FREE NOVEMBER 2020

Our best books and music of the year

New books from Sofie Laguna, Ceridwen Dovey, Stephen Fry, Helen Garner and more

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 FREMANTLE PRESS NEW RELEASE CRIME FROM FREMANTLE PRESS NEW RELEASE

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‘Crime writing at its apex.’ Australian Book Review ‘A master of hard-boiled crime.’ Emma Viskic Straight from the deep freeze and snappy The US Navy is in port and Frank Swann’s as ever, Sherlock Holmes is back. home town is awash with trouble.

‘Highly entertaining new voice.’ Books+Publishing ‘Crime fiction at its best.’The Australian A vanishing corpse, an orphaned girl, a hidden A cold-case murder leads Nick Chester past: Golden Age crime with an outback twist. to a scandal-plagued religious sect.

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FREMANTLE PRESS NEW RELEASE CRIME FROM FREMANTLE PRESS NEW RELEASE NEWS November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 3

holders & gift voucher sales, is only valid in online events program. Upcoming highlights Readings shops until 30 November 2020, include Jenny Hocking discussing The Gifts and games at Readings November and is not available online. Palace Letters on Wednesday 25 November, From fun socks to adorable mugs, from Laura Tingle talking about her new Quarterly jigsaw puzzles to colour-changing Essay on Sunday 29 November, Bruce umbrellas, you’ll find a range of quirky, News 20% off calendars and diaries Pascoe & Vicky Shukuroglou in conversation funny, delightful and one-of-a-kind gifts, For the month of November, we are about their guidebook Loving Country on games and stocking stuffers in our shops. offering 20% off 2021 diaries and Thursday 10 December, and many more! For Browse the full range in-store, or find a calendars. Come in-store to shop our details on how to watch, and to see what’s select range online at readings.com.au/ Readings shops are open again! full range, or browse a select range on offer across our whole events program, collection/games-and-puzzles Welcome back Melbourne, we’ve missed online on our Calendars and Diaries visit readings.com.au/events you! Our Carlton, Kids, Hawthorn, Malvern, page in this collection: readings.com.au/ Doncaster, and St Kilda shops are all open collection/2021-diaries-and-calendars Best Books and Music of 2020 to the public again, and our booksellers Bargains Our staff have voted on the best books and can’t wait to see you in-store. Thank you You might notice something missing from music of the year, and you’ll find the results so much for all of your support throughout Readings hampers your Readings Monthly this month. Due to in a range of lists throughout this issue of the the lockdown. For the most up-to-date If you’re looking for a special gift for friends, the ongoing lockdowns, restrictions and Readings Monthly. From the best Australian information about our opening hours and family or colleagues, the Readings Hamper supply issues in Victoria, we are unable to fiction to the best cookbooks, we’ve covered conditions of entry into our shops, please visit might be just the thing. We have two hamper include our Bargains page in this November all our favourites. Please note, while the lists readings.com.au/our-shops. Please note, our options available to order online: The Classic edition. But don’t worry, the Bargains page are numbered either a top 10 or top 5, they State Library shop remains closed at this time. Hamper, priced at $120 including delivery, will return to the Readings Monthly in 2021, are in no particular order. You can find more which includes Troy by Stephen Fry; To Asia, and, in the meantime, you can still browse detail about our thoughts on the best books With Love by Hetty McKinnon; a bottle of our wonderful range of bargain books at and albums on our blog (readings.com.au/ Get ready for Christmas Scorpo Noirien Pinot Noir; and a bottle of readings.com.au/bargains news). Happy reading and listening! Shop early and shop local at Readings this Hart’s Farm Olive Oil from the Mornington festive season! Our stores are full of new Peninsula. Our Victorian Hamper, priced at releases, and our booksellers are ready to $150 including delivery, features three books help you find everything you need for gift by Victorian writers: The White Girl by Tony buying this year. You’ll find plenty of gift Birch, The Survivors by Jane Harper and A ideas throughout this edition of the Readings Year of Simple Family Food by Julia Busuttil Monthly, as well as in our annual Summer Nishimura, as well as bottles of Scorpo Reading Guide, on our website, and in our Noirien Pinot Noir and Hart’s Farm Olive enews (subscribe at readings.com.au/ Oil. The books in the Victorian Hamper will sign-up). If you are shopping online, please all be signed by the authors. All hampers place your orders by midnight, Sunday 6 orders must be placed by 5pm, Monday December, for timely delivery by Christmas. 30 November, for delivery in early-to-mid December. Find our hampers by searching for ‘Readings hampers’ on our website or Readings rewards in November visit readings.com.au/collection/readings- The motto for gift buying this year is ‘shop christmas-hampers. early’ and we have a special offer this month to help you get started. Spend $250 in-store in one transaction, and you’ll Readings online events receive a $25 Readings voucher, or spend Each month, we’re bringing you an array of $500 in-store in one transaction and receive local and international authors discussing a $50 Readings voucher. Please note, this their books, all accessible and available to offer excludes lay-bys, select account watch right from your home as part of our

READINGS MONTHLY EDITORS 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 Jackie Tang ADVERTISING at time of publication, however prices SUBSCRIBE [email protected] Ellen Cregan and release dates may change without You can subscribe to Readings Monthly [email protected] notice. Special price offers apply only for and our e-news by visiting our website: EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS the month in which they are featured in readings.com.au/sign-up Judi Mitchell & Ellen Cregan GRAPHIC DESIGN Readings Monthly. Cat Matteson DELIVERY CHARGES FOR PROOFREADERS COVID-19 MAIL-ORDER & OVER-THE- Ellen Cregan & Marie Matteson CARTOON While all title release dates were correct PHONE PURCHASES Oslo Davis at the time of going to press, due to the $6.50 flat rate to anywhere in Australia for KIDS & YA CURATORS ongoing COVID-19 crisis the unexpected orders under $120. Free shipping for orders Angela Crocombe & Dani Solomon FRONT COVER may happen along the supply chain. $120 and over. The November Readings Monthly Please bear with us as we bring you books MUSIC CURATOR cover features an illustration by DELIVERY CHARGES FOR in these rapidly changing circumstances. Michelle Pereira. ONLINE PURCHASES Dave Clarke $6.50 flat rate to anywhere in Australia for Readings donates 10% of its profits each CLASSICAL MUSIC CURATOR orders under $120. Free shipping for orders year to the Readings Foundation: Phil Richards $120 and over. readings.com.au/the-readings-foundation

DVDS CURATOR Lou Fulco

It starts with science.

Visit the CSIRO Publishing website for more quality science books, journals and magazines www.publish.csiro.au 4 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 COLUMNS Mark’s Dear Say Reader with Mark Rubbo with Alison Huber

Well, Readings and most Each year, our staff picks, at readings.com.au/news. other Victorian members vote on their This month’s newsletter should really bookshops are open again favourite books of the be read in conjunction with the annual and it has been wonderful year, and each year at Summer Reading Guide; so many of the to see real people this time, I panic because season’s big releases appear there, but a discovering books in our shops. Sadly, our I have, yet again, failed to keep a reading few are reviewed here as well, including shop in the State Library is yet to open and diary to remind me of all the books I’ve the new novels by Sofie Laguna and may not reopen before Christmas as the ploughed through in the year – and given Ceridwen Dovey. We also recommend library has to be very cautious in managing this year’s events, one can be forgiven new international fiction from Raven the risk of COVID. from forgetting what was read when, how, Leilani, Don DeLillo, Rumaan Alam, However, in good news, the winner or where (or, for that matter, for Bryan Washington, Nicole Krauss, Kikuko of The Readings Prize for New Australian abandoning books halfway through for no Tsumura, and Linn Ullmann. Look out, Fiction this year is the remarkable good reason). Lots of people have too, for the collected stories of Shirley collection of short stories Smart Ovens for reported reading more than ever during Hazzard, a new collection of poetry Lonely People by Elizabeth Tan. The prize our various states of lockdown, others from Margaret Atwood, and novels from is judged by a small group of Readings staff have found it too hard to read, but Jonathan Coe, Phil Klay, and Bernhard and this year they were joined by last year’s absolutely no one has read everything Schlink, plus a lovely hardback gift winner, Alice Robinson, as guest judge that they meant to (and if they say they edition of Amor Towles’s bestselling A to help decide the winner from among have, they are either vastly exaggerating Gentleman in Moscow. For the person who the shortlisted titles. I am so grateful to or severely lacking in aspiration). won’t read anything until Sally Rooney’s all our judges for their assiduous efforts. Here is where our annual lists come next book, perhaps the scripts of the They chose from an amazing field of new in handy: they’ll remind you of things TV adaptation of Normal People might Australian writing. you didn’t get to, or that passed you by. temporarily suffice. Early this year, in a move that took Perhaps, for example, you missed Kate I love the story our reviewer tells of the publishing world by surprise, James Grenville’s long-awaited novel A Room her first encounter with the historical Kellow stepped down from his role as CEO Made of Leaves in July, or some of the figure of Gough Whitlam in her review of HarperCollins Australia. James is very outstanding first novels from Australian of our Nonfiction Book of the Month, highly regarded in the industry and, despite authors, like Laura Jean McKay’s The Jenny Hocking’s The Palace Letters. Don’t his English background, is passionate about Animals in That Country, Jessie Tu’s A miss the new books from the three local discovering new Australian writers. Trent Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing, legends who are Helen Garner, Barry Dalton’s extraordinarily successful Boy Victoria Hannan’s Kokomo, or Pip Jones, and Don Watson (you know at least Swallows Universe was one of the highlights Williams’s The Dictionary of Lost Words. one person who needs that exact trio of of Kellow’s time at HarperCollins. Now, Our colleague Sean O’Beirne’s universally books for Christmas). Our reviewers also Kellow has teamed up with Melbourne’s acclaimed debut short-story collection, recommend Christie Tate’s Group and Hardie Grant to form Ultimo Press, based A Couple of Things Before the End, is so Louise Milligan’s Witness. in the Sydney suburb of Ultimo. In this new 2020 it’s not funny. One of the biggest books of the season team’s words, they ‘want to excite readers of And then there are releases that are and indeed the entire year is the first general and literary fiction (especially the relatively new, but our staff have rated volume of Barack Obama’s anticipated sweet spot in-between), and discover non- as among the best of the year, so don’t presidential memoirs, A Promised Land. fiction that inspires and ignites’. They’ve overlook them: Kate Mildenhall’s The Obama is a wonderful writer, and the been hiring like mad and have appointed Mother Fault, Steven Conte’s The Tolstoy extract published in the New Yorker ex-Hachette publisher Robert Watkins as Estate, Nardi Simpson’s Song of the recently makes clear this book is not to publishing director, and former Picador Crocodile, or Andrew Pippos’s Lucky’s be missed. We also have a handsome Australia publisher Alex Craig as publisher. (which happens to be our Fiction Book hardback edition of Stephen Fry’s Troy We’ll be looking on with great interest to see of the Month for November: it feels to selling at the paperback price, and I can’t what they can add to our literary culture. me like an instant Australian classic). It’s help pointing out two cat-related books Kellow is also a former board member interesting to note that the majority of (and I’m not even a cat person): John of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation these Australian books are first or second Gray’s Feline Philosophy, and Japanese (ILF) and this year he has been acquiring works of fiction, which I think is testament cat doctor Yuki Hattori’s What Cats Want. permission for the ILF to reprint classic to our staff’s commitment to reading and I also recommend you turn to page 16 children’s books in First Nations recommending emerging local voices. to read our Art and Design specialist languages. This will be a wonderful project Our international fiction picks also Margaret Snowdon’s column highlighting broadening the offering of the almost include a number of debuts and second her picks of the year. 100,000 books the ILF gives to remote novels, including: the Booker-shortlisted And finally, dear reader, another of communities annually. gem by Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain; the best books of 2020 is the winner of I’m terribly pleased that Readings has Amina Cain’s elegant examination of The Readings Prize for New Australian retained all our people in spite of the huge creativity, Indelicacy; Brit Bennett’s Fiction: Elizabeth Tan’s short story impact of COVID, and each person has multigenerational historical novel, The collection, Smart Ovens for Lonely helped, in one way or another, to keep us all Vanishing Half; C Pam Zhang’s reworking People. It was an extremely strong field going during the difficult times. As a thank of the American Western, How Much in contention this year, and the judging you, I sent everyone a hamper of nice things. of These Hills is Gold; Susanna Clarke’s panel had a difficult task to choose a It got me wondering why the hampers on literary fantasy, Piranesi; and Megha shortlist, let alone a winner, but Ovens offer aren’t a little more cultural. Majumdar’s vivid thriller set in Kolkata, retained its status as an early favourite. So, we have teamed up with a small A Burning. Congratulations, Elizabeth! Apologies, Mornington Peninsula vineyard, Scorpo Rounding out the list are the Women’s dear editor, for running well over my Wines, and olive grower Hart’s Farm, Prize winner for 2020, Maggie O’Farrell’s allocated word limit, so I must wrap up to create two of our own hampers: our novel of Shakespeare, Hamnet; Sigrid this column for the final time in this Victorian Hamper (Victorian writers, Nunez’s unsentimental take on life, most unusual year. I look forward to Victorian produce, $150 including delivery) death, and everything in-between, What introducing you to the next year of reading and our Classic Hamper ($120 including Are You Going Through; Jenny Offill’s delights in February, our first newsletter delivery). These hampers are available incomparable contribution to cli-fi, for 2021, which seems both too soon and online only (search ‘hamper’ online at Weather; and Andrew O’Hagan’s gorgeous too far in the future to contemplate. readings.com.au) and orders must be celebration of friendship, Mayflies. We placed by 30 November for delivery in early also have lists of the best nonfiction, to mid-December. For details about the crime, and cookbooks, but as usual, I’m wonderful contents of these hampers, see running out of room already, and I haven’t News on page 3. We hope they will make a even started in on the November releases! great and unique gift; we have no idea how Check our website for the full lists, many to make, so order early! including our children’s, YA and music FICTION November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 5

