guilt-free, whether as a carnivore, Mora’s virtuosity Available 9 July Waste Not Everyday vegetarian or vegan. and this art book is This is the first-ever Erin Rhoads devised for those that illustrated history of Hardie Grant. PB. $19.99 Music love her and her glorious the iconic designs, Available 1 July art practice. Told with symbols, and graphic Erin Rhoads is a ‘doer’ grace and obvious art representing more and has been showing us Songs affection, Sabine Cotte’s than five decades of all how easy it is live Don Walker book is a tribute to Mora’s contribution to LGBTQIA+ pride and without extraneous waste Black Inc. HB. $32.99 Melbourne, to the art scene, to dining out, activism. Organised through her popular Available 1 July and to feminism. It is about an artist who by decade, beginning with Pre- eco-lifestyle blog The For over forty years, Don thrived on breaking conventions and Liberation and then spanning the 1970s Rogue Ginger. This book Walker’s songwriting has attitudes by using her practice, attitude, through the millennium, Queer X Design is a neat package of 365 captured what it is to be and faith in humanity. Mora is quoted as is an empowering, uplifting, and ways to reuse and reduce. There are top tips Australian. From Cold saying, ‘I would paint the sky if I was colourful celebration of the hundreds of for shopping, hosting parties and living the Chisel to his solo work, offered it.’ Many of us believe that she did graphics – from shapes and symbols to best life possible. There are no pictures of Walker’s words are just that. flags and iconic posters – that have stood beautiful people having picnics on the poetic, moving and Mora came into Cotte’s life when for the powerful and ever-evolving beach, but rather just accessible tips to help incisive. Including the National Trust asked her to do LGBTQIA+ movement. address our climate crisis. YOUNG ADULT July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 17

Promise Young Alexandra Alt Omnibus. PB. $16.99 Available 1 July Adult Set during WWII in Berlin, this story about two German teenagers is a fascinating Emoni has a deep love of cooking. She’s extraordinarily look at what life was like BOOK OF THE talented in the kitchen and has dreamed of being a chef since growing up under Nazi MONTH she was a child. When a culinary arts course is offered at her rule. Lene is only fifteen, school, she is, naturally, excited and it should be a no-brainer and her life has been Young Adult that she would sign up. She’s just not sure she can make it dominated by the Nazis. She can’t speak her happen. With the help of her Abuela (grandmother), Emoni mind or do what she wants and if she doesn’t is finishing high school while caring for her infant daughter; go to the compulsory League of German money is tight and a course that includes a trip to Spain Girls meetings she could be imprisoned, or might be a dream too big to manage. worse. Lene has also, unfortunately, Emoni is mature and hardworking, balancing school, attracted the unwanted attention of a childcare, work and navigating family dynamics. It’s rare ruthless Hitler Youth squad leader. To reject to see a book about teen motherhood, rather than teen him would cause even more trouble. pregnancy, especially one that never feels like a cautionary Lene’s best friend and secret crush tale. Emoni’s life isn’t easy but it’s certainly joyful. Emoni is a is her upstairs neighbour, Ludwig, and proud young woman and her story is hopeful. the two of them listen to illegal enemy broadcasts on the radio and talk about When a culinary arts course is offered at what might really be happening in her school, [Emoni] is, naturally, excited the war – as opposed to what the Nazi With the Fire on propaganda says is happening. As the war and it should be a no-brainer that she rages on unsuccessfully for the Germans, High would sign up. She’s just not sure she can Elizabeth Acevedo Ludwig is conscripted into the German make it happen. army. But will he survive the war? HG Egmont. PB. $19.99 The narrative is set in two parts: Out now Sections of the book are introduced with gorgeous recipes 1942–43 and then after the war is over, in that reflect Emoni’s Puerto Rican and African American 1946. After the war Berlin is in rubble, life roots, and the novel is a celebration of a rich food heritage, of family and community. The is still very hard for survivors, and Lene recipe directions include such gems as ‘keep on the stove for the duration of three listens has no idea if Ludwig is dead or alive. This to a Cardi B song’. It’s a perfect choice for readers who have loved Angie Thomas’s books. is an engaging novel about the horrors Elizabeth Acevedo is the author of the widely celebrated National Book Award winner The of living under the Nazi regime from Poet X and she has followed it up with a stunning young adult novel of the highest quality. the perspective of an ordinary German For ages 13+. teenager. It is suitable for readers aged 12+ who enjoy stories set in wartime. Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids Wilder Girls Impossible Music All That Impossible Space Rory Power Anna Morgan Pan Mac. PB. $16.99 Sean Williams A&U. PB. $19.99 Lothian. PB. $19.99 Available 9 July Available 1 July Out now This debut thriller is Simon Rain is Fifteen-year-old Lara set on a remote island eighteen, a guitarist, Laylor feels like a that has been infected by a songwriter and passionate supporting character in virus known only as ‘the metalhead. When, a her own life. She's Ashley's Tox’. It has been eighteen month before Christmas, best friend, she's months since the Raxtor Simon suffers a minor Hannah's sister – she's Boarding School for Girls stroke, his life will never never just Lara. When new was put under quarantine be the same. He cannot history teacher Mr. Grant following the outbreak of the Tox. The girls hear a note. Nothing. The silence is total. gives her an unusual assignment Lara had phone contact with their families on the What would you do if the one thing in life finds herself investigating the mystery of mainland for a while, but now they are you cared for the most were suddenly the Somerton Man, a true crime that has completely isolated while the authorities taken away? This eruption in Simon’s life intrigued people for years. Year 10 has work on a cure. The Tox affects everyone leads to a profound questioning of who he plenty of mysteries of its own and when differently, but many students have died is. His closest relationships – bandmates, they seem just as unsolvable as