NEW BOOKS

NON FICTION

Bachar Houli: Faith, Football and Family

Bachar Houli, Waleed Aly

Bachar Houli is as accomplished an AFL footballer as they come. He’s been part of two Richmond Premiership sides, he was an All-Australian in 2019, and with over 200 games to his name he remains a key part of a champion team.

Picked at number 42 in the 2006 National Draft by Essendon, Houli played 26 games for the Bombers before moving in late 2010 via the pre-season draft to Tigerland, where rookie coach Damien Hardwick was assembling the team that six years later would achieve the seemingly impossible and claim Richmond’s 11th Premiership. Another flag followed two years later, with Houli close to best on ground in both deciders.

Yet it’s as the AFL’s most prominent Muslim player that Houli is best known - and his strong Muslim values are at the heart of the man he is. Writing for the first time, Houli explores the experiences and beliefs that sparked his trailblazing success as a Muslim footballer, and that established him as a leading voice within the AFL community for inclusion, understanding and tolerance.

Belief

Marlion Pickett, Dave Warner

It’s the third quarter in the biggest game of the season. A young man lines up for goal. The 100,000 strong crowd leaps to its feet and roars as Marlion Pickett sends the ball soaring through the goalposts for his first ever major, celebrated by every teammate, a tradition upheld even on Grand Final day.

It was the 2019 AFL Grand Final, and Richmond’s Marlion Pickett was making history as the first player in over 50 years to debut on that ‘one day in September’.

Marlion helped the Tigers thrash the Greater Western Sydney Giants in their debut grand final appearance and was judged third best on ground, only six days after steering Richmond’s VFL team with his best on ground performance to their nail biting Grand Final victory.

Marlion Pickett’s extraordinary story of redemption is a true fairy tale. The tale of a man who came back from the brink to triumph on Australian sport’s biggest stage, a long-held dream come true.

What’s even more remarkable about Marlion’s journey is how this young, troubled Aboriginal kid from Western Australia ever got his chance in the first place. A story all too sadly familiar - about drugs, crime, violence and time spent in jail - but also about a life picked up piece by piece through his own belief in himself and those around him who believed in him too.

Belief also takes us inside the South Fremantle and Richmond Football clubs - clubs that have made stars and cult heroes out of other Indigenous players; clubs willing to overlook a talented kid’s troubled past to give him a chance. We meet the fellow players and support network who stood by Marlion’s side as he fought back against injury and the doubters and proudly ran onto the field at the MCG.

Marlion’s resilience and strength is inspirational. His is an unforgettable Australian story of triumph over adversity.

Good Selfie: Tips and Tools for Teens to Nail Life

Turia Pitt, Freda Chiu

Good Selfie contains simple strategies to help kids and teens build self-confidence, get through hard times and go after massive goals. It’s real, straight-talking and funny (if I do say so myself!). I can’t wait for you to get stuck in! Turia xx

‘Good Selfie is a fabulous book and an absolute must-read for every family. Like Turia, it’s practical and full of inspiration, wisdom, laughs….and a joyous optimism that is completely infectious.‘ – Lisa Wilkinson, Journalist

‘Turia Pitt’s life story is one of extraordinary strength through her struggle against adversity. Her courage and dignity inspire all people, particularly women and girls. As a national role model we are grateful that she has decided to share with us her emotional and powerful journey.’ – The Hon Julie Bishop MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs

‘Turia is an incredible woman. Forthright, fierce, resilient, bold, strong and oozing courage. She has so much to teach us about life, challenges and cultivating confidence. Good Selfie is a must read - for you and your kids.‘ – Sandra Sully, Journalist and Senior Editor Ten News

‘My friend Turia Pitt is an extraordinary person. She is living proof that with a strong purpose and vision for your life, you can overcome ANY challenge and any circumstance. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to know her and to hear her powerful story of triumph over the unimaginable.’ – Tony Robbins, Peak Performance Coach

‘Reading Good Selfie made me realise that everyone goes through hard times and everyone has bad days - not just me. I really liked all Turia’s hacks and tricks to feel more confident too - they actually work.‘ – Josh, 14 years old

‘Good Selfie was so inspirational and it really helped me boost my confidence. It has inspired me to never give up and smash goals. By the way my favourite activities were the re-framing activities and the gratitude activities. I will recommend this book to all my friends!’ – Chloe, 11 years old

Growing Up Disabled in Australia

Carly Findlay

My body and its place in the world seemed quite normal to me.

