'Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.

'A grandson tries to learn the family story. But what kind of story is it? Is it a prison memoir, about the grandfather imprisoned without charge or trial by a revolutionary government? Is it an oral history of the grandmother left behind to look after the children? Or is it a love story, or a detective tale?

'Moving from 1930s Hanoi through a series of never-ending wars and displacements to Saigon, Paris, Melbourne and Cambridge, Anam is a novel about memory and inheritance, colonialism and belonging, home and exile.

'Andre Dao mines his family and personal stories to turnover ideas that resonate with all of us around place and home, family legacy and expectations, ambition and sacrifice.

'Anam blends fiction and essay, theory and everyday life to imagine that which has been repressed, left out, and forgotten by archives and by families. As the grandson sifts through letters, photographs, government documents and memories, he has his own family to think about- a partner and an infant daughter. Is there a way to remember the past that creates a future for them as well? Or does coming home always involve a certain amount of forgetting?' (Publication summary)

'Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith were giants of the world of Australian books and writing from the 1940s to 1980s'Lilliput', in this dual biography, is the world of literary magazines in Australia between the 1940s and the 1980s. Here Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith, of the journals Meanjin and Overland, were determined, driven visionaries. Both were very human-and occasionally bruised-believers in and workers for a better nation. The book ranges from before the Menzies era and the Cold War, through the Whitlam period and beyond to the challenges of the 1980s. It shows how the editors constantly aimed for a culture more liberal, diverse and developed than the one then prevailing. Their publications may have lacked resources and economic return, but they nonetheless possessed authority, regularly providing stimulation for their readers and for the nation. In finely wrought detail, Jim Davidson - the second editor of Meanjin - traces the commitment of Christesen and Murray-Smith to this ambitious cultural project and how it attracted many of the key writers and thinkers of those years. There are pen portraits of many of them, as the reader is taken behind the scenes. Emperors in Lilliput exhibits the enlightened creative spirit animating these journals at their best. It is at once captivating biography and rich social history.'  (Publication summary)

'Acclaimed historian and biographer Ross McMullin has again combined prodigious research and narrative flair in this sequel to Farewell, Dear People, the winner of multiple awards, including the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History.

'Life So Full of Promise, his second multi-biography about Australia's lost generation of World War I, features a collection of interwoven stories set in that defining era. The extended biographies give prominence not only to the extraordinary identities who died, but also to their families and friends.

'The rich cast of characters includes a talented barrister whose outstanding leadership enabled a momentous Australian victory; an eminent newspaper editor who kept his community informed about the war while his sons were in the trenches; a soldiers' mother who became a political activist and a Red Cross dynamo at Bendigo; an admired farmer whose unit was rushed to the rescue in the climax of the conflict; the close sisters from Melbourne who found their lives transformed; a popular officer who was more fervently mourned than any other Australian casualty; the most versatile top-level sportsman Australia has ever known; and a bohemian Scandinavian blonde who disrupted one of Sydney's best-known families.

'Also revealed is the untold story of an enthusiastic cricketer who was chosen in an Australian national side to tour England, and the surprising explanation for his decision not to go. In addition, there is a superb biography of a brilliant yet practically unknown cricketer whose stunning feat has never been matched.

'The storytelling is superlative, illuminating, and profoundly moving.' (Publication summary)

'The first biography of Shirley Hazzard, the author of The Transit of Venus and a writer of "shocking wisdom" and "intellectual thrill" (The New Yorker).

'Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life tells the extraordinary story of a great modern novelist. Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard's authorized biographer, has drawn, with great subtlety and understanding, on her fiction (itself largely based on Hazzard's own experience); on an extensive archive of letters, diaries, and notebooks; and on the memories of surviving friends and colleagues to create this resonant portrait of an exceptional woman.

'This biography explores the distinctive times of Hazzard's life, from her youth and middle age to her widowhood and years of decline, and traces the complex and intricate processes of self-fashioning that lay beneath Hazzard's formidable, beguiling presence. Olubas shows us the places of Hazzard's life, of which she wrote with characteristic lyricism: her childhood in Depression-era Sydney; her youth in postwar Hong Kong, New Zealand, and London; her years in New York in the 1950s, working at the United Nations and The New Yorker. Olubas also describes Hazzard's long marriage to the writer Francis Steegmuller and their deep involvement in postwar Naples and Capri. Rare photographs from Hazzard's collection and elsewhere accompany the text.

'Hazzard was the last of a generation of selftaught writers, devotees of a great literary tradition, and her depth of perception and expressive gifts have earned her iconic status. Brigitta Olubas has brought her brilliantly alive, enhancing and deepening our understanding of the singular woman who created some of the most enduring fiction of the past sixty years.

'As Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, "Hazzard's stories feel timeless because she understands, as she writes in one of them: 'We are human beings, not rational ones.'" Here, in Shirley Hazzard, is the story of a remarkable human being.'  (Publication summary)

'A deeply moving memoir about the battles waged against terminal illness and a mother’s struggle to comprehend the battlefield in its wake. While some family members wage war against her daughter’s disease with natural therapies, and doctors fight on using the latest developments in medical science, she longs to take her daughter to Paris instead, the city that inspired the young woman’s writing and art.

