Книги

In his fiction debut, erstwhile speechwriter and Saturday Paper journalist Martin McKenzie-Murray takes us on a frantic, funny, and surreal journey through the corridors of power.

Toby, former speechwriter to the PM, has reached a new low: locked behind bars in a high-security prison, with sentient PlayStations storming the city outside, and the worst of Australia's criminals forcing him to ghost-write letters to their loved ones or have his spine repurposed as a coat-rack. How did he get here? From the vantage point of his prison cell, Toby pens his memoir, trying to piece together how he fell so far, all the while fielding the uninvited literary opinions of his murderous cellmate, Gary.

What Toby unspools is a tale of twisted bureaucracy, public servants gone rogue, and the ever-present pervasive stench of rotting prawns (don't ask). Realizing that his political career is far from the noble endeavor he'd once imagined it would be, Toby makes a bid for freedom...before the terrible realization dawns: it's impossible to get fired from the public service. Refusing to give up (or have to pay for his relocation fee), Toby's attempts to get fired grow more and more extreme, and he finds himself being propelled higher and higher through the ranks of bureaucracy.

In his fiction debut, erstwhile speechwriter and Saturday Paper journalist Martin McKenzie-Murray takes us on a frantic, funny, and surreal journey through the corridors of power.…

Showering in gumboots. Bomb threats. Tables of turds. Welcome to the life of a nurse.

Nurses are our number-one unsung heroes. They're the ones in the trenches mopping up bodily fluids, holding hands, keeping things ticking - and always with a smile on their face. In Off the Charts, Australia's favourite straight-talking nurse and comedian Georgie Carroll lets you peek behind the curtains to see the inner workings of a hospital. Taking us ward to ward, limb to limb, stitch to stitch, Georgie does not hold back as she shows us the human fragility and fierceness she sees every day at work.

This is a laugh-out-loud funny celebration of the big-hearted, no-b*llshit nurses who, sooner or later, play a huge role in all of our lives.

Showering in gumboots. Bomb threats. Tables of turds. Welcome to the life of a nurse.

Nurses are our number-one unsung heroes. They're the ones in the trenches mopping up…

You're Doing it Wrong is an outrageous tour through the centuries of bonkers and bad advice handed down and foisted upon women, told as only Kaz Cooke can - with humour and rage, intelligence and wit.

Come with Kaz on a laugh-out-loud frolic through centuries of terrible advice, from 14th-century clergy to the Kardashians (wear a dress made of arsenic, do some day-drinking, have sex with a billionaire biker, worry about your vagina wrinkles). It's also a roar against injustice, a rallying cry for sisterhood and a way to free ourselves from ludicrous expectations and imposed perfectionism.
Kaz's own 30-year history of interest and experience in advice - from her newspaper etiquette column to best-selling books, including Up the Duff and the Girl Stuff series - and years of archives and research have culminated in a full-colour, exuberant shout of a book with hundreds of wacky and sobering historical photos of objects and instructions.

You're Doing It Wrong examines what we're told to do (change shape, shoosh, do all the housework), and what we're not supposed to do (frown, have pockets, lead a country). It covers sex & romance, paid work, fashion & beauty, health advice, housework, and a motherlode of mad parenting instructions - from witchcraft to beauty pageants, with a side of aviatrixes. Put the kettle on and settle in.

You're Doing it Wrong is an outrageous tour through the centuries of bonkers and bad advice handed down and foisted upon women, told as only Kaz Cooke can - with humour and rage,…

A pile of rats having an identity crisis. A sexy robot rebellion. A velociraptor revenge wedding. The world's horniest scientist. Enter 'Sexy Tales of Paleontology': a world of queer romance, (dis)connection, and artifical intelligence told with Patrick Lenton's idiosyncratic bizarreness and heart.

Lenton's short stories combine laugh-out-loud humour with an honest-to-goodness sensibility. Sci-fi oddities, pop culture, a lesser-known Kardashian who lives on the moon, and a deft turn of comic absurdity bound through this truly queer romp of a book. But beyond all this, at the beating heart of the book, is the foolishness, horror, and delight that is love and heartbreak and 43 rats.

