Download or read book Smart Ovens for Lonely People written by Elizabeth Tan and published by Brio Books Pty Ltd. This book was released on 2020-06-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conspiracies, celebrities, and therapies underpin this beguiling short-story collection from Elizabeth Tan. A cat-shaped oven tells a depressed woman she doesn't have to be sorry anymore. A Yourtopia Bespoke Terraria employee becomes paranoid about the mounting coincidences in her life. Four girls gather to celebrate their fabulous underwear. With her trademark wit and slicing social commentary, Elizabeth Tan’s short stories are as funny as they are insightful. This collection cements her role as one of Australia’s most inventive writers ‘This utterly original book will mess with your mind and make you laugh like a drain.‘ Sydney Morning Herald ‘Elizabeth Tan can twist ordinary suburban life into the weirdest shapes.’ The Monthly ‘Tan twists a future that has already arrived with one in the process of arriving.’ The Saturday Paper ‘In a collection of consistent highlights, the brilliance of some stories is particularly blinding.’ Australian Book Review ‘Tan’s evocation of this dreamlike incongruity is playful, reminiscent of Murakami’s blasé surrealism and Coupland’s crafty wryness.’ Sydney Review of Books

Download or read book Cherry Beach written by Laura McPhee-Browne and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hypnotic and absorbing debut novel from an extraordinary new talent—a must-read for fans of Sally Rooney, Jennifer Down, Siri Hustvedt and André Aciman (Call Me By Your Name)

Download or read book Rubik written by Elizabeth Tan and published by Xou Pty Ltd. This book was released on 2017-04-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The History of Mischief written by Rebecca Higgie and published by Fremantle Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Jessie and her older sister Kay find a book called The History of Mischief,hidden beneath the floorboards in their grandmother's house, they uncover asecret world. The History chronicles how, since antiquity, mischief-makers haveclandestinely shaped the past &– from an Athenian slave to a Polish salt miner andfrom an advisor to the Ethiopian Queen to a girl escaping the Siege of Paris. Jessiebecomes enthralled by the book and by her own mission to determine its accuracy.Soon the History inspires Jessie to perform her own acts of mischief, unofficiallybecoming mischief-maker number 202 in an effort to cheer up her eccentricneighbour, Mrs Moran, and to comfort her new schoolfriend, Theodore. However, noteverything is as it seems. As Jessie delves deeper into the real story behind theHistory, she becomes convinced her grandmother holds the key to a long-held familysecret.The History of Mischief is about the many things we do to try to escape

Download or read book Nonna Knows Best written by Jacyln Crupi and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In NONNA KNOWS BEST, Jaclyn Crupi celebrates the passion, generosity of spirit and good old- fashioned wisdom of nonnas and shares the secrets that make them so special, including mouth-watering recipes from la cucina della nonna (nonna's kitchen), foolproof tips, sayings and advice for every life moment.Charming, entertaining and insightful, NONNA KNOWS BEST is the perfect gift for anyone in need of a big warm Italian hug (and a container full of leftover pasta).

Download or read book Foreign Soil written by Maxine Beneba Clarke and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a new voice in international fiction, a prize-winning collection of stories that cross the world—Africa, London, the West Indies, Australia—and express the global experience “with exquisite sensitivity” (Dave Eggers, author of The Circle). In this collection of award-winning stories, Maxine Beneba Clarke gives voice to the disenfranchised, the lost, and the mistreated. Her stories will challenge you, move you, and change the way you view this complex world we inhabit. Within these pages, a desperate asylum seeker is pacing the hallways of Sydney’s notorious Villawood detention centre; a seven-year-old Sudanese boy has found solace in a patchwork bike; an enraged black militant is on the war-path through the rebel squats of 1960s Brixton; a Mississippi housewife decides to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son from small-town ignorance; a young woman leaves rural Jamaica in search of her destiny; and a Sydney schoolgirl loses her way. In the bestselling tradition of novelists such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Marlon James, this urgent, poetic, and essential work announces the arrival of a fresh and talented voice in international fiction.

