Now to Love

It’s crisis talks for fighting couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Battling rumours of an impending break-up, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes tried to put split stories to rest with an intimate date in New York for the actress’s 32nd birthday. But a tense public argument – which saw Tom speaking sternly to his miserable-looking […]

Woman’s Day takes a sneak peek inside the extravagant mansions of the filthy rich and famous. Learn how to live like a star – then cross your fingers for a lottery win! Heidi Klum and Seal: With four young kids, Heidi and Seal need a whole lot of space – and their new house has […]

Michelle Williams has opened up about Heath Ledger‘s death from an accidental drug overdose in 2008. The actress, who has a five-year-old daughter Matilda from her relationship with the late actor, said she coped with the loss by reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. “It didn’t seem unlikely to me that he […]

FOR THE LOVE OF NATURE: E. E. GOSTELOW’S BIRDS & FLOWERS BY CHRISTOBEL MATTINGLEY, NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA, $29.95. An unexpected gem of a book, not just for the delicate colour plates of Australian wildflowers and birds, but for the story of the man who painted them. Born in 1866, Ebenezer Edward Gostelow was a […]

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD BY HARPER LEE, RANDOM HOUSE, $21.95. Fifty years old. Thirty million copies sold. Does Harper Lee’s classic of injustice and courage in a small town in the Deep South really warrant this celebratory edition? Can it be as good as we remember from school? Yes and even better. The familiar tale […]

A TINY BIT MARVELLOUS BY DAWN FRENCH, PENGUIN, $32.95. Families are the current Big Subject in fiction, so I was interested to check out UK comedian Dawn French’s first novel, which arrives with the tag, “Everyone hates the perfect family. So you’ll love the Battles”. Well, I didn’t love them at first. Written in the […]

THE ROMANTIC: ITALIAN NIGHTS AND DAYS BY KATE HOLDEN, TEXT PUBLISHING, $32.95. Plot-wise, Kate Holden’s latest memoir is a bit like the very dark sister of Eat, Pray, Love. A woman heads to Italy in search of romance, adventure and knowledge. She eats well, struggles with the language, has lots of great sex and constantly […]

STORIES OF LOVE & WAR BY REBECCA BRITT, NEW HOLLAND PUBLISHERS AUSTRALIA, $35. The pain of longing for a loved one is exquisite. Yet when that emotion is set against the backdrop of war, it is almost too heart-wrenching to contemplate. In this beautiful collection of love stories from The Australian War Memorial, author Rebecca […]

AN OBJECT OF BEAUTY BY STEVE MARTIN, WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, $32.99. This is Steve Martin’s third novel and, Hollywood star status aside, he’s a pretty decent novelist. The setting is one close to his heart, if a little rarefied – the New York art scene. Yet he imbibes it with sass in the form of […]

SWAINSTON’S FISHES OF AUSTRALIA BY ROGER SWAINSTON, VIKING, $125. It may seem an odd choice for an artist, but once you see Roger Swainston’s gentle, mesmerising illustrations of Australia’s fish, you’ll understand immediately where this artist gets his inspiration. This is a big book and certainly a specialised one, but it’s also surprisingly captivating. Swainston […]