a sixty- from infection and it has decimated the family and his passion for music – have all year-old cold case, Lara finds herself adults. Only two teachers are left. suddenly changed. And all, somehow, spending more and more time on the Teenagers Reese, Hetty and Byatt are must be remade. assignment. But Mr. Grant himself may be best friends and a tight group that look after With Impossible Music, award-winning the biggest mystery of all. one another under these tough conditions. Australian author Sean Williams delivers Due to the effects of the Tox, Hetty has an intense journey for readers up for the lost her eye, Reese now has a hand with a I Am Still Alive challenge. While Simon is struggling in utter metallic claw and Byatt has a second spine Kate Alice Marshall silence, he meets George, and she is faced beneath her clothing. Food is rationed Penguin. PB. $17.99 with the opposite: the endless unbidden and there are mutated beasts outside the Available 2 July noise that is tinnitus. They’re drawn school grounds on the island that the girls Jess hadn’t seen her together by the rawness of their experience must keep guard against. When Hetty is survivalist, off-the-grid and the need to find a way out of isolation. allowed out of the grounds on food runs, dad in over a decade. But ‘The silence in my head doesn’t mean music she learns that the situation is not quite as after a car crash killed her doesn’t exist. Right?’ Simon asks. Deafness she had previously been told. And when mother and left her cannot be an end to his music, but how can Byatt is suddenly dragged away by the injured, she was forced to Simon create this ‘impossible music’? teachers, this development sets Hetty and move to his cabin in the Reese on a determined course of action to As Simon reflects: ‘The best music, like Canadian wilderness. Just discover what has happened to her. This is the best relationships, breaks the rules, but as Jess was beginning to get to know him, a a smart, well-written, survival thriller that there are no rules on how to do that best’. secret from his past paid them a visit, puts female friendship at the centre of the Impossible Music raises the stakes and will leaving her father dead and Jess stranded. narrative and has the reader terrified as to attract readers 15+. It’s a smart, authentic, With only her father’s dog for company, Jess what will happen next. It is an exciting read brilliantly executed and sometimes must forage and hunt for food, build shelter, for teenagers aged 12+. blackly funny story, in which everything and keep herself warm. Jess will survive. will change. Angela Crocombe is the manager of She has to. She knows who killed her father Readings Kids Mike Shuttleworth is from Readings Hawthorn and she wants revenge. 18 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 CHILDREN

Children’s Books

Special offer on Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton’s Treehouse series!

To celebrate the release of the 117-Storey Treehouse on 23 BOOK OF THE July, all the earlier Treehouse MONTH books will be only $9.99 (was Picture Book $14.99) for the month of July. See News on page 3 for more details.

Fashionista Maxine Beneba Clarke Lothian. HB. $19.99

Award-winning author Maxine Beneba Clarke Goodbye House, Hello House of stars and landscape transformations, but they has already given us such great books as The Margaret Wild & Ann James (illus.) always come back to smaller problems and the close Patchwork Bike, Wide Big World and The Hate Race, A&U. HB. $24.99 relationships between animals and nature. Each story among others, and now we have the gorgeous Available 1 July begins with an illustration and a sweet paragraph Fashionista: Fashion Your Feelings. It’s a vibrant book ‘This is the last time I’ll fish in this that relates the characters to a particular type of that encourages everyone to embrace their river. This is the last time I’ll run child, praising valuable qualities such as imagination, individuality, and it’s the kind of book I wish I had through these trees. This is the optimism, loyalty, helpfulness, enthusiasm and seen more of when I was growing up. last time I’ll dream by this fire … bravery. Goodbye, old house. Goodbye.’ A Wombat, Mudlark & Other Stories is Helen Milroy’s It’s a vibrant book that heart-warming story of letting go writing debut, but she is well-known as Australia’s first and starting anew, of moving from Indigenous doctor and as a child psychiatrist who uses encourages everyone to the country to the city, with a her stories and artworks extensively with children. It’s unique illustration style that allows room and space no wonder, then, that these simple and direct stories embrace their individuality, for the reader’s imagination. demonstrate huge amounts of emotional intelligence. and it’s the kind of book I For ages 5+. The Suitcase Leanne Hall is Readings’ online children’s book specialist wish I had seen more of Chris Naylor-Ballesteros when I was growing up. Nosy Crow. HB. $24.99 Naughtiest Pixie in Disguise (The Available 1 July Naughtiest Pixie, Book 1) The illustrations are made from hand-cut When a strange-looking animal Ailsa Wild & Saoirse Lou magazine collage on textured paper with watercolour arrives pulling a big suitcase, the HG Egmont. PB. $12.99 pencil. They are fun and fabulous, and bring the other animals are curious. What Available 1 July fashion and people, including some global icons, such on earth could be inside that Jenifry Star is a very loveable, very as Beyoncé and her evocative Vogue flower-crown, and suitcase? A teacup? Maybe. A naughty young pixie who decides Prince in his purple jacket, to life as they dance across table and chair? But when the to go to human school to make the page in Matisse-like style. animals break into the suitcase some friends. Everyone knows and discover a very special photograph, they begin to As Maxine states herself: ‘Clothes can speak for us, grown-up humans are terrifying; understand what the strange creature has been when we cannot … fashion can be defiant, revolutionary, they hunt pixies, they stomp on through. A touching, timely tale about the importance wild, compliant, challenging, or camouflaging.’ It’s a their houses and even pickle pixies of kindness and understanding. must for any fashion-lover or creative mind aged 3+. in jars. But surely human children are perfectly safe? Jenifry is willing to find out! This Claire Atherfold is from Readings State Library series is a delightful romp in and out of a hidden world Junior Fiction for readers aged 6+.