Download or read book She Is Haunted written by Paige Clark and published by Two Dollar Radio. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction, Shortlist * 2022 Stella Prize, Longlist "A Best Book of the Year" —The Guardian "A Most Anticipated book of 2022" —Entertainment Weekly With an unforgettable voice and exuberant wit, She Is Haunted is a masterful debut exploring issues of identity, connection, and loss, told with remarkable grace and assurance by Chinese/American/Australian author, Paige Clark. In stories charged by the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, grief, exes, and the profundities of friendship, She Is Haunted features injured ballerinas, cloned dogs, and competitive call centers in settings as far ranging as future and present Australia, New York City’s Chinatown, and suburban California. A mother cuts her daughter’s hair because her own hair begins falling out; a woman attempts to physically transform into her dead husband so that she does not have to grieve; a woman undergoes brain surgery in order to live more comfortably in extreme temperatures. Braiding the real and the surreal, both playfully witty and deeply insightful, these stories show us characters striving to make sense of the grand themes of family, love, death, and our changing world. She Is Haunted flags Paige Clark as a wondrous and wise new literary talent.

Download or read book Kokomo written by Victoria Hannan and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'It does not disappoint.' - The Guardian When Mina receives an urgent call from her best friend back in Melbourne, her world is turned upside down. Her reclusive mother, Elaine, has left the house for the first time in twelve years. Mina drops everything to fly home, only to discover that Elaine will not talk about her sudden return to the world, nor why she's spent so much time hiding from it. Their reunion leaves Mina raking through pieces of their painful past in a bid to uncover the truth. Both tender and fierce, heartbreaking and funny, Kokomo is a story about how secrets and love have the power to bring us together and tear us apart. 'A timely song of secrets, sex and the meaning of love' - Sydney Morning Herald 'A coming-of-age novel for the Peter Pan generation, Kokomo juggles the dissatisfactions of sex, marriage, and corporate ambition with deceptive lightness and radiant empathy. Reading this book felt like drinking with friends in a cozy pub until last call; I emerged from it shiny-faced, unbothered by the cold, wanting more.' - Laura Elizabeth Woollett, author of THE LOVE OF A BAD MAN and BEAUTIFUL REVOLUTIONARY 'This is a book that gets right into your body. It makes you laugh, makes you think, but it doesn't stop there - it plays with your heart and leaves it different. This is smart, raw, tender fiction that feels as real as life.' - Ronnie Scott, author of THE ADVERSARY 'Graceful and raw, this is a remarkable study of the forces of desire and regret. Hannan is both acute witness and masterful reporter of love in all its faulty and essential shapes. Kokomo dazzles, pierces, and stays.' - Robert Lukins, author of THE EVERLASTING SUNDAY 'I can't remember being so excited by a debut novel. Kokomo is a delight, a book I wanted to finish in a greedy rush but one I also wanted to savour. It's so full of life, on each page there are tiny moments of delight, irreverence, tenderness. Kokomo is the Australian response to Normal People, this is Monkey Grip for the new generation of readers. This book will be read and cherished by many, and Victoria Hannan is a name we will see a great deal more in the future.' - J.P. Pomare, author of CALL ME EVIE and IN THE CLEARING 'Hannan's Kokomo is a sharply observed novel of one woman's facade and how it falls; an undoing that is both ordinary and compelling. This debut heralds an exciting new Australian voice with a story of estrangement from kin, friendship, love, self and country - one that will be familiar to many, and surprising, for it is often a shock to see one's reflection.' - Anna Krien, author of NIGHT GAMES and ACT OF GRACE

Download or read book Mr Penumbra s 24 Hour Bookstore written by Robin Sloan and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a web-design drone, and serendipity, sheer curiosity and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey have landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than its name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything. Instead they “check out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he has embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behaviour and roped his friends into helping him figure out just what’s going on. But once they take their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the secrets extend far beyond the walls of the bookstore. Evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or Umberto Eco, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like—an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave.

