Although there are hundreds of different essential oils, all you need are the following three — calming lavender, stimulating eucalyptus and delectable rose — to create a variety of natural health and beauty treatments and recipes for your home. Lavender A versatile all-purpose remedy and an ideal choice for treating burns, bites, stings and other […]

It’s official: sitting at your desk all day is making you fat, according to a new Canadian study. Researchers at the University of Montreal compared eating and exercise habits of people in 2004 to behaviour in the 1970s and found that despite eating more healthily and exercising more these days, we are still getting larger. […]

It has long been thought that carrying weight on your lower body was not as harmful to your health as carrying it around your stomach, and US scientists now think they know the reason. Contrary to the previous understanding that adults cannot produce new fat cells, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota have found […]

As she opens up on her life before fame, Ajay Rochester tells Glen Williams that for years “running around making fat funny” was her greatest joy. Ajay Rochester loves looking at her “fat photos”. They cause her to roar with laughter and reflect on what has been a “very big” life. Indeed the former host […]

I Came To Say Goodbye, By Caroline Overington, Bantam Australia, $32.95. The reality of the often hidden child welfare system is revealed by this powerful story of a broken family in an Australian country town. The themes in this brilliant book are played out on news bulletins across Australia every week. A young woman in […]

Holly Kerr Forysth is a writer, photographer and passionate gardener. She takes time out of her busy schedule to share her favourite books in Book Club. What was the last book you read? I try not to read too much fiction, as intriguing, involving fiction can prevent me reading research [non-fiction] material. I have just […]

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG, KATE ATKINSON, DOUBLEDAY, $32.95. Tracy Waterhouse retired from the West Yorkshire police force with a shell so thick there was scarcely anything left inside. Now over 50 and doing the rounds as security chief of her shopping centre, she spots prostitute and druggie Kelly Cross cruelly dragging a little girl. […]

MEDIUM RAW, BY ANTHONY BOURDAIN, BLOOMSBURY, $35. Knives at 20 paces! Bad boy Bourdain is back. As fans of his best-selling Kitchen Confidential know, he is a writer who never uses a polite phrase if an obscenity is available. “A loud, egotistical, one-note arsehole” is how one critic described him, which strikes Bourdain as “entirely […]

APE HOUSE, BY SARA GRUEN, ALLEN & UNWIN, $32.99. I so loved Gruen’s last book, Water For Elephants, that I’ve been waiting for this one. And it starts with a bang – a fire-bomb, actually, thrown by animal activists trying to “liberate” a family of Bonobo apes from a research facility, where they are being […]

THE SLAP, BY CHRISTOS TSIOLKAS, ALLEN & UNWIN, $32.95. Melbourne’s inner suburbs and family and friends gather for a barbecue. A child acts brattishly. One of the guests (not his parents) delivers the boy a stinging slap – and sets off a chain of events both extraordinary and familiar, which is the key to this […]