Books

THE GRAND HOTEL BY GREGORY DAY, RANDOM HOUSE, $32.95. The Grand Hotel is the kind of place – and book – which answers our need for the things that can be lacking in our lives: community, eccentricity, fun, freedom, history and magic. Like many Australian towns, Mangowak is under siege by officiousness, regulations and political […]

HEAVEN HELL & MADEMOISELLE BY HAROLD CARLTON, ORION, $32.99. If you’d like to take a mental break from your world in Australia 2010, take a visit to the fashion world of Paris in turbulent 1968. Heaven Hell & Mademoiselle markets itself as “the love child of Sex And The City and The Devil Wears Prada” […]

MY DIRTY SHINY LIFE BY LILY BRAGGE, VIKING, $32.95. Don’t expect pretty, but the life story of Lily Bragge, an Australian actress, mother, comedienne and addict, is never dull. Young Linda (she changed her name to Lily at the age of 26) is sexually abused by her uncle and emotionally and physically abused by her […]

YOUNG MANDELA BY DAVID JAMES SMITH, WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON, $35. Much has been written about Nelson Mandela, but for the first time, this biography offers a tangible perspective on the real man behind the political struggle. More importantly, it focuses on the troubled lives of his families, especially with first wife Evelyn and second wife […]

MARY POPPINS SHE WROTE BY VALERIE LAWSON, HACHETTE, $24.99. Australian-born author P.L. (Pamela Lyndon) Travers, creator of Mary Poppins, was never Australian at heart. She couldn’t wait to leave behind her largely lonely childhood, great aunt, mother and two younger sisters, to sail to Ireland in 1924, where her London-born drifter, charmer, drinker father claimed […]

HORROCKSES FASHIONSBY CHRISTINE BOYDELL, A&C BLACK, $59.95. UK fashion house Horrockses Fashions launched its first collection of ready-to-wear in 1946 with floral print women’s wear, beach clothes, housecoats and children’s wear. Though mass-produced, the label considered itself to have “off-the-peg exclusivity”. This delightful coffee-table book tells the story of Horrockses from interviews with staff, including […]

SNOBS BY JULIAN FELLOWES, PHOENIX, $22.99. Could there be anything more diverting than spending time as a portrait-on-the-wall at Broughton Hall and observing the intricate manners of the English aristocracy? British writer Julian Fellowes – Oscar-winning screenwriter of Gosford Park and himself listed in Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage – introduces us to Lady “Googie” Uckfield […]

THE RADLEYS, BY MATT HAIG, TEXT PUBLISHING, $32.95. This is a new and intriguing addition to the ever-expanding vampire oeuvre, which is still selling its blood-soaked socks off. The hook this time is that the Radleys – a seemingly average family living in an English village – are abstaining vampires: the parents, Peter and Helen, […]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER BY SETH GRAHAME-SMITH, ALLEN AND UNWIN, $24.99. The master of the literary mash-up is back. It was Seth Grahame-Smith who launched the conga line of Celebs-meet-Monster books with his chart-topping Pride and Prejudice And Zombies, in which the undead wreak havoc on Jane Austen’s muslin, mannered world. This time it’s Honest […]

AT HOME, BY BILL BRYSON, RANDOM HOUSE, $55. Best-seller Bill Bryson has an exceedingly lively mind. Having tackled space, time and the mysteries of the universe in his award-winning A Short History Of Nearly Everything, he was casting around for something more domestic – a book he could write in carpet slippers in his own […]