April 2013 at Jeffreys Books
I hear the collective sigh of relief (and a few disgruntled murmurs) as April brings Autumn with it. It also brings a swag of great new titles. We've mentioned a few here.
The Miles Franklin long list has been announced - 10 great titles to sink your teeth into.
We will be closed on ANZAC Day (25 April) and have included a section on ANZAC and military reads for the younger readers at the bottom of this newsletter - picture books through to titles suitable for young adult.
Enjoy another month of great reading and be sure to tell us what you've enjoyed throughout the month.

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Baz Lahrmann's film brings a new crowd of followers to F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic so we thought it timely to revisit (for many!) The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ...Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.
7pm Tuesday 23 April. Purchase the book to reserve your place. Please note that April's book club has been moved forward one week.

Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
Our March title has been rescheduled to April.
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team, husband and wife Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, take us on a journey through Africa and Asia to meet an

extraordinary array of exceptional women struggling against terrible circumstances. More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they are girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century combined. More girls are killed in this routine 'gendercide' in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth, it was totalitarianism. In the twenty-first, Kristof and WuDunn demonstrate, it will be the struggle for gender equality in the developing world. Fierce, moral, pragmatic, full of amazing stories of courage and inspiration, HALF THE SKY is essential reading for every global citizen.
11am Wednesday 17 April. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey
I’ve recently moved to Melbourne and friends introduced me to friends of theirs that live in Melbourne with the foreboding ‘I know you’ll love these guys. They are such great fun’. Well, I’ve met them and they are not my idea of great fun. They fit more into my definition of boring alouf-ites. Conversation was a struggle and their dinner would have been poo-poohed by the most generous of guests… To give them credit, they have been very welcoming and now invite me to everything. I’m running out of excuses – I’ve washed my hair, cut my hair, cat-sat, dog-sat and baby-sat for my neighbours (or so they would believe). What do I tell my friend? And how do I shake these people?

Home Alone

Helen

Dear Helen

First word of advice, never date someone your friend suggests*. You would be better to stay home and dust the Venetian blinds.

This sort of recommendation rarely works. You won’t believe the people that comment on ‘wanting to meet Uncle Jeffrey’. Thing is, I know a lot of people and rarely am I greeted with enthusiasm. People do not rush to sit next to me at dinner parties.

While I hear your pain, I’ll throw this one back at you. Most people are not boring. You just need to find something you can both be bothered talking about – heck, apparently you can even write a non-boring family history – just ask Hazel Edwards. And, if all else fails, anonymously send them a copy of David Gillespie’s How to be interesting.

Time is short
Uncle Jeffrey
* Instead, I refer you to Finding Mr Darcy by Amanda Hooton.

Featured Fiction
A World of Other People - Steven Carroll

Set in 1941 during the Blitz, A World of Other People traces the love affair of Jim, an Australian pilot in Bomber Command, and Iris, a forthright Englishwoman finding her voice as a writer.The young couple, haunted by secrets and malign coincidence, struggles to build a future free of society's thin-lipped disapproval. The poet T.S. Eliot, with whom Iris shares firewatching duties, unwittingly seals their fate with his poem 'Little Gidding', one of the famous Four Quartets.

Featured Non-Fiction
Alone on the Ice - David Roberts

On 17 January 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Then Mawson plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface. Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had detached from the flesh beneath. On 8 February, he staggered back to base, his features unrecognisably skeletal. Illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley's Antarctic photographs, this thrilling, almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders.

Featured Young Adult and Middle Readers
Clockwork Princess - Cassandra Clare

Danger intensifies for the Shadowhunters as the New York Times bestselling Infernal Devices trilogy comes to a close.

If the only way to save the world was to destroy what you loved most, would you do it? The clock is ticking. Everyone must choose. Passion. Power. Secrets. Enchantment. Danger closes in around the Shadowhunters in the third and final instalment of the bestselling Infernal Devices trilogy.

Featured Children's
Ted - Leila Rudge

A story about finding your perfect place. Ted is a smart dog, with his own jumper. But he has lived at the pet store for as long as he can remember and nobody seems to notice him. Will Ted ever find the perfect place to live?