Smart Ovens for Lonely People Fiction Elizabeth Tan Brio. PB. Was $29.99 $24.99 The Lucky’s is the kind of confident, big-thinking, character- BOOK OF THE driven, multi-storyline family saga that I love, and comes to us fully formed from a first-time author. It is one of the most MONTH Readings impressive and appealing Australian debut novels of 2020 – or, Australian frankly, any year, and you can scratch the adjective ‘debut’ from Fiction that description too. Written by Sydney author Andrew Pippos, Prize for New Lucky’s tells a story close to his heart and experience that is full of charm and imagination. The story finds its grounding in the postwar migrant experience in Sydney (and Australia at large), Australian Fiction the period when a new cohort of people came to this country’s shores to find a better life for their families, and in turn shaped Australian culture in the second half of the 20th century. 2020 winner Lucky is the book’s pivotal character and founder of Lucky’s, a restaurant franchise inspired by the traditional Greek cafés that were at one time ubiquitous in major cities and regional centres. ‘Being lucky’ or making one’s own luck It is a great pleasure to announce Elizabeth Tan’s Smart Ovens for Lonely People as the – and the roles played by fate, fortune, determination, and 2020 winner of The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. This is a truly exciting opportunity – are central features of the storylines, culminating work; Tan’s stories push the form, and offer a quixotic but penetrating look into our in a brilliantly written sequence set around the classic game contemporary life. Her collection stood out to the judges for its originality, its clear and show of chance, Wheel of Fortune. No saga is complete without concise writing, and its humour – Smart Ovens for Lonely People is laugh-out-loud funny. Lucky’s family secrets and scandals, and they are key to Lucky’s story, In response to the win, Tan said: Andrew Pippos as well as that of journalist Emily. She arrives in Australia ‘In a year in which our beloved rituals for encountering and celebrating new Picador. PB. Was $32.99 from the UK researching a story on the franchise for a New books have necessarily transformed, the vigorous efforts of independent $29.99 Yorker article that she hopes will reignite her career, just as booksellers like Readings to continue elevating Australian writers and Available now her relationship with her husband falters and clues about the connecting books with the readers who will love them deserve our applause. life of her late father appear. It’s an intricate set of intersecting It was an honour all on its own to be recognised in this year’s shortlist for the storylines and a disparate cast of characters, but they are drawn together seamlessly thanks to impeccable pace and structure. Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction alongside such fiercely talented Without a doubt, Lucky’s is a standout novel of this difficult year, and one that you’ll be authors, and I find myself quite startled and grateful to be named the winner. eager to thrust into the hands of all your friends – to remind them of how much fun reading a To Readings, the judges, and the booksellers – thank you all so much.’ great book really is, and how the answer to pretty much every problem is always: love. I was joined on this year’s judging panel by fellow booksellers Kara McQueen (Readings Alison Huber is the head book buyer for Readings Carlton), Kara Nicholson (Readings online) and Andras Kerekes (Readings online) – as well as last year’s winner, Alice Robinson. Deciding on 2020’s final winner was no enviable task. We had such a strong shortlist to choose from – highlights from a great year in Australian adult novels, this one will make you cry. Do publishing. In contention alongside Tan’s winning collection were five other terrific books: Australian Fiction read this novel knowing that it is painful, but The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay, Dolores by Lauren Aimee Curtis, also read it because Laguna’s writing is kind Lucky Ticket by Joey Bui, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu, and The House and, truly, a type of poetry in action. of Youssef by Yumna Kassab. Each year we offer all six books in a specially priced pack Infinite Splendours and in 2020 have sold a record number of these packs, as well as receiving some terrific Sofie Laguna Chris Gordon is the programming and events feedback about these books from our customers. The shortlist truly is a great window into Allen & Unwin. PB. Was $32.99 manager for Readings contemporary Australian writing and life. As Robinson writes: $29.99 Available now Life After Truth ‘The 2020 prize shortlist constituted one of the most exciting collections Infinite Splendours is Ceridwen Dovey of books I’ve seen elevated in recent years – both in terms of the filled with vivid Viking. PB. $32.99 diversity of their authors, and also in terms of the experimentation descriptions of colour, Available now and intelligence inherent in the form, plot, subject matter and literary movement, and grace. It also If you need a novel to merit of each work. I would like every reader in Australia to pick up at brims with unfathomable read that feels familiar least one of the books on this list – and, ideally, to read them all.’ grief. I guarantee that but will also give you a break award-winning author Sofie from dealing with your own Back in the first week of the first lockdown, Readings Prizes Manager Bronte Coates Laguna’s latest novel will force you to revisit insecurities, here it is. This and I had a discussion about whether it was possible to continue with the prize this year. moments from your own childhood. But, for novel is the perfect read to Running a bookshop in a pandemic seemed an impossible challenge and nerves were those readers among us fortunate to have take to the couch and frayed. Would we be able to give the books the attention they deserve? Many titles were cherished memories of our early years, completely submerge in. The story follows already being delayed and had fallen out of contention. If we continued, there could be imagine if the happy memories were cast into five close friends who attend a Harvard no award ceremony and no prize money. Would we continue with the Readings Monthly? shadow by those that followed, and by the college fifteenth reunion weekend. All the Would people even be buying books? There was so much we didn’t know at that time but, belief that you had to keep secrets about that characters have their own emotional baggage in the end, we decided to stay the course. And I’m so glad we did. time. This is Laguna’s superpower: capturing tucked well out of sight of the others. I This has been a miserable year for debut authors, with launches, bookstore visits, feelings in ways that make them urgently real promise you will be able to identify with at events, and writers’ festivals all cancelled or moved online. These are some of the few to her readers – in this instance, how it can least one of the personalities to whom we are spoils authors get for their years of hard, solitary work. So, it was rewarding to be able to feel to be guided in life by emotional states of introduced immediately through their use this prize as an opportunity to shine a light on a group of authors who could otherwise mortification and anguish. contributions to the Harvard Yearbook. have been overlooked in the maelstrom that has been 2020. We meet Lawrence Loman as a cheerful For me, it was Mariam and Rowan, Still, there can only be one winner, and I’ll leave it to Alice to tell you why you should 10-year-old child who is close to his brother who married young and have prioritised order your copy of our pick today: Paul and to his mother. We meet him as he family life over their careers. There is Jules, ‘The stories collected in Smart Ovens for Lonely People made me laugh is poised to take on the world. Lawrence a famous actor; Eloise, now a Harvard out loud with surprise and delight – not only because they are very has considerable artistic ability and a deep professor who studies the psychology of funny, conveying enviable literary skill, but also because I have simply appreciation of his environment. An uncle happiness; and Jomo, who is a founder of never read anything like them, and that is such a pleasure and a delight. comes to stay and a crime is committed. It is a jewellery company. Before the weekend really begins, the most infamous member One thing is certain in my mind, and that is that I am a lifelong convert this betrayal that permeates Lawrence’s life. It is only through his paintings that Lawrence of the Class of 2003, Frederick Reese, senior to Tan’s writing. I can’t wait to read whatever she writes next.’ can escape; it is through his relationship with advisor and son of the despised President Or, as one of my fellow judges, Kara McQueen, put it: ‘Smart Ovens for Lonely People the natural world that he is able to experience Reese, is found dead. And so it begins. made me excited to read again, and even more excited for new writing.’ This is the kind of freedom. As the novel follows Lawrence into Ceridwen Dovey’s ability to illustrate book we all need in our lives right now. his adult life, Laguna considers some of the pettiness, desire and our limited capacity long-term effects of child abuse. for empathy is quite uncanny. (And funny.) Joe Rubbo, Readings Carlton manager and chair of The Readings Prize for New Australian Through this wonderful array of characters, Fiction 2020 judging panel. Laguna is the type of writer who does not hide actuality from her readers. Her mission she manages to encapsulate the elusive is to look into dark corners and examine search for happiness that comes at a price Due to the impact upon Readings of the ongoing global health crisis, we are unable to offer prize money for any suffering, to expose silence, and to give us an not everyone can pay. of our three prizes in 2020. We do hope these prizes will still guide readers towards wonderful emerging voices. insight into other people’s lives. Like all her Life After Truth is an absorbing 6 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 FICTION

City and their demanding jobs. No cell entertaining book. A generation’s angst service. Plenty of peace and quiet. is reflected here too: job precarity is Everything quickly changes when, late enmeshed with desire for purpose, while one night, Ruth and GH – the couple who the gendered rules of engagement are own the house – come knocking at the being rewritten, and the environmental door. A city-wide blackout has sent them clock ticks on life as we know it. rushing to their vacation home. It quickly There’s a lot to laugh at, relate to, and becomes clear that something much despair about here, all conveyed in a lively stranger than just a blackout is happening, translation by Polly Barton. Comparisons but without cell service – and then without to Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store TV or internet as well – the two couples Woman are of course inevitable, but it also have no way of knowing what’s going on in made me think of Halle Butler’s The New the outside world. Is the vacation house, or Me, and both versions of the TV series anywhere for that matter, safe? The Office. This is the first book by award- Rumaan Alam’s third novel is a winning Kikuko Tsumura to be translated compulsively readable thriller. The tension into English, and I’d love to read more of is palpable. You’re as desperate to know her sharp observations. what is going on in the outside world as Alison Huber is the head book buyer for the characters are. Creating just as much Readings tension as the unknown are the issues of class and race that inevitably come up Memorial between the White, solidly middle-class Bryan Washington Amanda and Clay and the Black, wealthy Atlantic. PB. $29.99 Ruth and GH. Available 17 November Leave the World Behind has been Houston writer Bryan generating plenty of hype. It is a finalist Washington caused a for the National Book Award and has literary stir with the already been optioned into a Netflix film publication of his terrific starring Denzel Washington and Julia debut story collection, Lot, Roberts. All of this before it was even which counts the 2020 published. Reading it, however, it is easy International Dylan Thomas to see why. The novel is certainly timely. Prize and an endorsement from Barack The feelings of dread and ignorance Obama among its many accolades. Memorial concerning the outside world will be is his first novel and it’s a compulsively familiar to all of us dealing with the readable book – smart, immersive, very Covid-19 crisis. More importantly, it is funny, and surprisingly tender. just a fantastic read. It is strange, original, Mike, a Japanese–American chef, and and thrilling. It is tempting to compare it Benson, a Black childcare educator, both to other post-apocalyptic books but there know that their relationship isn’t working is nothing out there quite like it. This is anymore. They just can’t figure out why, or destined to end up on the ‘best of’ lists at whether to end it, or even how. And when the end of the year, so do yourself a favour Mike learns his estranged father is dying and read it immediately. of cancer in Japan, he decides to jump on Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton a plane to say goodbye – just as his mother character assassination of the middle class. they can: by living as if the internet had arrives for a visit. Left alone with the We are all guilty. We are all culpable. But we never been invented. The hold of tech delightfully acidic Mitsuko for a roommate, can all be forgiven. Fans of Kate Atkinson, giants starts to loosen as the revolution There’s No Such Thing as an Benson finds himself enjoying a strange Liane Moriarty and even Agatha Christie spreads. But can the little people win back Easy Job new companionship while, over in Osaka, will relish this novel. It will be shared the world? Kikuko Tsumura & Mike attempts to untangle his complicated amongst book group readers, seen on beach Polly Barton (trans.) family history and prepare for his father’s towels, and the cover will be stained with Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 The Collected Stories of death. As the two men grapple with their a wine-glass ring. It is that type of novel; a Available 1 December Shirley Hazzard own expectations and limitations, their perfect portrait of us all bumbling along on A truer sentiment than Shirley Hazzard relationships with others start to shift in this great merry-go-round we call life. the title of this work of Virago. HB. $39.99 unexpected ways. Japanese fiction could Chris Gordon is the programming and events Available 24 November hardly be imagined at this Memorial makes for an addictive read. manager for Readings Shirley Hazzard’s stories are time, but this pre-pandemic Similar to Edwidge Danticat, Washington a supreme evocation of piece of writing follows its incorporates slang into his prose and his writing at its very best: The Fifth Season 36-year-old narrator’s fast, punchy dialogue sweeps the reader probing, uncompromising Philip Salom search for a meaningful working life. headlong into the streets and homes of Transit Lounge. PB. $29.99 and deeply felt, and Collected Having ‘burnt out’ at her last job, we join Houston. Washington has a bristling, Available now Stories is a work of staggering her as she undertakes a number of jobs sharp-edged sense of humour that is breadth and talent. Taken Jack retreats to a cottage in found for her by the ever-patient recruiter undercut with moments of intimacy together, Hazzard’s short stories are a small coastal town. He is a Mrs Masakado, who has been tasked with and vulnerability. Mike and Benson masterworks in telescoping focus, ranging writer, and preoccupied the challenge of finding her a job that is flip between being acutely aware of and from quotidian struggles between beauty with the phenomenon of ‘very uneventful’. On face value, each of oblivious to the power they hold over one and pragmatism to satirical sendups of found people: the Somerton the jobs seems more absurd than the last: another, and as a reader you can’t help international bureaucracy, from the Italian Man, the Gippsland Man, our protagonist watches surveillance tapes hoping for them, even when it seems countryside to suburban Connecticut. the Isdal Woman, of a man working at home for some entirely futile. A novel about growing up unidentifiable people who are found dead reason; writes trivia to be printed on the and breaking up, about the messiness and – and the mysterious pull this has on the packets of a cult brand of rice crackers; weirdness of families, about the variances public mind. Then Jack discovers a strange International works in solitude in the middle of a forest of racial and queer politics, Memorial sits book, written by someone who once lived Fiction park adding perforations to the park’s easily among the best new books of 2020. in the same cottage, until he too museum-entry tickets. Bronte Coates is the digital content manager disappeared. But as time in each position unfolds, and Readings Prizes manager for Readings Leave the World Behind the revelations about the working Factory 19 Rumaan Alam life become something approaching The Silence Dennis Glover Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 universal. The bonds formed between co- Don DeLillo Black Inc. PB. $32.99 Available now workers appear as one of the satisfactions Picador. HB. $29.99 Available now Amanda, Clay and of life at work while the minutiae of work Available now Hobart, 2022: a city with a their two teenaged activities and office politics provide the On an aeroplane a declining population, in the children are expecting a shape of a collective daily life. At the man recites flight data grip of a dark recession. quiet vacation. They’ve same time, questions around what is to his partner, half listening Citizens whose jobs have rented an upmarket house actually created by workers’ labour in and writing in her notebook been destroyed by Amazon, on Long Island for a week – late capitalism and how work connects in the adjacent seat. Their Uber and Airbnb are invited revelling in the chance to to personal and cultural identity play conversation, spanning to fight back in the only way enjoy some rest from the bustle of New York out in the subtext of this thoroughly several pages, has FICTION November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 7

somewhat of a stilted back and forth, as life with intention and exactitude, begins they each regard each other. They’re on to lose his grip on language and memory. their way to New York, to watch the Super This is also a story of two creative people Bowl with two friends, another couple: who come together to complete a project Max and Dianne. They are in their together before it is too late, and is at apartment waiting for their friends’ times so poignant that it is impossible not arrival, along with Dianne’s former to be affected by it. This elegantly written student from when she was a physics book, translated from the Norwegian ‘The author professor. It’s a vocation, she says to by Thilo Reinhard, is a unique reading herself, that she abandoned too early. experience, and appears just at the right of this book The couple in the plane, Jim and time to round out a reading year unlike Tessa, do arrive at the apartment any other. is a genius’ eventually, but only after the plane Alison Huber is the head book buyer for MICHAEL KIRBY crashes and all electronic devices, at least Readings in America, have ceased to work. This is Don DeLillo’s incredibly short 19th Luster novel, and something of a culmination Raven Leilani of his work to date. Football, crowds, Picador. PB. $32.99 mass hysteria, and the imminent disaster Available late November American life seems to be hurtling There’s been some towards, are all touched upon. Dianne’s hype for this book former student talks at length about and rightly so. It’s great to Albert Einstein’s marginalia. Max works enjoy a debut novel as as an insurance-claims adjuster. As much as I enjoyed Luster. they’re bussed through the city to a clinic, It follows Edie, a Black after the plane crash, Jim says to Tessa, woman in her early 20s, ‘All we need is rain and we’d know we as she becomes involved with Eric, a were characters in a movie.’ ‘A thrilling married White man in his mid-40s who By now all of this is well-covered is exploring an open relationship. tale of politics ground, but it’s not really DeLillo’s fault Edie wants to be an artist but is working that his previous novels’ proclamations a low-paid job in publishing. Edie loses and intrigue’ of everyday terrorism and a deep-seeded the job, but not before Raven Leilani paranoia came true. By the end of The MALCOLM TURNBULL offers a few scorching truths about the Silence, the characters all sit in a freezing industry. Everyone is lonely in this book, cold apartment with no electricity, and Edie’s name is uttered so infrequently gathered reverently around a large blank it becomes a challenge to remember. She TV-screen that will probably never come is untethered; both her parents have died, back on, each talking in short monologues and we catch glimpses of her past as her without really listening to any of the others. present situation veers from precarious It gives a fitting end to a disaster novel in to desperate. She is thrown into the gig which no-one heeded any warnings. economy, loses the room she rents in Chris Somerville is from Readings online Bushwick, and winds up moving into Eric’s New Jersey home after a chance encounter Unquiet with his wife. Rebecca becomes a sort of Linn Ullmann & frenemy to Edie: a frosty host who accepts Thilo Reinhard (trans.) that Edie’s presence may benefit Rebecca Hamish Hamilton. PB. $32.99 and Eric’s adopted Black daughter Akila, a ‘Inspiring and insightful, this book Available 17 November smart and geeky tween who is isolated in blends familiar and new voices the ’burbs. I must admit that I was into a powerful call to action.’ initially drawn to this There’s something really exciting book thanks to a number of about the way Leilani writes. The book – Julia Gillard glowing endorsements from is brimming with sharp points and wit. writers I admire – Rachel Clever, choppy sentences throw us around. Cusk, Ali Smith, Deborah It’s like being pushed in a supermarket Levy among them – and a trolley by a drunk friend: a little risky, a lot striking photograph on its jacket by of fun. Eric is a library archivist who owns a Bumblebee Unlimited record and wears an ‘An engrossing social history Wolfgang Tillmans, before remembering – a bloody beauty – from one that I read and loved one of Ullmann’s ironic ‘disco sucks’ t-shirt. Edie and Eric’s earlier novels, A Blessed Child, many years first date is at a theme park, and another of our leading experts on ago. And I’m so glad I stepped into the memorable segment is at Comic-Con. Pop Australian English.’ world of this intriguing and emotionally culture provides vivid scenery, and the rich novel in which the youngest of a differences in age and race are visible at – Frank Bongiorno famous filmmaker’s nine children, born to all times in this book, regardless of what five different women, connects with her is being said, or not said aloud. This is a father in the final stages of his life on the funny, juicy and bleak novel about work, remote island location of Fårö in Sweden – sex, survival and being young. the place where she spent one month a Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda ‘Cunningham is communicating year during an unusual childhood. That this city’s soul as though it’s a this scenario is part of the author’s life A Gentleman in Moscow person, full of contradictions but story makes this work of autofiction even (Special Edition) with an essential character.’ more compelling. Amor Towles In a fragmentary style that I found Hutchinson. HB. $24.99 – Waleed Aly almost impossible to stop reading, Available now including at times the transcripts of On 21 June 1922, Count recorded conversations between the father Alexander Rostov is and daughter, Ullmann reveals a number escorted through the of truths about the relationships between elegant revolving doors of parents and children, as they change the Hotel Metropol. ‘A defining account of those who across time, always tussling between Deemed an unrepentant served in the Vietnam War and closeness and distance, attachment and aristocrat by a Bolshevik their challenges in its aftermath.’ detachment, and between personal desires tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to and aspirations and the responsibilities house arrest indefinitely. But instead of – General Sir Peter Cosgrove of care. In its reflective moments, the his usual suite, he must now live in an narrator realises she is making something attic room while Russia undergoes of a long goodbye to her beloved father, as decades of tumultuous upheaval. Can a AN IMPRINT OF UNSW PRESS this talented and erudite man, who lived life without luxury be the richest of all? 8 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 FICTION

