Books

By the end of this biography I didn't know whether to love or hate Gabrielle Chanel.

This book is hard to put down even though we all know the story of Hazel Hawke.

This book follows patient Beckett's pent-up courtship of Clare over kiddy sleepovers and sick days in bed with their mom.

Foal's Bread is an extraordinary piece of writing and 47-year-old Gillian Mears' first novel in sixteen years.

This anthology reveals the best of that collection including some telling images of women and children, showing just how far we have come.

New York, 2003. A citizens' jury must decide which is the best design for a healing, heart-lifting memorial to the victims of 9/11.

Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History, by Eric Chaline, Crows Nest, $35 The plus of this beautifully-packaged book on the impact of animals on human history is that it will help you blitz your next trivia night and blind-side your friends; the minus, it could turn you into a crashing bore, arming you […]

Review by Jennifer Byrn Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour, by Michael Lewis, Allen Lane; $39.95 Michael Lewis is the master of making financial journalism accessible. And — perhaps his best trick — funny as well. This tragi-comic romp through European’s current economic disaster is a worthy successor to past hits such as Liar’s Poker and Moneyball, […]

The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, Fourth Estate $29.95 The marriage plot was the staple of the great English novels of the 19th century so what, you might wonder, is the thoroughly modern author of the Pulitzer prize-winning Middlesex doing re-tilling this field? Subverting it, is the answer. Setting the ideals of happy-ever-after love against […]

Shadow of the Titanic by Andrew Wilson, Simon & Schuster UK, $40 For 705 passengers on the Titanic the sinking wasn’t the end of the story but the beginning of their new lives as “survivors”. Most had suffered the loss of husbands or children, some had to answer for their actions that night, and others […]