Featured ANZAC titles for Younger Readers

March 2013 at Jeffreys Books

Welcome to March. Before you go any further, let me bring your attention to an exciting event we have on Thursday 14 March with Graeme Simsion, the author of The Rosie Project. Read on for details. This book has created a huge stir in the industry and the press. I highly recommend it. We're so enamoured with it that we have a window display, it's our March book club book and we're having an event.
The inaugural Long List of 12 fabulous books has been announced this month. The Stella Prize is a new literary award for Australian Women's Writing. Click here to see the titles.

And to quote Mark Twain “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.”

Author Visit: Graeme Simsion - Thursday 14 March

Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project will be appearing at Jeffreys Books at 6.30 pm on Thursday 14 March.

'Funny and heartwarming, a gem of a book.' Marian Keyes

Join us for the evening. Enjoy refreshments on arrival and then discussion on the feel good book of the year...

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club

The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. Then a chance encounter gives him an idea. He will design a questionaire - a sixteen-page, scientifically researched document - to find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver. Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is strangely beguiling, fiery and intelligent. And she is also on a quest of her own. She's looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might just be able to help her with - even if he does wear quick-dry clothes and eat lobster every single Tuesday night.
7pm Tuesday 26 March. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club

Half the Sky - Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team, husband and wife Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, take us on a journey through Africa and Asia to meet an extraordinary array of exceptional women struggling against terrible circumstances. More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they are girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century combined. More girls are killed in this routine 'gendercide' in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth, it was totalitarianism. In the twenty-first, Kristof and WuDunn demonstrate, it will be the struggle for gender equality in the developing world. Fierce, moral, pragmatic, full of amazing stories of courage and inspiration, HALF THE SKY is essential reading for every global citizen.
11am Wednesday 20 March. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,

I have a theory I’d like to test on you. People are sick of noisy restaurants where they can’t engage in intelligent conversation and this is driving reality cooking shows. We all want the excuse to stay at home – eat the food we want, drink the wine we want – and have control over the music volume.

Yes, I am a man who needs to also be in control of the TV remote. (My wife suggested this would be useful data for your contribution to my theory).

Kind regards
Ron

Dear Regulated Ron

It sounds like you’ve married an intelligent woman who can participate in many intelligent conversations with you. I congratulate you.

I have recently dined out with friends ‘of a particular age’ and we all commented on restaurant volumes. Does this validate your theory?

An alternate theory is that it the volume gives us meaningful pauses in conversation to refer to our smartphones. There are no longer empty chairs at empty tables – they are now inhabited by smartphones. Being a somewhat disagreeable guest at dinner I am no longer constantly challenged by an original thinker but rather, by their smartphones. I’m going to start carrying around a copy of iPhone for Dummies.

Another theory – because I love a good theory – is that you’re entirely wrong. That people are dining out more than ever regardless of ambient music. I’m sure you can find a statistic that proves or disproves this theory. If you need to justify dining at home just admit that you don’t like the surprises that often come with dining in unfamiliar surrounds and that you’d prefer the company of Pete Evans (Pizza) and Nigel Lawson (Nigellissima) whom you can easily mute.

With (heat) affection
Uncle Jeffrey

Featured Fiction
Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell
The stunning new novel from Costa-Novel-Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell: a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976. It's July 1976. In London, it hasn't rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he's going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn't come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta's children - two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce - back home, each wih different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.

Featured Non Fiction
Daphne de Maurier and her Sisters - Jane Dunn
Celebrated novelist Daphne Du Maurier and her sisters, eclipsed by her fame, are revealed in all their surprising complexity in this riveting new biography. The middle sister in a famous artistic dynasty, Daphne du Maurier is one of the master storytellers of our time, author of 'Rebecca', 'Jamaica Inn' and 'My Cousin Rachel' among many. But her sisters Angela and Jeanne, a writer and an artist of talent, had creative and romantic lives even more bold and unconventional than Daphne's own. In this group biography they are considered side by side, as they were in life, three sisters who grew up during the 20th century in the glamorous hothouse of a theatrical family dominated by a charismatic and powerful father. This family dynamic reveals the hidden lives of Piffy, Bird & Bing, full of social non-conformity, love, rivalry and compulsive make-believe, their lives as psychologically complex as a Daphne du Maurier novel.

Featured Children's Books
My Easter Egg Hunt - Rosie Smith
Hunting for eggs is fun . . . when you share with everyone. Beautifully illustrated with delightful animals, My Easter Egg Hunt captures the fun of looking for eggs at Easter time.
We have lots of Easter books this year - activity books, bunny books and religiously themed books. A huge range for you to come and browse.