Download or read book Everything Now written by Rosecrans Baldwin and published by MCD. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER. NAMED A BEST CALIFORNIA BOOKS OF 2021 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES A provocative, exhilaratingly new understanding of the United States’ most confounding metropolis—not just a great city, but a full-blown modern city-state America is obsessed with Los Angeles. And America has been thinking about Los Angeles all wrong, for decades, on repeat. Los Angeles is not just the place where the American dream hits the Pacific. (It has its own dreams.) Not just the vanishing point of America’s western drive. (It has its own compass.) Functionally, aesthetically, mythologically, even technologically, an independent territory, defined less by distinct borders than by an aura of autonomy and a sense of unfurling destiny—this is the city-state of Los Angeles. Deeply reported and researched, provocatively argued, and eloquently written, Rosecrans Baldwin's Everything Now approaches the metropolis from unexpected angles, nimbly interleaving his own voice with a chorus of others, from canonical L.A. literature to everyday citizens. Here, Octavia E. Butler and Joan Didion are in conversation with activists and astronauts, vampires and veterans. Baldwin records the stories of countless Angelenos, discovering people both upended and reborn: by disasters natural and economic, following gospels of wealth or self-help or personal destiny. The result is a story of a kaleidoscopic, vibrant nation unto itself—vastly more than its many, many parts. Baldwin’s concept of the city-state allows us, finally, to grasp a place—Los Angeles—whose idiosyncrasies both magnify those of America, and are so fully its own. Here, space and time don’t quite work the same as they do elsewhere, and contradictions are as stark as southern California’s natural environment. Perhaps no better place exists to watch the United States’s past, and its possible futures, play themselves out. Welcome to Los Angeles, the Great American City-State.

Download or read book The Last Bookshop written by Emma Young and published by Fremantle Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book for book lovers, The Last Bookshop is a uplifting novel that reminds us never to underestimate the power of people who love books. Cait is a bookshop owner and book nerd whose social life revolves around her mobile bookselling service hand-picking titles for elderly clients, particularly the grandmotherly June. After a tough decade for retail, Book Fiend is the last bookshop in the CBD, and the last independent retailer on a street given over to high-end labels. Profits are small, but clients are loyal. When James breezes into Book Fiend, Cait realises life might hold more than her shop and her cat, but while the new romance distracts her, luxury chain stores are circling Book Fiend's prime location, and a more personal tragedy is looming.

Download or read book Lucky s written by Andrew Pippos and published by Picador Australia. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucky's is a story of family. A story about migration. It is also about a man called Lucky. His restaurant chain. A fire that changed everything. A New Yorker article which might save a career. The mystery of a missing father. An impostor who got the girl. An unthinkable tragedy. A roll of the dice. And a story of love - lost, sought and won again (at last). Following a trail of cause and effect that spans decades, this unforgettable epic tells a story about lives bound together by the pursuit of love, family, and new beginnings. WINNER OF THE READINGS PRIZE FOR NEW AUSTRALIAN FICTION 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE MUD LITERARY PRIZE 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR ABIA MATT RICHELL NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD 2021 SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARDS FOR FICTION 2021 HIGHLY COMMENDED FOR 2021 ARA HISTORIAL NOVEL PRIZE Praise for Lucky's 'Andrew Pippos has written an unforgettable epic with Australian humour and Greek tragedian turns on every page. Such skill and heart and love pulses through this debut!' - Alice Pung 'A sweeping, sprawling family epic of heartbreak, hope, and redemption. This is the debut of a born storyteller.' - Liam Pieper 'Affecting, authentic and tender' - Rebecca Starford 'A gorgeous novel of wonderful characters, Lucky's is the real deal and I didn't want it to stop. I was so caught up in the casual charm of this book that I kept being sideswiped by the excellent turns of its plot, and the wise, sometimes disturbing things it has to say about fate, luck and family over the sweep of decades.' - Ronnie Scott 'From the first pages of this debut novel, it is clear that we are in the hands of a wise, perceptive, and highly-skilled storyteller. Pippos brilliantly distills multiple stories to those pure moments of love, despair, passion and folly that make up the essence of a life, and his fierce and fragile characters will remain in your heart long after the final page. The writing is fresh and fairly crackles with energy. Lucky's is one of the best Australian novels I've read in years!' - Emily Bitto 'Crisp and evocative' - Rick Morton 'A mouthwatering tale that encapsulates family drama, true crime and Greek tragedy - with pathos-filled characters that pop' - Guardian 'A hugely entertaining, tender, rollicking yarn. Part immigration story, part love story, part adventure, it's a multi-layered original Australian story.' - Sydney Morning Herald 'Lucky's is a bold novel, both backwards- and forwards-looking, a strong start to a career, and a timely reminder that an individual's life story can be quietly vast.' - The Australian 'Pippos writes towards myth while grounding his book in deeply human themes. Lucky's is concerned with the stories we tell ourselves and the chasm between fact and fiction, the space where happiness may lie.' - Australian Book Review 'This is a novel that I'd like everyone to read...Lucky's is a beautiful reminder that lives can be reinvented, that the bad things will eventually give way to the good ones, and that the change we seek could be right around the corner.' - Kill Your Darlings 'One of the most impressive and appealing Australian debuts novels of 2020 - or, frankly, any year, and you can scratch the adjective "debut" from that description too.' - Readings 'From reading this magnificent debut, it's clear that Andrew Pippos will go down as one of the finest Australian storytellers of his generation ... Pippos dictates the conventions of our humanity perfectly, giving to us the definition of a Greek tragedy interpersed within what is sure to become an Australian classic.' - Glam Adelaide 'Grand, evocative and generous storytelling mark out Lucky's as one of the most rewarding Australian debuts of 2020 ... A wild and sprawling story is rendered with precision and depth. Every page is a reward for the reader.' - Booktopia

