- El Norte – Carrie Gibson
For reasons of language and history, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, America has much older Spanish roots. El Norte chronicles the sweeping and dramatic history of Hispanic North America from the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century to the present. Interwoven in this stirring narrative of events and people are cultural issues which are unresolved to this day: language, belonging, community, race and nationality. Seeing them play our over centuries provides vital perspective at a time when it is urgently needed.
- In the Name of God – Selina O’Grady
An original and ground-breaking history of religious tolerance that asks how and why our societies came to be as tolerant or intolerant as they are. Told through contemporary chronicles, stories and poems, Selina O’Grady takes the reader through the intertwined histories of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish persecutors and persecuted. This book will be an essential guide to understanding Islam and the West today and the role of religion in the modern world.
- The Anarchy: The Rise and Fall of the East India Company – William Dalrymple
In his most ambitious book to date, the best-selling historian tells the timely and cautionary tale of the rise of the East India Company and one of the most supreme acts of corporate violence in world history—how one of the world’s magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company. Three hundred years after its founding, with a corporate Mogul now sitting in the White House, the story of the East India Company has never been more current.
- Atlas of Vanishing Places – Travis Elborough
Maps offer us a chance to see not just how our world looks today, but how it once looked. But what about the places that are no longer mapped? Take a voyage to all corners of the world in search of the lost, disappearing and vanished. With archive photography and specially commissioned cartography showing each piece as it once was and how it is today, these incredible stories of place are brought vividly to life.
- Renia’s Diary – Renia Spiegel
‘Why did I decide to start a diary today? Has something important happened? Have I discovered that my friends are keeping diaries of their own? No! I just want a friend. Somebody I can talk to about my everyday worries and joys.’ Recently rediscovered after seventy years, Renia’s Diary is already being described as a classic of Holocaust literature. Written with a clarity and skill that is reminiscent of Anne Frank, it is an extraordinary testament to both the horrors of war, and to the life that can exist in even the darkest times.
- Quichotte – Salman Rushdie
In a tour-de-force that is both a homage to an immortal work of literature and a modern masterpiece about the quest for love and family, Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age.
- The Secrets We Kept – Lara Prescott
A banned masterpiece. Two female spies. A book that changed history. 1956. A celebrated Russian author is writing a book, Doctor Zhivago, which could spark dissent in the Soviet Union.
- Welcome to Country – School’s Edition – Marcia Langton
Essential reading for any Australian high school student who wants to learn more about our Indigenous culture that has thrived here for over 50,000 years. Author Professor Marcia Langton expands the educational information from the first edition of this book, to include chapters on Indigenous prehistory, cultures and languages, kinship, art and performance, storytelling, native title, the Stolen Generations and NAIDOC week. It also includes completely new content with everything from bush medicine to astrology. A new chapter on looking to the future for Indigenous Australia, including the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
- The Fifth Column – Andrew Gross
A Man in Trouble
February 1939 and Europe is on the brink of war. Charles Mossman is in a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, reeling from the loss of his job and his failing marriage, whilst outside thousands of Nazi sympathizers are attending a hate-spewing rally. As he confronts one, Charles makes a horrendous mistake with deadly consequences.
A City of Secrets
Two years later, Charles is released from prison and tries to reunite with his family. The US has kept out of the war for now but the pressure in the city is rising as those sympathetic to the Nazi cause lay the foundations for what lies ahead.
The Enemy Within
As he tries to make amends with his wife and daughter, Charles starts to understand that surrounding them there are forces that will use any means necessary to bring about the downfall of his nation. And when his daughter is befriended by a seemingly amiable Swiss couple, it brings to the surface his fears of a ‘Fifth Column’ of embedded German spies in their new neighbourhood. All Charles wants is to redeem himself as a husband and father, but sometimes a man must do questionable things to stand up for his family and what he believes, even sacrificing his life to do so.
- The Harp of Kings – Juliet Marillier
Eighteen-year-old Liobhan is a powerful singer and an expert whistle player. Her brother has a voice to melt the hardest heart, and is a rare talent on the harp. They are both training for the elite warrior band on Swan Island when they are asked to join a mission that requires posing as travelling minstrels.
Their task is to find and retrieve a precious harp, an ancient symbol of kingship, which has mysteriously vanished. If the instrument is not played at the upcoming coronation, the candidate will not be accepted. Faced with plotting courtiers, secretive druids, an insightful storyteller and a boorish Crown Prince, Liobhan soon realises an Otherworld power may be meddling in the affairs of the kingdom. When ambition clashes with conscience, Liobhan must make a bold decision and a heart-breaking choice.
- The Catholic School – Edoardo Albinati
In 1975, three young well-off men, former students at Rome’s prestigious all-boys Catholic high school San Leone Magno, brutally torture, rape, and murder two young women. The event, which comes to be known as the Circeo massacre, shocks and captivates all of Italy, exposing the violence and dark underbelly of the upper middle class at a moment when the traditional structures of family and religion are under threat.
Edoardo Albinati sets his novel in the halls and corridors of San Leone Magno in the late 1960s and the 1970s, exploring the intersection between the world of teenage boys and the structures of power in modern Italy. Along with indelible portraits of teachers and pupils – the charming Arbus, the literature teacher Cosmos, and his only Fascist friend, Max – Albinati’s novel also reflects on the legacy of abuse, the Italian bourgeoisie, and the relationship between sex, violence, and masculinity.
- First Map – Tessa Duder
Tessa Duder’s superbly researched book tells the human story behind the creation of Cook’s famous chart, following the progress of his six-month circumnavigation of New Zealand and piecing the map together as the narrative on H.M.B. Endeavour unfolds.
It is a story of courage, dogged perseverance and Cook’s extraordinary skills as both cartographer and seafarer. His encounters with the Māori peoples living around the coasts, particularly of the North Island, would require the diplomacy and respect he’d been instructed to observe. Later surveys using superior technology have shown that Cook, who was renowned for his modesty, seriously underestimated his achievement.
Scenes from Tessa’s evocative text are beautifully recreated by award-winning illustrator David Elliot.
- Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 – Max Hastings
Chastise sets the Dams Raid in the big picture of the bomber offensive and of the Second World War, with moving portraits of the young airmen, so many of whom died; of Barnes Wallis; the monstrous Harris; the tragic Guy Gibson, together with superb narrative of the action of one of the most extraordinary episodes in British history.
- The Collaborator – Diane Armstrong
Based on astonishing true events set in the darkest days of World War II in Budapest, this is an enthralling story of heroism, vengeance, passion, and betrayal. It is also the story of three women linked by a secret that threatens to destroy their lives.