February 2013 at Jeffreys Books

Do I mention Valentine’s Day or not? Yes, it’s February and mid-month everything turns chocolates and roses, romantic dinners and … books. Seriously, did you think I wasn’t going to add books in there?

I’m also wondering if I can run with the Chinese calendar this year. January has passed me by – I haven’t even come up with a new year’s resolution (generally stated in the form of a theme for the year). So, come February 10th it’s 新年快乐 as I welcome the year of the snake (as much as one can ever welcome a snake).
This will also be an exciting time for Jodie, one of the Jeffreys team, as she heads to Beijing to study Chinese. We wish her well. We farewell Laura also, who is moving, but not quite so far away. Thanks to both Jodie and Laura for being great work colleagues.

News and Events
The Shortlist for the 2013 Australian Independent Bookseller Awards has been announced. Voted on by the independent booksellers of Australia, The Indie Awards have a proud tradition of picking the best of the best of Australian writing. Browse the shortlisted titles here.

Open Book: By the Book by Romona Koval

5 February, Malvern Library, 6.30pm–7.30pm. Book Online.

Ramona Koval’s latest book, By the Book: A Reader's Guide to Life, is a love letter to books and writing. Join Ramona as she shares stories about reading and living and the authors that have written themselves into her life. It is about learning to read, about love and science (and her childhood ambition to be Marie Curie), about poetry and travel and falling in love.

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club

Lost Voices - Christopher Koch
Young Hugh Dixon believes he can save his father from ruin if he asks his estranged great-uncle Walter-- a wealthy lawyer who lives alone in a Tasmanian farmhouse passed down through the family-for help. As he is drawn into Walter's rarefied world, Hugh discovers that both his uncle and the farmhouse are links to a notorious episode in the mid nineteenth century. Walter's father, Martin, was living in the house when it was raided by members of an outlaw community run by Lucas Wilson, a charismatic ex-soldier attempting to build a utopia. But like later societies with communitarian ideals, Nowhere Valley was controlled by the gun, with Wilson as benevolent dictator. Dramatic, insightful and evocative, Lost Voices is an intriguing double narrative that confirms Koch as one of our most significant and compelling novelists.

7pm Tuesday 26 February. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club

Double Cross - Ben Macintyre
D-Day, 6 June 1944, the turning point of the Second World War, was a victory of arms. But it was also a triumph for a different kind of operation: one of deceit... At the heart of the deception was the 'Double Cross System', a team of double agents whose bravery, treachery, greed and inspiration succeeded in convincing the Nazis that Calais and Norway, not Normandy, were the targets of the 150,000-strong Allied invasion force. These were not conventional warriors, but their masterpiece of deceit saved thousands of lives. Their codenames were Bronx, Brutus, Treasure, Tricycle and Garbo. This is their story.

11am Wednesday 20 February. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
I’m writing to start the year on a positive note. How wonderful to see that Ita Buttrose is Australian of the Year – and her crown lasts the whole year. It’s not because I’m a feminist, I’m an equalist, and I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m her biggest fan, but I like to see someone recognised for perseverance on a cause – her most recent being alzheimer’s awareness and care.
May we long be a nation who celebrates success.
[Tall] Poppy, Caulfield

Dear Poppy,
Good on you for touting the ‘man on a mission’ (the gender neutral ‘man’). I love seeing the Australian of the year. I particularly love it when it’s someone we’ve never heard of – someone who is usually stuck in a lab with their eye on the microscope or going through the daily grind of their job to make someone else’s life better. Let’s praise dedication and our unsung heroes.

What I like about Ita (because all Australians call her Ita with no offense caused), is her strict adherence to etiquette. She’s prepared to challenge the rules, to speak her mind but when it comes to mobile phones, rsvp’ing or sneaking in to cinemas and causing havoc by sitting in someone else’s seat, she knows no grey. To quote Ita from A Guide to Australian Etiquette: “Walking on Footpaths – There is an urgent need for some sensible rules to be implemented in Australia over the use of footpaths. Few pedestrians feel obliged to observe any kind of courtesy. They walk on the left and on the right. They amble along with friends, sometimes three abreast, and think nothing of blocking other people’s way”. Ah Ita, we could’ve been great friends.