Bestiary TV restaurant competition. But in doing timeliness into questions of masculinity K-Ming Chang so, she launches both families out of the and violence, regret and regeneration, Harvill Secker. PB. $29.99 frying pan and directly into the fire. control and desire; and shines a fierce, Available now unwavering light onto men and women, One evening, Mother tells Missionaries and into the uncharted gulfs that lie Daughter a story about a Phil Klay between them. tiger spirit who lived in a Canongate. PB. $29.99 woman’s body. Soon Available 1 December Machine afterwards, Daughter wakes Neither Mason, a US Special Susan Steinberg with a tiger tail. As more Forces medic, nor Lisette, a Pushkin. HB. $27.99 mysterious events follow, foreign correspondent, has Available now Daughter is falling for Ben, a girl who is emerged from America’s A local girl drowns one more bird than tiger and has mysterious long wars in Iraq and night in summer on the stories of her own. Tracing one family’s Afghanistan unscathed. Yet, shore. As a seething guilt history, Bestiary is a lyrical and for them, war still exerts a settles over the teenagers of electrifying novel of migration, queer terrible draw – the noble calling, the this fractured town, another lineages and girlhood. camaraderie, the life-and-death stakes. girl narrates the experience Where else in the world can such a person of their hard-partying, Against the Loveless World go? Missionaries is a suspenseful novel fiercely divided collective. Her parents’ Susan Abulhawa infused with a rare wisdom about the marriage violently collapsing, her brother Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 human heart. spiralling into increasing destructiveness, Available now she sinks further back into the events Nahr has been confined to The Autumn of the Ace leading up to this tragedy and the deeper fault lines in the community. the Cube: nine square Louis de Bernières metres of grey cinderblock. A Long View From the Left is a Harvill Secker. PB. $32.99 Journalists visit her, but Mr Wilder and Me memoir by Max Odgen, a longtime Available now Nahr is not going to share Jonathan Coe Australian Communist Party member, Daniel Pitt was an RAF her story with them. The Viking. PB. $32.99 Unionist and, from 1985, ALP fighter in the First World world outside calls Nahr a Available 17 November member. The memoir traces Max’s 60 War and an espionage terrorist; some might call her a A young woman named years as a union and political activist, agent in the Second. Now revolutionary. Nahr sits in the Cube, and Calista meets the famed as well as the changing social and the conflicts he faces are tells her story to someone who isn’t there; Hollywood director Billy cultural values of Australian society closer to home: his someone who may not even be alive, but Wilder in the sweltering over this time, and reveals many rich marriage is fracturing, his who is her only reason to get out. summer of 1976. She knows lessons that will be invaluable to our relationship with his son is failing, and he nothing about him or his current and future generations of must face his brother Archie’s death. This work, but this chance leaders. A Promise of Ankles story illuminates both the effect of two encounter will change her life for good. In Alexander McCall Smith World Wars on a generation and how A Long View From the Left is not this new novel, Jonathan Coe turns his Polygon. HB. $34.99 familial love can overcome great obstacles. only a terrific record of recent cultural Available 23 November gaze to the nature of time, fame, family and political ideas within the broad We are back in Scotland and nostalgia. Dark Tides left of Australia, but an intriguing and Street, where Bertie is now Philippa Gregory valuable contribution to our social living with his father and Olga S&S. PB. $32.99 history. younger brother, his mother Bernhard Schlink Available 24 November having gone off to W&N. PB. Was $32.99 Midsummer’s Eve, 1670. A ‘Max introduced me to the ideas and Aberdeen. The mysterious $29.99 wealthy man waits outside a potential of radically different forms Italian nun who arrived in Available now of work organisation and industrial poor London warehouse to Scotland with Antonia, one of the Olga is an orphan raised by democracy ... his story gives great meet with Alinor, the residents of Scotland Street, is becoming her grandmother in a insight into an important part of our woman he failed 21 years more enigmatic. She is now on the board Prussian village around the Australian working class and union before. He has everything to of the Scottish National Gallery and is turn of the 20th century. history.’ offer, wealth, land, status, planning a rehang of the nation’s Smart and precocious, she and he believes she has the only thing he Michele O’Neil, ACTU President paintings. Will she get away with that? fights against the prejudices cannot buy: his son and heir. The of the time to find her place warehouse is failing, but will Alinor and Normal People: The Scripts in a world that sees her as second-best. her family sell out to Sir James? This is the Sally Rooney, Alice Birch When she falls in love with Herbert, a local second book in the Fairmile series and Mark O’Rowe aristocrat obsessed with the era’s dreams of Faber. HB. $39.99 power, glory and greatness, her life is Available 1 December Long Live the Post Horn! irremediably changed. Connell and Marianne grow Vigdis Hjorth up in the same small town Verso. PB. $29.99 The Last Good Man in Ireland, and this is all Available 1 December Thomas McMullan they have in common. But Ellinor, a 35-year-old media Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 when the two strike up a consultant, has not been Available 1 December conversation, something feeling herself; she’s not Duncan Peck has travelled life-changing begins. With been feeling much at all alone to Dartmoor in search an introduction by director Lenny lately. But when her of his cousin. He has come Abrahamson and featuring iconic images colleague vanishes from the city, where the fires from the show, Normal People: The Scripts overnight, an unusual new are always burning. In his contains the complete screenplays of the task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes cousin’s village, Peck causes acclaimed television drama based on Sally to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers a stir. He has not been there Rooney’s bestselling novel. Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange long before the village wakes up to the and transformative six months. This is an most unspeakable accusation; sentences ‘This book is going to touch your The Chicken Sisters existential scream of a novel about daubed on the wall that will detonate the loneliness (and the postal service!). heart, I couldn’t put it down. Highly KJ Dell’Antonia darkest of secrets. recommended!!!’ Two Roads. PB. $29.99 D. Bloom, Sydney Available 8 December To Be a Man Xstabeth In Merinac, Kansas, the Nicole Krauss David Keenan ‘This really touched me, very Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 White Rabbit. PB. $32.99 powerful. I was totally useless Moore and Pogociello Available now afterwards, trying to digest it. families have spent a Available now Possible one of the best “book club” century feuding over fried Beautiful, taut and dark, In St Petersburg, Aneliya books I’ve read yet.’ chicken. No one feels the spinning across the world, is torn between the love of Janet, Perth impact more than 35-year- from Switzerland, Japan her father and her father’s old widow Amanda Moore, and New York to Tel Aviv, best friend. When an who scandalously married Frank Los Angeles and South angelic presence named America, To Be a Man www.badapplepress.com.au Pogociello. Tired of being caught in the Xstabeth enters their lives, middle, Amanda sends an SOS to a reality delves with originality and Aneliya and her father’s FICTION November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 9 world is transformed. Moving from Russia Collisions: Fictions of the Future First Nations people is more relevant to Scotland, Xstabeth tackles the Leah Jing McIntosh, Hassan Abul, today than ever before. Razor-sharp and metaphysics of golf, the mindset of classic Adalya Nash Hussein & Cher Tan incisive, while simultaneously haunting Russian novels and the power of art and (eds) and beautiful, Oodgeroo’s poems will music to rewire reality. Pantera Press. PB. $29.99 enchant both young and old alike. Available now Shelter in Place A dinner party is held amid Dearly David Leavitt an impending climate Margaret Atwood Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 catastrophe. A father leases Chatto & Windus. HB. $27.99 Available 1 December his backyard to a cemetery. Available 17 November It is the Saturday after Activists plan an attack on Before she became one of More than the 2016 presidential ASIO drones in a shock-jock the world’s most important election, and in a plush run government. A voyeur and loved novelists, 100 recipes weekend house in finds herself caught in time. Featuring Margaret Atwood was a Connecticut, a group of both emerging and established writers of poet. Dearly brings together from liberal and like-minded colour, this collection of stories from the minutely perfect New Yorkers has gathered inaugural Liminal Fiction Prize longlist descriptions of the natural Australia’s to recover from what they consider the showcases some of the best work that world to startlingly witty encounters with greatest political catastrophe of their Australian literature has to offer. aliens, from pressing political issues to best-loved lives. Shelter in Place is a slyly comic myth and legend. This is a pure Atwood chefs. novel about house and home and the maar bidi: next generation delight, and long-term readers and new ways in which political upheaval can black writing fans alike will treasure its insight, undermine even the most seemingly Elfie Shiosaki & Linda Martin (eds) empathy and humour. impregnable foundations. Magabala. PB. $24.99 Available now Mother for Dinner In this beautifully crafted, Shalom Auslander evocative and poignant Picador. PB. $32.99 anthology of prose and Available now fiction, a diverse group of The Best As Seventh Seltzer’s young Black writers are Australian overbearing, narcissistic encouraged to find mother lies on her strength in their voices Fiction of 2020 deathbed, she whispers two and what is important to them. maar bidi words in his ear: ‘Eat me.’ is a journey into what it is to be young, a This is not unusual, as the person of colour and a minority in 1 A Couple of Things Before the Seltzers are Cannibal- divergent and conflicting worlds. End by Sean O’Beirne Americans, a once proud and thriving 2 Lucky’s by Andrew Pippos ethnic group. But for Seventh, it raises some serious questions, both practical Poetry 3 A Room Made of Leaves and emotional. Irreverent and funny, by Kate Grenville Mother for Dinner is an exploration of the Arelhekenhe Angkentye: 4 The Dictionary of Lost Words things we owe our families, and the by Pip Williams things we owe ourselves. Women’s Talk – Poems of Lyapirtneme from Arrernte 5 The Mother Fault by Kate Women in Central Australia Mildenhall You Exist Too Much Ptilotus Press Zaina Arafat Ptilotus Press. PB. $24.99 6 A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Dialogue. PB. $32.99 Available now Thing by Jessie Tu From prison Available 24 November This anthology of poems was 7 Kokomo by Victoria Hannan Told in vignettes that written by 21 Arrernte to premiership flash between the US and women from the heart of the 8 The Animals in That Country the Middle East, Zaina continent in Mparntwe Alice by Laura Jean McKay glory, this Arafat’s powerful debut Springs around the theme of is Marlion novel traces her the NT Writers Festival 2019: 9 The Tolstoy Estate protagonist’s progress Lyapirtneme, the Arrernte by Steven Conte from blushing teen to Pickett’s word for ‘growing back’ or ‘returning’. It is an 10 Song of the Crocodile creative and confused adulthood. important contribution to the growing by Nardi Simpson extraordinary Opening up the fantasies and desires of national landscape of First Nations literature. one young woman caught between story cultural, religious and sexual identities, The Weave You Exist Too Much is a captivating story John Kinsella & Thurston Moore charting two intense longings – for love, UWAP. PB. $19.99 and a place to call home. Available now The Best This volume of poetry is a International Anthologies collaboration between beloved author John Fiction of 2020 Kinsella and rock icon The Decameron Project: Thurston Moore. The Weave 29 New Stories from the is the second volume of 1 The Vanishing Half Pandemic poetry from these artists, by Brit Bennett and gives the reader insight into these two New York Times Magazine 2 Weather by Jenny Offill Scribner. HB. $35.00 formidable artists’ view of the world around Available 18 November us. These poems pose questions, and hint 3 A Burning by Megha Majumdar In 1353, Giovanni towards answers, all in electrifying verse. 4 Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell Boccaccio wrote The Decameron: 100 tales told My People 5 Indelicacy by Amina Cain by a group of people Oodgeroo Noonuccal 6 Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan waiting out the gruesome Wiley. PB. $24.95 Black Death. In March of Available 13 November 7 Piranesi by Susanna Clarke 2020, the editors of The My People is a compilation New York Times created The Decameron of the poetry of Oodgeroo, 8 Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart Project, an anthology that gathers of the tribe Noonuccal, 9 What Are You Going Through stories written during our current Custodian of the land by Sigrid Nunez pandemic. These 29 new stories are a Minjerribah. This collection tribute to a time and place unlike any of captivating poetry 10 How Much of These Hills is Gold other in our lifetimes. detailing the struggle of by C Pam Zhang 10 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 CRIME

what the hell happened – and try not to may have heard the screams separately get herself killed in the process. from various Melbourne suburbs, Dead Write though.) In The Searcher, American with Fiona Hardy Love and Theft ex-detective Cal Hooper has retired to a Stan Parish rural Irish village to partake in nothing Faber. PB. $29.99 more taxing than doing up a rundown Frank Swann is not cut out for any kind of crime Available 1 December cottage. Cal finds himself in the company BOOK OF THE legwork anymore. He’s tired, he’s sick all the time, and of a local boy whose brother is missing, nobody can figure out what it is that’s wrong with him. All When two single parents MONTH meet at a party in New but nobody in Ardnakelty seems to care. he knows is he can’t get halfway through a conversation Cal can’t help but investigate, and soon Crime without feeling nauseous, but people are still knocking on Jersey, it seems too good to be true. And since this finds himself realising the townsfolk, his door all the time, asking for help. First, there’s the who had initially seemed so lovely and brothel owner needing help with a suspicious client; then is a crime book, it obviously is: while Diane close-knit, are increasingly closed off to there’s his old friend, the officer of the US navy, off the outsiders. There’s mud, blood and death aircraft carrier docked in the port; not to mention the calls runs a successful catering company, Alex is a on these farms – and Cal will, as always, Frank’s been ignoring about thefts from a goldmine. Frank’s do anything to solve a problem. never been good at saying no – or avoiding problems – and professional thief. The two hit it off, and when one of the brothel’s sex workers is killed, apparently everything is going wonderfully, until at the hands of a sailor, he finds himself as the intermediary Alex’s new family is threatened. Only one, True Crime between local police and the navy’s investigators, each at last, impossible heist can save them, but the other’s throat to catch the culprit first. as Alex embarks on the job, he realises Diane is not quite the person he thought We Keep the Dead Close she was – and that they have met before. A Frank Swann is not cut out for any kind Becky Cooper high-octane, read-while-driving-a-fast- William Heinemann. PB. $35.00 of crime legwork anymore. He’s tired, he’s car* love story of a thriller. Available 1 December Shore Leave sick all the time, and nobody can figure *Please do not take this advice. In 1969, Harvard David Whish-Wilson out what it is that’s wrong with him. anthropology student Fremantle. PB. $32.99 Fortune Favours the Dead Jane Britton was Available now As the Fremantle Doctor blows its cool sea breeze across Stephen Spotswood murdered in her town, soothing the summer heat and unearthing the Wildfire. PB. $32.99 apartment. Some 40 years connections between the good, the bad, and the in-between of the city, Swann makes Available now later, student Becky his rounds, gets people to talk, knows when to back off, finds ways around closed crime In barely postwar New Cooper hears the first scenes. Lurking at the edges of these crimes are an escaped convict at the end of his York, Willowjean Parker whispers of the story: a sentence, a neo-Nazi looking to prove himself, and a bent cop intent on taking Swann has picked up a guard job student killed by the professor with down. In the middle of it all is Swann himself: a man you want onside when shit gets to fill time around her whom she was having an affair. Over the real, and with David Whish-Wilson, it relentlessly, thrillingly, always will. everywoman position at next 10 years, Cooper finds she can’t let Hart and Halloway’s the case go – and begins to investigate the Traveling Circus and then-unsolved crime. Avoid looking the Sideshow. When she case up online – it has been solved in the Take Me Apart witnesses private investigator Lillian meantime – and instead give yourself The Best Sara Sligar Pentecost breaking in, instead of coshing over to Cooper’s all-in search for the Text. PB. $32.99 her on the head, she follows along – and truth. A search that lays bare not only the Crime Fiction Available 1 December soon finds herself with a new career as crime itself, but the culture that of 2020 After sexual harassment assistant to New York’s most famous and surrounded it: the grim idea that so many at her New York irascible detective. This is a hard-boiled, people could have been suspects, what workplace leaves classic mystery, with danger, blood, male academics could get away with (and 1 The Good Turn journalist Kate Aiken in revenge, wealthy widows, and of course sometimes still do), the misogyny of by Dervla McTiernan need of a new job and a the classic deadly séance. institutions like Harvard, and the power new life, she heads to dynamics of late ’60s counterculture. In 2 The Thursday Murder Club California for an Death in the Family doing so, we learn as much about Cooper by Richard Osman archiving gig, looking Tessa Wegert herself, as well as Jane Britton, the woman lost in all the rumour. 3 The Survivors after famous photographer Miranda Penguin. PB. $32.99 by Jane Harper Brand’s catalogue of work. Miranda killed Available now herself at the peak of her career, and now, Senior Investigator Also out this month 4 The Devil and the Dark Water after the death of her husband, their son Shana Merchant chose to There are a LOT of excellent books by Stuart Turton Theo wants to archive her office. What work in upstate New out this month, so brace yourselves: Kate finds in Miranda’s written effects, Get your paws on Garry Disher’s third 5 The Safe Place York’s Thousand Islands by Anna Downes however, reveals that what everybody precisely because it isn’t Constable Paul Hirschhausen book, knows about Miranda’s death may not be dangerous. But then a Consolation (Text, PB, was $32.99, special true, and something much more man goes missing on a price $26.99); John Banville’s non- disturbing may have happened. With private island, leaving Benjamin-Black-pseudonym crime debut chapters that alternate between Miranda’s his side of the bed covered in blood. with Snow (Faber, PB, $29.99); Jessica letters and diary entries and Kate piecing When Shana and her colleague Tim arrive Fellowes’s new Mitford household book Death in Daylesford them together years later, this is a slow- on the island – along with a storm that The Mitford Trial (Sphere, PB, $32.99); Kerry Greenwood burn suspense novel to thrill. will trap them there – they find a group of Jack Heath’s third Timothy Blake A&U. PB. $29.99 people as callous and suspicious as they cracker Hideout (A&U, PB, $29.99); the Available now White Throat come. Did the missing Jasper die? Is his third Atlee Pine book by David Baldacci, Phryne Fisher is back – Sarah Thornton killer still there? And can Shana – who Daylight (Macmillan, PB, $32.99); Janet much to the delight of Text. PB. $32.99 barely escaped with her life from the Evanovich’s 27th (!) Stephanie Plum her many adoring fans – Available 1 December serial killer who abducted her a year ago book, Fortune and Glory (Headline, PB, and has found herself Fresh from Thornton’s – trust anyone, including herself? Turn $29.99); Michael Connelly has a new with a diverting excellent debut Lapse, on some rain sounds, put on your Mickey Haller book with The Law of invitation to travel to Clementine Jones is thinking cap and lose yourself in this Innocence (A&U, PB, $32.99); Anne Holt’s Daylesford. There, house-sitting on the locked-island mystery. second Selma Falck book A Necessary Captain Herbert Spencer Great Sandy Strait, trying Death (Atlantic Books, PB, $29.99); has started a retreat for soldiers suffering her hardest to leave her The Searcher Lee Child’s one billionth Jack Reacher from shell shock, where calm rest is of past behind her. Trouble Tana French book The Sentinel (Bantam, PB, $32.99), greatest importance and the food is is, she can’t sit still for Viking. PB. $32.99 Sebastian Fitzek’s sinister-sounding The vegetarian (all the residents have seen very long, and finds herself involved in a Available 17 November Package (Head of Zeus, PB, $29.99) and enough blood for a lifetime). Of course, campaign to stop developers encroaching With many of Readings’ probably way more … phew! once Phryne is involved, so too are on the habitat of endangered turtles. marketing team working murder, disappearances and many When a dead body is found at the bottom from home, there was luxurious shenanigans. Meanwhile, of a quarry, Clem is catapulted back into unfortunately no back in Melbourne, a body is found in shock, no less because police say it is collective holler of the harbour – and Phryne’s horrified suicide, and Clem thinks it was murder. delight when they non-nuclear family is determined to And when nobody else seems interested realised there was a new solve the crime. in helping, it’s up to her to figure out Tana French out. (You NONFICTION November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 11

