Exposition by Nathalie Léger; Amanda DeMarco (Translator)

$39.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

Fiction. Art. Photography. Biography. Memoir. EXPOSITION is the first in a triptych of books by the award-winning writer and archivist Nathalie Léger that includes SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN and THE WHITE DRESS. In each, Léger sets the story of a female artist against the background of her own life and res earch--an archivist's journey into the self, into the lives that history hides from us. Here, Léger's subject is the Countess of Castiglione (1837-1899), who at the dawn of photography dedicated herself to becoming the most photographed woman in the world, modeling for hundreds of photos, including "Scherzo di Follia," among the most famous in history. Set long before our own "selfie" age, EXPOSITION is a remarkably modern investigation into the curses of beauty, fame, vanity, and age, as well as the obsessive drive to control and commodify one's image. ...Show more

Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Leger

$39.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

‘Brilliant little book’ – Valeria Luiselli (winner of the 2015 LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for her debut novel, Faces in the Crowd) ‘An extraordinary book. It reads compulsively and is unlike anything else I have read.’ – Selma Dabbagh‘Immensely readable, extremely thought-provoking and really quite haunting […] And best of all, it achieves that most elusive feat of never reading like a translation.’ – Lydia Syson ‘This beautiful book is striking for its echoes of artists who are either quoted or (never gratuitously) emulated, including Godard, Fred Wiseman, Sebald and Perec.’ – La Quinzaine littéraire‘Beautifully translated’ – David Collard, Times Literary Supplement A writer commissioned to pen a short entry on Barbara Loden for a cinema encyclopaedia embarks on a trip to America to expand her research. How to paint a life, a personality? Loden’s sketchy biography draws the narrator to Duras, Perec, Godard, Plath, Kate Chopin, Melville, Beckett, Sebald and also a handful of ordinary people, each shedding light on the topic in the making: a singular homage to the 1960s American actress famously married to Hollywood giant Elia Kazan, and to her one and only film, Wanda (1970), hailed a masterpiece of early cinéma vérité – an anti-Bonnie-and-Clyde road movie about a young woman adrift in rust-belt Pennsylvania. As scenes from Wanda punctuate the pages, elements from the narrator’s own life and her mother’s start forming a fragmented mirror image. First published in France to enormous critical and popular acclaim, this is the first book about and inspired by one of the greatest, most unconventional actresses of her time. ‘It is a real gem of a piece of writing. Highly original and very powerful. And so well translated!’ – Jenny McPhee‘Léger jump-cuts through time and space with the expertise of a movie director’ – Joanna Walsh‘A moving, subtle novel about the need to create’ – Le Monde‘A truly remarkable book. I love Leger's obsessive circling, the connections she draws in and through the Loden/Wanda narrative, some deeply haunting images ...’ – Anna Zalakostas (Green Apple Books, San Francisco) ...Show more

Exposition by Nathalie Leger (Author) , Amanda DeMarco (Translated by) , Cecile Menon (Edited by

$39.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

The White Dress by Nathalie Léger; Natasha Lehrer (Translator)

$39.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

Fiction. Performance Art. Biography. Memoir. THE WHITE DRESS is the third in Nathalie Léger's award-winning triptych of books about women who "through their oeuvre, transform their lives into a mystery" (ELLE). In EXPOSITION, Léger wrote about the Countess of Castiglione, the most photographed woman of the nineteenth century; in SUITE FOR BARBARA LODEN she took up the actress and filmmaker Barbara Loden; here, Léger grapples with the tragic 2008 death of Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, who was raped and murdered while hiking from Italy to the Middle East in a wedding dress to promote world peace. A harrowing meditation on the risks women encounter, in life and in art, THE WHITE DRESS also brings to a haunting conclusion Léger's personal interrogation--sustained across all three books--of her relationship with her mother and the desire for justice in our lives. ...Show more

Nativity by Jean Fremon and Louise Bourgeois

$39.99 AUD

Category: Fiction | Series: G - Reference,Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Ser.

