Sorted on book title (not in series order)
Is Hamlet really mad or is the world mad? Is Othello merely gullible or is there something about his place in society that makes him vulnerable? Why can there be no happy ending to King Lear? In this radical approach to Shakespearean tragedy, Fintan O'Toole, Ireland's foremost theater critic, shows how Shakespeare's plays have been made unintelligible to modern students.Read more
On February 27, 1902, Lieutenant Harry Morant and Lieutenant Peter Hancock were shot by a British military firing squad. Both were serving in the Boer War as Australians under British command. They had been found guilty by court martial of killing Boer prisoners.
While there is...Read more
It is rare that a single book actually changes the course of history. Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, did exactly that. It spurred revolutionary changes in government policy toward the environment and was instrumental in launching the environmental movement that has made "ecology...Read more
Australian and New Zealand crime and thriller writing is booming globally, with antipodean authors regularly featuring on awards and bestseller lists across Europe and North America, and overseas readers and publishers looking more and more to tales from lands Down Under.
...Read more
"But down these mean streets must go a man who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished or afraid." When Raymond Chandler wrote these words in his classic The Simple Art of Murder, he drew a blueprint for the male private eyes who descend from Philip Marlowe to populate the world of...Read more
Revealing the invisible position of power and privilege in feminist practice, this accessible and provocative analysis elucidates the whiteness of Australian feminism. A pioneering work, it will overturn complacent notions of a mutual sisterhood and the common good.Read more
An extraordinarily powerful and personal meditation on race, culture and national identity.
In July 2015, as the debate over Adam Goodes being booed at AFL games raged and got ever more heated and ugly, Stan Grant wrote a short but powerful piece for The Guardian that went viral...Read more
Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from. Jacky was running.
The Natives of the...Read more
Tourism Australia statistics show that many overseas tourists, as well as Australians, are keen to learn more about Australia’s first peoples. And while the Indigenous tourism industry continues to grow, no comprehensive travel guide is currently available.
Marcia Langton’s...Read more
This book is a study of the "mothers" of the mystery genre. Traditionally the invention of crime writing has been ascribed to Poe, Wilkie Collins and Conan Doyle, but they had formidable women rivals, whose work has been until recently largely forgotten. The purpose of this book is to "...Read more
Alison Hoddinott writes about the history of crime fiction set in Oxford, from the early decades of the 20th century to the present. Her emphasis is on novels written by women and the ways in which their fiction deals with both the mystery and its solution and with the situation of women...Read more
A bonzer (p. 288) discussion of the strange but dinkum (p. 289) pedigree (p. 224) of the naughty (p. 202), nice (p. 212), and, sometimes, obscene (p. 217) English language.
We live in a torrent of words — from radio and television, books and newspapers, and now from the...Read more
Whatever you need, Susie Dent has a word for it.
Do you know the name for someone who loves reading in bed, or what a binfluencer does? How about the medieval invention of Lubberland as a place for lazy teenagers, or the...Read more
Widely acclaimed author Jackie French's journal of a year in the life of the Araluen Valley in the beautiful Southern Highlands of NSW. It's a combination of many stories - foxes in the autumn and the first of the asparagus, dashes to the school bus in the mornings and sleepy lizard...Read more