General Books
The QUT Bookshops stock a wide range of general books at 20% off the recommended retail price. Some of the categories we carry include:
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FEBRUARY '12 New Releases ...
AMERICAN DERVISH
Ayad Akhtar -$29.99$23.99
An extraordinary debut from a talented new writer.Growing up as a first generation Pakistani-American in the suburbs of Wisconsin was, at best, unusual circumstance for a young boy. Hayat Shah's life brightens when his mother's best friend, Mina, shows up from Pakistan to rebuild her life after a vicious divorce back in her homeland. Beautiful, brilliant and devout, Mina teaches the eleven-year old Hayat about his Islamic faith, opening him up to a way of life that seems, to him, as wondrous as Mina herself. But when Mina falls in love with Hayat's father best friend, Nathan Wolff, a local Jewish intellectual and doctor, problems ensue. The local Muslim-American community's anti-Semitism blends and incubates Hayat's jealousy about losing Mina, driving a dramatic rift through the Shah household.
Set in the 1980s, AMERICAN DERVISH chronicles young Hayat's journey deep into the Islamic faith and the damage his journey inflicts on the one person he loves more than anyone, Mina.
THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS
Peter Carey -$39.95- $ 31.96When her lover dies suddenly, all Catherine has left is her work.
The long affair had been kept secret from their colleagues at London's Swinburne Museum and now she must grieve in private. Or almost. In an act of compassion, the head of her department gives Catherine a very particular project, something to cling onto: a box of intricate clockwork parts that appear to be the remains of a nineteenth-century automaton, a beautiful mechanical bird.
Once she discovers that the box also contains the diary of the man who commissioned the machine, one obsession merges into another. Who was Henry Brandling? Who was the mysterious, visionary clockmaker he hired to make a gift for his ailing son? And what was the end result that now sits in pieces in Catherine's studio?
The Chemistry of Tears is a portrait of love and loss that is both wildly entertaining and profoundly moving, simultaneously delicate and anarchic.
At its heart is an image only the masterful Peter Carey could breathe such life into - an object made of equal parts magic, love, madness and science, a delight that contains the seeds of our age's downfall.
MATESHIP WITH BIRDS
Carrie Tiffany -$19.99- $15.99
On the outskirts of an Australian country town in the 1950s, a lonely farmer trains his binoculars on a family of kookaburras that roost in a tree near his house. Harry observes the kookaburras through a year of feast, famine, birth, death, war, romance and song. As Harry watches the birds, his next door neighbour has her own set of binoculars trained on him. Ardent, hard-working Betty has escaped to the country with her two fatherless children. Betty is pleased that her son, Michael, wants to spend time with the gentle farmer next door. But when Harry decides to teach Michael about the opposite sex, perilous boundaries are crossed.
Mateship with Birds is a novel about young lust and mature love. It is a hymn to the rhythm of country life – to vicious birds, virginal cows, adored dogs and ill-used sheep. On one small farm in a vast, ancient landscape, a collection of misfits question the nature of what a family can be.
THE CENSOR'S LIBRARY
Nicole Moore -$39.95- $31.96
A history of book censorship in Australia – what we couldn't read, didn't read, didn't know, and why we didn't.
For much of the twentieth century, Australia banned more books and more serious books than most other English-speaking or Western countries, from the Kama Sutra through to Huxley's Brave New World and Joyce's Ulysses.
The Censor's Library is the first comprehensive examination of Australian book censorship, based around the author's discovery of the secret 'censor's library' in the National Archive – 793 boxes of banned books, prohibited from the 1920s to the 1980s.
As it has for much of Australia's history, censorship continues to attract heated debate, from the Henson affair to the national internet feed. But federal publications censorship has been a largely secret affair for most of the century, deliberately kept from the knowledge of the public.
The Censor's Library is a provocative account of this scandalous history. Combining scholarship with the narrative tension of a thriller, Nicole Moore exposes the secret history of censorship in Australia.
