While women have struggled to gain recognition in the discipline of philosophy, there is no shortage of brilliant female thinkers. What can these women teach us about ethics, politics, and the nature of existence, and how might we relate these big ideas back to the smaller everyday concerns of domestic life, work, play, love, and relationships?Australian novelist Julienne van Loon goes on a worldwide quest to answer these questions, by engaging with eight world-renowned thinkers who...

Fanny and Selina could be any age but I like to think of them as having married young, reared their children and moved on through divorce into a new life flat-sharing together. It could so easily be my own story and I must confess to being quite jealous. Selina could be me. I envy her!

George is the new forklift driver. Millie and I work in the packaging department and we are both bored and frustrated with absent husbands doing endless three-week tours on the North Sea oil rigs. The arrival of 'Supersize George' as we quickly dubbed him caused us initially wry suggestive amusement, but gradually morphing into something deeper and more serious. Came the day that Millie said "I fancy him" and my spontaneous reply was "Me too!. From there on in there would be no knowing whe...

'Australians' fervent belief in luck is deeply etched in our consciousness. More than with the citizens of other countries, it affects the way we see most things. When someone escapes serious injury or death in an accident, we remark on how lucky they were. We don't say they were unlucky to have had the accident in the first place.'In ON LUCK, Anne Summers explores the gambling culture that is so intrinsic to being Australian, corruption in business, the economy, our obses...

I'm Jed, baptised Jeddediah, along with my twin brother Jeremiah, We grew up on our family farm and ran the cattle ranch along with our Pa until I took up an apprenticeship as a blacksmith. I quickly learned how to smash around red-hot ironwork to fashion horseshoes, put strengthening bars into unstable cottage walls and fix new rims on cartwheels. My activities soon enough attracted an audience to my hot, sweaty forge so I became accustomed to being watched over by the young ladies of the...

'I was born into a world that expected very little of women like me. We were meant to tread lightly on the earth, influencing events through our husbands and children, if at all. We were meant to fade into invisibility as we aged. I defied all of these expectations and so have millions of women like me.'This is the compelling story of Anne Summers' extraordinary life. Her story has her travelling around the world as she moves from job to job, in newspapers and magazines, advising p...

Sexual harassment, domestic violence and date rape had not been named, although they certainly existed, when Damned Whores and God's Police was first published in 1975. That was before the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984 and before large numbers of women became visible in employment, in politics and elsewhere across society. It's hard to imagine an Australia where these abuses were not yet fully understood as obstacles to women's equality, yet that was Australia in 1975.It ...

Out of the NightOut of the stillness of the nightCame the sound of the night birds trillIt came through the window loud and clearFrom the brow of the distant hill.As I lay there and listenedTo his melodious callThe answering trill came in on the windFaintly, barely heard at all.Twas a glorious thing of joy to hearSuch beauty out of sightIt made me know that God was thereIn the s...

This book offers an entirely new contribution to the history of multiculturalism in Britain, 1880-1940. It shows how friendship and co-operation between Christian and Jewish women changed lives and, as the Second World War approached, actually saved them. The networks and relationships explored include the thousand-plus women from every district in Manchester who combined to send a letter of sympathy to the Frenchwoman at the heart of the Dreyfus Affair; the religious leagues for women’s s...

As I slowly come awake, I can feel the tingle of excitement beginning to surge through my entire body, somehow stronger than it has ever been before, even in my still-sleepy memory. Deep down inside my belly my pulse throbs with a gradually rising cadence of erotic heat and my tightly clenching little vagina begins a slow pulsation that is irresistibly pleasurable. My eyes are still closed while my senses begin to explore Olivia's voluptuous body snuggled against me, her steady breathing s...

The time is post-war prosperous white Middle America. A time before computers, mobile phones, the internet or 'social media'. In this time it is still possible to live a double life as long as you are a wealthy white male, a time when "The Great Gatsby" was entirely plausible. But occasionally we women get our own back!

When I became of age, and being of a comely shape and a fair complexion, my master sold me into Suleiman the Magnificent's harem. I had been selected from amongst the many slave girls that he owned as being potentially suitable and had been put into seclusion as soon as I had my first menstrual period along with the other favoured ones. We were sent to live inside a walled palace on the fringe of a remote town in the far reaches of his domain, cut off from the outside world and attended on...