Yours sincerely,
Uncle Jeffrey

Featured Fiction

The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion
The feel-good hit of 2013, The Rosie Project is a classic screwball romance. Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. Then a chance encounter gives him an idea. He will design a questionnaire - a sixteen-page, scientifically researched document - to find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker or a late-arriver. Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is strangely beguiling, fiery and intelligent. And she is also on a quest of her own. She's looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might just be able to help her with - even if he does wear quick-dry clothes and eat lobster every single Tuesday night.

Featured Non-Fiction

Kel Richards' Dictionary of Phrase and Fable - Kel Richards
Are you seeing your mates this arvo because its been yonks? Do you shout 'ave a go, ya mug' to your football team from the stands? Or tell your mate his team has got Buckleys chance of winning the AFL Grand Final? Do you mutter stone the crows when surprised? Perhaps you've got your wobbly boots on? Aussie English may be the most inventive and creative language in the world. This larrikin lexicography by Kel Richards tells the stories behind almost a thousand Aussie words and phrases. So if youve ever wondered how bloody became an all-purpose swear word, why bludger means a lazy person, or even what dangle the dunlops, possum knockers or molly-dooker might mean, then you need to read this bonzer book.

Featured Young Adult and Middle Readers' Books

Shatter Me - Tahereh Mafi
"I place my hand on his chest. I dare to trace the outline of the bird soaring across his skin. 'You're my bird,' I tell him. 'You're my bird and you're going to help me fly away.' " Things happen when people touch Juliette. Strange things. Bad things. Dead things. No one knows why her touch is fatal, but The Reestablishment has plans for her. Plans to use her as a weapon. But Juliette has plans of her own. After a lifetime without freedom, without love, she's finally discovering her strength - and maybe even a future with the one boy she thought she'd lost forever.

Featured Children's Books

Maisy Grows a Garden - Lucy Cousins
This book lets you help Maisy to grow her very first garden with a vegetable patch and LOTS of flowers. See things spring to life in this fun-filled novelty book! Digging, planting, weeding, watering ... Maisy is getting her garden ready so that wonderful, colourful things can lay their roots. Turn the pages and pull the tabs to make seeds grow. Carrots, lettuce, tomatoes and green beans - yum, yum! Sunflowers and daisies! Look, a wriggling worm and a buzzing bee! Gardening is so much fun. This new "Maisy First Science" title is interactive, inspiring and informative too - enough to get even the youngest children excited about nature and how things grow.

January 2013 at Jeffreys Books

Wasn't December a blur? We hope you had a lovely time with family and friends - whether it was a family roast at your sister's (like me), a BBQ at the beach house or a chance to escape Australia altogether and head overseas. Thank you to all our returning customers for making it a very busy Christmas for us and welcome to all our new members. We look forward to a year ahead of great reads and discussions. Scan down to see our Top 12 Bestsellers for December 2012 - a good mix of holiday reading and cooking and a splash of biography.

Jeffreys On Sale
We've decided to clear some space on the shelves before the rush of 2013 new releases. There are a heap of fantastic titles reduced. You'll see well known authors, some of your favourite titles and with the low prices, you'll be able to experiment on some new authors. We've also included titles from around the store so you may broaden your horizons and dabble in some new topics. For those who like to plan ahead, our Christmas stock is reduced (limited Advent Calendars still available!). Come in to see the range. Reduced prices available while stock lasts.

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
Engagement - Chloe Hooper

Liese Campbell has an engagement for the weekend: to stay with Alexander Colquhoun, the well-mannered heir of a pastoral dynasty, at his property in western Victoria. Liese, an English architect in flight from the financial crisis, now works at her uncle's real-estate business in Melbourne. Alexander has been looking for a place in the city. The luxury apartments Liese shows him have become sets for a relationship that satisfies their fantasies – and helps pay her debts. It's a game. Both players understand the rules. Or so she thinks.
7pm Tuesday 29 January. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
We're taking a break in January from our Brain Food Book Club and we'll recommence in February 2013.

November 2012 at Jeffreys Books

For readers, our Christmases really do come at once. There are so many amazing books around for summer this year. We'll present just a few of them here. You'll find more in our Summer Reading Guide which is available in-store or by clicking here. Great books for you and great books for gifts!

The Stonnington Literary Festival [untitled] kicks off on Thursday evening. Click on the link to find details of events. Events are still open for bookings!