THE CARTOGRAPHER
Peter Twohig -$29.99- $23.99
′if ... you enjoyed Safran Foer′s (January Release) EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, you are going to want to read this book′
Melbourne, 1959.
An 11-year-old boy witnesses a murder as he spies through the window of a strange house. God, whom he no longer counts as a friend, obviously has a pretty screwed-up sense of humour: just one year before, the boy had looked on helplessly as his twin brother, Tom, suffered a violent death.
Now, having been seen by the angry murderer, he is a kid on the run. With only a shady grandfather, a professional standover man and an incongruous local couple as adult mentors, he takes refuge in the dark drains and grimy tunnels beneath the city, transforming himself into a series of superheroes and creating a rather unreliable map to plot out places where he is unlikely to cross paths with the bogeyman.
A bold, captivating and outrageously funny novel about a boy who refuses to give in and the numerous shifty, dodgy and downright malicious bastards he has to contend with on his grand adventure of loss and discovery, THE CARTOGRAPHER is an astounding, fresh and unforgettably poignant novel you′d be a mug to miss!
THE SOLDIER'S WIFE
Joanna Trollope -$32.95$26.36The Soldier's Wife, the topical new novel from Joanna Trollope, takes an insightful look at the home lives of the modern Army and what happens when love and a vocation collide.
Dan Riley is a major in the British Army. After a six month tour of duty in Afghanistan, he is coming home to the wife and young daughters he adores. The outside world sees those reunions as a taste of heaven after months of hell. But are they?
Can a man trained to fight adjust again to family and domestic life? How will the family cope, if he can't? And how much can Alexa, Dan's wife, sacrifice her own needs to a way of life that demands everything not just of him, but of her and the children as well.
STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING AND READ THIS!
Mark Haddon -$12.95$10.36By Mark Haddon, Michael Rosen, Zadie Smith, Carmen Callil, Jeanette Winterson, Tim Parks, Blake Morrison
In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams.
Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book? Reading is not an innate human ability. Many people can't read. Many people would rather read a newspaper, a magazine, a blog, a cereal packet, than a novel. But people have always needed stories. We need literature - novels, poetry - because we need to make sense of our lives, test our depths, understand our joys, and discover what humans are capable of. Great books can provide companionship when we are lonely or peacefulness in the midst of the commuter rush. Reading provides a unique kind of pleasure and no-one should live without it.
The ten essays in this book tell us about the experience of reading, why access to books should never be taken for granted, how reading transforms our brains, and how literature can save lives. In any 24 hours there are so many demands on your time and attention - books should be one of them.
SAMMY, I LOVE YOU
Sally Nielsen -$24.99$19.99
An inspirational true story of devotion, courage and determination in the face of great tragedy - a story that will touch your heart.
As seen on ABC TV's Australian Story
Sally Nielsen is a wedding planner, whose own wedding plans were turned upside down when her fiancé suffered a catastrophic stroke, leaving him completely dependent on her and his family for all his needs. When others said she should put him in a home and get on with her life, Sally refused. Sam was the love of her life and she was going to stand by him regardless.
As Sally fought to bring back the man who was her world, she wrote in a series of diaries about her hopes, her anger and her frustration, but above all else her ever strengthening love for Sam. With searing honesty, Sally recorded the highs of each small step in Sam's recovery and the plummeting lows of her own depression and loneliness. These are those diaries.
Sammy, I Love You is an incredible story of devotion, courage and determination. But more importantly it is an inspiring love story that will make you value every precious moment with the ones you love.
RUPERT MURDOCK: An investigation of Political Power
David McKnight -$32.99$26.39'A study of dangerous media abuse of power and of abject government weakness in regard to it. This is a disturbing book.' - From the foreword by Robert Manne
When Rupert Murdoch called, Prime Ministers and Presidents picked up the phone. David McKnight exposes Murdoch's unflinching use of his media empire to further his political agenda over decades. This is the story behind the hacking scandal that rocked the world and shook the Murdoch empire.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is the most powerful media organisation in the world. Murdoch's commercial success is obvious, but less well understood is his successful pursuit of political goals, using News Corporation as his vehicle.
