'Will break your heart and give you chuckles. What more do you want?' John Safran'The most achingly funny, heartsplittingly tragic and brilliantly written book you'll read this year.' Benjamin LawLiam Pieper was raised by his bohemian parents to believe in freedom and creativity, and that there's nothing wrong with smoking a little marijuana to make life more interesting.A fast learner, Liam combined hippie self-actualisation with gen ...

Liam Pieper's made some poor life choices, but he's (usually) meant well. He's tried to write important stories, fight racial prejudice and rescue traumatised puppies. And he's ended up with life-threatening infestations, a punch in the face at a Leonard Cohen concert and brief detention by counter-terrorism experts.Taking us from Nimbin to US border security to the star-studded Chateau Marmont in LA, these four essays are compelling, insightful and very funny. Mistakes Were Mad...

A person is defined by the secrets they keep ... Adam Kulakov likes his life. He's on the right side of middle age; the toy company he owns brightens the lives of children around the world; and he has more money than he can ever spend, a wife and child he adores, and as many mistresses as he can reasonably hide from them. And he is not the only one with secrets. In 1944, Adam's grandfather, Arkady, was imprisoned in Auschwitz and given an impossible choice. Now, as he's coming to the end o...

Greg Fleet's hilarious, heartbreaking account of the life-or-death battle for his soulFor 30 years Greg Fleet has been one of Australia's most widely known and best loved comedians. For the same period, he's had a drug habit that has delivered him comedy and tragedy in equal parts.On the high road: a genius wit and prodigious work ethic take him from NIDA and Neighbours, to Shakespeare and award-winning theatre, and on to acclaim and adoration on s...

'MR WIGG captivates to the end' Good Reading MagazineIt’s the summer of 1971, not far from the stone-fruit capital of New South Wales, where Mr Wigg lives on what is left of his family farm. Mrs Wigg has been gone a few years now and he thinks about her every day. He misses his daughter, too, and wonders when he'll see her again.He spends his time working in the orchard, cooking and preserving his produce and, when it's on, watching the cricket. It's a full life. Things are...

It is 1997 in San Francisco and Simon and Sarah have been sent on a quest to see America: they must stand at least once in every 25-foot square of the country. Decades later, in an Australian city that has fallen on hard times, Caddy is camped by the Maribyrnong River, living on small change from odd jobs, ersatz vodka and memories. She's sick of being hot, dirty, broke and alone. Caddy's future changes shape when her friend, Ray, stumbles across some well-worn maps, including one of San F...

If a bad attitude could be subject to copyright, my ten years as a waiter would have left me obscenely wealthy. Working the floor, I was the Kerry Packer of passive aggression. Sullen insolence was my personal trademark, diligently honed and perfected over time. For a long list of perceived diner slights - ranging from ordering the tomato sauce separately to the fries, to calling me 'dear' - I could perform a Jekyll and Hyde switch into the most perfunctory, robotic and joyless server ...

Brutal, brave, hilarious -- a full-frontal memoir about surviving the very worst that life can throw at you.Rosie Waterland has never been cool. Growing up in housing commission, Rosie was cursed with a near perfect, beautiful older sister who dressed like Mariah Carey on a Best & Less budget while Rosie was still struggling with various toilet mishaps. She soon realised that she was the Doug Pitt to her sister's Brad, and that cool was not going to be her currency in this life.

A deluded mother who invented her past, an alcoholic father who couldn't deal with the present, a son who wondered if this could really be his family.Richard Glover's favourite dinner party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?'. It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed-toy collector. Th...

Shortlisted for The Australian Literature Society (ALS) Gold Medal 2015Longlisted for The Miles Franklin Literary Award 2015Longlisted for The Australian Literary Studies Gold Medal 2015Longlisted for The Stella Prize 2015A gripping and thought-provoking novel about finding the lost child in all of us.Once an artist and teacher, Jen now spends her time watching the b...

“Clarke is the real deal…” —Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius“A tremendous new voice; a writer of immense talent and depth.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Sterling…a powerful view of the beauty and complexities of globalization.” —EssenceFrom a powerful new voice in international fiction, this prize-winning collection of stories crosses the world—f...

At the age of 82, Rupert Murdoch is divorcing his third wife Wendi Deng and gearing up for the toughest challenge of his life: to hand his empire on to his children. But is this the end of the Murdoch dynasty?Lachlan doesn't want to succeed him. James is in disgrace. And Elisabeth is not a serious contender. His grip on the group has also been weakened by scandal. His British tabloids have been caught hacking phones and bribing officials on an industrial scale. At least twenty jour...