Open Book with Les Murray will be held at Toorak/South Yarra Stonnington Library on Monday 3 December at 6.30pm. Call 8290 4000 to book.

Les Murray, is an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spans over forty years, and he has published nearly 30 volumes of poetry, as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings. His poetry has won many awards and he is regarded as "the leading Australian poet of his generation." He has also been involved in several controversies over his career and has been rated by the National Trust of Australia as one of the 100 Australian Living Treasures. Can and hear him read from his work.

Enjoy another month of reading!

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear. Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012.
7pm Tuesday 27 November. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
Eugenia - Mark Tedeschi
This is the true crime account of Eugenia Falleni, a woman who in 1920 was charged with the murder of her wife. Eugenia had lived in Australia for twenty-two years as a man and during that time officially married twice. She lived a full married life with her first wife, Annie, for four years before Annie realised that her husband was a woman. Even after Annie knew, they lived together for eight months before they went on a bush picnic, when Annie mysteriously died. Her body was not identified for almost three years, and during this time Eugenia married again, this time to Lizzie. When Eugenia was finally arrested and charged with Annie's murder, the police attempted to tell Lizzie that her husband was a man. She laughed at them - she was so convinced that her husband was a man that she thought she was pregnant to him. This is the story of one of the most extraordinary criminal trials in legal history anywhere in the world.
11am Wednesday 21 November. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey

Why is it that some days you wake up itching for a squabble? It may have been a dream that disturbe

d you, it may have been the neighbour calling in their cat beyond your bedtime that set the mood. And sometimes it’s nothing.

And especially why does this happen when the sun is shining and life is good?

Yours in agitation,

Roger

Dear Rueful Roger

It sounds to me like you’ve jumped out of the wrong side of your bed. Life is a rollercoaster – it’s not just a saying – it really is. Indeed you’ve probab

ly already bounced back from when you first penned your note to me. There are many little frustrations in life and generally I find these are the best to blow your stack about – but be quick about it and preferably do it out of earshot of others. Then you can be calm to deal with the bigger issues.

So where to now? I don’t generally like to recommend humour, in fact, I have no sense of humour (but you may already know that about me) but I’ll do it anyway. These are some things that make me laugh or a least make others laugh: Jeffreys’ wonderful range of New Yorker cards (limited range of Christmas ones also available), our ‘Man Cave’ in a box, Underwater Dogs (preferably for dog lovers but cat lovers may also be amused) and, believe it or not, On the Map by Simon Garfield. And if that fails I suggest spending ’28 Days in Provence’ Shannon Bennett-style.

Riez un peu, Souriez un peu
Uncle Jeffrey

Featured Fiction
Standing In Another Man's Grave - Ian Rankin
It's twenty-five years since John Rebus appeared on the scene, and five years since he retired. But 2012 sees his return in STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN'S GRAVE. Not only is Rebus as stubborn and anarchic as ever, but he finds himself in trouble with Rankin's latest creation, Malcolm Fox of Edinburgh's internal affairs unit. Added to which, Rebus may be about to derail the career of his ex-colleague Siobhan Clarke, while himself being permanently derailed by mob boss and old adversary Big Ger Cafferty. But all Rebus wants to do is discover the truth about a series of seemingly unconnected disappearances stretching back to the millennium. The problem being, no one else wants to go there - and that includes Rebus's fellow officers. Not that any of that is going to stop Rebus. Not even when his own life and the careers of those around him are on the line.

Featured Non-Fiction
The Lost Diggers - Ross Coulthart
During the First World War, thousands of Aussie diggers and other Allied troops passed through the French town of Vignacourt, two hours north of Paris. Many had their photographs taken by Louis and Antoinette Thuillier as souvenirs while they enjoyed a brief respite from the carnage of the Western Front. For all too many, this was their last moment away from the lines before being sent to their deaths in battles that are now part of the mythology of Australian nationhood - Pozieres, Bullecourt, the Somme. The weariness and horror of battle is reflected in their eyes, but the photos also capture a sense of camaraderie, high spirits and even a soupcon of romance. The Lost Diggers is the riveting detective story of the hunt across northern France for a rumoured treasure trove of antique glass photographic plates that led investigative journalist Ross Coulthart to an ancient metal chest in a dusty attic in a small farmhouse.