Picture Books Wombat, Mudlark and Other Stories Middle Fiction Helen Milroy Fremantle Press. PB. $14.99 Horatio Squeak Available 2 July Detention Karen Foxlee & Evie Barrow (illus.) Wombat helps Mother Earth Tristan Bancks Walker. HB. $27.99 recover the eternal flame in her Puffin. PB. $16.99 Available 1 July belly. Mudlark discovers the reason Available 2 July When tiny Horatio Squeak is for Sun’s burning anger and soothes Set within a few hours and with invited to a mysterious party at the him. Clever Penguin stops Whale from two distinct voices, this is a top of the stairs, he finds himself in stealing from Sky, and finds him a thrilling story that asks the reader to the unexpected company of kittens new family. question their assumptions about with dreadfully sharp claws. When This delightful collection of eight asylum seekers. Sima is in a detention they spot a bird in the window, they stories shows animals as protagonists and heroes, and centre with her family. After being cannot resist the urge to catch it. elements of nature (rocks, trees, moons) as possessing told they will be deported to Will Horatio find the bravery to personalities and feelings. The stories sometimes Afghanistan that night, her father speak out and save the scared little bird? describe vast and timeless events, such as the creation organises a daring escape with the help of protesters CHILDREN July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 19

outside. When it goes wrong, Sima tries to make it Pog complement her own significant knife-throwing talent alone to her uncle’s house in a town far away. Pádraig Kenny – as taught to her by her beloved grandfather during When Dan discovers Sima hiding in the toilet Chicken House. PB. $16.99 her recovery from illness. block at his school, he has to decide whether to report Available 1 July Katherine Rundell ably conveys the vibrant her to Border Security, who are prowling the school, There’s so much to enjoy in this atmosphere of Prohibition-era New York – both the or help her. clever story with its overlay of glamour and the grit. There are twists and turns Tristan Bancks has extensively researched the enchantment. But at its heart, it’s a but not a page is wasted. Fabulous, interesting and experiences of asylum seekers and consulted with story of a family struggling to genuine characters paired with a clever edge-of-your- refugee advocacy groups to make sure he has the overcome its grief at their mum’s seat plot make this one a cracker! For readers aged 9+. circumstances and the legalities right. His characters sudden death. Morgana is from Readings Hawthorn are strong individuals who have agency and, most When he moves his family to their importantly, compassion for one another. This is a ancestral home on the edge of a dark, Vincent and the Grandest Hotel on well-written, well-researched thriller from the author looming forest, David and Penny’s dad is looking for Earth of Two Wolves and The Fall that will appeal to lovers of a fresh start, and some distraction with a renovation Lisa Nicol suspenseful stories aged 11+. project. But the absence of the children’s mum is palpable Puffin. PB. $16.99 Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings Kids and each family member retreats into their own world. Available 2 July When David and Penny accidentally discover the Perched high on the snowy slopes of Lizard’s Tale mysterious Pog, a diminutive magical creature living the Mabombo Ranges lies The Weng Wai Chan in their attic, they’re completely flummoxed. They find Grandest Hotel on Earth. It’s wilder Text. PB. $16.99 themselves questioning their sanity – was the creature than the African savanna, more Available 2 July a rat, a dream, a figment of their imagination? But they fantastical than Disneyland and more Lizard is a street-smart twelve- soon discover their survival depends on this special magical than Shangri-la. So when year-old who lives in tiny caretaker who’s protected generations of their family ordinary eleven-year-old Vincent quarters above a tailor’s shop in (and the world) from the evil lurking close. meets the hotel’s young Florence he Singapore’s Chinatown, and ekes out This story ticks all the boxes, with mystery sets off on a path leading into his most wondrous a bare living with legitimate odd jobs, in spades. Our young protagonists’ struggles are dreams. and a few slightly shady ones for believable; even the forest and rundown house have minor gangster Boss Man Beng. The their own idiosyncratic personality which adds a year is 1940 and the atmosphere in wonderful depth. Highly recommended for boys and Nonfiction the British colony of Singapore is tense. Rumours of girls ages 9+. Japanese espionage abound, but when Lizard is asked Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern A Boy Called Bob Becomes an AFL by Beng to steal a small wooden box from a Raffles Footballer Hotel suite, he has no idea that he’s about to get Rumblestar (The Unmapped Bob Murphy with Tony Wilson sucked into a dangerous vortex of organised crime Chronicles, Book 1) Piccolo Nero. PB. $17.99 and secret intelligence organisations. Privileged and Abi Elphinstone Available 2 July somewhat-terrifying Georgina Jane Whitford Jones S&S. PB. $14.99 This is the story of a boy called Bob. catches Lizard in the act and inserts herself into the Available 1 July He’s a little scrawny, a little scruffy, intrigue, and it’s not long before Lizard’s friends Rumblestar is an adventure- and he likes to sniff footballs (weird). Roshan, a Raffles waiter, and Lili, the tailor’s filled fantasy that features a But he has the game in his veins and daughter, are involved too. timid, unlikely hero and a feisty, he’s determined to be one of the The heady tropical environment and cultural disagreeable girl and her tiny, totally greats, like his hero from the mighty melting pot of Singapore is brought vividly to life in adorable dragon. Casper is Tigers, Matthew Richardson. Follow this thrilling historical adventure, and the political unwillingly transported from his Bob as he gets drafted to the Western and social complexities of wartime Singapore are weather-challenged world, where he Bulldogs at seventeen, slogs his guts out at training handled with clarity and care for a young audience. has been mercilessly bullied, into a with the big Dogs, and – finally – becomes one of the Lizard, Georgina, Roshan and Lili make a delightful magical but troubled world that is in the grip of an evil greatest football captains ever. team that spans class and culture; and their being. Meeting Utterly and her dragon, Arlo, catapults A Boy Called Bob will be launched at Readings Kids on impressive sleuthing and spying efforts are laced with Casper into a fearsome race against the destruction of Tuesday 2 July at 2pm – see page 5 for details. high stakes, thrilling escapes and good humour. For both of their worlds. ages 9+. Along the way, they are confronted by many and Leanne Hall is Readings’ online children’s book specialist varied extraordinary people and creatures, and are Classic of the Month faced with dangers that test their courage and loyalty. Into the Wild (Wolf Girl, Book 1) Watching Casper grow from a lonely, scared outsider Anh Do who leads a very structured life into someone who Charlotte’s Web A&U. PB. $14.99 is tested at every turn is heartening, and his rocky E.B. White & Garth Williams (illus.) Available 1 July relationship with Utterly is thoughtfully explored. Puffin. PB. $19.99 Anh Do’s thrilling new action Once Rumblestar has you in its grip the ride is I was probably eight when I adventure series Wolf Girl takes thrillingly action-packed and unputdownable; you are was first captured by off with a surge of adrenaline and will in the