Praise for Sexy Tales of Paleontology:

“Patrick Lenton is a hot little piece of ass, and his book is a hot little piece of ass (for the mind).” - Nina Oyama (Utopia, The Weekly)

“Wildly inventive, refreshingly bonkers. I verify this attempt at humour by this human male.” - Julie Koh (Portable Curiosities)

“Lenton has an imagination like dropped pudding — delicious, and a crime to waste it. This collection is wicked, witty and only occasionally horny. Here Lenton writes with enviable verve around the intersection of science, inhumanity and the clarifying force of love. It is a book teeming with life and brilliance and I am very mad that I did not write it.” - Rick Morton (One Hundred Years of Dirt, My Year of Living Vulnerably)

A pile of rats having an identity crisis. A sexy robot rebellion. A velociraptor revenge wedding. The world's horniest scientist. Enter 'Sexy Tales of Paleontology': a world of…

A heart-aching comedy about three generations of mother-daughter love
Nora Fawn's daughter, Hope, disappeared four years ago. Nora has never known why. Refusing to answer her mother's calls, emails or texts, Hope maintained contact only with her big sister, Joy. Having once considered her mothering to be the greatest achievement of her life, Nora's spent these Hope-less years searching, aching, mother-guilting, working for a famous yet talentless artist and avoiding her own emotionally repressed mother, Daphne.
But ... last night Hope rang out of the blue to say, 'I'm coming home, I'm getting married, the wedding is in three weeks and it's your job to organise it.' Desperate to prove her worth as a mother and regain her daughter's love, Nora commits to the task - assisted by her own increasingly dementia'd mother and her two best friends, Soula (an amateur bikini-line waxer) and Thilma (whom they found in a cab in the 1980s).
My Daughter's Wedding is both hilarious and profound as it explores the confounding complexity, wild terrain, mountains, valleys and quicksand found in three generations of mother-daughter love.

A heart-aching comedy about three generations of mother-daughter love
Nora Fawn's daughter, Hope, disappeared four years ago. Nora has never known why. Refusing to answer her…

A Times (of London) Best Fiction Book of 2022

A wildly inventive, savagely funny and topical novel about love, mortality and the afterlife, by the Booker-shortlisted author of A Fraction of the Whole .

Angus is a reformed ne'er-do-well looking forward to the birth of his first child when he's murdered by a man who is in love with his pregnant wife Gracie. Having never believed in God, heaven or hell, Angus finds himself in the afterlife - a place that provides more questions than answers. As a worldwide pandemic finally reaches the shores of Australia, the afterlife starts to get very crowded and Angus finds a way to reconnect with his wife Gracie and maybe even seek revenge on his murderer...

Here Goes Nothing is a novel of exhilarating originality and scope about birth, death and everything in between and after by ‘a writer of prodigious talent’ (Peter Carey) that contains a vision of the afterlife that rivals Dante’s Divine Comedy and George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, and the emmy-nominated The Good Place

A Times (of London) Best Fiction Book of 2022

A wildly inventive, savagely funny and topical novel about love, mortality and the afterlife, by the Booker-shortlisted author of…

'Chasing cows and pigs. Mockery. Rude songs. Piracy, bullying, revenge, warfare and general thuggery.' This is the list of approved duck activities and it does NOT include poetry. The ducks of Little Dismal are angry. A scruffy chicken called Clara has been telling lies about them. They need revenge. Enter Rita - a duck with the soul of a poet. After an embarrassing talent night, Rita sees revenge on Clara as a chance to restore her reputation. But Rita finds more than revenge on her mission. She uncovers a dastardly plan to chook-nap the clever chicken that will take them both a long way from home. Luckily, it's Rita's unlikely friendship with a small human and the help of some street-smart birds that just might save the day and inspire an epic poem!

'Chasing cows and pigs. Mockery. Rude songs. Piracy, bullying, revenge, warfare and general thuggery.' This is the list of approved duck activities and it does NOT include poetry.…

Welcome to Wally Park Primary, the Weirdest School in Australia! A weird and wonderfully funny story collection for readers from 8 to 11.

Some people think that all schools are all the same. They might have different uniforms, slogans and emblems but in the end, there isn’t much difference between them . . . THESE PEOPLE ARE WRONG! They have not been to Wally Park P.S.
A normal day at Wally Park would be the weirdest day in any other school’s history.

With an annual Extreme-Walkathon few students survive, a talking Naughty Tree and an Out of Bounds area you might truly never return from and ruled by the meanest (and most vain) principal in Australia, you have to keep everything crossed that your family is not moving to Wally Park any time soon! A funny and wacky story collection about Australia’s weirdest school!

Welcome to Wally Park Primary, the Weirdest School in Australia! A weird and wonderfully funny story collection for readers from 8 to 11.