'The Asparagus Wars asks questions about notions of victory at all costs. Shot through with fearless wit and resonant description, this story will break your heart but leave you richer for the experience.' (Publication summary)

'The virtuoso new novel from the author of the Booker-shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole.

'Nobody was ever thinking about me. Now that I’m dead, I dwell on this kind of thing a lot.'

'Angus Mooney is in a dark place: the afterlife. His days are spent in aching embarrassment; god, religion, the supernatural – he was wrong about everything. He longs for his audacious, fiery wife, Gracie, but can only watch from the other side as she is seduced by his killer, who has stepped seamlessly into Mooney’s shoes.

'Meanwhile, life after death isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Another pandemic is sweeping the globe; Mooney’s new home is filling up fast, resources are scarce, infrastructure is crumbling, and he has to share an increasingly cramped existence with a group of people still traumatised by their own deaths. And although he should know better, he remains in the grip of the same fear as when he was alive: the opinions of others.

'Narrated with the ironic hindsight afforded by life beyond the mortal plane, Here Goes Nothing is a razor-sharp, hilariously entertaining, insightful and moving meditation on our 21st-century world, and the intricate relationship between love and death.' (Publication summary)

'How might the origins of our species inform the way we think about our planet? At a point of unparalleled crisis, can human ingenuity save us from ourselves?

'Much-loved writer Ramona Koval travels the globe in a quest for answers, and encounters the unexpected. She talks to an eminent paleo-archaeologist over a two-million-year-old skull in the Republic of Georgia, meets the next generation of robots in Berlin, attends a festival against death in California and explores an ice-age cave in southern France, speaking with the world’s leading authority on cave art.

'Between these and other adventures she returns to her ever-engaging granddaughter Layla, whose development in infancy spurs Koval to find out what makes us human, what separates us from the other apes.

'Full of revealing exchanges with scientists and writers whose knowledge of the past and visions for the future could hold the key to our next evolution, A Letter to Layla will surprise and delight in equal measure.' (Publication summary)

'Elizabeth von Arnim is one of the early 20^th century’s most famous – and forgotten –authors. Born in Sydney in the mid 1800s, she went on to write many internationally bestselling novels, marry a Prussian Count and then an English Lord, nurture close friendships with H.G. Wells and E.M. Forster and raise five children.

'Her novels were ahead of their time in their representation of women and their pursuit of happiness. Intrigued by von Arnim’s extraordinary life and vibrant career, Gabrielle Carey sets off on a literary and philosophical journey to know more about this talented author.

'Tim Olsen is the son of arguably Australia's most famous living painter, John Olsen. Son of the Brush is his fascinating, candid memoir of what it was like to grow up in the shadow of artistic genius, with all its wonder, excitement and bitter disappointments.

'Tim's childhood was dominated by his father's work, travelling to Europe and to communities around Australia as John sought inspiration and artistic fellowship. Wine, food, conversation and the emerging sexual freedom of the 1960s wove a pattern of life for the family. It was both the best and worst of childhoods, filled with vibrancy and stimulation, yet fraught with anxiety and eventual sadness as John separated from Tim's mother and moved away from the family.

'Yet the course of Tim's life had been set by the experiences of his childhood, and by the passion for art he got from both his father and his mother (an acclaimed painter in her own right). He has made his life about art as well, though following a different path from his parents. Today Tim is one of Australia's most respected art dealers, with a knowledge of art and artists forged from what is literally a lifetime of close experience. Son of the Brush is a memoir about living in the shadow of your father, and what it takes to chart your own course in life, but it is also about the wider world of art, artists and the joy, excitement and sacrifices of the creative life.' (Publication summary)

'At a hinge-point in his life, artist and ex-gallerist Tony Oliver travelled to the East Kimberley, where he plunged into the crosscurrents and eddies of the Aboriginal art world. He would stay for almost a decade, working alongside a group of senior Gija artists, including acclaimed figures Paddy Bedford and Freddie Timms, to establish Jirrawun Arts, briefly one of the country’s most successful and controversial Aboriginal painting collectives.

'The Stranger Artist follows Oliver’s journey and the deep relationships he formed, an experience that forever altered his life’s trajectory. His story will draw readers close to what he came to know of Kimberley life: the immersion of culture and spirituality in the everyday, the importance of Law, the deep and abiding connection to country, and the humour and tragedy that pervade the Aboriginal world.

'Evocative and absorbing in equal measure, The Stranger Artist tells not only of the connections that can be formed through the sharing of mutual interests and experiences, but of what it takes to live between cultures.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'FOUR Australian women writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a time when stories of bush heroism and mateship abounded, a time when a writing career might be an elusive thing for a woman.

'Friends and Rivals is a vivid and engaging account of the intersecting and entwined lives of Ethel Turner, author of the much loved Seven Little Australians; Barbara Baynton, who wrote of the harshness of bush life; Nettie Palmer, essayist and critic; and Henry Handel Richardson, of The Getting of Wisdom and The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney fame.

