Staff Reviews

Make it, don't buy it by Matt Remoroza

Available in print 

Make better food, spend less, and rediscover the joy of cooking!

Have you ever been shocked by the price of a fancy blended drink or wondered if you could make a better, less expensive version of your favourite takeout salad at home? Often, the answer is yes, you can—and Matt Remoroza will show you how.

Make It Don’t Buy It invites you to stop ordering takeout and try your hand at making your favourite store-bought foods from scratch, with over 100 recipes for dishes that taste better and often cost less than their overpriced restaurant counterparts. This unique cookbook draws on a variety of cuisines to satisfy every craving. Enjoy comforting breakfasts (Biscuits and Sausage Gravy), riffs on chicken and rice (Teriyaki Chicken, Halal Cart Chicken), and slow-cooked comfort food (Dipped Italian Beef, Easy Carnitas), as well as satisfying beverages (Iced Mango Matcha Latte) and impressive desserts (Basque Cheesecake). Matt breaks down the ingredients, tools, and techniques you’ll need to discover for yourself how simple it can be to make restaurant-worthy meals at home.

You’ll be inspired to cook more, eat out less, and make meals in your kitchen that are tastier than anything you'll find on a delivery app or in the frozen aisle in a grocery store.

Party people by Brie Larson and Courtney McBroom

Available in print

Celebrate any occasion (really, any occasion!) with 100 creative recipes and endless ideas for weird and wacky parties, from Academy Award–winning actor Brie Larson and former Milk Bar culinary director Courtney McBroom.

Brie Larson and Courtney McBroom found each other through food - a huge vat of molten queso, to be exact. They’ve been throwing food-filled parties together ever since. From weekly Game of Thrones viewing parties, to Dirty Dancing-themed birthday parties and their annual Hot Dog Appreciation Festival, they can find a reason to celebrate just about anything.

While their debate over whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich will never end, Brie and Courtney can agree that food always tastes best when you cook it and eat it with the ones you love. They wrote Party People to help you create meaningful connections with the ones you love, whether that’s with family, friends, or yourself. And with recipes like Old Pal cocktails, Jenga-Style Cheesy Bread, and Roast Chicken for the Ages, they have you covered.

Technically, this is an entertaining cookbook. But Brie and Courtney are serving up more than party tips and menus. They give you the tools to spark a new dining revolution in your home, one where connection takes centre stage and entertaining is an afterthought. Now, go forth and party!

Bring the outside in by Abi Dare

Available in print

Award-winning interiors blogger Abi Dare, author of The Soft Minimalist Home, offers a new take on biophilic design using organic materials, colours and textures to bring the outside in.

Nature provides ample inspiration for our homes, and a biophilic approach to design has been shown to enhance our mental and physical wellbeing. But there is more to it than adding lots of plants. Here, Abi Dare explores how to create an inviting home that makes subtle references to the natural world.

The book is divided into six sections: colour, materials and texture, shape and pattern, light and dark, layout and view, and finishing touches. In each, Abi provides practical tips and presents inspiring case studies, from a city apartment in Rotterdam to a family home in London and a farmhouse in the West Country. Palettes go beyond green, incorporating terracotta, pinks, peaches, blues, and ocher. Wood, stone, plaster, and linen offer a tactile experience, whether sleek and modern or rough-hewn and rustic. Soft curves, flowing lines, and imperfect forms can be used to mimic nature, tempering straight lines and sharp angles. Windows let in sunlight and frame our views of the outside world. Throughout, Abi highlights that biophilic design is not just an abstract theory, but an accessible concept that can make a big difference to our homes and lives.

The secret gardeners by Victoria Summerley

Available in print

The Secret Gardeners features the private gardens of more than 25 well-known figures from across British culture, including actors, artists, writers, designers and aristocrats. Through intimate interviews and over 300 photographs, it offers a rare look at the outdoor spaces where creativity, comfort and personal expression take root.

