August Highlights 2011

No Description

No tennis player since Andre Agassi has captivated the world like Rafael Nadal. He's a rarity in today's sporting arena - a true sportsman who chooses to let his raw talent, dedication and humility define him. This autobiography, written by Nadal with award-winning journalist John Carlin, includes memorable highlights such as winning the Wimbledon 2008 final in what John McEnroe called, "the greatest game of tennis ever played" and completing a career Grand Slam after winning the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open in 2010.? Th... read more

No Description

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power. Henry Kissinger

Rome - as a city, as an empire, as an enduring idea - is in many ways the origin of everything Robert Hughes has spent his life thinking and writing about with such dazzling irreverence and exacting rigour. In this magisterial book he traces the city's history from its mythic foundation with Romulus and Remus to Fascism, Fellini and beyond. For almost a thousand years, Rome held sway as the spiritual and artistic centre of the world. Hughes vividly recreates the ancient Rome of Julius Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Nero, Caligula, Cicero... read more

Meet Maggie Fortenberry. Her life seems pretty much perfect - she's beautiful, charming and successful, just as you'd expect of a former Miss Alabama. But, in fact, Maggie is perfectly miserable. By now she should have been living in an elegant house with an adoring husband and 2.5 children. Instead, she makes a living selling that dream to others - though her estate agency business has lately been going from bad to worse. But then Maggie comes up with the perfect plan. And that's when strange things start happening. As Magg... read more

No Description

Directed by Wayne Wang, and with a cast including Bingbing Li and Hugh Jackman, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is scheduled for release in June 2011. Lily is the daughter of a humble farmer, and to her family she is just another expensive mouth to feed. Then the local matchmaker delivers startling news: if Lily's feet are bound properly, they will be flawless. In nineteenth-century China, where a woman's eligibility is judged by the shape and size of her feet, this is extraordinary good luck. Lily now has the power to make a goo... read more

'Lisa See has written her best book yet ... achingly beautiful, a marvel of imagination of a real and secret world that has only recently disappeared' Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club

'Only the best novelists can do what Lisa See has done, to bring to life not only a character but an entire culture, and a sensibility so strikingly different from our own ... engrossing and completely convincing' Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha

'The wonder of this book is that it takes readers to a place at o..read more

At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy. The boy is not his own. It's a single act of violence, but the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it. Told through the eyes of eight of those present at the barbecue, this acclaimed bestseller is an unflinching interrogation of the life of the modern family. Poignant and provocative, The Slap makes us question the nature of commitment and happiness, compromise and truth. Whose side are you on?

'... wildly energetic and fearless, thrillingly about our lives now' - Helen Garner. 'Whose side are you on? Honestly, one of the three or four truly great novels of the new millennium.' - John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. '... nothing short of a tour de force ... a novel of immense power and scope.' - Colm Toibin, author of Brooklyn. 'A cool, calm, irresistible masterpiece.' - Chris Cleave, author of The Other Hand.

Doug Fanning lives an apparently gilded existence. A Gulf war veteran turned banker at the vast investment bank Union Atlantic, he is wealthy, handsome and powerful - the epitome of Wall Street success. Charlotte Graves lives in self-imposed exile deep in the forests of rural Massachusetts, stubbornly refusing to engage with a country she feels to be in morally bankrupt. When Fanning decides to build himself a sprawling mansion adjacent to her home, her isolation is threatened and she determines to evict him from his land ... read more

The first complete biography of singing legend Tony Bennett Among America's greatest entertainers such as Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Ray Charles and Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett alone is still here and at the top of his game. For the first time, All the Things You Are tells the incredible story of Bennett's life and sixty-year career, from his impoverished New York City childhood through his first chart-topping hits, from liberating a concentration camp to his civil rights struggles, from his devastating personal and career bat... read more

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness tells the story of the author's mother, Nicola Fuller. Nicola Fuller and her husband were a glamorous and optimistic couple and East Africa lay before them with the promise of all its perfect light, even as the British Empire in which they both believed waned. They had everything, including two golden children - a girl and a boy. However, life became increasingly difficult and they moved to Rhodesia to work as farm managers. The previous farm manager had committed suicide. His ghost app... read more