Download or read book My Year of Rest and Relaxation written by Ottessa Moshfegh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon,Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible A New York Times Bestseller “One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.” — Entertainment Weekly “Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.” —Vogue From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

Download or read book The Call of the Wild White Fang and Other Stories written by Jack London and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1995-01-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The biting cold and the aching silence of the far North become an unforgettable backdrop for Jack London's vivid, rousing, superbly realistic wilderness adventure stories featuring the author's unique knowledge of the Yukon and the behavior of humans and animals facing nature at its cruelest.

Download or read book I Know You Did It written by Sue Wallman and published by . This book was released on 2021-01-08 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On her first day at a new school, Ruby finds a note in her locker saying I Know You Did It. She's terrified that someone has found out she was responsible for the death of a girl called Hannah in a playground when they were both toddlers - a secret she has been keeping guiltily for ten years.

Download or read book To the Lighthouse written by Virginia Woolf and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2023-01-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark work of modernist literature explores the inner lives of a typical English family while vividly exploring the nature of loss and memory. Following her celebrated masterpiece Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf continues to develop her groundbreaking stream-of-consciousness technique in To the Lighthouse. Every summer, the Ramsey family returns to the Isle of Skye for a tranquil holiday, where the imposing lighthouse seems to promise everlasting constancy. But as their idyllic holiday confronts the realities of World War I, the Ramseys must also face the inescapable nature of change. A profound evocation of marriage, parenthood, aging, and grief, To the Lighthouse is regarded as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Download or read book Only the Animals written by Ceridwen Dovey and published by Atlantic Books Ltd. This book was released on 2015-02-05 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps only the animals can tell us what it is to be human. The souls of ten animals caught up in human conflicts over the last century tell their astonishing stories of life and death. In a trench on the Western Front a cat recalls her owner Colette's theatrical antics in Paris. In Nazi Germany a dog seeks enlightenment. A Russian tortoise once owned by the Tolstoys drifts in space during the Cold War. In the siege of Sarajevo a bear starving to death tells a fairytale. And a dolphin sent to Iraq by the US Navy writes a letter to Sylvia Plath. Exquisitely written, playful and poignant, Only the Animals is a remarkable literary achievement by this bright young writer. An animal's-eye view of humans at our brutal, violent worst and our creative, imaginative best, it asks us to find our way back to empathy not only for animals, but for other people, and to believe again in the redemptive power of reading and writing fiction.