I didn’t grow up disabled, I grew up with a problem. A problem those around me wanted to fix.

We have all felt that uncanny sensation that someone is watching us.

The diagnosis helped but it didn’t fix everything.

Don’t fear the labels.

One in five Australians have a disability. And disability presents itself in many ways. Yet disabled people are still underrepresented in the media and in literature.

Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, bestselling Growing Up series. It includes interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt, poetry and graphic art, as well as more than 40 original pieces by writers with a disability or chronic illness.

Contributors include Dion Beasley, Astrid Edwards, Jessica Walton, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Gayle Kennedy and El Gibbs.

Humans

Brandon Stanton

Brandon Stanton’s Humans is a book that connects readers as global citizens at a time when erecting more borders is the order of the day. It shows us the entire world, one story at a time…

Brandon Stanton’s Humans - his most moving and compelling book to date - shows us the world. After five years of traveling the globe, the creator of Humans of New York brings people from all parts of the world into a conversation with readers. He ignores borders, chronicles lives and shows us the faces of the world as he saw them. His travels took him from London, Paris and Rome to Iraq, Dubai, Ukraine, Pakistan, Jordan, Uganda, Vietnam, Israel and every other place in between. His interviews go deeper than before. His chronicling of peoples' lives shows the experience of a writer who has traveled widely and thought deeply about the state of our world.

Including hundreds of photos and stories of the people he met and talked with in over forty countries, Humans is classic Brandon Stanton - a fully color illustrated book that includes many photos and stories never seen before. For the first time for a HONY title, Humans will contain several of the essays Brandon’s posted online which have been read, loved and enthusiastically shared by his followers.

Spotlight

Solli Raphael

Following on from the success of Limelight, this new collection of poetry illuminates the social interests of Solli’s generation in a thought-provoking style, including a mix of traditional poems and brand-new performance poems.

It covers topics from connection to bullying and pinpoints climate change as a key concern with poems like Solli’s Greenpeace collaboration piece ‘Let’s Make More Minutes Count!’. Spotlight also contains five non-fiction chapters with advice, tips and plenty of activities for kids and teens.

Solli encourages readers to find their voice and learn the forms and occupations of writing, as well as discusses how to use and gain a platform, with ways to instigate change and become a wordsmith themselves. He shares his experiences, ideas and advice on how the reader can create a sustainable future and discover ways to help create change, while looking at trends such as veganism and zero waste. Everyone can be proactive in shaping the future so let’s stand in solidarity.

Too Much and Never Enough

Mary L. Trump

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security and social fabric.

Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents' large, imposing house in New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald.

A first-hand witness, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humour to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favourite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s.

Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists and journalists have sought to explain Donald Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary Trump has the education, insight and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.

FICTION

Allegiant

Veronica Roth

What if your whole world was a lie? What if a single revelation - like a single choice - changed everything? What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

The faction-based society that Tris Prior once believed in is shattered - fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal. So when offered a chance to explore the world past the limits she’s known, Tris is ready. Perhaps beyond the fence, she and Tobias will find a simple new life together, free from complicated lies, tangled loyalties, and painful memories.

But Tris’s new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind.

Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend the complexities of human nature - and of herself - while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice and love.