hands of a masterful storyteller. And when you Charlotte’s Web. Our teacher read a send readers’ fight or flight instincts are finished you will wish you had a cute little dragon few chapters aloud every afternoon into overdrive. This series offers a and you will definitely want a hot air balloon like Zip. and each day we longed for more, step-up in reading challenge for fans of Exciting reading for ages 9–12. our excitement growing as story WeirDo and Ninja Kid and introduces Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn time neared. As each new character feisty, resourceful Gwen as its hero. entered our lives – for this was no From the opening chapter the stakes in this The Good Thieves longer just a story – we were introduced to the world; humanity with all its beauty and its foibles. story are high and an undisclosed crisis sees Gwen’s Katherine Rundell We were transported to a small farm where a little family escape their home in a frantic dash by car to Bloomsbury. PB. $14.99 girl named Fern hand-reared the runt pig Wilbur; we elsewhere, somewhere, anywhere that may hold hope Available 1 July watched him grow, make friends, discover Charlotte of refuge. Driving though the night, down windy The Good Thieves is a fast-paced the spider, love and loss, and live his life to the fullest. roads alongside hordes of others, also fleeing, the heist adventure about Vita I’ve read this wonderful adventure at least once narrative is propelled forward at break-neck speed. Marlowe, a girl who comes with her a year ever since. Half a century later, I still weep for But it doesn’t take long before Gwen finds herself mother to New York to stay with her Charlotte, rejoice in the friendship, kindness and separated from her family, alone in the wilderness. grieving grandfather. Vita arrives love, wonder over the mystery and the beauty in our Gwen’s father had always encouraged her to listen determined to reclaim her family world. And every time I feel whole again. The writing is to her instincts and it is this advice that guides her home acquired by the dramatically beautiful, the sentiments profound. as she joins with a wolf cub, some stray dogs and a fearful character Sorrotore, a This story is E.B. White’s love letter to humanity, so hawk as her new family/pack. Together they learn ‘business’ man with shady and dangerous let this meagre offering be my love letter to E.B. White. to survive in a changed world. Into the Wild, the first connections. Our clever heroine is brave, sharp-witted From the bottom of my heart I believe there isn’t a book in the series, is sure to galvanise readers, and set and a polio survivor. She does suffer physically as a reader (child or adult) who won’t be a better person for hearts racing, anxiously awaiting the next instalment result of the disease, but doesn’t let it stop her as she reading Charlotte’s Web. What are you waiting for? (due this December). For ages 8+. devises her plot and gathers together a group of friends Natalie Platten is from Readings Doncaster (circus performers, pickpocket) with skills to Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern 20 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 BARGAINS

Lincoln in the Bardo Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Secondhand Time: The Last of July George Saunders Arles Sketchbook the Soviets HB. Was $49.99 Now $16.95 Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov Svetlana Alexievich & Bela Born from a seed of HB. Was $115 Now $29.99 Shayevich (trans.) Bargains historical truth, the Man Late in life, Vincent van HB. Was $59.99 Now $19.99 Booker-winning Lincoln in Gogh kept a sketchbook. Secondhand Time is a the Bardo is an astonishing This artefact of incalculable monument to the collapse feat of imagination and a historical and aesthetic of the USSR, charting the Beethoven’s Symphonies: bold step forward from one value remained hidden for decline of Soviet culture An Artistic Vision of the most important and more than one hundred and and speculating on what Lewis Lockwood influential writers of his generation. twenty years. The result of a will rise from the ashes of HB. Was $59.99 Now $16.95 Formally daring, generous in spirit, remarkable discovery, Vincent van Gogh: communism. In her The Beethoven symphonies deeply concerned with matters of the The Lost Arles Sketchbook offers fresh distinctive style, Svetlana Alexievich gives form the core of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability insight into the life and work of one of the a voice to the women and men whose classical concert repertoire to speak honestly and powerfully to the world’s most beloved artists. stories are lost in the official narratives of and remain among the things that really matter to us. nation-states, creating a powerful defining works of the Reckless Daughter: A Portrait alternative history from the personal and Western musical Pachinko of Joni Mitchell private stories of individuals. experience. Beethoven’s Min Jin Lee David Yaffe Symphonies introduces each symphony HB. Was $49.99 Now $16.95 HB. 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In a story that collects notable New Yorker underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate the guitar became a superstar of folk music transitions from North pieces from the most characters – strong, stubborn women, in the 1960s, a key figure in the Laurel West London to West Africa, Swing Time is tumultuous years of the devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken Canyon music scene of the 1970s, and the a dazzlingly energetic and deeply human twentieth century by moral crisis – survive and thrive songwriter who spoke resonantly to, and story about friendship and music and true including work by James against the indifferent arc of history. for, audiences across the country. identity, how they shape us and how we Baldwin, Pauline Kael, can survive them. Sylvia Plath, Roger Angell, and Muriel Queens of the Conquest: Sydney Moderns: Art for a Spark. Alongside new assessments of the England’s Medieval Queens, New World Empire of Secrets: British 1960s by some of today’s finest writers, Book One Deborah Edwards & Denise Intelligence, the Cold War and the groundbreaking pieces in The 60s Alison Weir Mimmocchi (eds) the Twilight of Empire present an incomparable portrait of a HB. Was $59.99 Now $16.95 HB. Was $90 Now $29.99 Calder Walton truly galvanizing era. The lives of England’s This volume comprises HB. Was $69.99 Now $16.95 medieval queens were some 400 works by Against the background of The 50s: The Story of a Decade packed with incident – ‘Sydney Moderns’ Ralph the Cold War, and the The New Yorker love, intrigue, betrayal, Balson, Frank and Margel looming spectre of Soviet- HB. Was $69.99 Now $19.99 adultery, and warfare – but Hinder, Roland Wakelin, sponsored subversion in In this thrilling volume, their stories have been and others in the Britain’s dwindling colonial classic works of reportage, largely obscured by Australian vanguard. possessions, the imperial criticism, and fiction about centuries of myth and omission. In the Essays and archival materials introduce intelligence service MI5 and from some of the first volume of an exciting new series, aspects of this key era of Australian art – a played a crucial but top-secret role in decade’s most exciting esteemed biographer Alison Weir provides time when the city of Sydney underwent passing power to newly independent players are complemented a fresh perspective and restores these rapid change, women achieved greater nation states across the globe. Packed with by new contributions from women to their rightful place in history. status, and the rewards and consequences of incidents straight out of a John le Carré the New Yorker’s present all-star lineup of modernisation were felt by the entire nation. novel, Calder Walton reveals this ‘missing writers. The result is a vital portrait of At the Existentialist Café: link’ in Britain’s post-war history. American culture as only one magazine in Freedom, Being, and Apricot Charles Darwin: Victorian the world could do it. Cocktails Mythmaker Unfaithful Music & Sarah Bakewell A.N. Wilson Disappearing Ink The Big Red Book of Modern HB. Was $49.99 Now $16.95 HB. Was $59.99 Now $17.95 Elvis Costello Chinese Literature Featuring not only With the publication of On HB. Was $59.99 Now $16.95 Yunte Huang (ed.) philosophers, but also the Origin of Species, Written with the same HB. 