A Brush with Mondrian
Yvonne Louis
$29.95

When bushfires threatened her home fifteen years ago, Yvonne Louis thankfully managed to save her family’s treasured Dutch heirlooms. But the event meant she began to see these objects in a new light – especially the portrait of a mysterious young woman nicknamed ‘Miss Maris’. Who was she really? And who had painted her? These initial musings soon led Yvonne on a full-blown quest to the Netherlands to learn the history of the painting, where she mixed company with famous artists and art experts, and discovered many surprises about her ancestry.

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A Life on Pittwater

$59.95

A Life on Pittwater takes the reader on a memorable trip to this beguiling place and presents all aspects of its distinctive way of life. There is Susan Duncan’s home with its gorgeous verandah; the lush surroundings, the bush and the bays, the ferries and the peculiarities of living somewhere without cars and, above all, the close community life. From the bestselling author of Salvation Creek this gloriously illustrated book will make you smile as you turn the pages and lose yourself to the magic of Pittwater

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A Simpler Time
Peter FitzSimons
$35.00

 A memoir of love, laughter, loss and billycarts It still amazes me what they allowed us to do without their supervision or help while remaining deeply loving parents. Climb trees from the age of four or five? No problem. Drive the tractor from the age of eight or nine onwards? Good luck to you. Haul on the hoist to pull the half-ton bins filled with oranges off the trailer? Yes. Take your bike out on the Pacific Highway and ride to school? Just be careful, but okay ...

Their rough reckoning was that if we thought we could do something, we probably could - and if we thought we couldn't do something, we probably still could, if we applied ourselves.

Peter FitzSimons' account of growing up on the rural outskirts of Sydney in the 1960s is first and foremost a tribute to family. But it is also a salute to times and generations past, when praise was understated but love unstinting; work was hard and values clear; when people stood by each other in adversity.

Above all, in the FitzSimons home, days were for doing. In this rollicking and often hilarious memoir, Peter describes a childhood of mischief, camaraderie, eccentric characters, drama - and constant love and generosity. The childhood of a simpler time.

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Brisbane
Matthew Condon
$29.95

‘I keep coming back to the light of Brisbane. If you are born into it, this palette of gentle pinks and oranges at dawn and dusk, the blast white of midday in summer, the lemon luminescence of mid-morning and mid-afternoon, you keep it with you, and measure all other light by it.’ Matthew Condon rediscovers in Brisbane the city of his childhood. Having returned after many years, he takes you on a unique and personal journey through the city, unearthing its history and painting a portrait of its contemporary transformation.

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Butterfly Mosque
G. Willow Wilson
$32.99

Willow Wilson is a young American and newly converted Muslim. After graduating from university she impulsively accepts a teaching position in Cairo. There she meets Omar, a passionate young Egyptian nationalist with a degree in astrophysics. Despite their cultural differences, the two find themselves in love. An engaging personal story that confronts issues of faith in a fractured world, Butterfly Mosque is an inspiring account of an unlikely cross-cultural love, as well as a rare insight into an important young reform movement.

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Dreaming of Dior

$35.00

Charlotte Smith inherited a priceless vintage clothing collection from her American godmother. With more than three thousand treasures dating from 1790 to 1995, with originals by Dior, Chanel and Balenciaga to a pioneer woman’s daintily mended best dress. When Smith unearthed her godmother’s book of stories about the dresses and the women who wore them, the true value of what she had been bequeathed hit home. This is a book any woman will treasure who knows that a dress can hold a lifetime of memories.

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Even Silence Has an End
Ingrid Betancourt
$35.00

Ingrid Betancourt’s story of courage, spirit and resilience has captured the world’s imagination. In 2002 she was campaigning as a candidate in the Colombian presidential elections when she was abducted by FARC, a Colombian terrorist guerrilla organisation. She spent the next six and a half years in the depths of the jungle as their prisoner and in 2008 was freed and reunited with her family. In Even Silence Has an End, Betancourt confronts the horror of her experience in this deeply moving book that is driven by her indomitable spirit.

