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In her memoir, Ask No Questions, Eva Collins charts her family's journey from Poland to Australia during the Cold War. Her restrained tone reflects the threat her parents experienced of the Communist regime and of ubiquitous anti-Semitism. Simply written and deeply moving she captures loss and gain, grief and celebration with great poignancy. With a third of Australians born overseas and half the population with one migrant parent, Ask No Questions forms a crucial part of our national experience. Its accessible poetry is particularly suited for young adult readers.

Though she was only fourteen years old, like many other Jews in Eastern Europe's Pale of Settlement in 1907, Rebecca Lieberman gathered her few belongings and left for the United States. What follows is a unique and poetic story of history, war, mysticism, music, abuse, survival and transcendence against the backdrop of New York City in the '20s, '30s and '40s.

The backdrop of Carol and Ahoy is the Goulburn River and its floodplains around Shepparton. Ancestry and watchful reflection combine seamlessly in these poems, which are always in search of "what is tactile and particular", be it a gum tree, an agave or the past. Simon West's fluid, ever-shifting gaze will be familiar to readers of his previous volumes.

 

Waking on a Summer Morning

 

I asked if verse were no more than a toy,

then heard the blackbirds carol and ahoy

and the traffic's tidal snare drum sough.

They were absolute, these tones, not thought's forgotten setting now,

as they washed through open windows and the new-found

arch of door jambs, and echoed round

the room's old school of shadows. They were glory

of music on the mind's cool parquet floor.

 

Simon West is the author of three collections of poetry and an edition of the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti. He is represented in anthologies including Thirty Australian Poets, Young Poets: An Australian Anthology, and Contemporary Australian Poetry.

The quality of Australian poetry has never been higher, nor the number of distinctive voices greater.

 

A landmark publication, this collection presents the astonishing achievements of Australian poetry during the last quarter of a century. Over ten years in preparation, gathering over 200 poets and 500 poems, it makes the case for this country's poetry as a broadening of the universal set for all English-speakers.

 

'Somewhat astonishingly,' the introduction notes, 'and while no-one was looking, Australian poetry has developed a momentum and a critical mass such that it has become one more luminous field in the English-speaking imagination. Increasingly, anyone who seeks to explore the perspectives or music available in English will also have to consider the perspectives and music which have originated here - Australia having turned itself, too, into a place in the mind.'

 

Both survey and critical review, this anthology offers a rare opportunity to explore the major national achievement of contemporary Australian poetry.

This book is aimed at providing criticism on contemporary Australian poetry in a form that is accessible to general readers. It is intended to be the first in a series which will grapple with the bewildering diversity of the contemporary poetry scene. Australian poetry deserves a criticism that accompanies the astonishing momentum and luminosity that has developed, which both elucidates the scale of poetic achievement and is also not afraid to evaluate that achievement through a rigorous and disinterested critical lens. Australian poets have been feeding the ghost with extraordinary energy and acumen over the last quarter of a century; it is now time for Australian poetry criticism to catch up.

When Helen Hayward had her two children in London, 25 years ago, she found looking after them easy. Loving and looking after her kids was straightforward. However loving and looking after her home was not. She had long been instructed to put her career first. So she did. Yet what to do with the mushrooming laundry by the bathroom door? And what about if she actually liked cooking? Home Work is a series of personal essays motivated by three questions:

1. Is there an art to running a home?

2. Can it be a satisfying thing to do?

3. Has the work we do around the home - which accounts for roughly a 1/4 of our waking hours - something important to teach us about life itself?

Making Australia Slightly Better Than Average Again™ is Mark Swivel's soundbite manifesto as he embarks on a bid for the senate in 2019. Swivel argues our political class detached from the rest of us a long time ago and has no real purpose beyond preserving itself. He advocates a new populism that's about making communities worth living in and building a future where government serves us and not the market - where the test is always 'so, tell me how does this bring people together?' An Australia that is Slightly Better Than Average... like the one he grew up in when there was free university education, a sane housing policy, and we all seemed to be part of a national adventure.

 

"Disruption is everywhere except politics. Let's change that." This is Mark Swivel's message to all Australians in this immensely readable, very funny, yet insightful book. Read it and be inspired. What The Barefoot Investor did for personal finance, Swivel does for politics. - Colleen Ryan, Author and former editor of the Australian Financial Review

 

With humour and insight, Mark Swivel skewers our political life: the dominance of corporatism and consumerism and the abandonment of the public sphere. Our politicians are so enthralled by vested interests, so absorbed in their own ambition they are unable to govern in Australia's long-term interest. Swivel rightly argues we all have a part to play in rebuilding and sustaining our Common Wealth. - Anne Cooombs, Activist, author and former chair of Get Up

'When I listen to Bach, I seem to turn into a fish'. - Bach (Pau) in Love.

'We forget because we want to live. We forget because we live in hope for a better life. It's this wretched hope that demands that we forget the unforgettable'. - The Last Smile of Graf Tolstoy.

These stories explore the nature of love, loss and memory: central to them is the uneasiness the narrators feel about their place in the world. A critical moment in the life of each narrator illuminates these themes in remarkable ways. For instance, in the story 'Walter Benjamin's Pipe' the narrator wants to comprehend that critical moment when Walter Benjamin, the famous Jewish-German philosopher and literary critic, decided to end his life. In the story 'Bach (Pau) in Love,' the famous Catalan cellist Pablo Casals imagines the situation which would have inspired Bach to compose his six suites for cello. In the story 'Anna and Fyodor in Basel,' Anna, Fyodor Dostoevsky's wife waits for that moment when Holbein's famous painting about the dead Christ makes its appearance in the novel The Idiot. In 'The Quartz Hill,' a Cantonese photographer looks at the prints of Paddy Bedford's paintings about the Bedford Downs massacre and decides to visit Halls Creek in search for her Gija grandmother's roots.