This updated edition includes four new gardens, including those of Prue Leith, Dominic West and Catherine FitzGerald and Jeremy Clarkson. Returning names include Julian Fellowes, Cath Kidston, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jeremy Irons. Each chapter reveals what gardening means to its owner, how their space reflects their personality, and why these green sanctuaries matter so deeply.

Photographed by Hugo Rittson-Thomas and written with warmth and insight by Victoria Summerley, this is a book that celebrates the joy of gardening, the importance of private space and the stories that grow behind the garden walls.

The Secret Gardeners is the perfect book for anyone who loves gardens and wants to get inside the head of the people who create and care for them.

The worst thing I’ve ever done by Clare Stephens

Available in print

It's an ordinary Tuesday morning when Ruby Williams' name starts trending online.

She's uploaded an interview that has outraged journalist Felicity Cartwright, a social media personality who has built her profile by policing exactly what women are allowed to say and how they're allowed to say it. Ruby is at the centre of a brutal public shaming, watching on in horror as her reputation is torn apart.  At first Ruby thinks she can get on top of it if she can just explain herself better. But she soon realises she'll never be able to calm the tsunami of strangers baying for her blood. The vitriol pouring in through her phone cracks open a visceral, personal shame from her past that she's refused to face.  Because the worst thing Ruby's ever done is not defined by this interview, but by a single, chilling scream. 

With skilful empathy, Clare Stephens holds a mirror to online identities versus actual lives, exploring what is truly important in a noise-ridden world competing for our attention.

1975 the year the world forgot by Dylan Jones

Available in print

The mid-seventies were dense with extraordinarily sophisticated, mature rock music made by singers, songwriters and musicians who had no problem calling themselves artists. And the records they made aspired to artistic status: everyone was trying to make their own masterpiece, and the sense of competitiveness was like something not seen since the mid-sixties. Three-minute pop singles had given way to concept albums, and pop-package tours had been supplanted by rock festivals, and rock in general had a renewed sense of ambition. 

1975 was the apotheosis of the adult pop, the most important year in the narrative arc of post-war music, and a year that was rich with masterpieces: Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan, The Who by Numbers by the Who, Young Americans by David Bowie, Another Green World by Brian Eno, The Hissing of Summer Lawns by Joni Mitchell and A Night at the Opera by Queen, amongst countless other legendary albums.

1975, as Dylan Jones expertly illustrates, was the greatest year of them all.

Hotshot: a life on fire by River Selby

Available in print

From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life—of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the constraints of what it means to be female-bodied in a male-dominated industry. An illuminating debut from a fierce new voice, Hotshot is a timely reckoning with both the personal and environmental dangers of wildland firefighting. 

By the time they were nineteen, Selby had been homeless, addicted to drugs, and sexually assaulted more than once. In a last-ditch effort to find direction, they applied to be a wildland firefighter. Two years later, they joined an elite class of specially trained wildland firefighters known as hotshots. Over the course of five fire seasons, Selby delves into the world of the people—almost entirely men—who risk their lives to fight and sometimes prevent wildfires. Simultaneously hyper visible and invisible, Selby navigated an odd mix of camaraderie and rampant sexism on the job and, when they challenged it, a violent closing of ranks that excluded them from the work they’d come to love. 

Drawing on years of firsthand experience on the frontlines of fire and years of research, Selby examines how the collision of fire suppression policy, colonisation, and climate change has led to fire seasons of unprecedented duration and severity. A work of rare intimacy, Hotshot provides new insight into fire, the people who fight it, and the diversity of ecosystems dependent on this elemental force.

Beyond the books by Heather Robinson

Available in print 

“Libraries are a community's secret weapon in the war against ignorance and isolation. They are also sites of pleasure and entertainment, and of rich cultural experience, knowledge transfer and social connection.'

This exciting and courageous book dares to look beyond economic impact to examine how the State Library of South Australia is valued by individuals and the community. Significantly, it demonstrates the real value of our nation's libraries, museums, archives and galleries, and what we stand to lose when we don't look after them.