Told from a riveting dual perspective, Allegiant, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the Divergent series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in Divergent and Insurgent

A Song for the Dark Times

Ian Rankin

‘He’s gone…’

When his daughter Samantha calls in the dead of night, John Rebus knows it’s not good news. Her husband has been missing for two days. Rebus fears the worst - and knows from his lifetime in the police that his daughter will be the prime suspect. He wasn’t the best father - the job always came first - but now his daughter needs him more than ever. But is he going as a father or a detective?

As he leaves at dawn to drive to the windswept coast - and a small town with big secrets - he wonders whether this might be the first time in his life where the truth is the one thing he doesn’t want to find…

The iconic storyteller is at the height of his powers in one of the must-read books of the year: A Song for the Dark Times

Concrete Rose

Angie Thomas

From international phenomenon Angie Thomas comes a hard-hitting return to Garden Heights with the story of Maverick Carter, Starr’s father, set seventeen years before the events of the award-winning The Hate U Give.

With his King Lord dad in prison and his mom working two jobs, seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter helps the only way he knows how: slinging drugs. Life’s not perfect, but he’s got everything under control. Until he finds out he’s a father…

Suddenly it’s not so easy to deal drugs and finish school with a baby dependent on him for everything. So when he’s offered the chance to go straight, he takes it. But when King Lord blood runs through your veins, you don’t get to just walk away.

Dog

Shaun Tan

Once we were strangers, legs bent the wrong way, rough voices falling to the wind … But in our hearts we wanted more than this. In our hearts, we knew there was more. ‘A tour de force.’ - The New York Times

If I Stay

Gayle Forman

Everybody has to make choices. Some might break you. For seventeen-year-old Mia, surrounded by a wonderful family, friends and a gorgeous boyfriend decisions might seem tough, but they’re all about a future full of music and love, a future that’s brimming with hope. But life can change in an instant.

A cold February morning …a snowy road …and suddenly all of Mia’s choices are gone. Except one. As alone as she’ll ever be, Mia must make the most difficult choice of all. Haunting, heartrending and ultimately life-affirming, If I Stay will make you appreciate all that you have, all that you’ve lost - and all that might be.

Includes interviews with the stars of the film, Chloe Moretz and Jamie Blackley.

Summer Spirit

Elizabeth Holleville

Summer for Louise means sand, surf, and… the supernatural.

Louise spends every summer at her grandma’s house with her older sister, cousins, and Rodin the dog. But, this year, her plans to relax and read comics on the beach are about to be turned upside down by a mischievous ghost, bored with being forced to haunt the same house. While the other girls are wrapped up in romance and teenage problems, Louise takes refuge with her new paranormal BFF, determined to escape the drama and just enjoy her summer break, something that is proving to be a lot harder than she anticipated…

Enter the dreamy world of Elizabeth Holleville’s graphic novel for a supernatural coming-of-age story, woven together with the threads of family, young love, and the tricky territory that comes with being a teenage girl.

The Absence of Sparrows

Kurt Kirchmeier

Stranger Things meets The Stand in this haunting coming-of-age novel about a plague that brings the world to a halt – and the boy who believes that his town’s missing sparrows can save his family.

In the small town of Griever’s Mill, eleven-year-old Ben Cameron is expecting to finish off his summer of relaxing and bird-watching without a hitch. But everything goes wrong when dark clouds roll in. Old Man Crandall is the first to change – human one minute and a glass statue the next. Soon it’s happening across the world.

Dark clouds fill the sky and, at random, people are turned into frozen versions of themselves. There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one knows how to stop it. With his mom on the verge of a breakdown, and his brother intent on following the dubious plans put forth by a nameless voice on the radio, Ben must hold out hope that his town’s missing sparrows will return with everyone’s souls before the glass plague takes them away forever.

The Cousins

Karen M. McManus

The Storys are the envy of their neighbours - owners of the largest property on their East Coast island, they are rich, beautiful, and close. Until it all falls apart.

The four children are suddenly dropped by their mother with a single sentence- ‘You know what you did’. They never hear from her again.