'Brenda Niall illuminates a fascinating time in Australia’s literary history and brings to life the remarkable women who made it so.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'In 1943, a young woman is taken to a Jewish ghetto outside Prague where one of the guards - a Czech gendarme - is quickly drawn to her. Believing he will offer her protection, Hana reluctantly accepts Karel's advances only to find herself alone and abandoned in Auschwitz. Decades later, Karel carries his regrets to Sydney where he and his family try to make a new life for themselves.

'Despite her devotion to the family, Karel's wife is a troubled woman, haunted by a secret that will not leave her as the consequences of her actions as a young woman continue to reverberate both within her family and further afield. Meanwhile, the couple's daughter is still reeling from her husband's infidelities as, unbeknownst to any of them, their cherished granddaughter becomes more and more entangled with her married boss.

'Outwardly harmonious, this is a fractured family whose lives are built on foundations of lies and deceptions - foundations that threaten to completely collapse as old transgressions re-emerge in the lead up to a long-awaited family wedding. Inspired by a true story of wartime betrayal, The Deceptions is a searing, compassionate tale of love and regret within a family whose secrets might better be left alone.' (Publication summary)

'Julia Sorell was a colonial belle from Tasmania, vivacious and warm-hearted. Her marriage to Tom Arnold in 1850 propelled her into one of the most renowned families in England and into a circle that included Lewis Carroll and George Eliot. Her eldest daughter became a bestselling novelist, while her grandchildren included the writer Aldous Huxley and the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley. With these family connections, Julia is a presence in many documented and famous lives, but she is a mostly silent presence.

'What began as a marriage born of desire soon turned into a relationship riven by discord. Tom’s sudden decision to become a Catholic and Julia’s refusal to convert with him plunged their lives into a crisis wherein their great love for each other would be pitted against their profoundly different understandings of marriage and religion. It was a conflict that would play out over three decades in a time when science challenged religion, when democracy challenged aristocracy, when women began to challenge men. It was a conflict that would not only shape their own lives and that of their children, but also touch the lives of all those who came into contact with them.

'Told with the pace, depth, and psychological richness of a great novel, An Unconventional Wife is a riveting biography that shines a shaft of light on a hidden but captivating life.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Arsonist takes readers inside the hunt for a fire-lighter. After Black Saturday, a February 2009 day marked by 47 degree heat and firestorms, arson squad detectives arrived at a plantation on the edge of a 26,000-hectare burn site. Eleven people had just been killed and hundreds made homeless. Here, in the Latrobe Valley, where Victoria’s electricity is generated, and the rates of unemployment, crime and domestic abuse are the highest in the state, more than thirty people were known to police as firebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man they didn’t know.

'The Arsonist tells a remarkable detective story, as the police close in on someone they believe to be a cunning offender; and a puzzling psychological story, as defence lawyers seek to understand the motives of a man who, they claimed, was a naïf that had accidentally dropped a cigarette.

'It is the story not only of this fire - how it happened, the people who died, the aftermath for the community - but of fire in this country. What it has done, what it has meant, what it might yet do. Bushfire is one of Australia’s deepest anxieties, never more so than when deliberately lit. Arson, wrote Henry Lawson, expresses a malice ‘terrifying to those who have seen what it is capable of. You never know when you are safe.‘

'As she did in The Tall Man, Chloe Hooper takes us to a part of the country seldom explored, and reveals something buried but essential in our national psyche. The bush, summertime, a smouldering cigarette - none of these will feel the same again.'  (Publication summary)

'By the time she was eleven and living in Russia, Lee Kofman had undergone several major operations on both a defective heart and injuries sustained in a bus accident. Her body harbours a constellation of disfiguring scars that have shaped her sense of self and her view of the world. But it wasn't until she moved from the Soviet Union to Israel and later Australia that she realised these markings weren't badges of honour to flaunt but were, in fact, imperfections that needed to be concealed.

'In a seductive mix of memoir and cultural critique, Kofman casts a questioning eye on the myths surrounding our conception of physical perfection and what it's like to live in a body that deviates from the norm. She reveals the subtle ways we are all influenced by the bodies we inhabit, whether our differences are pronounced or noticeable only to ourselves. She talks to people of all shapes, sizes and configurations and takes a hard look at the way media and culture dictates how bodies should and shouldn't be.

'By turns illuminating, confronting and deeply personal, IMPERFECT challenges us all to consider how we exist in the world and how our bodies shape the people we become.'  (Publication summary)

''Why didn’t you and Daddy want people to give you any presents?' I used to ask. But my mother could never be drawn into talking about the wedding. I assumed it was because she did not wish to be reminded of the ghastly mistake she had made in marrying my father.

'AS a child, Nadia Wheatley had a sense of the great divide between her parents, who had met and married while working in Germany on the front line of the Cold War. Growing up in 1950s Australia, the child became a player in their deadly contest. Was she her mother’s daughter, or her father’s creature?

'At the age of ten, the author began writing down her mother’s stories: her Cinderella-like childhood, and her escape into a career as army nurse and refugee aid worker. Fifty years later, the finished memoir is not only a loving tribute but also a social history of twentieth-century Australia, told through the lives of a mother and her daughter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.