of sexual abuse against George Pell and K’gari (Fraser Island). She shines a critical others within the Catholic Church. In her light on the little-known colonial-era Nonfiction work as a journalist covering the trials, she practice of paying Indigenous workers in had become closely acquainted with several opium and the ‘solution’ of then of the victims and she was called as a witness displacing them to K’gari. Full-colour herself. Consequently, she suffered firsthand images of Foley’s artwork add further Would these historic letters between the Queen and the the brutality that is often experienced by impact to this important examination of BOOK OF THE governor-general about Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam complainants in the adversarial judicial Australian history. government be recognised as Commonwealth records and MONTH system. Despite not being the victim in this opened for public access? Could we now, forty-three years later, case, despite legal training and years of being What the Colonists Never Australian finally know that history? a court reporter who knew the system inside Knew: A History of Aboriginal Studies On one of my first days at Readings, a phone customer and out, Milligan found being cross- Sydney tasked me with grabbing a copy of a Gough Whitlam examined by the defence ‘extremely Dennis Foley & Peter Read biography from our bargain table. After tracking down the traumatic’ and one of the worst experiences National Museum of Australia. PB. $35 tome and returning triumphantly to my phone call, I was of her life. Milligan is clear, however, that this Available now soon sharply reprimanded after mispronouncing the prime is not her story, and that she wrote the book What the Colonists Never minister’s name. I had been in Australia for a month at that for all the victims who do not have anything Knew paints a vivid picture point. Around the same time I was mangling Whitlam’s name, like the privilege she enjoys. of what it was like to grow up Jenny Hocking commenced action in the Federal Court of Milligan also details the cases of Saxon Aboriginal in Sydney, Australia seeking the release of the Palace Letters. Thus began Mullins, who was raped in an alleyway alongside the colonists, from Hocking’s four-year legal battle to force the National Archives behind a Sydney nightclub in 2013, and 1788 to the present. Dennis of Australia to release the correspondence between Governor- Paris Street, a former student at St Kevin’s Foley, the grandson of the General Kerr and Buckingham Palace in the lead up to Kerr’s College who in 2014 (at 14 years of age) last practising matriarch of the Gai-mariagal dismissal of Whitlam. It wasn’t until May of this year that the was groomed by his athletics coach. Both clan, was immersed in cultural knowledge High Court of Australia ruled in her favour and uncovered a victims experienced extreme trauma from an early age. Through his eyes we see a The Palace piece of Australia’s political history. The Palace Letters tracks during the legal process, and both came Sydney resonating with ceremonial sites, Letters the course of this legal action and reveals the extent of the up against impassable walls of power and ancestral activity, song-lines, and shared Jenny Hocking collusion and the deception behind the dismissal. Just how privilege. Another fantastic Australian memories of what has been lost. Scribe. PB. $32.99 much did Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles know in the book on this subject is Bri Lee’s Eggshell Available now lead up to the dismissal? Skull, which details the author’s own Pride in Defence A courtroom drama with political and historical intrigue, harrowing experience as a complainant in Noah Riseman & it reads like John Grisham crossed with Dan Brown – but more a sexual abuse case. Both Lee and Milligan Shirleene Robinson exciting than either because it all actually happened. This is a fantastic read and an important have legal training (Lee is a qualified lawyer MUP. PB. $34.99 part of Australian history. I finished this book with an intense amount of admiration and and Milligan studied law and was a court Available now gratitude for Jenny Hocking and historians like her who work in the interests of the public and reporter), both are articulate and have Since the Second World posterity. Former chief justice Sir Anthony Mason may owe history nothing, but history owes found the energy to fight for change despite War the Australian military Jenny Hocking a great deal. I promise to never mispronounce Gough again. their own trauma. Unfortunately, most do has shifted from Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton not enjoy this rare freedom; the system is persecuting, hunting and broken and books like these are vital to the discharging LGBTI cause of reformation. members to embracing Kara Nicholson is from Readings online by Yotam Ottolenghi & them. LGBTI people have The Best Ixta Belfrage served in the Australian military since its What Is to Be Done very beginnings, yet Australian Defence Nonfiction 4 To Asia, with Love Barry Jones Force histories have been very slow to of 2020 by Hetty McKinnon Scribe. PB. Was $35 recognise this. Drawing on over 140 $29.99 interviews and previously unexamined 5 Always Add Lemon by Danielle Alvarez Available now documents, Pride in Defence confronts 1 Humankind by Rutger Bregman When Sleepers, Wake! was this history. released in 1982, it became 2 The Details influential around the 2020: The Year That by Tegan Bennett Daylight world. Now, its author, the Changed Us 3 The Yellow House Anthologies polymath and former Molly Glassey by Sarah M Broom politician Barry Jones, turns T&H. PB. $21.99 his attention to what has Available now Animals Make Us Human 4 Lowitja by Stuart Rintoul and happened since, and to the problems faced The year 2020 began with Lowitja O’Donoghue Leah Kaminsky & Meg Keneally (eds) by increasingly fragile democracies. What fire-fuelled orange skies Penguin. PB. $29.99 Is to Be Done is a long-awaited work from 5 One Day I’ll Remember This over Australia, before Available now Jones on the challenges of the 21st century by Helen Garner nations prepared for A response to the devastating and what must be done to meet them. COVID-19 to hit their 6 Fire Country 2019–20 bushfires, Animals shores. What ensued was by Victor Steffensen Make Us Human both Back Roads crisis: a pandemic, political celebrates Australia’s unique Heather Ewart upheaval, an international human rights 7 A Life on Our Planet wildlife and highlights its HarperCollins. HB. $39.99 movement, global recession and localised by David Attenborough vulnerability. Through words Available now emergencies dwarfed by world turmoil. and images, writers, photographers and 8 Blueberries by Ellena Savage During the five years it has These 50 essays from leading thinkers researchers reflect on their connection with been appearing on our and contributors to The Conversation 9 Caste by Isabel Wilkerson animals and nature. By highlighting the screens, ABC TV’s Back examine what will be one of the most beauty and fragility of our unique fauna, 10 The Doctor Who Fooled the Roads has taken us across significant years in the 21st century. writers, renowned researchers and World by Brian Deer Australia, through scorched acclaimed photographers encourage readers deserts, along sapphire The Long Shadow to consider it in a new light. coasts, and over rolling plains. This book Peter Yule captures some of those places. Full of photos NewSouth. HB. $49.99 Australian Studies that show us the spirit of outback life, this Available now The Best book is a tribute to the places that exist along The medical and the back roads of our extraordinary country. psychological legacies of Cookbooks Witness the Vietnam War are major Louise Milligan Biting the Clouds and continuing issues for of 2020 Hachette. PB. $34.99 Fiona Foley veterans, their families and Available now UQP. PB. $34.99 the community, yet the Louise Milligan won Available now facts about the impact of 1 A Year of Simple Family Food the Walkley Book Agent Orange, post-traumatic stress by Julia Busuttil Nishimura In this groundbreaking Award for her first book, work of Indigenous disorder and other long-term health 2 Beatrix Bakes Cardinal, which forensically scholarship, Fiona Foley aspects are little understood. The Long by Natalie Paull and compassionately detailed addresses a great injustice Shadow sets the record straight about the the stories of several of the from the perspective of her health of Vietnam veterans and reveals a 3 Ottolenghi FLAVOUR victims who made allegations people, the Badtjala of more detailed and complex picture. 12 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 NONFICTION

Watsonia Starting with 90 minutes per week, Tate Lioness Love Marriage in Kabul Don Watson joins more and more of Rosen’s groups over Sue Brierley Sanaz Fotouhi Black Inc. HB. Was $49.99 the years until she is participating in 280 Penguin. PB. $34.99 Gazebo. PB. $24.99 $39.99 minutes of group therapy a week. (I can’t Available now Available now Available 17 November imagine being able to commit that much Sue Brierley grew up in In 2006, Sanaz Fotouhi, a time to therapy as a bookseller, much less as Watsonia gathers the fruits of geographic and emotional young woman in her 20s, a high-powered attorney working at one of a writing life. It displays the isolation. When she left travels to Afghanistan with the most prestigious law firms in the US.) many sides of Don Watson: home and married, she was her partner to make a film. historian, speechwriter, Tate is a bit of a controversial figure. able to sever the cycle of Seven years later, their social critic, biographer and She came under fire in 2019 for an opinion despair, and made the feature documentary won lover of nature and sports. piece in the Washington Post about her decision to adopt two awards and the hearts of Replete with wit, wisdom and refusal to stop writing about her daughter children in need – Saroo and Mantosh. audiences around the world. Love Marriage diverse pleasures, this collection includes a after being explicitly asked by her child not Moving and inspiring, Lioness explores the in Kabul is the behind-the-scenes account wide-ranging introduction by the author and to. This compulsion to write honestly and myth of motherhood, how families are of the seemingly impossible project of several previously unpublished pieces. No openly is evident in her debut book. It is formed in many ways, and how love and making a film in Afghanistan, told with other writer has journeyed further into the an intensely personal, unflinching account perseverance can bring us together. compassion and lucidity. soul of Australia and returned to tell the tale. of her life in therapy – warts and all. Tate transports her readers right into the group From a Mountain in Tibet Beyond the Sky with her and you feel like you’re sitting Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche James Vicars Biography in that circle with Dr. Rosen and a varied Penguin. HB. $35.00 Black Inc. PB. $34.95 cast of characters. The reading experience Available 17 November Available now is both enlightening and frustrating. I Lama Yeshe grew up in a One Day I’ll Remember This: constantly alternated between wanting to In Australia in the mid 1920s, quiet village, where the Diaries 1987–1995 give the vulnerable Tate a hug and wanting flight was still new, dangerous rhythm of life was anchored Helen Garner to physically shake some sense into her. and glamorous – and aviators by the pastoral cycles. The were all men. That was until a Text. HB. $29.99 In spite of my frequent frustrations with arrival of the Chinese petite and quietly-spoken Available now Tate as a figure in this narrative, there is government in 1959 changed 49-year-old mother of three, This is the second no denying that this is a welcome addition everything. In the wake of Millicent Bryant, took her volume of Helen to the growing number of books aimed at the deadly Tibetan Uprising, he escaped to first flight. Working from Bryant’s own Garner’s Diaries to be destigmatising therapy. I recommend it for India to start over as a refugee. Now in his rediscovered letters and writings as well as published and covers the fans of Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should 70s and a leading monk, Lama Yeshe casts newspapers and other historical sources, this years 1987–1995. The Helen Talk to Someone, and Gillian Straker and a hopeful look back at his momentous life. innovative biographical work reveals a in these entries is more Jacqui Winship’s The Talking Cure. mature, more established, pioneer of the sky and beyond. Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton and perhaps not as happy. Professionally, Gary Ablett: An Autobiography Gary Ablett things are going well. She’s working on her Conversations with RBG Searching for Charlotte Hardie Grant. HB. Was $49.99 first film script, writing for different Jeffrey Rosen Kate Forsyth & Belinda Murrell $39.99 magazines and journals, trying film St Martins. PB. $32.99 NLA. PB. $34.95 Available now criticism, being invited to overseas Available 30 November Available now Drafted in 2001, Gary’s festivals, and serving on the selection panel This remarkable book The extraordinary, long- incredible career has for the Literature Board. Her burgeoning presents a unique portrait buried life story of Australia’s spanned two great clubs, reputation comes with its little perks; when of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, earliest published children’s two Grand Finals and two she orders a new hot water service, it drawing on more than 20 author, Searching for Brownlow medals among arrives the next day. The dispatcher is a fan. years of conversations with Charlotte combines elements many other accolades. In In her private life there are flashes of Jeffrey Rosen, starting in of biography, recreation of his book, Gary takes happiness but an underlying sadness. She the 1990s and continuing history and rediscovery of readers through the trials and triumphs of has embarked on a relationship with V, through the Trump era. Rosen, a veteran family history. Here, Forsyth and Murrell his life. From childhood to his zenith as a another writer, but V is married, and she legal journalist, shares with us the justice’s tell Charlotte’s story along with that of their player, Gary’s story will be a book to read snatches time and affection where she can. observations on a variety of topics, and her own journey to discover her. It is a and re-read about a player without equal. Eventually they marry, but when she tells intellect, compassion, sense of humour, sometimes confronting but ultimately her parents that she’s getting married again, and humanity shine through. they don’t react. There is, too, a yearning for heartwarming journey into the story of a One Life some more stability for someone whose life family with writing in its blood. Megan Rapinoe No Time Like the Future has been so peripatetic; she buys her first Penguin. PB. $34.99 house and a block of land in the bush. The Best of Me Available 17 November Michael J Fox Headline. PB. $32.99 She writes about her writing, about David Sedaris Megan Rapinoe is one of Available 17 November other writers – Elizabeth Jolley, Alice Little, Brown. PB. $32.99 the world’s most talented In No Time Like the Future, Munro, George Steiner, Proust, and Available now athletes. But beyond her Michael J. Fox shares Chekhov. At times she takes pleasure in For more than 25 years, success on the soccer field, personal stories and her work, but then qualifies it. There is a David Sedaris has been Rapinoe has become an observations about illness growing sense of confidence and we see carving out a unique icon and ally to millions. In and health, ageing, the the move from fiction to nonfiction as she literary space, virtually recent years, she’s become strength of family and starts work on her landmark book, The creating his own genre. one of the faces of the equal pay friends, and how our First Stone. One Day I’ll Remember This is His stories open our eyes movement and her activism for LGBTQIA+ perceptions about time affect the way we a delightful book, longing to be dipped in to what is absurd and rights has earned her global support. In approach mortality. Thoughtful and moving, and out of, and, through it, the reader gets a moving about our daily existence. And it One Life, Rapinoe embarks on a thoughtful but with Fox’s trademark sense of humour, picture of this remarkable woman. is almost impossible to read without and unapologetic discussion of social his book provides a vehicle for reflection Mark Rubbo is the managing director of laughing. Now, for the first time collected justice and politics. about our lives, our loves, and our losses. Readings in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. A Promised Land Group Barack Obama How We Live Now Christie Tate Beyond Possible Viking. HB. Was $65 Bill Hayes S&S. PB. $32.99 Nimsdai Purja $54.99 Bloomsbury. HB. $32.99 Available now Hodder & Stoughton. PB. $32.99 Available 18 November Available 1 December Christie Tate, by most Available now In the stirring, highly A bookshop where readers objective measures, is Fourteen mountains on anticipated first volume of shout their orders from the a success. She’s graduating Earth tower over 8,000 his presidential memoirs, street. A neighbourhood top of her class from law metres above sea level, an Barack Obama tells the restaurant turned takeaway school and is well on her way altitude labelled ‘the death story of his improbable place. These scenes, among to a high-powered career. zone’, where the brain and odyssey from young man many others, became the But underneath her veneer body withers and dies. searching for his identity to new normal as the world of control lies an unsettled body and mind. Nimsdai Purja scaled them leader of the free world. With strikingly began to face the COVID-19 pandemic. In Struggling with a history of bulimia, suicidal all in under seven months. This is his personal detail, he describes both his How We Live Now, author and photographer ideation and anxiety surrounding her account of life in the death zone, and how political education and the landmark Bill Hayes offers an ode to our shared inability to maintain a healthy romantic his time in the Gurkhas and Special Boat moments of the first term of his historic humanity, capturing in real time this relationship, Tate begins group therapy with Service prepared him for a record- presidency – a time of dramatic strange new world we’re now in with his the unconventional Dr. Jonathan Rosen. breaking conquest. transformation and turmoil. signature insight and grace. NONFICTION November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 13