Years later, when 18-year-old cousins Aubrey, Milly and Jonah Story receive a mysterious invitation to spend the summer at their grandmother’s resort, they have no choice but to follow their curiosity and meet the woman who’s been such an enigma their entire lives.This entire family is built on secrets, right? It’s the Story legacy.

This summer, the teenagers are determined to discover the truth at the heart of their family. But some secrets are better left alone.

The Deep End: Diary of a Wimpy Kid (15)

Jeff Kinney

In The Deep End, book 15 of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series from #1 international bestselling author Jeff Kinney, Greg Heffley and his family hit the road for a cross-country camping trip, ready for the adventure of a lifetime. But things take an unexpected turn, and they find themselves stranded at an RV park that’s not exactly a summertime paradise. When the skies open up and the water starts to rise, the Heffleys wonder if they can save their vacation - or if they’re already in too deep. And don’t miss an all-new fantasy from Greg’s best friend in Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure, the follow-up to the instant #1 bestseller Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid- Rowley Jefferson’s Journal.

The Great Escape (Wolf Girl, Book 2)

Anh Do, Jeremy Ley

I held onto the bars of the truck and howled to my dogs as they fell further and further behind. Sunrise, Brutus, Zip, Nosey and Tiny all ran as hard as they could, but there was no way they could keep up…

After four years alone in the wild, Gwen is overjoyed to see another person. But when she is thrown into the back of a van and stolen away to a prison camp, things don’t look good. How will her pack find her? Where is her human family? Will the other kids in the camp be friends or enemies?

Luckily, Eagle is fast, the dogs are brave, and bars and fences are no match for the one and only Wolf Girl!

The Lying Life of Adults

Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein

A powerful new novel set in a divided Naples by Elena Ferrante, the beloved best-selling author of My Brilliant Friend.

‘Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly. The sentence was uttered under his breath, in the apartment that my parents, newly married, had bought in Rione Alto, at the top of Via San Giacomo dei Capri. Everything - the spaces of Naples, the blue light of a very cold February, those words - remained fixed. But I slipped away, and am still slipping away, within these lines that are intended to give me a story, while in fact I am nothing, nothing of my own, nothing that has really begun or really been brought to completion: only a tangled knot, and nobody, not even the one who at this moment is writing, knows if it contains the right thread for a story or is merely a snarled confusion of suffering, without redemption.’

Giovanna’s pretty face has changed: it’s turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Into which mirror must she look to find herself and save herself?

Tiny Pretty Things

Dhonielle Clayton, Sona Charaipotra

Black Swan meets Pretty Little Liars in this book set in an elite New York ballet school - now a major Netflix series! Being a dancer at New York’s most elite ballet school isn’t easy. Everyone wants to be the prima ballerina, and sometimes you have to play dirty. With the competition growing fiercer with every performance and harmless pranks growing ever darker, Bette, June and Gigi find themselves battling it out to stay at the top. And it’s only a matter of time before one small spark ignites… and even the best get burned…

When We Say Black Lives Matter

Maxine Beneba Clarke

Little one, when we say Black Lives Matter,we’re saying black people are wonderful-strong.That we deserve to be treated with basic respect,and that history’s done us wrong.

From birth to the end of school, in joy and in sorrow, on the trumpet and the djembe, at home and in the community, a black child’s parents remind him why Black Lives Matter.

A gorgeous and essential picture book for children of all ages from bestselling and award-winning author Maxine Beneba Clarke.

In When We Say Black Lives Matter, a black child’s parents explain what the term Black Lives Matter means to them: in protest and song, in joy and in sorrow. I see this picture book as an act of Black Love - I was inspired to write and create it when thinking about how to explain the concept of Black Lives Matter to the young African diaspora kids in my extended family, living in over eight different countries across the world - including America, Australia, Germany, Barbados and England.

- Maxine Beneba Clarke, on writing WHEN WE SAY BLACK LIVES MATTER

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