Thursday, December 5, 2013

Christmas Gift Guide

Looking for a Christmas present? Everyone loves books! Here are our picks for Christmas.



The unauthorised biography of Australia’s youngest billionaire, Nathan Tinkler.

Hunter Valley mine electrician Nathan Tinkler borrowed big in 2005, made a fortune from several speculative coal plays, and by 2011 was a self-made billionaire. He had gambled and won, but his volatility and reluctance to pay his debts was making him enemies. He lived the high life as only a young man would, buying luxury homes, private jets, sports cars and football teams, and splurging massively to build a horseracing empire.

Boganaire tells the story of Tinkler’s meteoric rise to wealth, and captures the drama of his equally rapid downfall.



The hilarious and bestselling book that everyone’s loving!

In Girt, David Hunt tells the real story of Australia’s past from megafauna to Macquarie ... the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and the Eureka moments that have made us who we are. He recounts the strange and ridiculous episodes that conventional histories ignore, and the result is surprising, enlightening and side-splittingly funny.



Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest is the public face of Australia’s once-in-a-lifetime mining boom. A swashbuckling entrepreneur in the finest West Australian tradition, Twiggy took on mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto at their own game – and won. Yet he has also been embroiled in two of the most heated debates in recent Australian history: over the treatment of Aboriginal people and the mining super-profits tax. Twiggy traces Forrest’s business triumphs and disasters to reveal the complicated man behind the myth.




From weight to wee, children to crap dates, nothing is off limits for Chrissie Swan, self-confessed ‘over-sharer’. Celebrity, friendship, love, being a working mum, ‘having it all’ and the general chaos of life – Is It Just Me? is Chrissie at her hilarious, candid and fearless best.





The Best Australian Essays 2013
Edited by Robert Manne

In The Best Australian Essays 2013, Robert Manne draws out this year’s most distinctive voices. This superb collection encompasses the personal, with Robert Dessaix’s distant summer of love and touch-typing and Helen Garner’s reaction to the death of Jill Meagher; and the political, with Chloe Hooper and Pamela Williams reflecting on the last days in office of Gillard and Rudd, while Christos Tsiolkas tells us why we hate asylum seekers and Julian Assange warns of the internet’s threat to civilisation.



In The Best Australian Stories 2013, Kim Scott assembles the most exceptional short fiction of the last year and invites readers to build ‘a rare and intimate relationship’ with these talented writers, one that is ‘essential to storytelling in print, whether on paper or screen.’

Contributors include Kalinda Ashton, Tony Birch, Cate Kennedy, Georgia Blain, Ryan O’Neill, Ashley Hay, James Bradley and many more.


The Best Australian Poems 2013
Edited by Lisa Gorton

This engaging collection presents the outstanding Australian poems of the last year – a fascinating array of voices and styles, subjects and moods. Including many of Australia’s most admired literary figures as well as exciting newcomers, The Best Australian Poems 2013 celebrates the wonder and diversity of language.

Contributors include Les Murray, Mandy Sayer, David Malouf, Clive James, John Tranter, Robert Adamson, Chris Wallace-Crabbe and many more. 



Dorothy Porter was one of Australia’s true originals, renowned for her passionate, punchy poetry and verse novels. This collection, the best of her life’s work as selected by her partner Andrea Goldsmith, presents the many facets of Porter, from her break-out verse novel The Monkey’s Mask to her posthumous collection, The Bee Hut.



Welcome to Paradise, Now Go to Hell, is surfer and former war reporter Chas Smith’s wild and unflinching look at the high-stakes world of surfing on Oahu’s North Shore – a riveting, often humorous, account of beauty, greed, danger, and crime.



Australians have just lived through a period of exceptional prosperity, but, says influential economist Ross Garnaut, the Dog Days are on their way. Are we ready for the challenges ahead?

In Dog Days, Garnaut explains how we got here, what we can expect next and the tough choices we need to make to survive the new economic conditions. Are we clever enough – and our leaders courageous enough – to change what needs to be changed and preserve a fair and prosperous Australia?




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