This book reveals the vital role libraries and other cultural institutions play in our communities, promoting our civic 'common ground' and preserving our way of life. Bolstered by insights from across the Australian cultural sector, this book addresses what cultural value means to the public today – and what they see as the best return on government spending.”

Indignity by Lea Ypi

Available in print

“When Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with unsettling questions. Growing up, she was told records of her grandmother’s youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania.

What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans. While investigating the truth about her family, Ypi grapples with uncertainty. Who is the real Leman Ypi? What made her move to Tirana as a young woman and marry a socialist who sympathized with the Popular Front while his father led a collaborationist government? And why was she smiling in the winter of 1941?

By turns epic and intimate, profound and gripping, Indignity explores what it means to survive in an age of extremes. It reveals the fragility of truth, both personal and political, and the cost of decisions made against the tide of history. Through secret police reports of communist spies, court depositions, and Ypi’s memories of her grandmother, we move between present and past, archive and imagination, fact and fiction. Ultimately, she asks, what do we really know about the people closest to us? And with what moral authority do we judge the acts of previous generations?”

100 top crops you can grow by Mark Valencia

Available in print

“After nearly 20 years of practical food-growing and gardening experience, I’ve compiled a list of the top 100 crops I recommend people grow.  Actually, it’s technically the top 80 crops, because 20 of the 100 are crops that I recommend you avoid growing. I grew and tested them, so you didn’t have to go through the heartache.

The main reason this book took over two years to write was the extra thought and research I needed to do to decide on the top 100 crops. Part of this research took me down the nutritional value of these foods, so I called on my good friend Kate Di Prima (a practising dietician for over 30 years) to help sum up the “nutritional power status” for each crop, which is very interesting!

100 Top Crops You Can Grow is written for everyone from the beginner and advanced food gardener through to the prepper and/or self-sufficiency enthusiast. Whether you’re working with a sprawling backyard paradise or making magic happen in a few pots on your apartment balcony, this book has got you covered.”

Operation Pimento by Adam Hart

Available in print

“A thrilling, moving account of RAF Squadron Leader Frank Griffiths' remarkable escape from the Nazis after his plane was shot down over occupied France - as told by his great-grandson.

On 14 August 1943, Adam Hart's great-grandfather Frank Griffiths took off from RAF Tempsford, the SOE 'Special Duties' airbase in rural England. Frank and his crew were on a secret midnight mission codenamed Operation Pimento, but they were shot down near Annecy in southeast France. Only Frank survived.

Though seriously injured, Frank felt it was his duty to get back to England to continue the fight against the Nazis. He embarked on a perilous, 1,200-mile, 108-day escape across Europe, via the attic of a brothel, a Frenchwoman's chimney and a Spanish prison cell. Seventy-nine years later, Frank's 22-year-old great-grandson Adam Hart retraced the epic escape through France, Switzerland and Spain. His emotional encounters with descendants of people who'd risked their lives to help his great-grandfather reveal the enduring legacy of Operation Pimento and how we should never forget their sacrifice.

Operation Pimento is not only a riveting true story, but also a vivid account of one young man's journey to discover more about a man he'd never met, but always knew to be a hero.

Book of lives: a memoir of sorts by Margaret Atwood

Available in print

Immerse yourself in the creative universe of Margaret Atwood for a riot of life, art and everything in between: the greatest writer of our time tells her own story.

Raised by scientifically minded parents, Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forest of northern Quebec: a vast playground for her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother. It was an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.

The handmade home by Arounna Khounnoraj

Available in print

Brimming with ideas from the pretty to the practical. Twenty unique projects for every room in your home using repurposed materials, helping you save money and the planet.

With beginner friendly projects and step by step instructions, you’ll be making your own quilt in no time!