Solitude & Company discover what it takes to stay in the room Silvana Paternostro & Edith together. Wry, vulnerable and prescient, Grossman (trans.) this is Claudia Rankine’s most intimate Seven Stories Press. PB. $32.99 work, less interested in being right than in Available now being true, and being together. In this irreverent and hopeful biography, Silvana On Connection Paternostro recounts the Kae Tempest life of a boy from the Faber. PB. $14.99 provinces who decided to Available 17 November become a writer. Solitude & Drawing on 20 years’ Company is the story of experience as a writer how little Gabito achieved his artistic and performer, Kae Tempest dreams and became Gabriel García explores how and why Márquez, and of how Gabriel García creativity – however Márquez survived his own self-creation. we choose to practise it – can cultivate greater self- Greenlights awareness and help us establish a deeper Matthew McConaughey relationship to ourselves and the world. Headline. PB. $32.99 Honest, tender and written with piercing Available now clarity, On Connection is a call to arms that Matthew McConaughey has speaks to a universal yet intimate truth. been in this life for 50 years, The brilliant new Lincoln Lawyer A warm and been trying to work out its The Book Collectors of Daraya novel from the Mickey Haller is back fascinating memoir riddle for 42, and has been Delphine Minoui keeping diaries of clues to Picador. PB. $34.99 acclaimed Miles in the heart-stopping of the extraordinary that riddle for the last 35. Available now Franklin Award- new thriller from life of one of From the Academy Award In 2012, Daraya, Damascus winning author of #1 bestselling author Australia’s most -winning actor, comes this unconventional was brutally besieged by memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw Syrian government forces. The Eye of the Sheep Michael Connelly. significant public wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way Yet in this human-made hell, and The Choke. figures. about living with greater satisfaction. 40 young Syrian revolutionaries embarked on Shakespearean an extraordinary project to Robert McCrum create a secret underground library: a place Picador. HB. $34.99 to learn, to exchange ideas, to dream and to Available now hope. Based on interviews with these Robert McCrum has spent the young men, The Book Collectors is a last 25 years immersed in powerful testament to freedom, tolerance Shakespeare’s work. During and the power of literature. this prolonged exploration, Shakespeare’s poetry and Essex Girls plays, so vivid and Sarah Perry contemporary, have become Serpents Tail. HB. $16.99 his guide and consolation. In Shakespearean Available 17 November he asks: why is it that we always return to Essex Girls are disreputable, Shakespeare, particularly in times of acute disrespectful and disobedient. crisis and dislocation? And why do the They speak out of turn, too loudly and too often, in an works of an Elizabethan writer speak to us as Rosalie Ham’s dressmaker returns in the sequel to the if they were written yesterday? accent irritating to the ruling beloved #1 bestseller and the box office sensation, classes. Their bodies are The Dressmaker. hypersexualised. They are Ruth Bader Ginsberg; A Life ‘A true original. Astringently unsentimental … given to squabbling. They do not apologise Jane Sherron de Hart memorably eccentric … and mischievous.’ Scribe. PB. $35 for any of this. And why should they? In this Sydney Morning Herald Available 16 November exhilarating feminist defence of the Essex girl, Sarah Perry re-examines her relationship In this bestselling with her much maligned home county. comprehensive, revelatory biography – 15 years of interviews and research in Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto the making – historian Jane Legacy Russell The 130-STOREY Sherron De Hart explores Verso. PB. $22.99 the central experiences that Available 1 December TREEHOUSE crucially shaped Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s This is a vital new chapter in passion for justice, her advocacy for gender cyberfeminism, one that equality, and her meticulous jurisprudence. explores the relationship The brand new adventure from bestselling team Intimately, personably told, this biography between gender, technology Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton. Andy and Terry have offers unprecedented insight into a and identity. In an urgent added 13 new levels to their treehouse and it’s more out of this world than ever before! pioneering life and legal career. manifesto, Legacy Russell reveals the many ways that the Glitch performs and transforms: how it Cultural Studies refuses, throws shade, ghosts, errs, encrypts, mobilises and survives. Timely and provocative, Glitch Feminism shows Just Us: An American how the error can be a revolution. Conversation The GO0D Sister Claudia Rankine Head Hand Heart ‘No one writes domestic suspense like Allen Lane. HB. $49.99 David Goodhart Sally Hepworth. The Good Sister is the perfect Available 17 November Allen Lane. HB. $39.99 blend of suspense and heart – a book that’s sure to get everyone talking!’ At home and in Available 17 November Kelly Rimmer government, aggression As recently as the 1970s most and defensiveness alike are people left school without on the rise. In such partisan qualifications, but now 40 conditions, how can per cent of all jobs are Love talking about books? humans best approach one graduate-only. A good society Find us online at Pan Macmillan Australia another across our must re-imagine the meaning differences? Just Us is an invitation to of skilled work, so that people 14 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 NONFICTION who work with their hands and hearts are The Next Great Migration full-colour illustrated adaptation of his further to see how these people came to be valued alongside workers who manipulate Sonia Shah ground-breaking book, renowned who they were. Neil Price takes us inside data. This is the story of the central struggle Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 historian Yuval Noah Harari tells the story the Norse mind and spirit world, and across for status and dignity in the 21st century. Available 17 November of humankind’s evolution, exploring the their borders of identity and gender, to The news today is full of ways in which biology and history have reveal startlingly different Vikings to the Mediocre: The Dangerous stories of dislocated people defined us. barbarian marauders of stereotype. Legacy of White Male Power on the move. News media Ijeoma Oluo presents this migration as Berlin: The Story of a City John Murray. PB. $32.99 unprecedented, provoking Barney White-Spunner Mythology Available 8 December fear across the Western S&S. PB. $32.99 Through the last 150 years of world. But the science and Available 2 December American history, Ijeoma history of migration tell a different story. Berlin has always been a city Troy Oluo exposes the devastating Tracking misinformation from the 18th on the edge – Stephen Fry Michael Joseph. HB. Was $45 consequences of White male century through today’s anti-immigration geographically, culturally, supremacy on women, policies, The Next Great Migration makes politically and morally. The $35.00 people of colour, and White the case for a future in which migration is great movements that have Available now men themselves. As not a source of fear, but of hope. shaken Europe, from the The story of Troy is ancient, provocative as it is essential, Mediocre Reformation to Marxism but still relatable – a investigates the real costs of White male Uncomfortable Conversations have their origins in Berlin’s streets. For terrible war with casualties power in order to imagine a new White male with a Black Man much of its history, it has been a city that on all sides as well as identity, one free from racism and sexism. Emmanuel Acho accepts everyone. Berlin: The Story of a City strained relations between Macmillan. PB. $34.99 is as approachable for the casual visitor as allies, whose consequences Not A Novel Available now it is informative for history buffs. become tragedies. In this Jenny Erpenbeck Emmanuel Acho takes on all special hardback edition of Troy, you will find heroism and hatred, love and loss, Granta. HB. $29.99 the questions, large and Gladius revenge and regret, desire and despair. It Available 5 January 2021 small, many White Guy de la Bédoyère is these human passions, written bloodily Not a Novel gathers together Americans are afraid to ask. Little, Brown. PB. $34.99 in the sands of a distant shore, that still the best of Jenny In his own words, he Available now speak to us today. Erpenbeck’s nonfiction. provides a space of The Roman army was the Drawing from her 25 years of compassion and greatest fighting machine thinking and writing, the understanding in a discussion that can lack the ancient world produced, book plots a journey through both. Here, he asks only for the reader’s and it depended entirely on Philosophy the works and subjects that curiosity – but along the way, he will soldiers. Gladius takes the have inspired and influenced her. Here we galvanise all of us to join the antiracist fight. reader right into the heart of An Event, Perhaps see one of the most searching of European what it meant to be a part of Peter Salmon writers reckoning with her country’s Why Didn’t You Just Do What the Roman army through the words of Verso. HB. $39.99 divided past in all its complexity, and You Were Told? Roman historians, and those of the men Available 1 December responding to the world today with insight, Jenny Diski themselves through their religious intelligence and humanity. Bloomsbury. HB. $36.99 dedications, tombstones, and even private Jacques Derrida has a Available now letters and graffiti. towering, and foreboding, Jenny Diski was a fearless reputation across modern writer, for whom no subject Himalaya: A Human History philosophy. Here Peter Psychology Salmon introduces the key was too difficult, even her own Ed Douglas concepts, showing that, diagnosis with cancer. Her Bodley Head. HB. $35.00 despite the impression of The Weirdest People in the columns in the London Review Available now of Books – selected here by her being eclectic, Derrida was a writer who World This is the first major editor and friend Mary-Kay spent his life on a series of interlinked Joseph Henrich history of the Himalaya: an Wilmers – have been described as ‘virtuoso themes: ethics, friendship, language. Allen Lane. HB. $39.99 epic story of peoples, performances’, and ‘small masterpieces’. This Accessible, provocative and beautifully Available 17 November cultures and adventures collection will allow readers old and new to written, An Event, Perhaps introduces to a Do you identify yourself by among the world’s highest enjoy Diski at her best. new readership the life and thinking of an your achievements, rather mountains. Spanning influential philosopher. than your family network? If millennia, from its earliest so, perhaps you are WEIRD: Natural History inhabitants to the present conflicts over raised in a society that is Tibet and Everest, Himalaya is a soaring Feline Philosophy Western, Educated, account of resilience and conquest, John Gray Industrialised, Rich and What Cats Want discovery and plunder, oppression and Allen Lane. HB. $39.99 Democratic. Unlike most who have ever Yuki Hattori enlightenment at the ‘roof of the world’. Available now lived, WEIRD people are highly Bloomsbury. HB. $24.99 There is no real evidence individualistic, nonconformist, analytical Available now Hitler and Stalin that humans ever and control-oriented. Joseph Henrich, who Dr. Yuki Hattori is Japan’s Laurence Rees domesticated cats. Rather it developed the concept of WEIRD, uses leading cat doctor, and to Viking. PB. $35.00 seems that at some point leading-edge research to explore how the him cats are the most Available now cats saw the potential value Western mind was shaped. to themselves of humans. beautiful animals in the This compelling book on John Gray’s wonderful new world. His advice will tell Hitler and Stalin examines book is an attempt to get to grips with the you exactly what to look for the two tyrants during the philosophical and moral issues around the Environmental as a cat owner and will make Second World War. Despite uniquely strange relationship between a life-changing difference to your feline the fact they were bitter Studies ourselves and these remarkable animals. companion. With understanding, affection opponents, Laurence Rees and respect, your cat will be healthier and shows that Hitler and Stalin The Climate Cure more contented – and you’ll feel happier too. were, to a large extent, different sides of The Godless Gospel Tim Flannery the same coin: both were prepared to Julian Baggini Text. PB. $24.99 History create suffering, destroy individual liberty Granta. PB. $29.99 Available now and twist facts in order to build the society Available now Although Australia’s prompt, they wanted. Even if we don’t believe that science-led response to Sapiens Graphic Novel: Volume 1 Jesus was the son of God, we COVID-19 has not been Yuval Noah Harari & David The Children of Ash and Elm tend to think he was a great perfect, it has saved tens of Casanave (illus.) Neil Price moral teacher. But was he? thousands of lives. But for Jonathan Cape. HB. $39.99 Allen Lane. HB. $59.99 Here, Julian Baggini focuses decades, governments have Available 1 December Available now on Jesus’s teachings, ignored the advice of Many thousands of years The ‘Viking Age’ is stripping away the religious scientists on the climate emergency. Here, ago, at least six different traditionally held to begin in elements. As he journeys deeper into renowned climate scientist Tim Flannery species of humans June 793, and to end in Jesus’s worldview, and grapples with takes aim at those responsible for the inhabited Earth. Yet today September 1066. This book sometimes contradictory messages, against campaign of obfuscation and denial that has there is only one. What takes a refreshingly different his scepticism he finds that Jesus’s words already cost so many Australian lives and happened to the others? In view. It traces Scandinavian amount to a purposeful philosophy, which held back action on climate change. this first volume of the history back centuries has much to teach us today. NONFICTION November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 15

Time of the Magicians how it is the surprising source of all the Wolfram Eilenberger beauty and diversity in the living world. Allen Lane. HB. $49.99 A MAGICAL SAGA OF LOVE, FAMILY Available 17 November Analogia The year is 1919. Walter George Dyson AND SECOND CHANCES Benjamin, Ludwig Allen Lane. HB. $49.99 Wittgenstein, Martin Available 17 November Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer In a world where humans are all facing new beginnings. coexist with technologies The lives and thought of this they no longer control or quartet will converge and understand, who holds the intertwine, between them remaking future? Here, George Dyson philosophy. Time of the Magicians shows plots a thrilling and expected philosophy is not gifted from on high but course through 300 years of worked out in the mess of everyday life. history and science to reveal the hidden connections that underpin the digital transformation of the current age, ending Politics with a premonition of what might follow.

The Purpose of Power Gift books/Humour Alicia Garza Doubleday. PB. $35.00 Available now Heroes Next Door Black Lives Matter began as a Samuel Johnson & Hilde Hinton hashtag when Alicia Garza Hachette. HB. $24.99 wrote what she calls ‘a love Available now letter to Black people’ on Samuel Johnson and his Facebook. But hashtags don’t sister, Hilde, travelled the build movements, she tells country to spread their us. People do. Interwoven message about how to kick with Garza’s experience of life as a Black cancer in the face hole. In the woman, The Purpose of Power is the story of process they connected and how she galvanised people to create change. listened as people shared their own stories. This moving, funny, irreverent, Evil Geniuses inspiring and big-hearted book shares those Kurt Andersen stories and shows us all that resilience and ‘One of the best Australian novels I’ve read in years’ Ebury. PB. $35.00 kindness are what make the difference. Available now EMILY BITTO As the social liberation of the Australia 2020 1960s finally ended in the The Betoota Advocate chaos of Vietnam and Macmillan. PB. $32.99 Watergate, a faction of rich Available now industrialists, business This was meant to be our chiefs, libertarians and year: a time to tend to the right-wing radicals were wounds of a country torn waiting, determined to claw back everything asunder by divisive they saw as rightfully theirs. In this political and media entertaining and deeply researched cultural debates. But fate had other exposé, Kurt Andersen reveals how America plans, starting with the got to where it is now – and what it might do worst bushfires in human memory. Mother to win its future back. nature arrived as COVID-19, and told us all to go to our rooms. Here, Australia’s You don’t have to travel Money favourite (satirical) newspaper details our Jacob Goldstein country’s very rocky start to a new decade. far to find good people . . . often Atlantic. PB. $29.99 Available now they are right next door. Humans invented money Music from nothing, so why can’t we live without it? In this I’ll Be Gone lively tour through the Craig Horne centuries, Jacob Goldstein Melbourne Books. PB. $32.99 charts the story of this Available now paradoxical commodity, I’ll Be Gone is not just the story exploring where money came from, why it of an accidental masterpiece, matters and whether bitcoin will still exist in a song written by Mike Rudd 20 years. This in an indispensable handbook and recorded by his seminal for anyone curious about how money came Australian band, Spectrum, in to make the world go round. 1969. It is also about a time of unprecedented political and Science cultural upheaval in Australia. More than anything, it is the story of a unique artistic vision, often in the face of immense personal A Series of Fortunate Events hardship and sorrow. Sean B Carroll Princeton University Press. PB. $24.99 Beethoven Available now Laura Tunbridge Like every other species, we Viking. HB. $39.99 humans are here by Available now ©️ Julian Kingma accident. But it is shocking Ludwig van Beethoven is just how many things – any seen as an eccentric genius, of which might never have and some consider him to be occurred – had to happen in simply the greatest ever OUT NOW certain ways for any of us to composer of Western exist. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the classical music. Yet his life story of the awesome power of chance and remains shrouded in myths. 16 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 NONFICTION

