Pulling from twenty-five years of essays, articles, and reviews, Alex Boyd’s Take This for the Pain is a curious look at art and culture in a rapidly changing world. Boldly tackling topics ranging from faith to aging to work in factories and bookshops, Boyd’s work finds inspiration in the philosophies of writers like George Orwell, William Stafford, and Charlotte Brontë. If you’ve ever wondered about the value of poetry in the 21st century, or whether graffiti is a valid art form, Take Thi...

A genre-bending retelling of The Odyssey, Army of the Brave and Accidental is a modern fable: a story about relationships, parenthood, and trying to have an impact on the world told from the shifting perspectives of ten characters. A hundred years after James Joyce stitched together a version of the epic tale, Canadian writer and essayist Alex Boyd updates the story as a reflection of Canadian twenty-first-century culture, allowing it to take a radically differen...

The least important man was a boy in the 1970s. He remembers clubhouses, plastic soldiers, swimming lessons, rocket launches, a grandfather’s letters from World War I. Those days are long gone, however: now the least important man is grown up. He lives in the city. He suffers endless rush hours, he dreams of other places, he drinks cheap coffee and crosses streets and sees explosions on the TV news. But through it all he’s still thinking about that old life, and wondering what it meant, an...

An epic eleven-part adaptation of Mary Renault’s ‘Theseus’ novelsWidely considered as one of the finest historical novelists of the 20th century, Mary Renault brought the ancient world alive, turning age-old myths of gods and monsters into compelling human stories. In The King Must Die and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea, she retells the legend of Theseus, one of the greatest heroes of Ancient Greece.This enthralling radio adaptation com...

Long ago, all horse were wild. In time, people taught them to wear a saddle and a bit. But some horses were not tamed. And today, all over the world, wild horses still run free.

"A high-spirited, comic ramble into the savage Outback populated by irreverent, beer-guzzling frontiersmen." --Chicago TribuneSwept off to live in Sydney by his Australian bride, American writer Tony Horwitz longs to explore the exotic reaches of his adopted land. So one day, armed only with a backpack and fantasies of the open road, he hitchhikes off into the awesome emptiness of Australia's outback.What follows is a hilarious, hair-raising ride i...

It's only a dog, the FBI agents think when they descend on the drug lord's home. Only a dog, chained in the back yard, half starved and with almost glowing eyes it's so filled with rage and fear.It isn't till they get closer that someone says, "That looks like a wolf."a short story3200 words

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERPolly Evans was a woman with a mission. Before the traditional New Zealand male hung up his sheep shears for good, Polly wanted to see this vanishing species with her own eyes. Venturing into the land of giant kauri trees and smaller kiwi birds, she explores the country once inhabited by fierce Maori who carved their enemies’ bones into cutlery, bushwhacking pioneers, and gold miners who lit their pipes with banknotes—and comes fac...

This remarkable memoir begins with Don Walker's early life in rural Australia and goes up to the late ’80s. In mesmerising prose, Walker evokes childhood and youth, wild times in the ’70s, life on the road and in Kings Cross, music-making and much more. Shots is a stunningly original book, a set of word pictures – shots – that conjure up the lowlife and backroads of Australia.‘Singular, strong and beguiling’ —The Sydney Morning Herald‘Better than good. Mos...

"[A] superb sampling of Swedish crime writing talent . . . will be appreciated by fans of Stieg Larsson's Millennium [series] and Jens Lapidus's Easy Money ." — Library JournalWhat could be more peaceful than a city made up of a series of islands surrounded by crystal-clear water? But like any big, international metropolis, Stockholm has a dark side—fed by the disparity between its affluent boroughs and its more ...

As the Black Death reaches its hand into a Venetian goldsmith’s shop, a young apprentice must make a difficult choice.Venice, 1610: “My uncle the goldsmith died less than an hour ago but the Plague Doctor is already at our door…”After the bubonic plague takes his parents, ten-year-old Tonino is apprenticed to his uncle in a small goldsmith’s studio perched on a bridge. But as the Black Death reaches its hand into his uncle’s workshop, young Tonino ...

Living in the wilder parts of Australia has its challenges.These are the true stories of one person's journey from Australia's suburbs to the remote northern Outback, and then to remote rural Tasmania.It is a story of deadly snakes, bush drumming, killer bicycles, Tasmanian tigers, and barramundi fishing.Compiled by Matt Flynn, a former Northern Territory journalist who also publishes fishing and outdoors magazines.