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Both personal as anticolonialism, feminism, and determined self-promoter who did not emotional foundations of some of his best and authoritative, Yunte Huang’s LGBTQIA+ rights. credit the many great sages whose ideas known songs and the hits of tomorrow, this selections make for a joyously informative he advanced in his book. book is destined to become a classic. read and an eye-opening portrait of China The Book of Woe: The DSM and in the tumultuous twentieth century. the Unmaking of Psychiatry The Patrick Melrose Novels Jamie Cooks Italy Gary Greenberg Edward St Aubyn Jamie Oliver Homesick for Another World HB. Was $39.99 Now $14.95 PB. Was $39.99 Now $15.95 HB. Was $49.99 Now $29.99 Ottessa Moshfegh The Book of Woe is a Collected here together in a Jamie Cooks Italy is a HB. Was $39.99 Now $16.95 riveting exposé of the single volume are the celebration of the joy of This is the debut short-story psychiatric profession’s complete Patrick Melrose Italian food. 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The reader is in the hands of an author reportage and biting analysis it will the savageries of his childhood and lead a This is about bringing the pleasure and with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, prove invaluable for expert and casual self-determined life – is one of the major passion of the world’s favourite cuisine to and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. readers alike. achievements in English fiction. your kitchen at home. DVDS July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 21

investigation she encounters a series of suspect – Levi Bellfield – but Sutton must extraordinary characters, each of whom locate the evidence to make sure Bellfield Film & TV provides her with clues that will help her is convicted. Based on Sutton’s memoirs, in her quest. This is an enchanting new Manhunt follows the compelling story of animated tale of brave young heroes, in how he charged one of Britain’s most which good must challenge dark forces notorious killers. Karyn Kusama’s first film, Girlfight, had quite an impact on and triumph. DVD OF THE me back in 2000. Her most recent film, the crime thriller MONTH Destroyer, hit me just as hard. I have no doubt that when I Film sit down at the end of this year to consider the best, most Mirai Film significant films I’ve watched in 2019, Destroyer will be very $29.95 Available 10 July close to the top of my list. Wajib: The Wedding Invitation When four-year-old Kun Destroyer opens with a close-up on Nicole Kidman’s $29.95 meets his new baby sister face. Her usually porcelain skin is mottled and sallow; Out now Mirai, his world is turned her eyes sunken; her hair a limp, mousy mop. It’s a very ‘Wajib’ translates as ‘duty’, upside down. Kun becomes different look for the actress but what’s most striking and it’s duty that brings increasingly jealous of baby about her performance, as Detective Erin Bell, is how she architect Shadi from Rome Mirai, until one day he moves. Every step, as she drags herself around Los Angeles back to Nazareth, where his storms off into the garden, where he seeking revenge and redemption, tells us she’s worn out sister Amal is to be married. encounters strange guests from the past and worn down. Local tradition dictates that and future, including his sister Mirai as a Kusama makes films about women’s rage and Destroyer Shadi and his divorced dad, Abu Shadi, teenager. Together, Kun and teenage is her angriest. Within Hollywood’s strict rulebook about must drive around town delivering Mirai go on a journey through time and how women should look and behave it is rare to see such wedding invitations. The bickering duo space, uncovering their family’s fury expressed by anyone other than men on screen. meet many colourful characters in this Destroyer But Erin is consumed by rage; she turns it inwards as incredible story. $29.95 hugely entertaining and illuminating punishment, and trains it outwards on a world that Out now slice of Palestinian life. repeatedly evades justice and accountability. She’s haunted by her past as an undercover agent, buried deep in the TV California desert along with her partner Chris (Sebastian Stan). Her guilt about that The Happy Prince $29.95 case has made a mess of her life – she drinks too much – and of her relationships, Available 3 July especially with her teenage daughter Shelby. Lost in Space (2018): Season 1 After being imprisoned in There’s a chance for Erin to atone when members of the gang resurface; Erin hunts $34.95 England for his love affair them down with what energy she has left. Kidman embodies this broken woman with a Out now with Lord Alfred Bosie conviction that is, like Kusama’s direction, bold and utterly uncompromising. Despite its The Robinson family are Douglas, Oscar Wilde is brutality, it’s a performance that bruises with vulnerability; once seen, not easily forgotten. travelling on the Resolute, penniless and in poor health, Joanna Di Mattia is from Readings Carlton an interstellar spacecraft stumbling the streets of carrying selected families to Paris. As Wilde journeys from England to colonise the Alpha Centauri France to Italy, desire and loyalty face off, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Arnold star system. But after they the transience of lust is laid bare, and the Documentary Schwarzenegger, Billy Crystal, Rob crash-land on a nearby habitable planet, true riches of love are revealed. Reiner, family members and more. they must contend with a strange Andre the Giant environment and battle their own Sometimes Always Never $24.95 Family personal demons as they search for a way $29.95 Out now back to the Resolute. Available 10 July Andre the Giant is a Alan has spent years documentary examining the Dilili in Paris Manhunt: Series 1 searching tirelessly for his life and career of one of the $29.95 $24.95 missing son Michael, who most beloved legends in Available 10 July Available 17 July stormed out over a game of WWE history. The Dilili, a young girl from New When a young woman’s body Scrabble. 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World’s best documentaries to light up the screen at Nova! Featuring the most thought-provoking, passionate, eclectic and diverse documentaries from Australia and around the world. Films include: tales of daring to live a single life in a world where pairing up is the norm; Melbourne’s connection to the greatest rock concert of the 20th century; the dilemma of defending the worst serial killer in America’s history, and the question of whether the solution to the opioid crisis might be found in psychedelics. From the nail-biting attempt to become the world’s fastest skydiver, to the untold story of the man who inspired Banksy, to Francis Ford Coppola’s attempt to create a new film genre, to Leonardo Di Caprio’s favourite comedy documentary, Tickets and Festival Passes on sale from the July19-29 Cinema Nova Box Office or www.cinemanova.com.au MDFF has it all.