Featured Young Adult and Middle Readers' Books
Bilbo's Last Song - J R R Tolkien
While Bilbo embarks on his last journey to the West, his mind is cast back to his first big adventure, "The Hobbit". J.R.R Tolkien's beautiful poem is brought to life through Pauline Bayne's stunning illustrations. It's the perfect introduction to the epic fantasy series of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" for younger readers, and a real treat for all Tolkien fans. Baynes' illustrations have been fully restored in this fantastic new edition, which is published to coincide with the film release of "The Hobbit" in autumn 2012.

Featured Children's Books
Joseph and the Amazing Technical Dreamcoat - Andrew Lloyd Webber and Time Rice (illustrated by Quentin Blake)
Based on the smash-hit musical that has become one of the most popular children's plays of all time, this beautiful book retells in verse and illustrations one of the most action-packed stories of the Old Testament. The lively lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and the humorous illustrations by Quentin Blake are a delight for children of all ages. A book to be treasured!

October 2012 at Jeffreys Books

Welcome to this tenth month. We can safely say that diaries and calendars have landed on the Jeffreys shelves. The range includes pictorial V&A diaries through to your Collins Debden and Filofax refills. Come in to see the full range. And you know once diaries and calendars have been displayed it's only a very short time until the Christmas Cards appear - they will be on display before the end of October.
Now that you have your diary, we have a some dates you may like to add.

Stonnington Library has announced its inaugural Literary Festival - [untitled] - and Jeffreys Books is excited to be a sponsor and bookseller at the festival. It runs from 15-18 November. There are presentations, panels and workshops with some wonderful authors as well as competitions for aspiring writers. All the details can be found on their website. http://www.stonnington.vic.gov.au/explore-stonnington/library-services/untitled-literary-festival/

Enjoy October!

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Dinner - Herman Koch

Paul Lohman and his wife, Claire, are going out to dinner with Paul's brother Serge, a charismatic and ambitious politician, and his wife, Babette. Paul knows the evening will not be fun. The restaurant will be over-priced and pretentious, the head waiter will bore on about the organically certified free-range this and artisan-fed that, and almost everything about Serge, especially his success, will infuriate Paul. But as the evening wears on it becomes clear that tonight's dinner will be even more difficult than usual. There is something the two couples have to discuss. It's about their teenage sons and the very bad thing they have been doing. And it's about how far two sets of parents will go to save their children from the consequences of their actions.

7pm Tuesday 30 October. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
The Story of Billy Young - Anthony Hill

The Story of Billy Young is the true story of the suffering - and survival - of an underage prisoner-of-war during World War II. Bill Young, who is still alive, enlisted in the army in July 1941 aged only 15, though he said he was 19. He went to Singapore, was captured at the fall, and spent the rest of his teenage years in some of the most barbaric Japanese prisons. From Changi he was sent to Sandakan in Borneo, from which he and a mate were lucky to escape before the infamous death marches. They were quickly caught, however, and Billy ended up in the notorious Outram Road prison in Singapore, where he spent much of the next two years in solitary confinement. This is the story of how he survived that ordeal. Young Bill is an extraordinary testament to a young man's remarkable courage in the face of some of the most horrific experiences of wartime. It is also the story of the tragic effects of war and its aftermath on the personal lives of those who fought.

11am Wednesday 24 October. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
I have a conundrum. My thirst for books outweighs my budget. I’m constantly restraining myself from entering Jeffreys Books as I can rarely leave without a small brown parcel under my arm. I realise this is a difficult one for you – obviously you need me to be buying – but I also need to eat! Your thoughts on my addiction please?
Constant Reader
C

Dear Bookworm

Well, I never! You’re asking me for advice on how to stop buying books? Hrmph. My duty to my readers outweighs my good sense, so I shall provide you with an answer. If I’m out of a job after this I’ll be reading your books and eating your food.

There are dear little places that will lend you books for free – Stonnington is well endowed with them. They are called libraries. In fact, you will see that the Stonnington Library is holding its inaugural Literary Festival – [untitled] – later in November this year. Oft-times generous friends may lend you their favourite reads (less likely to lend you their e-reader). They may insert a little note from a ‘check book*’ so that you know who to return it to. (*These may be purchased at Jeffreys Books.)