Some people think that all schools are…

Hi there. My name is Stevie. NOT Steven. I mean, you can call me Steven if you MUST, literally everyone does... including my own mum.
But my ACTUAL name is Stevie Louise Mason. I'm eleven years old. I love reading, and watching musicals. I hate olives, and when people say I ask too many questions. I think I ask just the right amount of questions. And today, I am going to ask the Brooke Street kids the Most Important Question of their lives!

Stevie has a Brilliant Plan - an AMAZING idea to make money and, more importantly, make sure the Brooke Street kids stay best friends forever. Then a new neighbour threatens to derail all Stevie's plans, and soon real disaster strikes. But the show must go on. After all, Stevie is A Professional...

A gloriously warm, funny and relatable story from much-loved comedian, writer, radio announcer and social media sensation Tanya Hennessy.

Hi there. My name is Stevie. NOT Steven. I mean, you can call me Steven if you MUST, literally everyone does... including my own mum.
But my ACTUAL name is Stevie Louise Mason.…

This picture book follows the story of an eager cockroach and his family who hitch a ride to school -- with hilarious results. For fans of I Don't Want to Be a Frog.

Everyone's favorite cockroach from Your Birthday Was the Best! is back, and this time he's going to school . . . and bringing his whole family along for the ride!

From show-and-tell to arts and crafts, this little stowaway can't wait to try it all . . . and maybe become the new teachers' pet!

Charming, hilarious and just a tiny bit disgusting, this is a school tale with a twist.

This picture book follows the story of an eager cockroach and his family who hitch a ride to school -- with hilarious results. For fans of I Don't Want to Be a Frog.

Everyone's…

A spooky, exuberantly funny and hugely entertaining book about a boy who is having trouble making friends in his new neighbourhood... From bestselling author Sofie Laguna. Perfect for Halloween reading!

Alby and his family are new on Pleasant Street. Their house is perfect, with a great tree to climb, and a pool. Their pet, Delia, is still in training, but she's settling in just fine.

And tonight is Halloween - Alby's favourite night of the year - so ANYTHING could happen...

A hilarious story about family and friendship, and what happens when trick-or-treating doesn't go to plan.

A spooky, exuberantly funny and hugely entertaining book about a boy who is having trouble making friends in his new neighbourhood... From bestselling author Sofie Laguna. Perfect…

A new pet purchase becomes CATASTROPHIC. Laugh your head off with the super-popular Funny Kid series!


Every kid wants to laugh, but Max is the boy who can make it happen. He's also the boy who absolutely, definitely, does not under any circumstances want a cat. So why did Mum and Dad just bring one home?

Max is the funny kid but now a cat is here to ruin his life!

Cat bums, cat claws, ticklish cats, piano-playing cats, cats that will run away and cats that won't (oh, and a jealous Duck in a toilet jacuzzi) are just some of the things in store for Max and his friends in this Funny Kid adventure!

FUNNY KID is the mega-bestselling series from author-illustrator Matt Stanton that has everyone laughing!

A new pet purchase becomes CATASTROPHIC. Laugh your head off with the super-popular Funny Kid series!


Every kid wants to laugh, but Max is the boy who can make it happen.…

The smash-hit play, in print for the first time with a foreword and notes from multitalented playwright, writer, commentator and actor Nakkiah Lui. Love, politics and other things you shouldn't talk about at dinner

Charlotte Gibson is a lawyer with a brilliant career ahead of her. As her father Ray says, she could be the next female Indigenous Waleed Aly. But she has other ideas. First of all, it's Christmas. Second of all, she's in love.

The thing is, her fiance, Francis Smith, is not what her family expected - he's unemployed, he's an experimental composer ... and he's white! Bringing him and his conservative parents to meet her family on their ancestral land is a bold move. Will he stand up to the scrutiny? Or will this romance descend into farce?

Love is never just black and white. It's complicated by class, politics, ambition, and too much wine over dinner. But for Charlotte and Francis, it's mostly complicated by family. Secrets are revealed, prejudices outed and old rivalries get sorted through. What can't be solved through diplomacy can surely be solved by a good old-fashioned dance-off. They're just that kind of family.

The smash-hit play, in print for the first time with a foreword and notes from multitalented playwright, writer, commentator and actor Nakkiah Lui. Love, politics and other things…

Meet Tariq Nader, leader of ‘The Wolf Pack’ at Punchbowl High, who has been commanded by the new principal to join a football competition with his mates in order to rehabilitate the public image of their school. When the team is formed, Tariq learns there’s a major catch – half of the team is made up of white boys from Cronulla, aka enemy territory – and he must compete with their strongest player for captaincy of the team.

