The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, Faber & Faber, $23.99 My current literary love affair is with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna. The story of Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo’s cook, it begins in 1930’s Mexico and ends in post-War America, taking in the hero’s ever-hopeful femme fatale mother, the exiled Trotsky and the ghoulish functionaries of […]

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova, Simon & Schuster, $32.99 Sarah, the main character in Left Neglected (Lisa Genova’s follow up to Still Alice) has a husband she loves, three happy children and is a high powered executive at the top of the corporate food chain. Some would say she has it all, but not the […]

From spectacular scenery, fine restaurants, island retreats, ski resorts and White Christmases, British Columbia and Alberta serve up a tantalising array of tourism options.

22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson, Fig Tree, $32.95 There is no shortage of stories inspired by the terrors of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Europe, but Amanda Hodgkinson’s debut novel is so much more than that — beneath the story’s wartime bunker is a complex, intriguing and, in snatched moments, deeply […]

The paparazzi knew they had a good get — a female celebrity in a swimsuit always is — but this was the jackpot. The public face of weight loss in Australia and as such the body everyone wants to critique. And so, as Magda Szubanski and some friends enjoyed an impromptu swim at Bondi Beach […]

Grace Wang is the victim of one of Australia’s most shocking medical mistakes. During birth, her epidural was filled with antiseptic instead of anaesthetic. Today she is severely handicapped and unable to lift her baby. Sometimes it’s a touch on her face. Sometimes it’s a look exchanged across a meal. Sometimes it’s a shared tear. […]

Grace Wang is the victim of one of Australia’s most shocking medical mistakes. During birth, her epidural was filled with antiseptic instead of anaesthetic. Today she is severely handicapped and unable to lift her baby. Here, The Weekly‘s Michael Sheather discusses his emotional interview with Grace. One of the great privileges of working for The […]

In an exclusive extract from her moving book, Helen Cummings talks about the terror of her abusive marriage and the realisation that she too could have ended up dead had she not left her ex-husband. It started out as an ordinary Newcastle day, one weekend early in March 1984. Something was creating a strange sense […]

Hilary Swank is not one to do anything by halves. She has built her career playing underdogs — women who struggle to overcome adversity through dedication and hard work — and in the process has earned two Oscars (Boys Don’t Cry in 1999 and Million Dollar Baby in 2004). Her own tough beginnings growing up […]

The designer of Princess Diana’s famous wedding dress was so worried the gown would be leaked to the public before the big day she secretly designed a second gown, details of which have been revealed for the first time. Elizabeth Emmanuel was thrilled when the young Lady Diana Spencer commissioned her to create a gown […]