May/June 2009

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The selected works of T. S. Spivet / Reif Larsen 

T.S. Spivet is a 12-year-old genius mapmaker who lives on a ranch in Montana. His father is a tight-lipped cowboy and his mother is a scientist who for the last twenty years has been looking for a mythical species of beetle. His brother has gone, his sister seems normal but might not be, and his dog, very well - is going mad. It’s odd, but then families are. T.S. makes sense of it all by drawing beautiful, meticulous maps kept in innumerable colour-coded notebooks: maps of the countryside, maps of his family’s behaviour, and maps of animal and plant life. He is brilliant, and the Smithsonian Institution agrees, though when they telephone with news that he has won a major scientific prize they don’t suspect for a minute that he is twelve years old. So begins T.S.’s life-changing adventure.

 The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is exhilarating, funny, endlessly charming and unbearably poignant. It is a journey through life’s mysteries great and small, and about how on earth a boy with a telescope, four compasses and a theodolite should set about solving them.

The kiss of Saddam / Michelle McDonald

After growing up in a privileged and cosmopolitan Iraq during the 1950s and 1960s, Selma Masson is plunged into a world of despair and intrigue when she discovers first-hand the brutality of her country’s dictator. While Iraqi Ambassador to Spain, her husband is imprisoned and tortured by the Hussein government - for Selma, securing his freedom will mean an unforgettable encounter with Saddam Hussein.

Now an Australian citizen, Selma is ready to tell her story for the first time. The Kiss of Saddam draws an evocative picture of the political and religious history of Iraq through the story of Selma’s family and the role her husband played in Iraqi politics, both before and during Saddam Hussein’s rise to power. It also movingly captures the experience of life in Australia for political asylum seekers.

An awkward truth : the bombing of Darwin, February 1942 / Peter Grose

Darwin was a battle Australia would rather forget. Yet the Japanese attack on 19 February 1942 was the first wartime assault on Australian soil. The Japanese struck with the same carrier-borne force that devastated Pearl Harbour only ten weeks earlier. There was a difference. More bombs fell on Darwin, more civilians were killed, and more ships were sunk. The raid led to the worst death toll from any event in Australia.

Drawing on long-hidden documents and first-person accounts, Peter Grose tells what really happened and takes us into the lives of the people who were there. There was much to be proud of in Darwin that day: courage, mateship, determination and improvisation. But the dark side of the story involves looting, desertion and a calamitous failure of leadership. Absorbing, spirited and fast-paced, An Awkward Truth is a compelling and revealing story of the day war really came to Australia, and the motley bunch of soldiers and civilians who were left to defend the nation.

A lion called Christian / Anthony Bourke & John Rendall

A Lion Called Christian relates how Anthony ‘Ace’ Bourke and John Rendall visited London from Australia in 1969 and bought a boisterous lion cub in Harrods. For a while, the three of them lived together as flatmates on the King’s Road, Chelsea, where Christian became a local celebrity. But he was growing up, fast, and even the church garden in which he exercised was becoming too small for him.  A chance meeting with Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, stars of Born Free, led to Christian being flown to Kenya and placed under the expert care of Adamson. Ace and John did not return to see him for a year.

Now, thanks to the internet age, their incredible reunion is again being enjoyed by millions. Originally published in 1971, A Lion Called Christian has been fully revised and updated, telling Christian’s remarkable story in words as well as stunning photographs. It is a unique and extraordinary tale of its time that resonates again today with a worldwide audience, and is destined to become one of the great classics of animal literature.

The angel’s game / Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In an abandoned mansion in Barcelona, a young man named David Martin makes a living by writing steamy melodramas under a pseudonym. When his own novel receives scathing reviews, it seems his publishers are plotting against him, and David is destined to literary obscurity. In a locked room deep within the house he finds letters and photographs hinting at the death of the previous owner. Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as David struggles with an impossible love. Then he receives an extraordinary proposal from the French editor Andreas Corelli - a proposal that could make David rich and famous.

The Angel’s Game is a tale of lost souls and haunting shadows set amid the winding alleyways of Barcelona during the turbulent 1920s. It is a masterful tale and spellbinding love story about the magic of books and the darkest corners of the heart.

Zulu Hart / Saul David

Bullied at school for his suspiciously dark skin and lack of a father, Hart soon learns to fight — and win. At eighteen, his world is shaken by his mother’s revelation that his anonymous father is willing to give him a vast inheritance — provided he can prove himself worthy of the prize as an officer in the King’s Dragoon Guards.

At a time when racism and prejudice are rife in Victorian society, Hart struggles to come to terms with his identity. Forced to leave the army, he decides to head to South Africa, and a fresh start. But George Hart has soldiering in his blood, and once in Africa the urge to serve again is strong. Yet now he is caught between two fierce and unyielding forces as Britain drives towards war with the Zulus. Hart must make a choice — and fight for his life.

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