At school Tariq thinks he has life all figured out until he falls for a new girl called Jamila, who challenges everything he thought he knew. At home, his outspoken ways have brought him into conflict with his family. Now, with complications on all fronts, he has to dig deep to control his anger, and find what it takes to be a leader.
In confronting and often hilarious situations, Tariq’s relationships with his extended Lebanese family and his friends are tested like never before, and he comes to learn that his choices can have serious consequences.

Meet Tariq Nader, leader of ‘The Wolf Pack’ at Punchbowl High, who has been commanded by the new principal to join a football competition with his mates in order to rehabilitate…

Narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct American mastodon, Mammoth is the (mostly) true story of how the skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a pterodactyl, a prehistoric penguin, the severed hand of an Egyptian mummy and the narrator himself came to be on sale at a 2007 natural history auction in Manhattan.

Ranging from the Pleistocene Epoch to nineteenth-century America and beyond, including detours to Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, Mammoth illuminates a period of history when ideas about science and religion underwent significant change. By tracing how and when the fossils were unearthed, Mammoth traverses time and place to reveal humanity's role in the inexorable destruction of the natural world

Narrated by a 13,000-year-old extinct American mastodon, Mammoth is the (mostly) true story of how the skull of a Tyrannosaurus bataar, a pterodactyl, a prehistoric penguin, the…

They tell us that human happiness lies only in the future. But what if it really lies in the past?

Hobart, 2022: a city with declining population, in the grip of a dark recession. A rusty ship sails into the harbour and begins to unload its cargo on the site of the once famous but now abandoned Gallery of Future Art, known to the world as GoFA.

One day the city’s residents are awoken by a high-pitched sound no one has heard for two generations – a factory whistle. GoFA’s owner, world-famous tycoon Dundas Faussett, is creating his most ambitious installation yet. He’s going to defeat the internet’s dominance over our lives by establishing a new Year Zero: 1948. Those whose jobs and lives have been destroyed by Amazon and Uber and Airbnb are invited to fight back in the only way that can possibly succeed: by living as if the internet and the smartphone had never been invented.

The hold over our lives by Gates, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and the rest starts to loosen as the revolutionary example of Factory 19 spreads. Can nostalgia really defeat the future? Can the little people win back the world? We are about to find out.

They tell us that human happiness lies only in the future. But what if it really lies in the past?

Hobart, 2022: a city with declining population, in the grip of a dark…

When her parents announce their impending divorce, Natalie can’t understand why no one is fighting, or at least mildly upset. Then Zach and Lucy, her two best friends, hook up, leaving her feeling slightly miffed and decidedly awkward. She’d always imagined she would end up with Zach one day―in the version of her life that played out like a TV show, with just the right amount of banter, pining, and meaningful looks. Now everything has changed, and nothing is quite making sense. Until an unexpected romance comes along and shakes things up even further.

When her parents announce their impending divorce, Natalie can’t understand why no one is fighting, or at least mildly upset. Then Zach and Lucy, her two best friends, hook up,…

A boy races across the Solar System, piloting a beat-up spaceship and accompanied by his fascinating new friends. Forced to crash land on Neptune, he’s soon dodging lightning cannons, racing hovercrafts, and trying to outsmart a bunch of super aggressive guys with buckets on their heads, all in the hope of making it back to Earth in time for his Mum’s spaghetti carbonara.

The second epic chapter in the critically acclaimed Action Tank series, this 256 page, fast-moving adventure continues the galaxy-spanning tale of discovery, friendship and what you’re really capable of.

A boy races across the Solar System, piloting a beat-up spaceship and accompanied by his fascinating new friends. Forced to crash land on Neptune, he’s soon dodging lightning…

Take a rhythmic, read-aloud (and rather silly) burrow into the unseen world of the wombat! Set in a similar style to Mopoke, this is a book created to be read together. The deliberately sparse script and silly illustrations invite the reader to follow the fate of a blossoming marsupial love story.

Take a rhythmic, read-aloud (and rather silly) burrow into the unseen world of the wombat! Set in a similar style to Mopoke, this is a book created to be read together. The…

From the author of the best-selling Mermaid! and Unicorn! and one of the world’s hottest new picture-book illustrators comes the story of a plucky young cockroach who gate-crashes a birthday party – with hilarious results. Funny, silly and surprisingly cute, Your Birthday Was the BEST! is the perfect blend of downright gross and delightfully entertaining.