David McKnight tracks Murdoch's influence, from his support for Reagan and Thatcher, to his attacks on Barack Obama and the Rudd and Gillard governments. He examines the secretive corporate culture of News Corporation: its private political seminars for editors, its sponsorship of think tanks and its recurring editorial campaigns around the world. Its success is reflected in the fact that the campaigns are familiar to us all: small government and market deregulation, scepticism on climate change, support for neo-conservative adventures such as Iraq and criticism of all things 'liberal'.
While the phone hacking crisis has tarnished his reputation, Rupert Murdoch's influence is far from finished.
THE PROMISE
Lesley Pearse -$29.95$23.96
London, 1914.
Belle Reilly finally has the life she's dreamed of thanks to a devoted husband in Jimmy and the hat shop she's wanted to own since she was a child. But as the storm clouds of World War One begin to gather, Belle's already turbulent life is to change in ways she never imagined possible.
When Jimmy enlists in the army and leaves for the battlefields of Ypres, her world is shattered and she realises she can no longer stand by and watch, she must volunteer to help the wounded. But her work as a Red Cross ambulance driver in France throws her into the path of Etienne, the enigmatic man who played a significant role in her childhood, and Belle finds herself torn agonisingly between forbidden passion and loyalty to a good man.
But the past returns to haunt her present in other - more unpleasant - ways and Belle’s character are put to the test like never before. Can she survive this most brutal of wars with her spirit intact? And will destiny finally lead her to lasting happiness even while war rages all around?
Note: Prices subject to change.
JANUARY '12 New Releases ...
GANG OF ONE:How One of the Natwest Three Survived Extradition and Life in a Texas Prison
Gary Mulgrew -$32.99$26.39
GANG OF ONE is an explosive prison memoir with the gritty realism of Midnight Express and the emotional force of The Shawshank Redemption.Imagine you're a 35 year old, white, British, middle-class business man sentenced to three years in Big Spring, one of America's most notorious prisons. You've been told that if get into any trouble, your sentence will be doubled. You've just said goodbye to your lawyer. You're on your own.
You are a GANG OF ONE.
In the relentless heat of the desert, seven hundred men were crammed into a space meant for four hundred. Fights, murders and month-long lock-downs were commonplace. The guards - armed, untrained, on low wages - left the running of the jail to the gangs.
GANG OF ONE is an explosive prison memoir with the gritty realism of Midnight Express and the emotional force of The Shawshank Redemption.
SHE'S NEVER COMING BACK
Hans Koppel -$19.99- $ 15.99
A Swedish psychological thriller dark enough to rival Stieg LarssonMike Zetterberg lives with his wife Ylva and their daughter in a house just outside Helsingborg. One evening, Ylva isn't home as expected after work. Mike passes it off as a drink with a work friend, but when she's still missing the next day, he starts to worry. As Mike battles suspicion from the police and his own despair, he is unaware that Ylva is still alive, just a stone's throw from his own home. Ylva has been drawn into a twisted plot of revenge and tragedy that leads back into her and her abductors' shared past...
FREDDIE MERCURY: The Biography
Laura Jackson -$24.99- $19.99
A biography of rock legend Freddie Mercury.This fascinating biography of Freddie Mercury which received outstanding acclaim from Queen and rock fans worldwide, has now been updated for reissue to coincide with the release of the film about his life. Laura Jackson addresses topics including:
* The reality behind Queen's flamboyant front man and lead singer
* Mercury the star of mystery - amusing, loyal and generous, yet revealing a dark side to his personality
* His frequent use of cocaine and how it heightened his tendency to excess - both on and off stage
* The women in his life - his bizarrely enduring relationships with his first love, Mary Austin, and his long-time confidante, Barbara Valentin, who speaks for the first time in this book
The book also includes new and intimate stories by those who knew him well, such as Tim Rice, Richard Branson, Cliff Richard, Bruce Dickinson, Mike Moran, Wayne Eagling, Zandra Rhodes and Susannah York.