Melanesia: travels in black Oceania by Hamish McDonald

Available in print

Stretching from Fiji in the east to New Guinea in the west, Melanesia is astonishingly diverse. Its islands are home to some 1200 language groups, many of them still isolated from the outside world. In Australia, this complex region tends to make the news only in times of crisis: military coups in Fiji, Kanak unrest in New Caledonia, rioting in Solomon Islands.

Melanesia offers readers a deeper insight into the people and places behind these headlines, combining travelogue, history and astute political analysis.

The carpool detectives: a true story of four mums, two bodies and one mysterious cold case by Chuck Hogan

Available in print

In 2020, Marissa, Jeannie, Samira, and Nicole find themselves at a familiar crossroads- when motherhood takes charge of their lives, they begin grappling with their own identities. Their thriving careers seem like a lifetime ago, and as their children become more independent, they struggle to find purpose. But when they meet at a bowling night fundraiser for their kids' school, they discover a shared interest in true crime that crystalizes around a mysterious double homicide that took place in their hometown a decade earlier.

A couple in their 60s vanished overnight from their home and mysteriously shuttered their family business, leaving millions of dollars unaccounted for. Initially believed to have absconded with the money, they went from suspects to victims when their bodies were discovered in their car at the bottom of a steep ravine. And then the case turned cold.

Dreams: the many lives of Fleetwood Mac by Mark Blake

Available in print

Dreams is a must-read for casual Fleetwood Mac fans and die-hard devotees alike. In this unique collection of mini-biographies, observations and essays, Mark Blake explores all eras of the Fleetwood Mac story to explore what it is that has made them one of the most successful bands in history.

Labour of love: a midwife’s stories of birth, life and speaking up for women by Oceane Campbell

Available in print 

From her first days as a junior midwifery student, through to birthing babies during lockdown measures, Labour of Love follows Australian midwife Oceane Campbell.

In her first ten years catching babies she finds the courage to advocate for mothers, save lives, and soothe, grieve with, and celebrate new parents. As a feminist, woman, mother and midwife, Oceane keenly observes the impacts of birth, and the power dynamics of a system that doesn’t always support women when they’re most vulnerable. 1 in 10 women in Australia report obstetric violence, and 1 in 3 report trauma from their birthing experience. Something needs to change.

Labour of Love explores issues of consent, risk, misogyny and autonomy that surround the monumental transition from woman to mother. Oceane’s stories will leave you in awe of the human body and the miracle of witnessing a baby’s first breath.

Life & crimes: true stories from Australia’s underbelly by Andrew Rule

Available in print, large print, eBook and eAudiobook

Journalist and podcaster Andrew Rule brings us eighteen Australian crime stories that have fuelled fears, fired outrage and broken hearts and dreams. Among them are events so infamous that a word or phrase propels us back to a time and place.

The disappearance of the Beaumont children from an Adelaide beach in the sixties lingers in the nation's collective memory. The Easey Street murders symbolise a chilling assault on the freedom of young women in the seventies. The execution-style shooting of Gary Abdallah by a detective in the eighties heightened suspicions about the twinned worlds of cops and criminals.

The author has covered crime for decades with a novelist's eye and forensic attention to truth and lived to tell the tales. These are the best of them.

The wonder and happiness of being old: offerings of hope, joy, and new ways to perceive aging by Sophy Burnham

Available in print

What began as a singular response to Sophy's cousin asking about aging, soon blossomed into a full year of unmailed reflections, wonderment, and curiosities on a full life truly lived.

In The Wonder and Happiness of Being Old, bestselling author Sophy Burnham shares these priceless life lessons with you. A kind and thoughtful collection for readers of all ages, this book is a friendly companion that meets you exactly where you are, gives you hope for what's ahead, and an appreciation for all that you have already lived through.

Whether you are knocking at the door of 30, 60, 80, or 100, Sophy welcomes you to the side of gratitude that only age provides with a knowing nod of understanding and warmth. In the end, this book is about being old. It is also about joy. But most importantly, it is about love: Love of self, of life, and of still being here to tell your stories one letter at a time.

