A merchant sailor works for a decade, captaining a yacht up and down the coasts of Malaysia, in the hope that his crooked employer will stay true to a promise...Years after a pandemic sweeps across Europe, wiping out its all-white population, a pilgrim returns to his Polish birthplace in search of the only other non-white kid he knew at school...An inscrutable hotelier loses his composure when a secret passage is discovered in his hotel, leading to a mysterious room and a p...

They say that tourist ships to Antarctica, even more than ordinary human conveyances, are loaded down with aching hearts. Deceived wives and widowers, men who've never been loved and don't know why, Russian crew forced to leave their children behind for years at a time … And then there are the married couples: how calm the old ones, how eager the new! – but isn't a couple the greatest mystery of all?Regions of Thick-Ribbed Ice is the tale of a journey to Antarctic...

A Thunk is a beguiling question about everyday things that stops you in your tracks and helps you start to look at the world in a whole new light. The author guides you through the origins and uses of Thunks and demonstrates how this powerful little book can develop philosophical thinking for all ages ... remember there are no right or wrong answers to these questions. How liberating is that ...? Winner of The Author's Licensing and Collecting Society Award for Educational Writing by the S...

‘Wonky, idiosyncratic, fragmentary, paradoxical, drunk on words, the essay has … a uniquely human thumbprint.’ —Geordie WilliamsonIn The Best Australian Essays 2015, Geordie Williamson compiles the year’s outstanding short non-fiction. Read Helen Garner on condescension, DBC Pierre on travel, Ceridwen Dovey on autobiography, Tim Winton on injury, Anna Krien on first love, and Nicolas Rothwell on the northern coast. With bracing essays on politics, music, literature, histor...

When David Jordan, an extraterrestrial human in appearance, agrees to help U.N. Secretary General Nicholas Straka resolve an escalating nuclear crisis, he also learns he must defuse a horrifying plot to exterminate humanity by a hostile race of beings who despise human culture. Somehow, he must thwart both crises before a worldwide intervention is launched by his superiors, destroying human innocence in the process. In Reason for Existence, David learns the origins of human conflict, the n...

Stories and essays by Claire Aman, Tony Birch, Rjurik Davidson, Michael Giacometti, Marion Halligan, Andy Kissane, Jennifer Mills, Ryan O’Neill, Maria Takolander and Patrick West. With an Introduction by Amanda Lohrey.‘Cracking the spine is not just a deftly curated overview of the contemporary Australian short story, including pieces by ten of the best practitioners at work today. The auto-critical essays that accompany each work gesture even more widely. Literature, life, landsca...

A strange alien species forces us to question our definition of civilization in this biting satire from the Grand Master of Science Fiction.What would intelligent life‑forms on another planet look like? Would they walk upright? Would they wear clothes? Or would they be hulking creatures on six legs that wallow in their own excrement? Upon first contact with the Utod— intelligent, pacifist beings who feel no pain—mankind instantly views these aliens as animals becaus...

Writing a novel can be a slow, painful and lonely process. Many writers never manage to achieve their goal. This inspirational book will help you to rediscover the joy of your craft and rekindle your creative fire.Leading contemporary authors offer you support, guidance and encouragement as well as a fascinating insight into the craft of writing:Jill Dawson - getting started; Andrew Miller - creating characters; Meg Rosoff - finding your voice; DBC Pierre - convincing dialogue; Adam Foulds - ...

AFTER A HIGHLY reviewed first volume of Sanders' life-story trilogy, this second book takes automotive autobiographical style to a different level. Again combining the literary history of his past, fused with his life long obsession with adventure, he produces a true story that reads like a novel. This book is about motorcycling and lots of it. Cover to cover from the Atacama to Alaska, Syria and the Middle East, London to Cape Town and beyond and then back again. His family, his loves, da...

In this collection of essays, ten leading writers from different countries consider the conflicts that have informed their own literary lives. 1914-Goodbye to All That borrows its title from Robert Graves's "bitter leave-taking of England" in which he writes not only of the First World War but the questions it raised: how to live, how to live with each other, and how to write.Interpreting this title as broadly and ambiguously as Graves intended, these essays mark the War's centenary...

A daughter flies into a painting to escape her overprotective mother. An exchange student sees green lights in the sky above South America and fears the worst. Against the backdrop of an Italian bird market, a holidaying teenager makes her first attempt at seduction. And an affair that never happens is deconstructed while tigers pace in a European zoo.Wild Gestures is the first collection from British writer Lucy Durneen, bringing together stories of loss, desire and oppor...

True creativity, the making of a thing which has not been in the world previously, is originality by definition. But while many claim to crave originality, they feel an obscure revulsion when confronted with it. The really new is uncomfortable and disturbing. Repetition of the familiar is preferred. The hailing of old ideas as original lowers the standard for invention and robs most creative people of the drive to do anything interesting, let alone seek out the universe of originality whic...