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June Book News (Updated 1/6/08) | | | 
| The Household Guide to Dying
When Delia Bennet, author and domestic advice columnist, is diagnosed with cancer, she knows it's time to get her house in order. After all, she's got to secure the future for her husband, their two daughters and their five beloved chickens. But as she writes lists and makes plans, questions both large and small creep in. Should she divulge her best culinary secrets? Read her favourite novels one last time? Plan her daughters' far-off weddings? Complicating her dilemma is the matter of the past, and a remote country town where she fled as a pregnant teenager, only to leave broken-hearted eight years later. Researching and writing her final Household Guide, Delia is forced to confront the pieces of herself she left behind. She learns what matters is not the past but the present, that the art of dying is all about truly living. Fresh, witty, deeply moving, and a celebration of love, family and that place we call home, this unforgettable story will surprise and delight the reader until the very last page. 
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| Speaking for Myself
Cherie Blair's much-anticipated autobiography takes the reader from a childhood in working-class Liverpool to the heart of the British legal system and then, as the wife of the Prime Minister, to 10 Downing Street. It has been an astonishing journey for a woman whose unconventional childhood was full of drama, and who grew up with a fierce sense of justice. Cherie Blair was the first British Prime Minister's wife to have a serious career, rising to the top of her profession at a young age, only to find herself in a new and challenging role in the public eye. In her autobiography she will speak for the first time about what it was like to combine this role with her full and rewarding life as a working mother. As a barrister and a judge, Cherie Blair is used to speaking on behalf of other people. At last she speaks for herself, offering a warm, intimate and often very funny portrait of a family living in extraordinary circumstances. |
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| Boned
As a starry-eyed journalism graduate, Kate becomes an intern at Australia's number one commercial station. Television is a blokes' world but soon Kate is beating the guys at their own game and develops into a journalistic force to be reckoned with. 20 years on, Kate is hosting the network's top-rating weekly current affairs show. |
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| Bright Shiny Morning
Welcome to LA. City of contradictions. It is home to movie stars and down-and-outs. Palm-lined beaches and gridlock. Shopping sprees and gun sprees. Bright Shiny Morning takes a wild ride through the ultimate metropolis, where glittering excess rubs shoulders with seedy depravity. Frey's trademark filmic snapshots zoom in on the parallel lives of diverse characters, bringing their egos and ideals, hopes and despairs, anxieties and absurdities vividly to life. Some suffer, like the otherworldly wino who tries to save a spoilt teenage runaway. Others gain, like the canny talent agent who turns sexual harassment to blackmailing advantage. Some are loaded, or grounded, and have luck on their side. Others, like the countless actresses-turned-hookers, or schoolboys-turned-gangsters, are doomed. |
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| Sex and the City
Sex and the City is back and bigger than ever. Since the show's 2004 finale, there have been whispers that a movie was in the works, and on 30 May 2008, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda will finally make their big-screen debut. Accompanying it will be SEX AND THE CITY: THE MOVIE. Including interviews with stars and producers, the companion book will offer insights into the filming process, including notes from costume designers that guide readers through the movie's two-million-dollar fashion closet, and an overview of the set locations will include a guide toManhattan's trendiest new restaurants and clubs. These juicy insights will appear alongside more than 300 sexy colour images - the kind of eye candy Sex and the City fans live for. SEX AND THE CITY: THE MOVIE is this spring's must-have accessory for every devoted fan. |
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| A Wolf at the Table
Tells the story of Augusten's early childhood when he lived with his crazy father, John Robison, Sr, a man only briefly touched upon in 'Running with Scissors', his spaced-out poet mother and his delinquent older brother, John Robison, Jnr. |
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| Growing Up Asian in Australia
Asian-Australians are known to each other and the outside world by many labels: quiet achiever, FOB, gangster chigger, mainlander, banana. But are these labels based on some degree of truth or only fiction? What is it like to grow up Asian in Australia? |
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| The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family lies sound asleep. At some point after midnight a dog barks. The family wakes the next morning to a horrific discovery: an unimaginably gruesome murder has taken place in their home. The household reverberates with shock, not least because the guilty party is surely still among them. Jack Whicher of Scotland Yard, the most celebrated detective of his day, reaches Road Hill House a fortnight later. He faces an unenviable task: to solve a case in which the grieving family are the suspects. The murder provokes national hysteria. The thought of what might be festering behind the closed doors of respectable middle-class homes - scheming servants, rebellious children, insanity, jealousy, loneliness and loathing - arouses fear and a kind of excitement.But when Whicher reaches his shocking conclusion there is uproar and bewilderment.
A true story that inspired a generation of writers such as Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle, this has all the hallmarks of the classic murder mystery - a body a detective a country house steeped in secrets. In The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale untangles the facts behind this notorious case, bringing it back to vivid, extraordinary life. |
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| Then
The second story of Felix and Zelda. They escaped from the Nazis but how long can they now survive when there are so many people ready to hand them over for a reward? Thanks to the courage of a kind, brave woman they are able to hide for a time in the open, but Felix knows he has a distinguishing feature that identifies him as a Jew. Ages 8+. |
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| Zen Ties
Muth's extraordinary Caldecott Honor book featuring a giant panda named Stillwater is now available in this beautiful keepsake edition, contained in an elegant slipcase and including a limited edition lithograph. Full color. Consumable. |
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Best Selling Non Fiction | | | 
| Underbelly
They called Carl Williams 'The Truth' but the truth was he was just a fat kid with a pill press and a taste for fast food, women and bucks. He got lucky the day Jason Moran shot him in the belly instead of the head. Carl didn't return the favour: one by one, Moran, his family, and friends were shot dead during an underworld war for extermination. |
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| Rupert's Adventures in China
Starting his foray into China in the mid-80s, Rupert Murdoch quickly discovered that the rules were different in the Middle Kingdom: unlike in the West, the China's Communist leadership didn't need the support of the media to retain power. Dover paints a personal picture of the man at work, with anecdotes of the impulsive billionaire in his prime. |
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| The Anatomist
Gray's Anatomy still sets the standard in medical textbooks even after 150 years. Little has been written about its author, Henry Gray and less is told about Henry Carter, the illustrator who brought the text to life. This is the true story of the lives of these two men, balancing biography with the author's own experience in anatomy class. |
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| The Whale Warriors
For two months Heller was part of the crew of a vegan pirate ship of eco-crusaders, the Farley Mowat, on a mission to stop Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic. As they plough through the Antarctic, weathing gale force winds and thirty-five foot seas, they find themselves at the centre of an international whaling war. |
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2007 Pulitzer Prize Winner! | | | 
| The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuk --the ancient curse that has haunted his family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, violent accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love.With dazzling energy and insight Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous lives of Oscar; his runaway sister Lola; their beautiful mother Belicia; and in the family's uproarious journey from the Dominican Republic to the US and back.Rendered with uncommon warmth and humour, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Waopresents an astonishing vision of the endless human capacity to persevere - and to risk it all - in the name of love. A literary triumph, this novel confirms Junot Diaz as one of the funniest, warmest and most exciting writers of our time. |
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