This tour de force – published for the 250th was a cherished artist. In this – the first of anniversary of Beethoven’s birth – is a three biographical volumes – Michael compelling, human portrayal of Beethoven Posner draws on hundreds of interviews to Art & At and a fascinating journey into one of the reach beyond the Cohen of myth and reveal world’s most amazing creative minds. the unique, complex, and compelling figure Design home of the real man. A Sound Mind Paul Morley in 2020 in 2020 Bloomsbury. PB. $29.99 Visual Art & Design with Margaret Snowdon with Chris Gordon Available 1 December Paul Morley had stopped Pride of Place Prehistorians propose that the arrival of I’m proud to let you all know that this year, being surprised by modern Alisa Bunbury art in the timeline of humanity’s history for the first time, I kept a sourdough starter pop music and found MUP. HB. $59.99 indicates a jump in our cognitive abilities, in my fridge. I also watched my adult kids himself retreating into the Available 1 December so Readings is happy to present to you argue, chop, disagree, stir and use every sounds of artists he loved in The Russell and Mab some wonderful art and design books from dish in the house in order to create delicious the ’70s. Not wishing to give Grimwade Bequest this year to delight, entertain, inform and family meals. This year my cookbooks were in to dreary nostalgia, he comprises a rich variety help our cognitive skills expand and grow, bent, splattered and marked for inspiration, went searching for something new and of art, books and objects. as surely this year has asked of us. for banana bread recipes, noodle soups, and wondrous – and found it in classical music. A scientist, businessman quick, cheese-heavy meals. This year has A Sound Mind is a memoir of Morley’s Starting close by, The Garden State and philanthropist, Sir given us so much anguish, so much anxiety shifting musical tastes, and a compelling (T&H, HB, $80) offers a look inside an Russell had wide-ranging and so much time to cook soups, bake cakes history of classical music. inspiring collection of private gardens interests embracing industry, history and across Victoria. Adelaide Hills Gardens and create casseroles. Feeling diminished? botany. In all of these he was strongly (T&H, HB, $80) features some locations that Cook. Feeling fraught? Serve. Feeling Wagnerism supported by his wife Mab. In this are so pretty I look forward to getting there hopeless? Eat. Alex Ross beautifully illustrated book, numerous soon. Moving further afield, Philip Hughes: There were certain cookbooks we used 4th Estate. PB. $39.99 experts share their interpretations of the Painting the Ancient Land of Australia continuously because the recipes were not Available 2 December Grimwade Collection’s highlights, (T&H, HB, $80) includes photographs complex and didn’t contain ingredients we For better or worse, Wagner is responding to past historical attitudes and and insights connected to the landscapes couldn’t buy within our 5km radius – and a widely influential figure in offering 21st century insights. Hughes has painted. Unfinished Business: also because we wanted comfort food rather the history of music. The Art of Gordon Bennett (QAGOMA, HB, than elegant dishes with side sauces. We Anarchists, occultists, Sustainable & Fashionable: $54.95) makes it a good time to explore the needed meals we could balance on our laps, feminists saw him as a Melbourne important contribution the late Bennett eat at our home desks, and munch through a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Greta Lukavic made to identity and contemporary lively family set of Cards Against Humanity. Hitler incorporated Wagner Slattery Media. HB. $34.95 art. Team it with Becoming Our Future: This year we stayed home, and we cooked. into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and his Available now Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice (PB, Julia Busuttil Nishimura’s A Year of name became almost synonymous with Sustainable fashion $39.99) from the AGSA – it’s an expansive Simple Family Food fulfilled many of our artistic evil. Neither apologia nor involves a lot: the exploration of the subject. Then back to expectations of an excellent cookbook. We condemnation, Wagnerism is a work of elimination of waste, Melbourne again for a new book on mid- relished her pasta dishes, her no-nonsense intellectual passion, urging us toward a more utilising recyclable century architect Robin Boyd, Robin Boyd: approach and, in particular, became experts honest idea of how art acts in the world. materials, and focusing Late Works (Uro, PB, $49.99), featuring at kneading dough. We consider her simple on the ethical treatment material from the last decade of his life. butter cake with raspberries a gift to all our Really Saying Something of workers. As consumers Further treats perfect for those who senses and often had a slice for breakfast. Sara Dallin & Keren Woodward grapple with the sustainability and ethics of love architecture and interiors include We turned to Natalie Paull’s Beatrix Bakes Hutchinson. PB. $35.00 mass production these 80 Melbourne Living In (DGV, HB, $105), featuring rarely on the weekends when we had time to beat Available now makers offer a gentle alternative. From seen modern residential masterpieces, those egg whites into a glorious, glossy In the early ’80s, best friends clothing and shoes to jewellery and hats this and Homes for Our Time (HB, $49.99) in creation. We gifted her chocolate caramel Sara Dallin and Keren guide showcases the incredible talent of the Taschen’s new 40th anniversary format. bars to our dearest friends and neighbours, Woodward arrived in Melbourne creative scene. High Grade Living (T&H, HB, $49.99) by we munched through an entire cheesecake London, their sights set on Jacqui Lewis and Arran Russell of The while watching Fargo, and we learnt that careers in journalism and the Broad Place, is a gorgeous lifestyle oasis those with cold hands (and a warm heart) media... but that wasn’t to Travel for creativity, clarity and mindfulness. have a way with pastry. be. Instead, they formed one Peek into the private spaces of famous Recipes from Hetty McKinnon’s To Asia, of the biggest-selling female bands of all creatives from Voltaire and Byron to with Love filled our soup bowls with noodles Wanderers time – Bananarama. Really Saying Kipling, Woolf and Bowie in Life Meets Art and coconut milk, which we dripped over Something is the story of two friends who Kerri Andrews (Phaidon, HB, $79.95). our clothes, slurping with the pleasure of not Reaktion. HB. $34.99 continue to pursue their dreams their way A standout new classic is Van Eyck seeing anyone outside the family that day. Available now – and have a great time doing it. (T&H, HB, $120), the official book for the Ottolenghi’s latest contribution, Flavour, was This is a book about 10 women largest ever exhibition of Van Eyck’s work met with delight. Oven chips with curry-leaf Sweet Dreams over the past 300 years who which was held at the Museum of Fine Art mayonnaise was sometimes all we had for Dylan Jones have found walking essential in Ghent this year. Other must-haves for dinner. However, it was his influence that Faber. HB. $39.99 to their sense of themselves, the art history shelves are Abstract Art: A made us reconsider the potential of polenta Available 17 November as people and as writers. Global History by Pepe Karmel (T&H, HB, and the versatility of tofu. Wanderers traces their Sweet Dreams charts the rise $130) and Shaping the World: Sculpture from In recent days we have laughed and footsteps, from 18th century of the New Romantics, a Prehistory to Now by Antony Gormley and read aloud sections from Africola by parson’s daughter Elizabeth Carter to modern scene that grew out of the Martin Gayford (T&H, HB, $80). How To Be Adelaide’s Duncan Welgemoed. Surely, he walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and remnants of post-punk and An Artist (Ilex, HB, $19.99) by Pulitzer Prize- is our new cooking rock star – filled with Cheryl Strayed. This book offers up a developed quickly alongside winning art critic Jerry Saltz is the real deal attitude and advice for living oh so well. It beguiling view of the history of walking. club culture, ska, electronica, and witty to boot. The Honest Art Dictionary is because of him that we have perfected and goth. One of the most (White Lion, PB, $29.99) by podcasters The the art of chermoula sauce (perfect creative entrepreneurial periods since the Loving Country Art History Babes is informative and fun, with nearly everything but particularly ’60s, the era had a huge influence on the Bruce Pascoe & Vicky and I encourage everyone to discover the recommended with sardines) and his green growth of print and broadcast media, and Shukuroglou inspirational Artemisia Gentileschi (LK, HB goddess dressing for all our green leaves. was arguably one of the most bohemian Hardie Grant Travel. HB. Was $45 $24.99), the latest in a series inspired by Talking of culinary heroes, New Classics environments of the late 20th century. $39.99 Vasari’s Lives of the Artists. from the people behind Good Food is a Available 2 December Dronescapes (T&H, HB, $39.99) is an perfect roll call of chefs giving us their Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories Loving Country is a powerful irresistible collection of aerial photography best lessons on creating delicious food. Michael Posner and essential guidebook that with a bird’s-eye view, and we can’t travel Kylie Kwong’s chicken is a dream, as is Neil S&S. HB. $49.99 offers a new way to travel and but Steve McCurry takes us places in the Perry’s cauliflower gratin, and Adam Liaw’s Available 2 December discover Australia through an latest collection from his archive, In Search parmigiana is a cheesy delight. Leonard Cohen was a giant Indigenous narrative. In this of Elsewhere (LK, HB, $100). Bruce Mau It’s been a tough year, but also a year in in contemporary western beautifully designed and shares 24 principles for impacting change which my family slowed down and cooked culture, entertaining and photographed edition, co-authors Bruce though design in Mau MC24 (Phaidon, for one another. We commiserated over inspiring people Pascoe and Vicky Shukuroglou show travellers HB, $95), and, lastly, a bit of fashion fun: dishes that failed us, and celebrated those everywhere with his work. how to see the country as herself, to know her sustainable dressing with savoir faire in that didn’t. I hope the year brought you From groundbreaking whole and old story, and to find the way to fall Why French Women Wear Vintage (MB, HB, some happy family mealtimes. It was one novels, to timeless songs, he in love with her, our home. $29.99) by Alois Guinut. of the silver linings of 2020. YOUNG ADULT November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 17

the library to find out where it comes from and what it wants from them. The Best Junior Young This is an intriguing thriller that & Middle Grade incorporates issues around digital Adult technology, online behaviour and social Books of 2020 media amid a backdrop of current cultural issues. The teenagers are well-drawn and engaging characters whose dilemmas feel 1 Skunk and Badger Karen M. McManus’s mysteries are perennial decidedly real. Stimulating reading for by Amy Timberlake ages 12+. (Junior; for ages 6+) BOOK OF THE bestsellers and her fans certainly won’t be disappointed by her latest book, The Cousins. Milly, Audrey Angela Crocombe is the manager of Readings 2 Hattie by Frida Nilsson MONTH Kids and Jonah are teenagers and cousins that have been invited (Junior; for ages 6+) Young Adult by their extraordinarily rich grandmother to spend the summer at her island resort. Their grandmother disinherited Most Likely 3 Willy-willy Wagtail: Tales From her own children abruptly many years ago, so the teens are Sarah Watson the Bush Mob by Helen Milroy curious to meet the mysterious Mildred and to find out what Scholastic. PB. $16.99 (Junior; for ages 5+) really happened with their parents way back when. As soon Available 1 November 4 The Heart of the Bubble as the teens set foot on Gull Cove, however, things start to Ava, CJ, Jordan, and by Trace Balla (Junior; for ages 5+) seem weird. They are all well aware that their family has Martha have been friends plenty of secrets, but that doesn’t make what they discover since kindergarten. Now 5 Meet Taj at the Lighthouse any less shocking! they’re in their final year by Maxine Beneba Clarke & of high school, facing their Nicki Greenberg This book is truly a lot of fun. If you’re biggest fears about (Junior; for ages 5+) looking for escapism, there’s nothing like a growing up and growing 6 How to Write the Soundtrack to apart. But there’s more gripping mystery that features drama, an Your Life by Fiona Hardy than just college on the horizon: one of (Middle; for ages 9+) The Cousins inheritance up for grabs, a holiday locale these girls is destined to become the Karen M. McManus and a web of lies. President of the United States. This is the 7 The Year the Maps Changed Penguin. PB. $17.99 story of four friends who, together, can by Danielle Binks Available 1 December McManus has a real knack for revealing character in her achieve anything. (Middle; for ages 10+) novels; personalities develop along with the plot and many 8 As Fast as I Can by Penny first impressions are turned on their heads by the end of the book. The plot is clever and Super Fake Love Song Tangey (Middle; for ages 8+) the surprises are genuinely shocking. There are a few moments that feel quite Scooby-Doo- David Yoon like but please know I mean that in a good way: it’s contemporary with a classic feel. This Penguin. PB. $17.99 9 The List of Things That Will Not book is truly a lot of fun. If you’re looking for escapism, there’s nothing like a gripping Available 17 November Change by Rebecca Stead mystery that features drama, an inheritance up for grabs, a holiday locale and a web of lies. When self-proclaimed (Middle; for ages 10+) The ending hints at the possibility of a sequel, so here’s hoping we get another book soon! nerd Sunny Dae meets 10 The Republic of Birds Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda Cirrus Soh, he can’t by Jessica Miller believe how cool she is. So, (Middle; for ages 9+) when Cirrus mistakes Sunny’s brother’s These Violent Delights novel that feels completely new. Between bedroom for Sunny’s, he Chloe Gong the scenes of gory action and brutal accidentally tells her he’s powerplay, there is a delicate romance Hachette. PB. $19.99 the front man of a rock band. Before he that will leave your heart aching. Fans Available 24 November knows it, Sunny is knee-deep in the lie and of The Diviners series by Libba Bray will There have life-changing things are happening, but it’s undoubtedly eat this novel up. For ages 13+. doubtless been only a matter of time before it all comes many retellings of Xiao-Xiao Kingham is from Readings Kids tumbling down. The Best Shakespeare’s classic love story Romeo and Juliet but Take Me with You Picture Books few contain such a unique Tara Altebrando of 2020 and compelling premise Bloomsbury. HB. $25.99 as Chloe Gong’s debut Available 1 December The Best novel, These Violent Delights. The book Tara Altebrando’s 1 Your Birthday Was the Best by opens in 1920s Shanghai, a glittering city latest sci-fi thriller is Young Adult Maggie Hutchings (for ages 3+) overrun by Western colonisers but closely a fascinating look at the 2 Sometimes Cake by Edwina controlled by the Chinese Scarlet Gang and powers of technology and Books of 2020 the Russian White Flowers, two rivals human behaviour under Wyatt & illustrated by Tamsin locked in a relentless blood feud. Enter pressure. When four Ainslie (for ages 2+) Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov, heirs to 1 The End of the World Is Bigger teenagers are called to a 3 Our Home, Our Heartbeat the two clans and ex-lovers who share a than Love by Davina Bell teacher’s office at school, by Adam Briggs (for ages 3+) bittersweet history of bloodshed and the teacher never arrives but a strange (for ages 13+) betrayal that neither can forget. Though it’s black cube is waiting in the room. 4 Please Don’t Eat Me 2 The Erasure Initiative the last thing either wants, the two are Confused, they are about to leave, but then by Liz Climo (for ages 2+) by Lili Wilkinson (for ages 14+) forced to work with each other as their city the cube lights up. It displays the first of 5 Finding Francois is enveloped by a mysterious contagion many rules: Do Not Tell Anyone About the 3 Loner by Georgina Young by Gus Gordon (for ages 4+) that is causing its residents to go mad. Device; Do Not Leave the Device (for ages 14+) Together they must unravel a web of Unattended; Take Me With You – Or Else! 6 Finding Our Heart 4 The Left-Handed Booksellers hidden secrets to uncover who or what is The four teenagers – Eden, Eli, Marwan by Thomas Mayor & of London by Garth Nix (for ages 12+) behind it all. and Ilanka – are very different, barely Blak Douglas A teeming metropolis of a city, know one another and already have busy 5 None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney (for ages 3+) Shanghai makes for a fascinating backdrop lives. But they quickly become bound (for ages 16+) 7 I’ll Always be Older than You by that is enriched by the ‘Roaring Twenties’ together as the device creates more rules Jane Godwin & illustrated by period setting – one of smoky burlesque to follow, and manipulates their phones 6 This One Is Ours Sara Acton (for ages 3+) bars and flapper girls. The glamour is and other technological devices if they do by Kate O’Donnell (for ages 12+) matched by an undercurrent of danger, not comply. As they try to keep up with 7 Future Girl by Asphyxia 8 Izzy and Frank by Katrina as mobsters stalk the streets, the opium its numerous demands, their increasingly (for ages 12+) Lehman (for ages 3+) market booms and Communists scheme erratic behaviour gets them in trouble at to overthrow the Nationalist Chinese home. Marwan responds to anti-Muslim 8 The Other Side of the Sky 9 What do you call a baby…? government. Gong also manages to create attacks on his father’s Egyptian restaurant, by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Kamsani Bin Salleh (for ages 0+) a modern take on this historical setting Spooner (for ages 12+) Eden faces inappropriate requests from 10 You Matter by Christian through queer representation and a brutal a boy she kissed, and Ilanka must find 9 Taking Down Evelyn Tait Robinson (for ages 3+) takedown of colonialism. a way to tell her Russian parents she no by Poppy Nwosu (for ages 12+) The first in a duology, These Violent longer wants to continue her demanding Delights manages to transform Romeo and gymnastics schedule. Meanwhile, Eli 10 The F Team by Rawah Arja Juliet’s ageless tale into a historical fantasy researches the device both online and at (for ages 13+) 18 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 KIDS

the world. crossed over to real life and they are all lurking in Kip’s Illustrations from artist and musician Matt Ottley bedroom as she wakes up one day. There’s a dinosaur, a Kids’ accompany McKinlay’s text and depict a solitary ninja from a TV show, a character from a story Kip’s dad young maker at work against the backdrop of a stark, is working on, and even a unicorn without a bottom Books windblown ocean shore. Ottley’s distinctive style is from one of Kip’s unfinished drawings! Naturally, this is partially inspired by his synaesthesia, and there is an cause for alarm. inherent musicality to his art, his exquisitely detailed Kip and her dad try to keep a lid on the situation, line drawings awash with soft, dreamy hues. but the Odds all have distinct personalities and some McKinlay’s use of second-person narrative creates of them are quite sassy! It doesn’t take long to become a powerful sense of intimacy and immediacy in this quite fond of the Odds. My favourite is the seemingly work: ‘To make a bird / you will need a lot of very tiny depressed little elephant who chooses to hide in bed bones.’ A certain element of magic is essential to the instead of deal with the unknown. Quite relatable, really. success of any creative endeavour and that moment is It’s a funny book but it’s not without heart, and there are beautifully evoked here when the girl’s makeshift bird, empowering messages among all the deadpan lines and constructed with delicate bones, broken shells, and antics. I think this will be a real hit with kids aged 7+. BOOK OF THE other found objects, takes soaring flight. Kim Gruschow is from Readings St Kilda MONTH Bronte Coates is the Digital Content Manager Picture Book Catvinkle and the Missing Tulips How to be a Real Ballerina Elliot Perlman & Laura Stitzel (illus.) Davina Bell & Jenny Lovlie (illus.) Puffin. HB. $19.99 Hardie Grant. HB. $24.99 Available now Available now Here comes the delightful feline What does it take to be a Catvinkle and her dalmatian ‘real ballerina’? Do you friend Ula for a new adventure, one in have to conform to a which they have to defend their new particular size and shape? Do sheep friends who have been accused When We Say you have to execute all the of eating the tulips of Amsterdam. Black Lives steps in perfect order to The animal community is front and Matter qualify? Is there only one centre in these junior fiction novels Maxine Beneba way? How to Be a Real with humans on the periphery, yet the intrigues, petty Clarke Ballerina is a fun and playful celebration of the jealousies and connivances that we experience are also Hachette. HB. $26.99 diversity of real ballerinas everywhere; our ballerina is rife among Catwinkle’s cohort. Nasty Twinkiepaws is Available 24 November irreverent, cheeky, totally disarming and completely causing more trouble but learns that she can’t beat lovable. Even when there’s a right way and a wrong friendship and loyalty. This is a quirky tale that has a way she still manages to find her own way! nice take on empathy wrapped up with a capricious When We Say Black Lives Matter explains to the The illustrations in this mischievous story are wit which made me laugh out loud. Great to read aloud reader why Black lives matter. It talks about colourful and innocent with a childlike naïvete; a for ages 4–6 and read alone ages 7–9. what ‘Black Lives Matter’ means exactly and why it perfect complement to the story. And what a genius Alexa Dretzke is from Readings Hawthorn still needs to be said, whispered, sobbed, shouted, Davina Bell is! She has given the world so many and sung. As Maxine Beneba Clarke states within the wonderful picture-book stories including All the The Ickabog book, ‘Enough is enough is enough, we need to put Ways to Be Smart and Under the Love Umbrella. JK Rowling She’s known for writing stories with an emphasis on things right.’ Little, Brown. HB. $45 positive experiences for children who are finding and When We Say Black Lives Matter is written in Available now becoming themselves. rhyme and is accompanied by beautiful illustrations, A mythical monster, a kingdom in How to Be a Real Ballerina is a picture book for budding also by Beneba Clarke, who is as incredible with art peril, an adventure that will test two ballerinas everywhere. Recommended for ages 3+. and illustrations as she is with language. This is not children’s bravery to the limit. The just a book for children of colour, this is a book for Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Ickabog is the brand-new book from all children, and especially for anyone who’s ever Harry Potter author JK Rowling, questioned or silently wondered why ‘Black Lives Dragon! lovingly illustrated in full colour by Matter’ needs to be said – I urge you to buy it and Maggie Hutchings & Cheryl Orsini (illus.) young children across the world. Set leave it somewhere they might find it. When We Affirm. HB. $19.99 in the magical kingdom of Cornucopia, this original Say Black Lives Matter explains the reason behind Available now fairy tale about the power of hope and friendship comes the statement in such a straightforward way it’s When Lena and Luka’s friend Sam in a beautiful hardback edition, just in time for the impossible not to understand. moves far away, the best friends holiday season. When We Say Black Lives Matter is ultimately an must come up with a way to visit optimistic book for kids aged 3+. each other. Maybe what they need Dani Solomon is from Readings Kids is something scaly and wide- winged, with room enough for Middle Grade three … From the author and Note: A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be illustrator behind the picture donated to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. books Mermaid! and Unicorn! this is a fiery adventure about friends who can overcome anything – with a Glassheart little help from an accident-prone dragon. Katharine Orton Walker. PB. $16.99 Picture Books Available now Right from the beginning, Junior Grade Glassheart is a heart-stopping encounter in the foreboding quiet of the How to Make a Bird night, and a compelling mystery to be Meg McKinlay & Matt Ottley (illus.) solved by both our protagonist, Nona, Walker. HB. $25.99 The Odds (The Odds, Book 1) and the reader. Available now Matt Stanton Nona and her adopted ‘Uncle How To Make a Bird is a ABC Books. PB. $14.99 Antony’ are both survivors of World stunner of a picture book. Available now War II. They’ve lost everyone else, but found family In heart-shivering, lyrical prose, Sydney author Matt Stanton and protection in each other. When a mysterious Meg McKinlay details the has amassed many fans with commission and an inexplicably powerful force drive process of creating a bird, and, his picture books and the popular them to an isolated church in the Dartmoor moors, in doing so, illuminates the Funny Kid novels. He has now turned Nona is forced to explore a terrifying unknown and face transformative potential of the his hand to graphic novels and The her nemesis from the shadowy realm in order to save creative process – from Odds is the first book in a new series. her world. Nona’s allies are intriguing but elusive, and conceptualising and gathering the materials, to adding An assortment of critters from their motivations are questionable. unique touches, and, finally, letting your idea loose on various imaginative worlds have Glassheart is about finding courage within, the KIDS November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 19