The most controversial book on family violence published this year, BREAKING SILENCE was initially banned from major book chains after a 50,000 strong Facebook boycott campaign ripped across New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the UK protesting its publication. The boycott campaign had been based on false information, however, and designed to deliberately whip up public hysteria during a Coroner's Court hearing into the deaths of two twins. Now that the book has been published the critics are praising it. Breaking Silence... read more

“I believe your book is one of the most important insights I have seen into the social problems NZ has, and how we might start to address them. It is raw and real.” – Christine Rankin, children’s advocate, former head of WINZ and strong critic of Macsyna King

“Brilliant” – Bob McCoskrie, director of Family First, poster of $25,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the Kahui case

“Just finished reading pre release of the book "Breaking Silence" re the Kahui tw..read more

"They're all doing it...It's not so much a contest between horses, as a race to find the best recipe." When young scientist Jean Campbell is hired to eliminate drugs in sport she enters a murky world where power, privilege and corruption mix easily. In 1940s Sydney, Jean and her charismatic boss Howard Carter expose the cruel underbelly of the 'sport of kings' only to find themselves in the dock, unaware that the hard tack struggle of a young rider, Frank Littell, will determine their fates.

New York, late 1840s, and in the wild, noisy, brash and beautiful circus of Silas P. Swift a shadowy, mesmeric woman entrances crowds because she can unlock the secrets of troubled minds. Above them all her daughter sweeps and soars: acrobat and tightrope-walker. People cannot take their eyes from the mysterious woman in the Big Top who can help so many others - but she cannot unlock dark, literally unspeakable, memories of her own. In London memories fester in the mind of an old and venomous duke of the realm. He plots, wit... read more

A devastatingly powerful and memorable novel for readers of The Memory Keeper's Daughter.
On a stormy night in small-town America, a couple, desperate and soaked to the skin, knock on a stranger's door. When Martha, a retired schoolteacher living a safe and conventional life, answers their knock, her world changes forever. For they are fugitives. Lynnie, a young woman with an intellectual disability, and Homan, a deaf man with only sign language to guide him, have escaped together from The School for the Incurable and... read more

Intrepid detective Isaac Bell engages in his most dangerous case yet. It is the early years of the 20th century, air travel is in its infancy, and newspaper publisher Preston Whiteway is offering $50,000 for the first flier to cross America in less than fifty days. He is even sponsoring one of the candidates - a barnstorming woman flier named Josephine Frost - and that's where Isaac Bell comes in. Frost's violent-tempered business magnate husband, Harry, has just killed her lover and tried to kill her and now he's on the run - but ... read more

Wessex is retired - or would be, if murder and danger would only leave him alone. The impossible has happened. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford has retired. He and his wife now divide their time between Kingsmarkham and a coachhouse in Hampstead belonging to their actress daughter, Sheila. For all the benefits of a more relaxed way of life, Wexford misses being the law. But a chance meeting in a London street, with someone he had known briefly as a very young police constable, changes everything. Tom Ede is now a Detective Superintend... read more

Finder's first Nick Heller novel, VANISHED, was published to widespread acclaim. Now Nick Heller returns in an explosive new thriller. When private investigator Nick Heller returns home to Boston to set up his own agency, he soon gets an urgent case closer to home than expected. Alexandra Marcus - teenage daughter of hedge fund titan and Heller family friend Marshall Marcus - has been kidnapped. But it's no ordinary kidnapping - she has been abducted by professionals, buried alive in an underground casket, a video camera streaming ... read more

When Jack Canfield is told he has a terminal illness and that he has weeks to live, his first concern is for his beloved wife, Lizzie, and children, baby Jack, Cory and rebellious teenager Mikki. On Christmas Eve, when Lizzie comes home, Jack is devastated to see his neighbour, Bill Miller, kiss Lizzie on their driveway. Jack confronts her, she tries to explain he's got it all wrong, and distraught, she leaves the house into an ice storm - and a fatal collision with a truck. Overwhelmed with grief, and with his illness worse... read more

"As expertly plotted as all Baldacci's work" - Sunday Times

Gabriel Allon - master art restorer and international assassin. A reclusive man with a deep appreciation for all that is beautiful, he is also an angel of vengeance, solid and unyielding, who will go anywhere in the hunt for terrorists, criminals, and killers, and stop at nothing to see justice done. For Gabriel and his wife, it was supposed to be the start of a pleasant weekend in London. But a pair of deadly bombings in Paris and Hamburg has already marred this sparkling autumn day. And while walking along Wellington Street, the ... read more