DOWN THE DARKEST ROAD
Tami Hoag -$29.99- $23.99
Find out where evil lives in the latest bestseller from the Queen of Crime.Four years after the unsolved disappearance of her sixteen-year-old daughter, Lauren Lawton is the only one still chasing the ghosts of her perfect Santa Barbara life. The world has given her daughter up for dead. Her husband ended his own life in the aftermath. And Lauren's younger daughter is desperate to enjoy what's left of her childhood.
Lauren knows exactly who took her oldest child, but there is not a shred of evidence against the man. Even as he stalks her family, Lauren is powerless to stop him. The Santa Barbara police are handcuffed by the very laws they are sworn to uphold. Looking for a fresh start in a town with no memories, Lauren and her younger daughter Leah move to idyllic Oak Knoll. But when Lauren's suspect turns up in the same city, it feels as if history is about to repeat itself. Leah Lawton will soon turn sixteen, and Oak Knoll has a cunning predator on the hunt.
FEAR, FAITH AND HOPE: The Long Wet Summer 2010-2011
Matthew Condon -$29.95- $23.96
Fear, faith and hope – just three of the emotions felt during the long, wet summer of 2010-2011.
The floods and cyclones of that wet season produced a natural disaster which will continue to influence the lives of the people in Queensland for years to come. The scale was huge, but out of the wreckage a wonderful story emerged: a story of community spirit and human resilience as friends, neighbours, and total strangers came together to help one another through the worst aspects.
'This song, just rain on a tin roof, that had started in northern Queensland the year before had now become a swelling symphony . . . ' MATTHEW CONDON, Qweekend
Fear, Faith and Hope tells the events of that long, wet summer through:
- over 300 photographs taken by Courier-Mail and other photographers
- compassionate reports from journalists who were on-the-ground
- timelines of the events leading up to and during the summer
- a full-colour map of Queensland showing flood-affected towns.
Fear, Faith and Hope is an eyewitness account of the disasters as they unfolded, from the far north and gulf country to the border in the south. It focuses on the personal anecdotes of those who experienced it, and its tribute to the people of Queensland and a celebration of their enduring spirit.
Royalties from this book will be donated to Australian Red Cross disasters relief and recovery projects.
THE TORRENT: Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, 10 January 2011
Ameanda Gearing -$27.95$22.36
Of all the stories to emerge from the catastrophic floods that hit Queensland in the summer of 2011, the most starkly tragic and dramatic were those that emerged from Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley.
On January 10, 2011, after weeks of heavy rain and as floodwaters began to overwhelm much of south-east Queensland, an 'inland tsunami' hit the the city of Toowoomba, the rural districts of Spring Bluff and Postmans Ridge, and the towns of Murphys Creek, Withcott, Helidon, and Grantham. Official figures state that twenty-four people died. Hundreds of lives were threatened by flash flooding. Many people escaped death only because they were rescued by members of the community or through sheer good fortune.
The Torrent tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of survival and loss that emerged from that terrible day. Based on exclusive interviews with survivors, rescuers and with the families and friends of victims of the disaster, The Torrent is a unique and powerful account of human courage in the face of the devastating force of nature, and the enduring resilience of ordinary Australians.
EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE FILM TIE IN
Jonathon Safran Foer -$19.95$15.96
In a vase in a closet, a couple of years after his father died in 9/11, nine-year-old Oskar discovers a key . .
The key belonged to his father, he's sure of that. But which of New York's 162 million locks does it open?
So begins a quest that takes Oskar - inventor, letter-writer and amateur detective - across New York's five boroughs and into the jumbled lives of friends, relatives and complete strangers. He gets heavy boots, he gives himself little bruises and he inches ever nearer to the heart of a family mystery that stretches back fifty years. But will it take him any closer to, or even further from, his lost father?'Utterly engaging. From the very first page it is a hugely involving read . . . a heartbreaker: tragic, funny, intensely moving' Spectator
77 SHADOW STREET
Dean Koontz -$32.99$26.39
Old Silas Kinsley is the self-appointed resident-historian of The Pendleton, an imposing building raised by a titan of industry in the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, now converted into a number of highly desirable condominiums.