transformative power of love, and the importance of inspiring young minds to build a more beautiful world. family. The writing is imaginative and rich, steeped This innovative guide teaches the basic principles in folklore and drawing on the legends of Dartmoor, of architecture in a relatable style associating transporting the reader into another realm. This is concepts with everyday things, like a favourite sports a captivating and suspenseful story for readers with team or creating a recipe. It asks the reader, what a penchant for enchantment and mystery aged 9+. kind of person is this building? If this building were Fans of Katherine Orton’s first novel, Nevertell, will speaking to me, what would it be speaking about? By not be disappointed. linking architecture with methods that can be easily Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern understood, the book simplifies concepts, engages the mind, and the young reader can begin to see what Shoe Wars makes a street enticing, or what might be considered undesirable in a city. Liz Pichon Scholastic. PB. $19.99 With photography and artwork throughout referencing Available now a wide range of styles from all over the world, including some local Melbourne sites such as the La Trobe Ruby and Bear Foot are running out Reading Room (‘The Dome’, page 56) in the State of time to rescue their inventor dad Library Victoria, and the Green Chemical Futures from his hideous boss Wendy Wedge. building (page 12) at Monash University, this is a clever She’ll do anything to win the glitzy start to a series that will encourage eager minds to look Golden Shoe award and knows that more deeply. Additionally, we can look forward to What entering his gadget-packed flying Adults Don’t Know About Art, which is also due to be shoes is her hot ticket to the trophy. released on 8 December. Brilliant for Ages 9+. Flying shoes that Ruby and Bear just happen to be hiding ... Filled with absurd inventions, Claire Atherfold is the manager of Readings State Library Books to hilarious cartoons and attention-grabbing Victoria typography, Shoe Wars is the lively new book from the bestselling author of Tom Gates. Terry Denton’s Really Truly Amazing share with Guide to Everything The Wizard in My Shed Terry Denton (The Misadventures of Merdyn Penguin. HB. $19.99 the family this the Wild, Book 1) Available now Simon Farnaby For anyone from the ages of 8 to 80, festive season Hodder. PB. $16.99 this mini book of facts from master of Available now comedy Terry Denton is a fascinating What better time than the holidays to share a Meet Merdyn the Wild. He’s the whistle-stop tour of the history and book with the whole family? There are plenty world’s most wicked Warlock – don’t science of the universe. Packed with of festive books this year that will keep young humour and knowledge, it features call him a wizard – banished to the readers engaged long after the gift wrapping 21st century for bad behaviour. Meet chapters on: life on Earth; the ins and has been discarded. Rose. She’s the world’s most ordinary outs of biology, geography, geology girl, who is roped into showing and the weather; how life evolved and how it works; Little ones who love interactive reads will be endlessly Merdyn the ways of the modern and how people use science to create amazing things. fascinated by Emma Yartlett’s Santa Post (Walker, world. Meet Bubbles: the world’s best HB, $24.99). This delightful story about Santa guinea pig. He poos a lot. Together they’ll embark on receiving his mail features hilarious real letters to a hilarious adventure that might just end in an epic open up and read. Love, Actually screenwriter Richard wizard battle in the garden – if you’re lucky. Classic Curtis’s third picture book with Rebecca Cobb, That Christmas (Puffin, HB, $29.99), is all about upturning The Boy, the Wolf and the Stars of the Month traditions with lashings of family fun, while Emma Shivaun Plozza Quay’s nudies return in Rudie Nudie Christmas (ABC Puffin. PB. $16.99 Books, HB, $24.99), a glorious riot of a book that takes place over one chaotic Christmas Eve! And of Available now course, Australia’s first canine family have their own Every night Ulv is cloaked in a total The Jolly Christmas Postman Christmas Eve adventure in Bluey: Verandah Santa Darkness ruled by the ravenous, Janet & Allan Ahlberg (Puffin, HB, $16.99). clawing Shadow Creatures. Young Bo Puffin. HB. $29.99 New Hannukah children’s books are always a is charged with a monumental task: Available now welcome sight and Happy Llamakkah! (Abrams, HB, freeing the land of its curse by The Jolly Christmas $21.99) showcases all the Hannukah traditions in returning the stars to the sky. He must Postman has charming rhyming text with a cute, festive Llama family. find three magical keys spread across delighted children for For readers ages 7 and up, Sibeal Pounder’s Tinsel: The the land – keys that will unlock the almost 30 years and over Girls Who Invented Christmas (Bloomsbury, HB, $17.99) cage holding the wolf who ate the stars. Set in a that time has lost none of is a beautiful story of friendship and a funny, feminist thrilling new world, The Boy, the Wolf and the Stars is a its magic; it’s as wonderful re-imagining of the story of Santa Claus. sweeping, timeless adventure. now as it’s always been. For nearly 50 years, the disgruntled Grinch has been Written in a cheerful trying to steal Christmas from children in the hilarious rhyme that, when read aloud, keeps even the Seussian classic, How the Grinch Stole Christmas youngest in any family sitting attentively, it follows (HarperCollins, HB, $14.99). It even comes in a special the jolly postman on his round as he delivers mail to Nonfiction pocket-sized edition perfect for stockings. Miffy creator a community of classic fairytale characters. Dick Bruna’s vivid illustrations adorn the simple and All of the jolly postman’s deliveries exist as physical timeless The Christmas Book (Hardie Grant, HB, $19.99), correspondence within the book. You can open up a perfect introduction to the Nativity story for very the Big Bad Wolf’s card to Red Riding Hood, solve the What Adults Don’t Know About young readers. And of course, Charles Dickens’ classic jigsaw puzzle that Humpty Dumpty receives from all Architecture story about Ebenezer Scrooge learning the true meaning the King’s men, read the book the Gingerbread Boy gets The School of Life of Christmas is one every child should know. The from his dad and play the cheeky board game Little Red Affirm. HB. $32.99 Victoria & Albert Museum edition of A Christmas Carol Riding Hood sends to Mister Wolf. So much more than a Available 8 December (Puffin, HB, $19.99) is particularly lovely and a great book, this is a gorgeous bundle of surprise packages. Winston Churchill said, ‘We introduction to a classic for readers 7 and up. The illustrations are charming, the prose is shape our buildings and We always have families wanting Christmas classics delightful and even the postmarks are noteworthy; this afterwards our buildings shape us.’ with an Antipodean perspective and What Do You Wish is a hilarious and joyous family gift to share and enjoy The influence that architecture has For (Puffin, PB, $14.99) is one to savour. This story of – and not just for Christmas. Highly recommended for on how we live our lives is grand in the wonders of Christmas is from beloved Australian ages 18 months+. scale, but easy to miss. The first book partnership, Anna Walker and Jane Godwin. Mem in a new series from The School of Athina Clarke is from Readings Malvern Fox and Kerry Argent’s Wombat Divine (Omnibus, HB, Life, What Adults Don’t Know About Please note that stock of The Jolly Christmas Postman is extremely $17.99) is another. Filled with native animals, this is a Architecture focuses on helping the reader to find limited this year. Please order your copy early or call to check beautiful Australian story about a wombat’s dream to self-understanding and connection. It’s a book aimed at availability before you visit. perform in the Nativity play. 20 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 MUSIC

Ella: The Lost Berlin Tapes gathered two trusted musicians, Stephen Ella Fitzgerald Magnusson and Sam Anning, around his Popular kitchen table in Gunditjmara country in $22.95 | Also on vinyl Available now southwest Victoria to rerecord all of the 10 impassioned tracks from his landmark Music The First Lady of Song debut album. returns to Berlin, home of some of her most legendary Plastic Bouquet Recorded at the magnificent and historic Alexandra concerts. Recorded in Kacy & Clayton Palace in North London as the UK was emerging from ALBUM OF 1962 but never and Marlon Williams its first COVID-19 lockdown in July this year, Idiot Prayer – THE MONTH released, this album $21.95 | Also on vinyl Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace was conceived as Cave’s features an iconic performance at Available 11 December Pop/Rock/Alt reaction to this period of confinement and isolation. The Sportpalast Berlin. Ella Fitzgerald may be a Plastic Bouquet performance was originally streamed live worldwide back in musical legend with over 40 million records began with Kiwi the middle of the year and due to the huge response, Cave sold worldwide and millions of digital crooner Marlon has decided to release this concert as an album. Described by streams, but you’ve never heard her like this. Williams discovering Cave as ‘a prayer into the void and a souvenir from a strange Canadian duo Kacy & and precarious moment in history’, this live album includes Royal Tea Clayton’s (cousins all 22 songs he performed in that venue alone at the piano. Kacy Anderson and These include deconstructed versions of songs from his Joe Bonamassa $26.95 Clayton Linthicum) first record Strange discography with The Bad Seeds, which evolved from Cave’s Available now Country. Williams reached out and 2019 ‘Conversations With…’ events. In Cave’s own words, ‘I discovered the admiration was mutual. loved playing deconstructed versions of my songs at these Joe Bonamassa’s new Idiot Prayer – Within six months, Williams flew from a shows, distilling them to their essential forms. I felt I was solo studio album Nick Cave Alone hot New Zealand summer, into the depths rediscovering the songs all over again.’ Listeners will no Royal Tea is inspired at Alexandra of a Saskatchewan winter to record this doubt feel the same way, as they experience these starkly by his British guitar Palace album over an intensive two weeks. beautiful and haunting tracks. heroes Jeff Beck, John Nick Cave Mayall and the This album is also a rare opportunity to hear Cave as a $24.95 2CD Bluesbreakers, Eric soloist. And sadly, due to travel restrictions, we are unlikely Song Machine, Season One: Also on vinyl Clapton and Cream. This album reconnects to see him perform here in the foreseeable future. Fans Strange Timez Available 20 November the 43-year-old with the guitar-slinging kid will have to make do with this incredible memento of a Gorillaz from upstate New York, who stumbled remarkable concert. At the time I write this, we still have no $22.95 | Also on vinyl across the best of British blues music in his idea when cinemas will open in Melbourne, but if we are lucky, the concert will also get Available now dad’s vinyl collection – whose influences a limited cinematic run as an extended cut featuring four songs that were not shown on Song Machine is the have shaped him to be the player he is today. the stream. A DVD release, while not confirmed, is also likely to follow next year. ongoing and ever- evolving process Dave Clarke is the music and DVD manager for Readings Sunset in the Blue which has seen

Melody Gardot Gorillaz joined by an $22.95 expanding roster of series of RPO albums showcasing classic Available now collaborators captured The Best recordings by timeless artists in sublime The story of Grammy live in Kong Studios and beyond. The result is Popular Music new musical settings. Producers Award-nominated an expansive collection of 11 tracks consulted with John Carter Cash to vocalist, guitarist and embracing myriad sounds, styles, genres and of 2020 choose 12 career-spanning Johnny Cash pianist Melody attitudes from a breathtaking line-up of guest master recordings. Gardot is remarkable; artists including Elton John, St Vincent, she’s persevered Moonchild Sanelly, Unknown Mortal 1 Gold Record by Bill Callahan against abject Orchestra and many more. Jazz/Blues adversity throughout her life and is blessed 2 Mordechai by Khruangbin with a beautiful alto voice and grand The Makarrata Project 3 Rough and Rowdy Ways Blue Note Re:imagained insight as a songwriter. Now she returns Midnight Oil by Bob Dylan Various with Sunset in the Blue, an exquisite $19.95 | Also on vinyl collection of originals and covers, all 4 The Slow Rush by Tame Impala $21.95 | Also on vinyl Available now centred around love and collaboration. Available now The Makarrata 5 Good Souls Better Angels Blue Note Project is a themed by Lucinda Williams Re:imagined brings Pop/Rock/Alt album of collaborations 6 Sunday (The Gospel According to you covers, reworks Iso) by Vika and Linda and reimaginations between Midnight Oil of the classic jazz Disco and a range of 7 Nyaaringu by Miiesha greats from Kylie Minogue Indigenous artists, heavyweights of the $22.95/Deluxe CD $29.95 including Jessica Mauboy, Dan Sultan, 8 Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers new jazz wave. This superb album features Also on vinyl Alice Skye and many more. Midnight Oil 9 Monovision by Ray LaMontagne iconic tracks ‘Watermelon Man (Under the Available now will donate its share of any proceeds received from this release to organisations Sun)’, ‘Galaxy’ and ‘Rose Rouge’. The ‘Disco is as much an 10 Whole New Mess by Angel Olsen which seek to elevate the Uluru Statement interpretations are courtesy of today’s ode to the 6:00 a.m. From the Heart in particular, and emerging jazz stars, including Ezra set as it is a musical Indigenous reconciliation more broadly. Collective, Fieh, Shabaka Hutchings, Melt mission statement for Yourself Down and Poppy Ajudha. the star, one of the biggest-selling female Metrobolist (AKA The Man Budapest Concert artists in history, with Who Sold the World) 50th Country Keith Jarrett just as many honorifics as awards. The anniversary edition $31.95 2CD album is a return to everything she’s ever David Bowie done well in song: gooey melodies, sheeny $22.95 | Also on vinyl Johnny Cash and the Royal Available now production, spellbinding reverie.’ – Esquire Available now Philharmonic Orchestra The second complete show to be issued This November sees Johnny Cash and the Royal from Keith Jarrett’s the 50th anniversary Philharmonic Orchestra The Songs of Charcoal Lane 2016 European Archie Roach of the release of $19.95 tour – following on $21.95 David Bowie’s The Available 13 November from the widely- Available 13 November Man Who Sold the Produced by Nick acclaimed concert Music legend, Stolen World in North Patrick and Don released as Munich 2016 – this double Generation survivor America (the album Reedman and album documents the pianist’s solo and 2020 Victorian was released worldwide in ’71). Originally recorded at the performance at the Béla Bartók National Australian of the Year titled Metrobolist, the iconic album’s name fabled Abbey Road Concert Hall in Budapest. Here, creative Archie Roach AM is a was changed at the last minute. The 2020 Studio Two, Johnny energy is applied to familiar songs given as living treasure. In re-release of the album under its Cash and The Royal encores, including ‘It’s a Lonesome Old June and July 2020, Metrobolist moniker has been remixed for Philharmonic Orchestra is the latest in a Town’ and ‘Answer Me’. and in a year like no other, Archie Roach 2020 by original producer Tony Visconti. MUSIC November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 21