I recently overheard a conversation between a Jeffreys’ customer and a staff member. When the customer was greeted cheerfully he commented that he was ‘Just looking today. For every three visits I make, I only purchase once!’ Perhaps (if you must) you could adopt this approach?

For when you truly can’t get back out onto Glenferrie Road without making a purchase there are books for the budget conscious. For example Vintage Classics and the new yellow Text Classics are $12.95 – or for as little as $9.95 you can purchase a Penguin Classic. We also have discounted books out front that may fit your needs.

Now, allow me to share a little story about the value of books. I recently met a country lass from remote Queensland. On hearing that I provide a self-help column for readers she told me about her recently formed book club. She and her neighbours rotate their meeting place between their homes. When the meeting is held at the western most home, the eastern most home-dweller drives two hours to book club and two hours to return! Now, there is dedication. That demonstrates the value of a good read. That warms the cockles of my heart.

Spend wisely, read widely

Uncle Jeffrey
(Editors note – books pictured are a salute to our Australian outback)

Featured Fiction
The Jewels of Paradise - Donna Leon

Caterina Pellegrini is a young Venetian musicologist hired by two competing cousins to find the truthful heir to an alleged treasure concealed by a once-famous, but now almost forgotten, baroque composer. Sworn to secrecy, Caterina can solve the mystery only by searching through the papers contained in the composer's two chests that have not been opened for centuries. As she delves into all quarters of his life, from professional to personal, she is drawn into one of the most scandalous affairs of the baroque era. When her research takes her in unexpected directions, she begins to wonder what dark secrets these chests hold and just whom can she trust? The Jewels of Paradise, a gripping tale of intrigue, music, history and greed, is Donna Leon's first stand-alone novel.

Non-Fiction from Around the World
Ray Parkin's Odyssey - Pattie Wright

In 1939, Ray Parkin was a petty officer on board the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth. Despite his lack of formal education and his naval practicality and discipline, Ray had the soul of an artist and a philosopher's enquiring mind. As HMAS Perth became embroiled in war in the Mediterranean and South-East Asia, Ray chronicled the events through his meticulous diaries and his minutely observed paintings and sketches. When Perth was sunk off the coast of Java, Ray survived but soon became a prisoner of war, first on the Thai-Burma Railway and then as a labourer in a Japanese coalmine. The horrors and privations of those years saw some of his most memorable artwork, documenting both the beauty of the natural world and the savageries of the POW experience. He also developed lifelong friendships with fellow prisoners Weary Dunlop and Laurens van der Post, and later published the seminal books Out of the Smoke, Into the Smother and The Sword and the Blossom. Ray died in 2005, acclaimed for his art, his wartime trilogy, and for his prize-winning masterpiece H. M. Bark Endeavour, an extraordinary evocation of Captain Cook's ship and its voyage up the east coast of Australia in 1770.

Non-Fiction Australian Grown
The Words that Made Australia - edited by Robert Manne and Chris Feik

This is not a book of documents, snippets or worthy speeches. Instead it presents the original essays and the moments of insight that told us what Australia is and could be. These are the essential statements - from historians, reporters, novelists, mavericks and visionaries - that take us from federation to the present-day, and tell a story of national self-discovery. There is the Frenchman who saw that Australia was a 'workingman's paradise', and the historian who explained why. There are the two reporters who realised the true significance of Gallipoli and conveyed it to the nation, the Australian Legend, the Australian Ugliness, the Lucky Country, the Great Australian Silence - and much more. Memorably written and cohesive, this is the essential sourcebook for the words that made Australia.

Young Adult and Middle Readers New Release
The Convent – Maureen McCarthy

Peach is nineteen and pretty happy with the way things are. She has her university work, two wildly different best friends, her sister, Stella, to look after and a broken heart to mend. But when she takes a summer job at a cafe in the old Abbotsford convent, her idea of who she is takes a sharp turn into the past. Where once there were nuns, young girls and women who had fallen on hard times, Peach discovers secrets from three generations of her family. As their stories are revealed, Peach is jolted out of her comfort zone. But does she really want to know who she is? Warm and real, intense and provocative, Maureen McCarthy's The Convent shows in vivid detail how fate and the choices we make ripple and reverberate through time. A novel to fall in love with.