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Every Day in Tuscany
Frances Mayes
$34.95

From the author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany comes Every Day in Tuscany – another deeply personal account of Frances Mayes’ present-day life. She takes readers through the gentle and sometimes violent and disruptive undulations of the seasons in her home ‘Bramasole’, while reflecting upon the changes she has experienced and the joys of life in her adopted hill town. Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the rich, timeless beauty and simple pleasures of Italian life.

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Find Your Tribe
Rebecca Sparrow
$14.95

Everybody knows high school can be tough, especially when:

* your best friend behaves more like your worst enemy
* the person you have a crush on fails to notice you exist
* even the C-grade netball team thinks you have the defending skills of a stapler.

So how do you get through it?

Bestselling author Rebecca Sparrow, with a little help from Ruby Rose, Wil Anderson and other celebs, explains how bouncing back, trusting your instincts and finding your tribe can make all the difference. This 'little black book' is the indispensable guide for surviving - and enjoying - your teen years.

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Iran: My Grandfather
Ali Alizadeh
$29.95

Ali Alizadeh’s grandfather, Salman Fuladvand, was a lieutenant and controversial police chief under Iran’s second last king. Iran: My Grandfather is the story of Salam’s life – his youthful devotion to the advancement of his country and the emancipation of Iranian women, his conflicts with the shahs, his wrongful imprisonment, and his eventual embracing of Sufi mysticism. A rare mix of narrative, memoir, history and personal exploration, Iran: My Grandfather recounts Iran’s journey from progressive idealism to the ravages of tyranny, imperialism and religious reaction.

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Lunch in Paris
Elizabeth Bard
$35.00

The chocolate centre flows like dark lava onto the whiteness of the plate. The last ounce of stress drains from my body....I have discovered the French version of Death by Chocolate. Part love story, part wine-splattered cookbook, LUNCH IN PARIS is a deliciously tart, forthright and funny story of falling in love with a Frenchman and moving to the worlds most romantic city - not the Hollywood version, but the real Paris, a heady mix of blood sausage and irregular verbs. From gutting her first fish (with a little help from Jane Austen) and battling bad-tempered butchers to discovering heavenly chocolate shops, Elizabeth Bard finds that learning to cook and building a new life as a stranger in an even stranger land have a lot in common. Along the way she learns the true meaning of home - and the real reason French women dont get fat ... Peppered with recipes to die for, this mouth-watering love story is the perfect treat for any woman who has ever suspected that lunch in Paris could change her life.

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Mad Dogs & Englishmen

$35.00

Sir Ranulph Fiennes can trace his lineage back to Charlemagne along with being related to Jane Austen. One of his relatives, Geoffrey de Saye, was at the signing of the Magna Carta. Celia Fiennes wrote a journal of her horseback exploration of England and inspired the nursery rhyme ‘Ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross’. Mad Dogs and Englishmen is Sir Ranulph’s personal expedition to trace the roots of this extraordinary family, which has been intimately involved in the major events of English history.

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Mercy, Mater & Me
Sister Angela Mary
$35.00

Sister Angela Mary arrived in Brisbane from Ireland in 1947 having left behind her close-knit family and friends. Originally trained as a teacher, she was called upon to work as a nurse at Brisbane’s Mater Hospital. She worked the wards during the Mater’s early years and ended up as Administrator of the hospital until she retired in the early 2000s. Mercy, Mater & Me is an inspirational story for women of all generations and Sister Angela is living proof that quite determination, education and kindness go hand-in-hand on the road to success.