Child in Reverse world, including David Lynch, Danny Boyle, releases from the 1970s. Now, for the first soothing vessel of eight simple and serene Kate Miller-Heidke Peter Jackson, Michelangelo Antonioni, time, the master recordings from the 1970 pieces. Drifting through emotions from $22.95 | Also on vinyl Derek Jarman and Michael Mann. Studio B sessions may be enjoyed together the stark and sobering opener ‘First Available now as a single official Elvis album. Defeat’, to the gently euphoric ‘No Step on Wing’ and the contemplative but hopeful Last year, Kate PWR/UP closer ‘Black Notes’, Empty is a comforting Miller-Heidke’s AC/DC Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol. 1: score for these turbulent times. jaw-dropping $19.95 | Also on vinyl The Early Years (1963-1967) performance of ‘Zero Available 13 November Joni Mitchell Gravity’ at Eurovision PWR/UP is AC/DC’s $139.95 5CD Unreleased (1998-2010) 2019 was an ecstatic 17th full-length Available 30 October Powderfinger moment in pop album, marking the Since her debut album $21.95 | Also on vinyl culture: one that any artist would call an legendary band’s first arrived in 1968, Joni Available 27 November all-time high. In 2020, she returns with her new music since Mitchell’s songs have Following the release fifth studio album Child in Reverse – her 2014. This album sees been embraced across of a 20th Anniversary first non-opera album in six years and the band firing on all generations, inspired Deluxe Edition of their possibly her most pop album yet. cylinders once again. AC/DC cut 12 new multitudes of artists seminal album tracks for the album, proudly maintaining around the world, and Odyssey Number Five, Apart Together their signature sound and all of its powerful earned every conceivable accolade. She is Powderfinger are Tim Minchin hallmarks. AC/DC are back for a brand-new now opening her vault for the first time to proud to release this create the Joni Mitchell Archives, a new series $22.95 | Also on vinyl decade: get ready to power up. highly anticipated new album, their first of boxed set releases that feature deep dives Available 20 November album of previously unreleased music in over into different eras of her storied career. a decade. Recorded between 1998 and 2010 Tim Minchin, maestro The Modern Medieval – encompassing all of their biggest albums – of both comedy and Something for Kate this album also features brand new work, music, is back with his $22.95 | Also on vinyl Live Drugs including recent single ‘Day By Day’. long-awaited debut Available 20 November War on Drugs studio album Apart Since arriving in 1994, $22.95 | Also on vinyl Together. Two years Something for Kate Available 20 November Dreamboat ago, Minchin left LA have bent the Pulled together from Luluc and moved home to Sydney, and he started Australian musical over 40 hard drives of $21.95 | Also on vinyl (December) work on this album as soon as he arrived landscape to their recorded live shows, Available 13 November back. This album will tickle your funny bone will. Few bands have Live Drugs is the first Dreamboat is the at the same time as it tugs your heartstrings, spanned multiple eras volume to capture the fourth full-length and make you tap your toes as well. of Australian music as they have, and even band’s live album from folk duo fewer have refused so stridently to be interpretations, Luluc. Recorded in Hey Clockface cosseted by their past. The Modern Medieval showcasing the evolution of the band’s live New York and Berlin, Elvis Costello brings together three closely knit musicians, performances over the years. Sequenced to this record was reflect how a typical 70-minute set would $22.95 | Also on vinyl showing that moving in parallel lines leads finished by the band flow, Live Drugs immortalises live-set Available now to sustained and stunning invention. after they returned to coastal Victoria to see staples on record for the first time. out the pandemic. Each of these 10 tracks Hey Clockface is Elvis features the laid-back acoustic Costello’s 30th studio I Can Still Hear You arrangements, dreamy synths and soft, album. Recorded in Suzzy Roche & Lucy Wainwright Push the Blues Away clear vocals Luluc are loved for. This Helsinki, Paris and Roche Josh Teskey & Ash Grunwald beautiful record is the perfect soundtrack New York, and $29.95 $21.95 | Also on vinyl to a relaxed summer. featuring a broad Available now Available 13 November range of guest artists, Suzzy Roche and her Two local this is an exciting new offering. Speaking daughter Lucy powerhouses – lead Eric Clapton’s Crossroads of the emotional and dynamic range of the Wainwright Roche singer of The Teskey Guitar Festival 2019 record, Costello said, ‘I wanted the record shed some light on Brothers, Josh Teskey Eric Clapton & Guests to be vivid, whether the songs demanded our troubled times on and solo artist Ash $34.95 3CD, $49.95 DVD playing that was loud and jagged or their third musical Grunwald – have Available 20 November intimate and beautiful.’ collaboration. I Can teamed up for an Eric Clapton, one of Still Hear You explores themes of good and album born out of a mutual love for the the world’s pre- Delicate Sound of Thunder evil, youth and mortality, the absurd and blues and a genuine appreciation for each eminent blues/rock (2020 Reissue Edition) the serious, the real and the imagined, and other’s talents. Push The Blues Away guitarists, once again Pink Floyd the connection between what is present features a mix of original songs by both summoned an all-star and what is gone. Teskey and Grunwald, alongside two covers. team of six-string $34.95 2CD, $49.95 | Also on vinyl heroes for his fifth Available 20 November charity Crossroads Guitar Festival in 2019. After Roger Waters’s We Will Always Love You Return to Greendale Following a six-year hiatus, the festival departure from Pink The Avalanches Neil Young & Crazy Horse returned re-energised with outstanding Floyd in 1985, $21.95 | Also on vinyl $34.95 2CD | Also on vinyl performances by Clapton, Sheryl Crow, remaining members Available 11 December Available now Peter Frampton, Los Lobos, John Mayer, David Gilmour and We Will Always Love On their 2003 tour, Bonnie Raitt and many more. Nick Mason decided You is a stunning Neil Young and Crazy to continue. This aural journey through Horse were joined on double live album features music from the time and space. stage by a large cast Folk/World massive 155-date world tour that they Building on the of singers and actors embarked on in 1988 in the wake of the sample-based to perform a story success of the Momentary Lapse of Reason approach of their about the small town Optimisme album, one of the most spectacular live classic album Since I Left You, but stepping of Greendale and how a dramatic event Songhoy Blues shows ever put together. boldly into new terrain, in this new full affects the people living there. Here, the 10 $21.95 | Also on vinyl length album the band explore the songs from the powerful original album are Available now Film Music 1976-2020 relationship between light, sound and spirit. performed in sequence, with the cast Sons of Mali. Brian Eno speaking the sung words. Groundbreaking $24.95 | Also on vinyl From Elvis in Nashville Artists. Refugees. Available 13 November Elvis Presley Empty Virtuosos. Survivors. This long-awaited $54.95 4CD | Also on vinyl Nils Frahm Rock Stars. album brings together Available 20 November $21.95 | Also on vinyl Unforgettable and 17 tracks from Eno’s Recorded live in Available 13 November undeniable, Songhoy most recognisable Nashville over the Conceived just Blues represent the future of African rock film and television course of an epic five before Nils broke his ‘n’ roll. This 11-song, multilingual album work, spanning five day run in June 1970, thumb and marks a real musical breakthrough for the decades. Eno’s music Elvis’s performances composed the band. Musically harder, it is steeped in has been used in hundreds of films and he from those sessions similarly intimate deep traditions of classic Malian music and has composed more than 20 soundtracks for formed the core of solo piano album desert blues and fused with an urgent and some of the best-known directors in the three of his most successful studio album Screws, Empty is a supercharged sound of now. 22 READINGS MONTHLY November 2020 MUSIC

woodwind instruments. If you purchased Shostakovich: the Vivaldi, this is a must-listen to compare Cello Concertos Classical and enjoy these historically-inspired Alban Gerhardt, WDR performances. Sinfonieorchester & Music Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings Jukka-Pekka Saraste Hyperion. CDA68340. Was $29.95 Selige Stunde: $24.95 (limited stock at this price) Romantic Songs ‘Gerhardt, one of the In Chanson d’Amour, heavenly-voiced Sabine Devieilhe Jonas Kaufmann & Helmut finest [contemporary ALBUM OF takes us on a journey to France, via the music of Fauré, Deutsch cellists] before the THE MONTH Ravel, Poulenc and Debussy. I know her best as an opera Sony Classics. 19439783262. Was $32.95 public, plays both singer possessed of a stratospherically high vocal range, and $26.95 (limited stock at this price) works with an Classical on this occasion Devieilhe impresses with her middle-register, Selige Stunde intensity, bravura and her intelligent approach to art song. Alexandre Tharaud is (roughly translated as and scrupulous Devieilhe’s sensitive associate artist, whose fingers make light ‘Blessed Hour’) is the attention to the score, honouring but brilliant work of the piano accompaniments. first recital in a small Rostropovich’s championship of these series of recordings [Shostakovich] masterpieces without Poulenc’s music is aptly languid, brought that Jonas Kaufmann copying them ... Fascinating complements to life by Devieilhe’s divine and finely and Helmut Deutsch to Rostropovich’s own, highly personal spun voice. have made during the COVID-19 crisis. accounts of scores with which he is Recorded in private quarters, the intimate indelibly associated.’ – The Sunday Times sound reflects the warm, personal and Favourites are offerings from Poulenc – a composer endearing mood of the songs. The listening Schumann & Brahms Lieder Chanson whose music straddles both the ridiculous and the experience is like a home concert by the Elīna Garanča & Malcolm d’Amour sublime. ‘Voyage à Paris’ is set to a few lines of doggerel by fireside. The themes of the lyrics centre on Martineau Sabine Devieilhe & Apollinaire, who contemplates how delightful it will be to love, longing, peacefulness and farewell. DG. 4839210. $24.95 Alexandre Tharaud leave a dismal place for Paris, a city created by love. I am For her first solo Erato. 0190295224271. transported to Paris every time I hear this song, just as I am $29.95 recital album, the to the maison close Apollinaire describes in ‘Hotel’: ‘my room Rachmaninoff: Préludes, mezzo-soprano Elīna forms a cage, as the sun passes its arms through the window. Études-Tableaux & Moments Garanča has chosen I smoke for the sake of making shapes with the vapour, and I light my cigarette with Musicaux two composers – the sun’s fire. I don’t want to work, I want to smoke.’ Poulenc’s music is aptly languid, Sergei Babayan Schumann and brought to life by Devieilhe’s divine and finely spun voice. I challenge anyone to keep DG. 4839181. $24.95 Brahms – whose up with the goings-on described in ‘Fêtes Galantes’ – the commuters rushing by on their ‘There’s some works have been with her for many years. bikes and in their cars, the children playing, the haves and the have-nots – as Devieilhe extraordinary playing The heart of this album is Schumann’s swiftly reels off the text in her immaculately clear French. on this beautifully Frauenliebe und Leben op. 42, a musical Fauré’s music offers a more darkly romantic perspective of France. His hypnotic ‘Les recorded disc. The setting about devotion to love. In addition berceaux’ takes on a youthful colour in Devieilhe’s voice, the clarity of her tone belying Armenian-born to the Schumann cycle, she performs a the sadness of the women who wait patiently for sons and husbands out at sea, perhaps American pianist selection of Brahms songs that express very never to return. exhibits a profound different emotions and moods. Pianist A delicious selection of 29 enchanting French mélodies. empathy for Rachmaninov’s music, revelling in its richness of sonority, its contrasting Malcolm Martineau provides a highly Alexandra Mathew is from Readings State Library Victoria moods of elation and melancholy, and its sensitive and experienced accompaniment. structural fluidity. What really binds this recital into an utterly compelling musical experience is the sheer range and tonal a sweet blending of the tone colours, each Antonio Vivaldi: Lost variety of his pianism.’ – BBC Music melding and then taking charge before The Best of Concertos for Anna Maria bowing again to the full orchestra. Federico Guglielmo, Roberto Cyrillus Kreek: Classical 2020 Loreggian, Modo Antiquo & Kate Rockstrom is a friend of Readings The Suspended Harp of Babel Federico Maria Sardelli Vox Clamantis & Jaan-Eik Tulve Glossa. GCD924601. Was $32.95 Carl Maria von Weber: ECM New Series. 4819041. $29.95 1 Dowland: A Fancy by Bor Zuljan $26.95 (limited stock at this price) The Clarinet Concertos ‘Their clarity, their 2 Women of Note: A Century of Eric Hoeprich, Orchestra of the precision, their sheer There was a Australian Composers, Volume 2 Eighteenth Century & musicianship make time in Venice by Various Artists when baby girls Guy Van Waas them easily one of the could be dropped Glossa. GCD921128. Was $32.95 best vocal ensembles 3 Corelli: Concerti Grossi Op. 6 by through a slot, $26.95 (limited stock at this price) currently active Sophie Gent, Lucinda Moon & similar to a library- Beautiful, lush anywhere in the world Genesis Baroque returns chute, and so romantic ... Two of the most impressive works are 4 Aspects of America: The Pulitzer be abandoned to be raised in a convent. If strings set this “Bless the Lord, my soul” and “By the rivers Edition by Oregon Symphony & a young girl was (relatively speaking) recording off. Then of Babylon”, both of which are absolutely Carlos Kalmar lucky enough to be left at the Ospedale the clarinet enters, ideal vehicles for Vox Clamantis, whose della Pietà in the late 1600s, then she with a wailing sound precise placing of chords, assisted by 5 Verdi: Otello by Jonas would be raised in one of the best musical – not at all what I was impeccable tuning, means that every Kaufmann, Orchestra e Coro traditions of the day. The teacher was none expecting. There is an edge to the clarinet harmonic detail is as clear as a bell. Highly dell’Academia Nazionale other than Antonio Vivaldi, and he wrote tone, with a brightness that cuts straight recommended.’ – Gramophone di Santa Cecilia & Antonio most of his best music for these orphan over the orchestra. It was so unlike any Pappano girls. One in particular was his favourite, recording I had previously heard of the Philip Glass: and he created an entire book just for her, Weber Clarinet Concertos that I reached for Les Enfants Terribles 6 Vivaldi: Works for Clarinet and the ‘Anna-Maria Part Book’. Handsomely the cover, and Google, to learn more. A Katia & Marielle Labèque Orchestra by Martin Fröst & bound in leather, this book included the quick look and realisation dawned: this is a DG. 4855097. $26.95 Concerto Köln violin parts of 31 concertos, and while recording of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Philip Glass’s music 7 Elgar: Violin Concerto by Nicola most can be found elsewhere in historical Century, who all perform on period occupies a special Benedetti, Petr Limonov, documents, six concertos have only ever instruments. This is not the clarinet as we place in Katia and London Philharmonic Orchestra been found in this book. know it, instead it is the exact (yes, exact!) Marielle Labèque’s & Vladimir Jurowski Federico Maria Sardelli, a specialist clarinet this piece was written for. And what creation as they are not only in historical performance but power it has! You can hear the extreme already dedicatees of 8 Elgar: Cello Concerto by Sheku also musicology and conducting, has virtuosity of Eric Hoeprich as he grapples his Double Concerto Kanneh-Mason, London painstakingly reconstructed these missing with this unwieldy instrument and, for the for two pianos. It was the composer himself Symphony Orchestra & Sir six concertos from snippets found across first time, I get this concerto. I can finally who chose to adapt his opera Les Enfants Simon Rattle the historical record. Federico Guglielmo hear what Carl Maria von Weber’s musical Terribles (after Jean Cocteau’s novel) for 9 Bluetongue: Australian Guitar and the ensemble Modo Antiquo, under intentions were in writing this concerto. them, in a suite for piano duet, entrusting Quartets by Guitar Trek the direction of Sardelli, have created a After last month’s review of Vivaldi the adaptation to Michael Riesman, his bright and engaging recording of these on the clarinet, I have to say this was long-time collaborator and arranger. The 10 Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. works. Particular favourites of mine were a fascinating continuation that delves new recording captures the pianists’ special 1-5 by Le Concert des Nations & the Concertos for Violin and Organ, with into the history of one of the most popular artistic relationship with Glass. Jordi Savall DVDS November 2020 READINGS MONTHLY 23

Halifax Retribution Angeles is booming. When the case of $34.95 the decade breaks down his door, down- Film & TV and-out defence attorney Perry Mason's Available now After years as a university relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a professor, Jane Halifax has fractured city and just maybe, a pathway to been brought back to the redemption for himself. The end of the year brings two exciting dates for fans of front lines of forensic psychiatry. A sniper is DVD OF THE The Crown. For those with Netflix subscriptions, Season terrorising the city, the cops are desperate, 4 of this outstanding series will have its streaming release on MONTH and Halifax is the only person who can Documentary 15 November, and for everyone else who has had to remain figure out who is behind these murders. But TV patient, Season 3 is finally getting a DVD release. as she profiles a killer no-one can see, she This season covers the period between 1964 and 1977, and The Booksellers finds herself in the gunman’s sights. opens with the death of Winston Churchill, who was brilliantly $29.95 portrayed by John Lithgow in the previous two seasons. We Available 21 October are introduced to an outstanding new ensemble cast, though The Singapore Grip This fascinating it does take some time to get used to the new actors who $29.95 documentary dives into the step into all of the roles from Seasons 1 and 2. Gone is Claire Available 18 November world of rare book dealers Foy’s youthful Queen, and in her place comes Olivia Colman, This epic story centres on a and collectors. Dreamers, intellectuals, portraying Queen Elizabeth II as she enters middle age. Matt wealthy British family living eccentrics, these antiquarians play an Smith’s handsome Prince Philip is replaced by a rather stern in Singapore at the time of essential role in preserving the history Tobias Menzies. Vanessa Kirby’s dazzling Princess Margaret the Japanese invasion. Rubber merchant and future of the printed word. A turns wonderfully bitter in a charismatic performance by Walter Blackett, his wife Sylvia, ruthless loving celebration of book culture, The Helena Bonham Carter. The standout new face in this season daughter Joan and spoilt son Monty live a Booksellers offers a rare glimpse of many is Josh O’Connor, who brilliantly captures the torment of life of luxury, seemingly untouched by the unique objects and the obsessive hunt for The Crown Prince Charles. I know it is only a TV characterisation, but I troubles in Europe. With Walter’s business the next great find. Season 3 must admit to feeling quite a bit of empathy for Charles, who partner’s health failing, Walter needs Was $44.95 is forced to do so much for the Royal Family against his will. to ensure that the future of their firm is Iyengar: The Man, $39.95 Indeed, Wallis Simpson warns him to ‘never turn your back secure. Yoga, the Student's Available 11 November on true love’ and ‘to watch out for your family’. As viewers Journey have come to expect, the script, acting, production and Film $29.95 cinematography this season are all first class. Available now With Season 3 covering events in more recent memory such as the Aberfan disaster in Considered to be one of Wales, the 1972 Miners’ Strike and Princess Margaret’s divorce, it will be interesting to see The Personal the most important yoga masters ever, how the remaining seasons play out, as the show starts to enter periods in which the Royal History of David B.K.S. Iyengar was credited with bringing Family had a far higher profile in the media–think the tabloid obsession with Princess Copperfield the ancient art of yoga to the modern Diana. For now, however, this series continues to delight. $29.95 masses. Born in Southern India in 1918, the Dave Clarke is the music and DVD manager for Readings Available now legendary guru was the founder of Iyengar With a wry, yet heart- Yoga, known for its rigorous mental and filled storytelling style, The Personal spiritual focus. This film tells the story of History of David Copperfield reimagines his life, struggle and teachings. TV The Plot Against Charles Dickens’s classic ode to grit and America perseverance. Through the comedic lens of The Cave $39.95 its award-winning filmmakers, this iconic $29.95 Killing Eve Season 3 Available now Dickensian tale of a quirky yet impoverished Available 18 November $34.95 The Plot Against America, orphan is made fit for a cosmopolitan age For besieged civilians in Available 11 November based on Philip Roth’s with a diverse ensemble cast of stage and Syria, hope and safety lie As the third season of acclaimed novel, imagines an alternate screen actors from across the world. underground inside the the multi award-winning American history during World War II. Told hospital known as the Cave, where Dr. drama continues, Eve and through the eyes of the Levins, a working- Perry Mason Amani Ballour and her colleagues have Villanelle are desperately trying to live class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, Season 1 claimed their right to work as equals their lives without the other. Believing Eve the six-part series charts the political $39.95 alongside their male counterparts. is dead, Villanelle is dangerously aimless; rise of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, Available 2 December Following the women as they contend with while Eve is hiding in plain sight. But a xenophobic populist who captures the The year is 1932, and while daily threats and chronic supply shortages, following a shocking and personal death, presidency in 1940 and turns the nation the rest of the United States The Cave paints a stirring portrait of they are set on a collision course yet again. toward fascism. recovers from the Great Depression, Los courage, resilience and female solidarity. The highly anticipated first volume of Barack Obama’s presidential memoirs

Available 18 November from all Readings shops and readings.com.au

Special price $54.99 (was $65)