Charting surreal and yet familiar worlds where hope and horror co-exist, Monster is ruthless, weird, dark and funny. These 32 stories explore loss, addiction, love and breakdown with unsentimental economy. Stories concern mothers losing or leaving children, relationships dangling by a thread or exploding. Some characters are institutionalised, others are profoundly lonely. Some just wander around - lost, while others are filled with shocking violence. There is joy here, too, and a kind of blazing intimacy in this debut collection of tough, tender and unflinching stories.

 

Ashleigh Synnott lives in Sydney. Her stories, poems and essays have appeared in publications such as Meanjin, Overland, the Long Paddock, and Antipodes. Monster is her first book.

 

"Synnott has a rare gift for mixing light and dark, a love of outsiders and of inner worlds that soon becomes addictive. The stories in Monster pierce the skin, pick at wounds, and break through to the mysteries of embodiment and desire with a strange power. This is a writer who's not afraid to aim for the guts." - Jennifer Mills

 

"Monster takes us into unexpected corners of the imagination, a place inhabited by misfits and dreamers, innocents and lost souls, who take us by out necks and shake us around." - Debra Adelaide

 

"An astonishing writer. Synnott's immense empathy for her outsiders and her fearless ear reminded me of George Saunders." - Delia Falconer

 

"Strange, haunting, beautiful." - Sunil Badami

 

Saeed has not returned to Iran after publishing his novel The Imaginary Narrative of a Real Murder for fear of political persecution. He is surprised when Ismael, his father who has never left Iran, announces that he is travelling to Adelaide to visit him. During his short stay, Ismael tells Saeed the story of his unrequited love for Forugh Farrokhzad - the most controversial poet of modern Iran. The story makes Saeed see his father in a new light, and leaves him with the burning question: had his father, unwittingly, played a role in Forugh's death?

Follow the adventures of Mr Farmhand as he negotiates a rural existence in New Jersey, staving off the attentions of Mavis Eggwhistle, staying one step ahead of Frank Winkler and steering clear of Farmer Bart Brassica's pitchfork. His is a world full of unexpected dangers, from the odd satirical skirmish to the surprise philosophical poke in the eye, where gossip takes centre stage and life is lived on the margins. It's a tough gig, but somebody has to do it.

Select Episodes from the Mr Farmhand Series is perhaps the first literary work to feature instant polenta and dirty snow in the same sentence. It does not so much occupy a new literary genre as create one - an episodic play of pun-laden prose, each taking a seriously silly photograph as its point of departure. But better than that, it's funny. Carol Jenkins and her collaborating photographer Ingrid Periz have an uncannily absurd and whimsical eye.

Bringing the Select Episodes of Mr Farmhand into the Puncher and Wattmann stable is a coup, possibly even a chicken coup. Carol Jenkins lives in Sydney. She has two books published Fishing in the Devonian (2008) and Xn (2013) both from Puncher & Wattmann and shortlisted for the Premiers' Awards. Her collaborator Ingrid Periz lives in New Jersey and her most recent book is Robert MacPherson, The Painter's Reach (QAGOMA, 2015)

In a suburban Sydney pub, a woman tells her younger sister the story of how her life has changed since a serious car accident. She speaks of the blossoming of romance, the rediscovery of her long dormant creativity: her ability to draw. And yet an exhibition comes to nothing, a lover is abandoned. She leaves everything behind.
In the driving monologue of her own narrative, the younger sister attempts to make sense of her life and the events and thoughts that have obsessed the elder since the accident.

Fourteen years ago Michael dazzled the world with Ephesus, a brilliant debut novel that won him the respect of his peers, plenty of easy sex and the coveted Booker Prize. Since then, there's been nothing but false starts and dead ends. He can't even finish a short story. With debt collectors at the door, the cellar empty and the mortgage on the line, it's crunch time. His wife, Tanya, issues an ultimatum: get a job or get a divorce. Forced into assessing his literary agent's slush pile to help make ends meet, Michael discovers a dark gem. He rewrites it to make it his own. His publisher loves it and fame beckons and his literary standing soars... until the real author appears.

Slush Pile is a satire of literary ambition.

The Mentals went from the top of a pool table to the top of the charts. Enjoy the untold stories behind Aussie classics like: Live it Up, Too Many Times, If You Leave Me Can I Come Too?, Berserk Warriors, Egypt, The Nips are Getting Bigger, and a whole lot more. Plus tales from the road as told by Greedy, Martin, Bird, Pete & Reg - and a star-studded cast including Colin Hay, Richard Gottehrer, Mark Opitz, and Wreckless Eric - in this access-all-areas official biography.

Mothers-in-law are famous for being difficult but when Nell marries Andy it’s her father-in-law, Hal, who is the problem. A corrosive force in his own family, Hal is a truly ugly Australian who spreads his corruption whenever he gets the chance. Surviving Hal takes place in Sydney and Thailand and is the story of Nell and Andy trying to keep their family together against the influence of a charismatic but ugly soul.

 

Praise for Penny Flanagan

"Poignant … balanced, delicately handled, quietly eloquent." - The Sydney Morning Herald

 

"Penny Flanagan has produced a stylish first novel studded with comic gems." - New Librarian

 

"Not since Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip has a book given me this feeling of fitting into another woman’s skin." - Marie Low