From the author of the best-selling Mermaid! and Unicorn! and one of the world’s hottest new picture-book illustrators comes the story of a plucky young cockroach who gate-crashes…

Long ago, the little Prince of Cloudburst was stolen from the seashore by a Water Sprite. Now, ten years later, the prince has found his way home. The King and Queen are planning the biggest party in their Kingdom's history to welcome him.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Kingdoms and Empires, Esther Mettlestone-Staranise is looking forward to another year at Katherine Valley Boarding School. But she arrives to find a number of strange and unsettling changes. For one, her new teacher is rumoured to be an Ogre. Two mysterious students have joined the school, and one of Esther's classmates is an undercover Spellbinder. Most disturbingly, the mountains surrounding the school - usually a delight of glaciers, teashops, lakes and Faeries - are now crowded with wicked Shadow Mages.

As secrets and dangers escalate, Esther must find the answers to several puzzles. Why is her teacher behaving so oddly? Which of Esther's classmates is the Spellbinder, and can they really protect the school from gathering hordes of Shadow Mages? Could the Stolen Prince of Cloudburst be connected?

How can Esther - who is not talented like her sisters, nor an adventurer like her cousin, but just Esther - save her family, her school and possibly her entire world?

Long ago, the little Prince of Cloudburst was stolen from the seashore by a Water Sprite. Now, ten years later, the prince has found his way home. The King and Queen are planning…

In a captivating follow-up to April and Esme, Tooth Fairies, a master of whimsy sends his tiny heroines on another adventure.

With their parents off on an urgent molar pickup, April and Esme are ready for a cozy overnight at Grandma and Grandpa's teapot house by the airport fence. There will be fairy cakes to mix, pancakes and syrup for breakfast, a chocolate on each of their pillows. But then a call comes in about a small girl in a red coat, arriving from Ghana with a baby tooth somewhere in her pocket. Could this be a job for April and Esme, tooth fairy sisters? As always with Bob Graham, the beauty is in the details: Grandpa working out with a giant teabag-turned-punching-bag; fellow winged creatures hovering above the airport terminal (cupids to help people meet and angels to comfort the sad arrivals). Merging humor, poignancy, and a bit of heart-fluttering suspense, Bob Graham turns a familiar moment of childhood independence into a thing of magic.

In a captivating follow-up to April and Esme, Tooth Fairies, a master of whimsy sends his tiny heroines on another adventure.

With their parents off on an urgent molar pickup,…

Детство двенадцатилетнего Илая Белла не назвать обычным.

Его старший брат Август — ясновидящий гений, принявший обет молчания и общающийся с миром с помощью фраз, написанных в воздухе.

Его отчим Лайл — профессиональный наркодилер средней руки.

Его мир — австралийское предместье.

А место няньки и учителя при нем занимает Артур Холлидей по прозвищу Гудини — философ и чемпион по успешным побегам из тюрем.

Такова "вселенная" Илая — мальчика, кому скоро предстоит влюбиться в девушку, которую он никогда не видел, спасти мать, вступить в неравную схватку с таинственным криминальным боссом Титусом Брозом и начать получать советы из трубки отключенного красного телефона...

Детство двенадцатилетнего Илая Белла не назвать обычным.

Его старший брат Август — ясновидящий гений, принявший обет молчания и общающийся с миром с помощью фраз, написанных в…

'They're different, that's for sure. And I wouldn't put anything past 'em.' It's 2006, and terror scaremongering in the media has rattled the residents of sleepy, suburban Dunlop Crescent. When a Maori family moves into number 14, the local cranks assume they are Middle Eastern terrorists hell-bent on destroying the Australian way of life. Rumour has it that they plan to turn their house to face Mecca. This sets off an extraordinary chain of events that embroils the entire neighbourhood as well as cynical media figures, bumbling anti-terrorist police, and a gang of white supremacists with a radical plan to wake up the country and 'preserve Australian values'. At the centre of it all is Gordon, a retired widower, who just wants a bit of peace and quiet. Deadly Kerfuffle is a smart, riveting and incredibly funny novel inspired by actual letters to the editor in a local newspaper. Through biting satire and a cast of unforgettable characters, it's an insight into the kind of paranoia that could only ever blossom in the quietest and safest of places.

'They're different, that's for sure. And I wouldn't put anything past 'em.' It's 2006, and terror scaremongering in the media has rattled the residents of sleepy, suburban Dunlop…