Other People's Houses by Kelli Hawkins

$32.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

A stunningly tense, page-turning debut for all fans of The Woman in the Window and The Girl on the Train The perfect house. The perfect family. Too good to be true. Kate Webb still grieves for her young son, ten years after his loss. She spends her weekends hungover, attending open houses on Sydney's wealthy north shore and imagining the lives of the people who live there.Then Kate visits the Harding house - the perfect house with, it seems, the perfect family. A photograph captures a kind-looking man, a beautiful woman she once knew from university days, and a boy - a boy that for one heartbreaking moment she believes is her own son. When her curiosity turns to obsession, she uncovers the cracks that lie beneath a glossy facade of perfection, sordid truths she could never have imagined. But is it her imagination? As events start to spiral dangerously out of control, could the real threat come from Kate herself?   ...Show more

Rose Code by Kate Quinn

$29.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

The brand-new book from the internationally bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress - available to pre-order now! 1940. Three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything--beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses--but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Awkward local girl Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles beneath her shy exterior. 1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter-the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together... As the nation prepares for the royal wedding they must race against the clock to save one of their own. If you loved The Crown, don't miss this riveting historical novel - pre-order now! ...Show more

A Home Like Ours by Fiona Lowe

$32.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

Girl in the Walls by A. J. Gnuse

$29.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

She doesn't exist. She can't exist. 'A uniquely gothic tale about grief, belonging and hiding in plain sight' Jess Kidd, author of Things in Jars 'Those who live in the walls must adjust, must twist themselves around in their home, stretching themselves until they're as thin as air. Not everyone can do what they can. But soon enough, they can't help themselves. Signs of their presence remain in a house. Eventually, every hidden thing is found.' Elise knows every inch of the house. She knows which boards will creak. She knows where the gaps are in the walls. She knows which parts can take her in, hide her away. It's home, after all. The home her parents made for her. And home is where you stay, no matter what. Eddie calls the same house his home. Eddie is almost a teenager now. He must no longer believe in the girl he sometimes sees from the corner of his eye. He needs her to disappear. But when his older brother senses her, too, they are faced with a question: how do they get rid of someone they aren't sure even exists? And, if they cast her out, what other threats might they invite in?   ...Show more

Last Convict by Anthony Hill

$32.99 AUD

Category: Historical Fiction

'It's a good story, Samuel. You're a piece of living history.' Oxford 1863 - Young Samuel Speed sets a barley stack alight in the hope it will earn him a bed in prison for the night. He wants nothing more than a morsel of food in his belly and a warm place to sleep off the streets. What he receives is a sentence of seven years' servitude, to be served half a world away in the penal colony of Fremantle, Western Australia. When Samuel boards the transport ship Belgravia, he is stripped of his clothing and even his name, and given regulations of when to rise, eat, clean and sleep. On arrival at Fremantle Prison, hard labour is added to the mix and he wonders if life can get any worse. The only solace he finds is a love of reading, which allows the likes of Tom Sawyer and Oliver Twist to become his lifelong friends. Samuel is granted a ticket of leave in 1867 and full freedom in 1871, but what sort of life can a man forge for himself in the colony, with no skills, no money and no family? Will it be the beginning of the life he has always dreamed of, or do some sentences truly never end? A colourful recreation of the life and times of the last known convict to be sent to Australia, The Last Convict is a moving study of old age and loneliness, as one social outcast finds meaning in his impoverished life through the power of literature. Meticulously researched and brilliantly woven into an engaging fictional account, it is an unforgettable story by an award-winning writer and historian. ...Show more

Apeirogon by Colum McCann

$19.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERLONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIX FEMINA AND THE PRIX MEDICISWINNER OF THE PRIX DU MEILLEUR LIVRES ETRANGERCHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2020 BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, i PAPER, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SCOTSMAN, IRISH TIMES, BBC.COM, WATERSTON ES.COM'A wondrous book. It left me hopeful; this is its gift' Elizabeth Strout'An empathy engine ... It is, itself, an agent of change' New York Times Book Review'A quite extraordinary novel' Kamila ShamsieHow do we continue living once we have lost our reason to live?Rami and Bassam live in the city of Jerusalem - but exist worlds apart, divided by an age-old conflict. And yet they have one thing in common. Both are fathers; both are fathers of daughters - and both daughters are now lost.When Rami and Bassam meet, and tell one another the story of their grief, the most unexpected thing of all happens: they become best of friends. And their stories become one story, a story with the power to heal - and the power to change the world.'The book goes anywhere and everywhere. It is a delirious and thrilling improvisation, a jazz solo spun out of that meeting ... A spectacular structure of stories about everything' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times ...Show more

Transient Desires (#30 Brunetti) by Donna Leon

$32.99 AUD

Category: Fiction

In his many years as a commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native Venice to discover the person responsible. Now, in the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon's masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough- two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti's curiosity is aroused by the behaviour of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it? As Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, investigate the incident, they discover that one of the young men works for a man rumoured to be involved in more sinister night-time activities in the Laguna. To get to the bottom of what proves to be a gut-wrenching case, Brunetti needs to enlist the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organised. Donna Leon's thirtieth Brunetti novel is as powerful as any she has written, testing Brunetti to his limits, forcing him to listen very carefully for the truth.   ...Show more