Mouche & friends: seamless toys to knit and love by Cinthia Vallet

Available in print

Mouche & Friends is a combination of a knitting book and a children's storybook, as maker Cinthia Valley brings adorable creatures to life with seamless knitting. The readers are taken through the techniques step-by-step with clear, illustrated tutorials, making knitting easy and enjoyable. She also shares her tips on working small circumferences, picking yarns and preparing a toolbox for toy-making. Cinthia's toy-making process is unique and totally seamless, which ensures a flowing knitting experience. The animals are knitted with natural fibres and worked in the round, starting from the nose and knitting down to the feet – growing a toy rather than building it.

The sunset years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann

Available in print and large print

One murder to solve and another to cover up. It'll be tricky, but the OAP residents of Sunset Hall are going to give it their best shot.

Sunset Hall is a house-share for the old and unruly, led by Agnes Sharp. It's an eventful day when this group of idiosyncratic geriatrics gets a visit from the police to inform them of some shocking news: a body has been discovered next door.

Everyone puts on a long face, but they are secretly relieved that the body in question is not the one they're currently hiding in the shed (sorry about that, Lillith). Now the answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen into their laps. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbour, so they can pin Lillith's death on them, thus killing two old birds with one stone.

To investigate, the group (not forgetting Hettie the tortoise) will venture into the not-so-idyllic village of Duck End and tangle with sinister bakers, broken stair lifts, inept criminals and their own dark secrets.

What we left unsaid by Winnie M Li

Available in print and eAudiobook

Thirty years ago, Alex, Bonnie and Kevin went on a road trip to the Grand Canyon with their parents. But something happened on that trip that cut it short. They never made it there. And their mother was never the same again.

Now, Alex, Bonnie and Kevin might be siblings, but they've grown apart, each holding heavy secrets close to their chests. When their mother takes a turn for the worse, asking them to relive that old road trip to see her, they're forced into close quarters once more.

As the siblings begin the drive, old memories and new secrets stir, tensions hitched as they find themselves driving through small towns where the locals aren't used to people who look like them.

What really happened to their mother on that road trip all those years ago? And what are the new truths each sibling is afraid to say? As they retrace old steps on a sweeping journey, the siblings are forced to finally learn the truth about each other, and the truth of what happened to their mother.

How bad things can get by Darcy Coates

Available in print

It was supposed to be the party of the century: miles of idyllic white sand beaches, lush jungle foliage...and a dark legend nobody dreamed might be all too true.

When an online influencer and several hundred of his most loyal fans land on Prosperity Island, the plan is simple: five days of elaborate games, drinking, and suntanned fun.

A week in paradise should have been a welcome respite. The only survivor of an infamous cult, Ruth wants nothing more than to keep her head down and not draw attention. She's spent decades outrunning her blood-soaked childhood, and her identity is a closely held secret.

But then the true history of the island is revealed…along with its sinister connection to Ruth's past. As guests go missing and games turn deadly, Ruth and the rest of the attendees are forced to question whether they've really been invited to paradise...or whether something much darker—and far bloodier—is waiting for them just beyond the bonfire's light.

A woman’s voice by Alli Sinclair

Available in print

When violin virtuoso Laura Hartley’s priceless instrument is stolen, more than just her celebrated European career disintegrates. Her rare gift of seeing music in colour fades to grey, crushing the sense of self she’s always expressed through her performances.

Fleeing to her grandmother’s home in the Australian outback, Laura discovers an extraordinary legacy woven through sheets of music – a powerful symphony born from the revolutionary hearts of suffragettes who refused to be silenced, their defiant voices rising above the doomed decks of the Titanic.

But as Laura traces each note of this forgotten masterpiece, she uncovers more than just music. She finds a story of women who dared to smash society’s chains, claim their own destiny and fight for a world where every voice can be heard.

When scandal rocks the tight-knit community of Gungderring, Laura must confront the question that has haunted generations of women before her: will she remain safely in the wings, or step forward and fight?