Note to Self: The Secrets of Calm by Rebekah Ballagh Allen & Unwin Rebekah Ballagh is a qualified counselor who created the popular Instagram page called Journey to Wellness – @journey_to_wellness_ – when she wanted students at the school where she was counseling at to have something better than leaflets. Her book is a beautifully […]
The Time of Our Lives by Robert Dessaix (Brio Books) Audio book narrated by Paul English (Wavesound) Robert Dessaix is at a Yogyakarta hotel when he starts contemplating growing old. At 76 years of age, he is watching a 25 year-old Balinese wellness instructor on the lawn with a group of elderly hotel guests as […]
Author Garry Linnell has spoken to OUTinPerth editor Graeme Watson about his new book, Moonlite which documents the life of Andrew George Scott, one of Australia’s last bushrangers. Known as Captain Moonite, Scott was different to other outlaws such as Ned Kelly, because he was in love with one his fellow bushrangers. In this interview […]
Honeybee by Craig Silvey Allen & Unwin When fourteen year-old Sam Watson climbs over the rail of the traffic overpass late at night, Sam wonders if it is going to do will hurt or if death would be instant. Having a slight pang of sympathy for whoever would find what remained, Sam notices an old […]
The Book of Two Ways By Jodi Picoult Allen & Unwin Dawn Edelstein knows a lot about death. As a death doula (a death midwife), she helps people on their final journeys and tries to fulfill their last wishes. Fifteen years earlier, before she married and had a daughter, she was a graduate student in […]
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason Fourth Estate Martha writes a funny food column for a magazine, but her editor keeps taking out her jokes, so it might just be a food column. Turning 40, she realises that she has lost touch with school, university and work friends simply because they all had children and […]
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig Canongate Sixteen year-old Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the school library in Bedford, playing chess with the librarian Mrs Elm. Nora was worried about her future but felt she could talk to the librarian who had so much wisdom to share. Suddenly, there was a phone call […]
A Saint from Texas by Edmund White Bloomsbury Yvonne (pronounced Why-von in Texas) and Yvette (pronounced Why-vet) Crawford are twin sisters born in Ranger, Texas – once the oil capital of America before the wells ran dry in the 1930s. Their mother died in the 1950s and their father had millions in oil money in […]
Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron Bloomsbury Variations of the Cinderella story have been told for nearly 2000 years and the mythology of the popular fairy tale lingers in our cultural ether even today. While the Grimm brothers’ tale is a lot darker than the Disney one, the possibility that magic can transform a destitute […]
Sam Bloom by Samantha Bloom, Cameron Bloom & Bradley Trevor Greive ABC Books The best-selling book Penguin Bloom captured the hearts and minds of people around the world, and the miraculous and heart-warming story has even inspired a major motion picture starring Naomi Watts. Full of the most marvelous photographs, it told how a wounded […]