Melbourne’s home of quality arthouse and contemporary cinema 22 READINGS MONTHLY July 2019 MUSIC

Kicks Folk/World Popular Rickie Lee Jones $19.95 | Also on vinyl Out now Betrayal of a Sacred Sunflower Music Rickie Lee Jones is that Joseph Tawadros rare musician who has $29.95 transcended the Out now singer–songwriter Melancholic, spacious Husband-and-wife team Buddy and Julie Miller have released mantle by incorporating and dreamy, oud ALBUM OF their first album in ten years – their third as a couple in nearly different radio genres virtuoso Joseph THE MONTH twenty years of recording together. Even they find it a little from the very beginning of her career, and Tawadros delivers yet strange that they haven’t released more titles, but I suppose Pop/Rock/Alt she continues that tradition on her latest another new direction appearing on each other’s releases during that time appeased album Kicks, a collection of songs from the on his latest album. fans wanting to hear more from them. great American songbook. The album spans This time his musical imagination sees They actually started working on this album straight two decades of pop, rock and jazz hits, him teaming up his oud with violin, piano, after the 2009 release of Written in Chalk but unfortunately presenting her unique and sophisticated electric guitar, trombone and percussion. were waylaid by Julie’s battle with health issues that interpretations of classic songs. The interplay between the instruments on continue to this day. Julie having to take some time off the album is beautiful, capturing ended up coinciding with a very productive period for Amyl and The Sniffers sensitivity and allowing Tawadros’s Buddy as an in-demand session musician, collaborator and Amyl and The Sniffers signature phrases to really shine through. producer, working with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, $19.95 | Also on vinyl Richard Thompson, Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin, to name Out now Break Down on a few. Trust me when I say the ten-year wait for their new Jazz/Blues collaboration is worth it. The debut album from 20th Ave. South Amyl and the Sniffers is Julie had written upwards of fifty songs for this release, Buddy & Julie Miller primal and explosive, none more prophetic than ‘I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.’ The Balance $19.95 | Also on vinyl underpinned by a love This song was her way of saying to Buddy that she had been Abdullah Ibrahim of glam, Sharpie Out now ready for years to record this album so get off your arse, make $19.95 | Also on vinyl subculture, and good some time and stop putting this off! Available 28 June time rock ‘n’ roll. It has attitude, sass and Considering the difference in their voices and their own At the age of eighty- lyrics that are somehow simultaneously releases it is hard to imagine upon hearing them together that they could indeed ever four, Abdullah Ibrahim bleak, nihilistic, humorous and not record together. Julie’s sweet tones and Buddy’s rough and rugged voice and guitar (aka Dollar Brand) is set celebratory. The album is full of beefy riffs playing create a wonderful blend. The sound is raw and Julie’s voice exhibits an emotion to release his first new and stomping drums that rage and roll, that only her lyrics could express. Bluesy, rootsy with a dash of soul, it’s all here. album in four years. and it lives up to all the hype. Years of rage and love and healing have gone into these stories. These two artists give This project features his us a snapshot of their lives together, through thick and thicker. What a beautiful harmony long-time septet Ekaya, a line-up that he’s they create. Years to Burn been recording with since 1983. The lush Calexico & Iron & Wine Lou Fulco is from Readings Hawthorn horn lines, lilting melodies, and uplifting $21.95 | Also on vinyl chord progressions are characteristic of

Available 12 July the nostalgic yet hopeful nature of ‘Together, these eight Abdullah’s musical spirit. frequently lovely rumination on life lived tracks ... feel most of all Pop/Rock/Alt on a tour bus. Songs unfold in hotel bars, like the product of a on open roads, beneath vast blue bowls of true mass collaboration Country Let’s Rock rural sky. The rhythms of perpetual travel ... In incorporating The Black Keys pulse beneath acoustic melodies that lie more voices and somewhere between Dylan and Sufjan – a sources of ideas, Years to Burn feels most Ride Me Back Home $19.95 | Also on vinyl few gentle, a few forceful.’ – Pitchfork of all like the work of a complete, cohesive Willie Nelson Available 28 June and individual band – a group of old $19.95 | Also on vinyl This long-awaited A Bath Full of Esctasy friends who’ve gathered together to sing Out now album, the band’s first in in a single voice.’ – NPR Ride Me Back Home is a five years, is a return to Hot Chip reflective, upbeat the straightforward rock $21.95 | Also on vinyl journey through life, of singer–guitarist Dan Out now Flamingo love and time’s Auerbach and drummer A Bath Full of Ecstasy is Olympia inescapable rhythms Patrick Carney’s early days as a band. ‘The Hot Chip’s seventh $21.95 | Also on vinyl viewed from Willie record is like an homage to electric guitar,’ album, crystallising the Available 5 July Nelson’s inimitable perspective. This new says Carney. ‘We took a simple approach and sound they’ve become Flamingo is a glorious album finds the artist in full appreciation trimmed all the fat like we used to.’ celebrated for – collection of eleven of every moment, sharing his experience bridging euphoria and tracks, resonating with in songs he has written, as well as in songs melancholy with colourful melodies, complex pop unspooling, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest he loves to sing. idiosyncratic vocalisations and pounding vast lyrical scope and the Bill Callahan electronic pop rhythms. The record is a confident animation of a $ 21.95 | Also on vinyl celebration of joy, but recognises the world lit with familiar dreams and desires. A Out now struggle it can take to get to that point of striking follow up to the debut Self Talk, an Re-issue of the