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Nomad
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
$35.00

This woman is a major hero of our times RICHARD DAWKINS For me, the three most beautiful words in the emerging language of secular resistance to tyranny are Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Christopher Hitchens Ayaan Hirsi Ali caused a worldwide sensation with her gutsy memoir INFIDEL. Now, in NOMAD, she tells of coming to America to build a new life, an ocean away from the death threats made against her by European Islamists, the strife she witnessed and the inner conflict she suffered. It is the story of her physical and emotional journey to freedom - her transition from a tribal mindset that restricts womens every thought and action to life as a free and equal citizen in an open society. Through stories of the challenges she has faced, she shows the difficulty of reconciling the contradictions of Islam with Western values. Hirsi Ali recounts the many turns her life took after breaking with her family and how she struggled to throw off restrictive superstitions and misconceptions that initially hobbled her ability to assimilate into Western society. She writes movingly of her reconciliation, on his deathbed, with her devout father, who had disowned her when she renounced Islam after 9/11, as well as with her mother and cousins in Somalia and in Europe. Nomad is a portrait of a family torn apart by the clash of civilizations, but it is also a touching, uplifting and often funny account of one womans discovery of todays America. This is Hirsi Alis intellectual coming of age, a memoir that conveys her philosophy as well

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Rifling Through My Drawers

$35.00

With her inimitable wit, treasury of tales and outspoken views, Clarissa Dickson Wright opens her diary and takes us on a journey around Britain and her life. As a celebrated cook and champion of the countryside, Clarissa recalls episodes from her life and describes her encounters with everyone from local farmers to various Women’s Institutes. In a world of political correctness, Rifling Through My Drawers is a breath of fresh air and proves once again why Dickson Wright is a true treasure.

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Sahara

$34.95

In Sahara Paula Constant finds herself alone in Africa. The wheels have fallen off her marriage,  her husband has left her, she is in mad lust with one of the tour guides, but she is determined to follow her dream - to walk across the Sahara from its westernmost point to the east. Sahara is a thrilling adventure story, while also being a story of joy and heartache, inspiration and despair. But above all it’s a celebration of the human spirit in all its guises.

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Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad
Rowlatt Bee & Witwit May
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Would you brave gun-toting militias for a cut and blow dry?

May's a tough-talking, hard-smoking, lecturer in English. She's also an Iraqi from a Sunni-Shi'ite background living in Baghdad, dodging bullets before breakfast, bargaining for high heels in bombed-out bazaars and battling through blockades to reach her class of Jane Austen-studying girls. Bee, on the other hand, is a London mum of three, busy fighting off PTA meetings and chicken pox, dealing with dead cats and generally juggling work and family while squabbling with her globe-trotting husband over the socks he leaves lying around the house.

They should have nothing in common.

But when a simple email brings them together, they discover a friendship that overcomes all their differences of culture, religion and age. Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad is the story of two women who share laughter and tears, and swap their confidences, dreams and fears. And, between the grenades, the gossip, the jokes and the secrets, they also hatch an ingenious plan to help May escape the bombings of Baghdad . . .

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The Bird King and Other Sketches
Shaun Tan
$39.95

The bird king, the anthropologists, the thing in the bathroom, the paraffin-oil koala, the secret birthday party – what do they all have in common? They all come from the sketchbooks of Shaun Tan, acclaimed creator of The Lost Thing, The Arrival, and Tales from Outer Suburbia. This previously unpublished selection of Shaun’s work includes portrait and landscape studies, pages from travelling notebooks, and preliminary drawings for book, film and theatre projects. All offer a special insight into the daydreams of this celebrated author and illustrator.

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Under the Huang Jiao Tree

$29.95

In mid-life Jane Carswell leaves her tranquil New Zealand life, her family and friends, to teach english in China. Her journey into the unknown epitomises the ache so many of us feel in our own lives for new challenges and personal understandings. Under the Huang Jiao Tree is a reflective, amusing and absorbing book about living and working in China, and the profound impact the experience has on the author’s search for connection and community. Carswell writes beautifully of China, of its people and her surprises and setbacks.

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When It Rains: A Memoir
Maggie MacKellar
$29.95

When Maggie’s vibrant young husband dies tragically, Maggie is left widowed and due to give birth three months later to their second child. Then her beloved mother, backbone of the family, dies suddenly of aggressive cancer. In two short years, Maggie’s life has shattered. After a year she gives up trying to juggle single motherhood and the demands of an academic career and returns with her children to the family farm in central western New South Wales. When It Rains is a stunning memoir about piecing a life back together, one step at a time.

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