by NRB | 26 Sep 2013 | Non-fiction |
Forgery, drunkenness, prejudice, injustice – the notorious Newtown Ejectment Case of the 1850s provides a fascinating slice of colonial life. Scandalous land deals are nothing new in New South Wales. The Newtown Ejectment case ran for 10 years in the middle of the...
by NRB | 24 Sep 2013 | Non-fiction |
Footy – for spectators and participants – has the power to connect and the power to crush. There’s much to love in this book. As a lifelong footy fan, I hunted through this collection for the things that interest me most: stories written by or about women who...
by NRB | 10 Sep 2013 | Non-fiction |
From convicts to mutineers to modern scandals, Robert Macklin taps the history of Norfolk Island. Robert Macklin has successfully woven together the stories of the early settlement of New South Wales, the history of the penal colony on Norfolk Island and later...
by NRB | 27 Aug 2013 | Non-fiction |
In an age dominated by the idea of gay marriage, one of the founding fathers of homosexual liberation asks where Queer culture has gone. Many people have forecast the end of gay culture in recent years. Indeed, even the very word ‘gay’ seems to have become a quaint...
by NRB | 25 Jul 2013 | Fiction, Non-fiction |
This literary figure from a forgotten age retains a cult following for his charmingly sharp-eyed novels, which may even have curative powers. ‘We will pay anything for Lucia books,’ read a legendary advertisement in the Times at some point in the 1940s, placed by a...
by NRB | 11 Jul 2013 | Non-fiction |
Leaks, rumours, polls and deniability: Kerry-Anne Walsh paints an ugly picture of Kevin Rudd’s road back to the prime ministership. This book, which details the covert media campaign run by Kevin Rudd and his supporters over the course of the Gillard government, went...
by NRB | 27 Jun 2013 | Non-fiction |
Sydney in the 1890s: shame, syphilis and infanticide. If you were unmarried and pregnant, or married and unable to afford another child, you had very few choices in Sydney in the late 1800s. There was no contraception, no safe abortion, no support for poor families...
by NRB | 30 May 2013 | Non-fiction |
A fascinating, engaging and witty look at our often fraught relationship with what we wear. Everyone has to wear clothes, there’s no way around it: if you were to leave the house naked, you’d be arrested. That doesn’t mean getting dressed each day is easy. What you...
by NRB | 23 Apr 2013 | Non-fiction |
One moment after another: Jo Case’s well-crafted memoir is a graceful tale of living with difference. Asperger’s Syndrome describes someone of high intelligence and strong focus, whose social skills are learnt rather than intuitive. Although Asperger’s has been...
by NRB | 9 Apr 2013 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
The real-life hanging of a 19th-century baby-farmer inspired award-winning poet Judith Rodriguez to tell the story in a variety of literary forms. I am Minnie Thwaites. I am under Melbourne. Wherever lime goes, where it seeps, where the sour juices of the city are...
by NRB | 28 Mar 2013 | Crime Scene, Non-fiction |
This true crime account attempts to explain the mind of a manipulative killer. It’s a cliché, but in this case it’s apt; if you came across a scenario like this in crime fiction you’d be hard pressed to stop your eyes from rolling. As is often the...
by NRB | 18 Mar 2013 | Non-fiction |
A return to Patti Miller’s childhood home in country New South Wales sparks this investigation of place, identity and dispossession. ‘D’ya have any blackfella in ya?’ The skinny woman across the room looked directly at me. So begins Patti Miller’s search under...
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