As you listen to happiness. This is an invigorating and album that was nominated for an ARIA Month Shepherd in a Sheepskin essential new chapter in the band’s career. award, J Award for Best Video, shortlisted in Vest, a feeling of totality the Australian Music Prize and selected as and completeness steals Western Stars triple j feature album. Ágætis Byrjun: A Good over you. This album Bruce Springsteen Beginning – 20th Anniversary glows incandescent – an $19.95 | Also on vinyl Woodstock: Back to the Edition entirely acoustic arrangement, sounds and Out now Garden – 50th Anniversary Sigur Ros stories shifting seamlessly, almost like one Collection 4CD $59.95 | Also on vinyl big song made of many new stories – the ‘There’s not a hint of Various Available 5 July kind that only Bill Callahan thinks to sing. the E Street Band’s booming Sturm und 3CD $39.95 In 1999 Sigur Ros Drang, nor the Available 28 June released their I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream. stripped-back Over three days in August remarkable The Tallest Man on Earth earthiness of his 1969, more than 400,000 breakthrough album $19.95 | Also on vinyl previous solo albums here: they’re people converged on Max Ágætis Byrjun (‘A Good Available 28 June replaced by luscious orchestrations, Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy Beginning’). In this ‘Last summer, Kristian heavy on the strings and French horn, farm in upstate New York twentieth anniversary celebratory Matsson lamented that cooing female backing vocals, guitars that for Woodstock Festival. edition, the band expand the album with steady touring had shimmer and quiver with tremolo effects, Thirty-two acts performed, including some demo and archive versions of songs, slowed the arrival of I mournful pedal steel … Western Stars is of the most popular and influential musicians newly unearthed material from the time, Love You. It’s a Fever powerful enough to make you wish Bruce of the era. Woodstock: Back to the Garden rare B-sides and a live recording of the Dream. … Ironically, Springsteen would take more stylistic features some of the finest performances concert played in Reykjavík on the day the Fever Dream arrives as a focused and detours in the future.’ – The Guardian recorded at the legendary festival. record was released. MUSIC July 2019 READINGS MONTHLY 23

Vaughan Williams: violin, they drag you up on to your feet and Symphonies No. 7 & 9 whirl you around. That’s partly to do with Classical Music Royal Liverpool Philharmonic the buoyancy of Podger’s playing, full of Orchestra & Andrew Manze agile twists and turns, and partly because Onyx. ONYX4190. $29.95 some movements naturally flow faster on the violin.’ – The Guardian During the summer of 1788, aged only thirty-two, Mozart ‘The Seventh and Ninth ALBUM OF achieved a monumental feat of compositional greatness: in Symphonies of Vaughan Williams are perhaps the J.S. Bach: The Cello Suites THE MONTH just one and a half months, he completed symphonies 39, 40 and 41, to which he referred collectively as his ‘Symphonic least likely to find their Alban Gerhardt Classical Testament’. Despite this most artistically fruitful period in way into concert Hyperion. CDA68261. 2CD $59.95 the composer’s life, he was experiencing significant financial programmes; the Ninth ‘Gerhardt says he has hardship, evidenced by the desperate letter he sent to a ‘brother’ in particular has never been popular. been wary of recording at the masonic lodge in which he pleaded for a loan. Quite However, this new recording, which forms the Bach Suites before surprisingly, Mozart apparently received no commission for part of the last volume in the series of he was good and ready the symphonies – he simply composed for composition’s sake. Vaughan Williams symphonies by the RLPO … In any case, his Conductor Nikolas Harnoncourt argues that together the three and Andrew Manze, has a vibrancy and performances do not symphonies are one unified work: 39 is the overture, 40 is clarity which do much to enhance their sound like the kind that would ever have without a proper ‘finale’, and 41 majestically concludes all that ‘cinderella’ reputation.’ – Gramophone become set in stone; they are too personal has come before it. and spontaneous-sounding for that … Mozart: Le Weinberg: Symphonies No. 2 & 21 Gerhardt can sound deliciously at ease in Testament Jordi Savall – gambist, musical director and prolific Gidon Kremer, Mirga Gražinytė- this music … And his sound is glorious – a Symphonique recording artist – leads his orchestra Le Concerts des Nations in a dazzling performance of Mozart’s last three symphonies, Tyla, Kremerata Baltica & CBSO silvery tenor register capping an overall Le Concert des DG. 4836566. 2CD $26.95 tone that is rich without ever being Nations & Jordi alongside ‘Maurerische Trauermusik’ (‘Masonic Funeral ‘The appearance of this overbearing.’ – Gramophone Savall Music’). Savall acknowledges that it’s hard to imagine the ‘unremitting distress of Mozart’s daily life’ when viewed performance on a major Alia Vox. AVSA9934. prestige label will surely 2CD $29.95 through the prism of such extraordinary orchestral music – there is certainly a disconnect between reality and art. Or prove one of the Classical Specials of perhaps it was this adversity that inspired Mozart to produce highlights of this, his such great work within an inconceivably short time frame. centenary year ... It takes the Month Regardless, Savall’s recording is of his usual high standard. The musicians of Le a performance of fierce concentration and absolute dedication to ensure this music’s Concert des Nations play period instruments, and deliver a performance that is fine, sharp, Officium Novum hold on an audience ... the CBSO, with its boisterous, and occasionally solemn. A personal favourite is the first movement of Symphony Jan Garbarek & The Hilliard Ensemble newly appointed fireball Mirga Gražinytė- No. 40 for its dark and agitated opening theme, which quickly expands into something quite ECM. ECM2125. Was $26.95 warm and magisterial. Under Savall’s direction the orchestra is magnificent, producing a Tyla, is teamed up with Kremerata Baltica, $11.95 for a limited time luscious sound that one might not usually associate with period instruments. A recording lending extraordinary depth and power to ‘The frisson created sure to pique renewed interest in Mozart’s greatest orchestral compositions. the string sound ... All in all, this has to be one of the most important symphonic between the Hilliards’ Alexandra Mathew is from Readings Carlton releases of the year.’ – Gramophone chaste vocalising and the raw wailing of Domenico Scarlatti: Mandolin Garbarek’s saxophone Sir John Tavener: or brass through to the finals of these Sonatas manifests as scared versus profane, like a chilled jazzer idling The Protecting Veil kinds of competitions. So for Jess Gillam to Pizzicar Galante get through is a true testament to her against a church wall, his brow shaded by a Matthew Barley & Sinfonietta Riga Arcana. A115. $19.95 musicianship, at the ripe old age of twenty well-worn trilby, improvising effortlessly Signum. SIGCD585. $29.95 This new recording years! So in celebration, Decca have signed while choristers intone the word of God ... When the first from the Pizzicar her on, and this is her debut album. I have It’s a pretty seductive formula that still thing you see, as a Galante ensemble, to say I loved it for so many reasons. It creates a fair measure of magic. You might performer, is the phrase provides a fascinating really reflects the crossover that happens not want to hear it every day but there will ‘Transcendent With and unusual between truly great modern classical be some days when you’ll want to hear Awesome Majesty’, you encounter between music, with elements of pop, rock, folk and little else.’ – Gramophone know you’re going to be one of the most important composers of more. We’ve got some Milhaud, Kate Bush, in for something epic. John Tavener wrote the baroque period and an instrument that John Williams, Dowland, Shostakovich, those words over the top of the constantly originated in Naples and enjoyed great J.S. Bach: Six Sonatas for Nyman and Bowie. If that’s not a well- singing cello part of his orchestral work popularity throughout Europe. The music Violin and Piano rounded programme, I don’t know what is. ‘The Protecting Veil’, which has proved to is full of contrasts, rich in virtuoso Michelle Makarski & Keith Jarrett The first track, Pequeña Czarda by be one of his most popular works. passages, surprises and effects but also full ECM. ECM223031. 2CD. Was $39.95 Iturralde completely blows you away with Matthew Barley, contemporary cellist of sweetness and humour, combined with $16.95 for a limited time Gillam’s technical capabilities. While in and musical experimenter, has seized a certain meditative melancholy. ‘While both performers the Dowland you hear long melodic lines this work between his teeth and with have strong musical that sweep you away into another world. A Sinfionetta Riga has created an album personalities, they bit overly poetic you might say? I think Classic 100 – Composer that goes beyond the music. The addition achieve an apt Gillam deserves it for making a bit of Various of celebrated actors Julie Christie and ABC Classics. 4818368. 8CD $59.95 democratic balance Olwen Fouéré reading poetry interspersed history and winning one for the Who is your favourite between the violin and throughout the music is delightful, and woodwinds. composer? Classic 100, piano parts ... Both musicians give almost music in its own right. The actors’ Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Australia’s favourite impeccable technical performances and, hypnotic voices wash over you and the classical music while there is no shortage of recordings of comparison between the cello and human Richard Strauss: Four Last countdown, is asking these Sonatas, Jarrett and Makarski’s voice has never been quite so clear. With Songs & Wagner: Arias from Australia the big interpretations add something a dash of some of the Indian music that Tannhauser question in 2019, one sure to spark hours of individual.’ – BBC Music Magazine inspired Tavener’s style at the end, this Lise Davidsen, Philharmonia debate among music lovers. This deluxe is a fascinating album for the discerning Orchestra & Esa-Pekka Salonen CD boxset will contain works by all of the Precipitando (Music of Berg, classical music lover. Decca. 4834883. $21.95 top 100 – a definitive ranking of Australia’s Janáček & Liszt) Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings ‘Davidsen is no ordinary favourite composers! Dénes Várjon singer. Throughout the ECM. ECM2247. Was $26.95 Rise whole album one J.S. Bach: Cello Suites $11.95 for a limited time Jess Gillam marvels at the voice, its (arranged for violin) ‘… the luminous playing Decca. 4834862. $21.95 easy grandeur and sheer Rachel Podger of the opening of Berg’s Last year was a size, its steely focus and Channel Classics. CCSSA41119. 2CD $39.95 Sonata Op. 1 tells us this historic year for security … The timbre has a default cool ‘In Podger’s hands they is a pianist of rare the BBC Young Musician beauty but she can flood it with warmth to sound altogether new, sensitivity ... Várjon’s awards. They had their fill out a phrase magnificently. These gifts not like a higher-pitched probing approach first ever saxophonist in are matched by the maturity, honesty and copy of the familiar cello reveals the finest shades of harmonic the finals. Now to those integrity of Davidsen’s approach. This works but like something colouring and places more emphasis on who don’t know, this is a bigger deal than album only reinforces the fact that she is written for her own the work’s preludial character than most you might think. It’s historically pianists one of the greatest vocal talents to have instrument ... Played on the cello, these sets accounts ... All in all, a very impressive and violinists with a smattering of other emerged in recent years, if not decades.’ of stylised dances sit companionably with and intelligently planned programme.’ strings and occasionally a token woodwind – Gramophone you beside the ballroom floor. Here, on the – BBC Music Magazine Principal Government Partner Major Government Partners