He has discovered that there is a cycle of strangeness and tragedy in The Pendleton′s past. The original owner became a recluse--and was rumored to be more than half mad--after his wife and two children were kidnapped and never found. The second owner suffered a worse tragedy in 1935, when he was murdered by the butler/house manager, along with his family and all the live-in staff.
Certainly, the eeriness of the place is pervasive: it is full of creepy shadows and unidentifiable sounds. CCTV images show places that can′t possibly exist within the confines of the building. And someone--or something--is glimpsed in the courtyard gardens at night.
On the second floor of The Pendleton lives Bailey Hawk, a would-be novelist who is at present a money manager with twenty good clients. He is smitten with neighbour Twyla Trahern, a successful songwriter who works mostly from home. Twyla is the single mother of 8-year-old Winny, a shy dreamer of a boy. They will need each other in the trial to come.
The Pendleton is heading into another of its disturbing cycles. Bad things are about to happen. Terror of epic proportion is about to descend. To survive, the people of The Pendleton must make of their home a fortress. But the enemy is relentless and unearthly ... and as real as death.This is not a ghost story. It is something scarier by far.
A COMMON LOSS
Kirsten Tranter -$29.99$23.99
From the critically acclaimed author of The Legacy
They were originally five.
Elliot. Brian. Tallis. Cameron. And Dylan - charismatic Dylan - the mediator, the leader, the man each one turned to in a time of crisis. Five close friends, bonded in college, still coming together for their annual trip to Las Vegas.
This year they are four. Four friends, sharing a common loss: Dylan′s tragic death. A common loss that, upon their arrival in Vegas, will bring with it a common threat: one that will make them question who their departed friend really was, and whether he is even worthy of their grief.
A Common Loss is Kirsten Tranter′s follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut, The Legacy. Yet again, Tranter′s weave of watertight prose and literary sensibilities shows her to be a born writer with a precocious control of storytelling and style.
WE BOUGHT A ZOO: The Amazing True Story of a Broken-down Zoo and the 200 animals that changed a family forever.
Benjamin Mee -$19.99$15.99
A few years ago, Ben and his wife, Katherine, sold their small flat in Primrose Hill and moved to France to pursue their dream of restoring an old barn near Nimes.That dream then became much, much bigger, as they moved with their two young children, Ben′s 76 year-old mother and his brother, into a run-down zoo on the edge of Dartmoor which they had bought, and found themselves responsible for 200 animals including four huge tigers, lions, pumas, three massive bears, a tapir and a wolf pack.
Ben′s new extended family now included: Solomon, an African lion and scourge of the local golf course; Zak, the rickety Alpha wolf, a broadly benevolent dictator clinging to power; Ronnie, a Brazilian tapir, easily capable of killing a man, but hopelessly soppy; and Sovereign, a jaguar who is also a would-be ninja, and has devised a long term escape plan and implemented it. But tragedy was to strike for, in the midst of dealing with escaping wolves and jaguars, and troublesome adolescent vervet monkeys, Katherine, who had developed, and had removed, a brain tumour while in France, began to experience symptoms again. The prognosis was poor, and so Ben found himself juggling the complexities of managing the zoo and getting it ready for re-opening, and at the same time having to care for his rapidly deteriorating wife, their two young children, and their ever growing menagerie of animals.
Ben′s story will both move and entertain - charting, simultaneously, the family′s attempts to improve the animals′ lives, the build-up to the Zoo′s official reopening, as well as Katherine′s decline, her final days, and how the family went on. Film release in Australia Boxing Day 2011
Note: Prices subject to change.
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The QUT Bookshop offers a 20% discount of the R.R.P. for all Lonely Planet publications.
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