Children's Picture Book New Release
The Man from the Land of Fandango - Margaret Mahy

The man from the land of Fandango is coming to pay you a call! He wears a hat with a tassel and a polka-dot tie - and he juggles and bounces and dances with bears, bison, baboons, kangaroos and even dinosaurs. He's wonderful and amazing - so watch out for him, and watch carefully - because he only appears every 500 years! This magical, fantastical poem, full of Mahy's signature wordplay and joie de vivre, is brilliantly matched by the humour and energy of Polly Dunbar's illustrations.

September 2012 at Jeffreys Books

Thank you to everyone who dropped in on National Bookshop Day - and congratulations to our prizewinners. We had a lovely day - it hardly felt like we were working at all!
Have you managed to get along to the Melbourne Writers' Festival? I've heard good reports from a number of events and it doesn't end until Sunday, Father's Day. Oh, speaking of Sunday, don't let me forget it's Father's Day - what an astonishing list of books we have for you. You can be forgiven for thinking that it can be hard to find a good book for a bloke, just as it can be hard to find a good card (although we like to think we have both covered for you!) - come September this all changes. And it's good to see the list is not all just footy and BBQs (although those are covered too). We've listed some of our best picks for you and we found it hard to shortlist. We've made it easy for you by rearranging the store and bringing loads ofgreat Dad titles down to the front of the store.
Get Reading is on again. Go to their website for the guide or pick one up instore. For your chance to win a copy of each book in the guide, all you have to do is register for their updates on the Get Readingwebsite! Too easy.
Have a lovely month.

September Event - In Search of My Father by Dr Helena Popovic
Event in-store at Jeffreys—Tuesday, 4 September
6 for 6.30pm presentation
Dr Helena Popovic puts her medical training and beliefs to the test when she becomes the carer for her elderly father who has encroaching dementia.
Dr Popovic began a rigorous program of activities and lifestyle changes designed to improve the functioning of her father’s brain. With time and tenacity, she was rewarded beyond her expectations. Refreshments will be served. Come along - and bring a friend.

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Housemaid's Daughter - Barbara Mutch
Duty and love collide on the arid plains of central South Africa. Cathleen Harrington leaves her home in Ireland in 1919 to travel to South Africa and marry the fiance she has not seen for five years. Isolated and estranged in a harsh landscape, she finds solace in her diary and the friendship of her housemaid's daughter, Ada. Cathleen recognises in her someone she can love and respond to in a way that she cannot with her own husband and daughter. Under Cathleen's tutelage, Ada grows into an accomplished pianist, and a reader who cannot resist turning the pages of the diary, discovering the secrets Cathleen sought to hide.
7pm on Tuesday, 25 September. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
The Fishing Fleet - Anne de Courcy
From the late 19th century, when the Raj was at its height, many of Britain's best and brightest young men went out to India to work as administrators, soldiers and businessmen. With the advent of steam travel and the opening of the Suez Canal, countless young women, suffering at the lack of eligible men in Britain, followed in their wake. This amorphous band was composed of daughters returning after their English education, girls invited to stay with married sisters or friends, and yet others whose declared or undeclared goal was simply to find a husband. They were known as the Fishing Fleet, and this book is their story, hitherto untold. For these young women, often away from home for the first time, one thing they could be sure of was a rollicking good time. Anne de Courcy's sparkling narrative is enriched by a wealth of first-hand sources - unpublished memoirs, letters and diaries rescued from attics - which bring this forgotten era vividly to life.
11 am on Wednesday, 19 September. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Featured Father's Day
It can be very hard to show your Dad just how important he is. These books will help you go somewhere closer to that goal.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
I recently met a B-grade celebrity. On recognising them, I immediately tried to establish where I knew them from. I went through schools, parent groups, work places and even the local cafes. In the end, they ever so politely asked if I recognised them from [insert Australian TV series - Editor's note - name removed to protect the innocent]. Now, you can imagine the many shades of red and subsequently grey that I turned. I’d like to say this embarrassment has never happened before, but it has. I’m a senior manager in my business and networking is constantly being hammered into me by the Managing Director. When I try, you know how it goes…
Please help
Yours muddled,
Mary

Oh My, Mary,
I can see this is a problem. Some of us are just prone to this sort of incident. I’m not sure if it’s genetic but I’m pretty confident that it’s not curable. Do not let that deter you. Many very successful people suffer similar social awkwardness and it’s actually quite endearing. There is hope if you develop some winning strategies:

Smile warmly and act as if you know the person, but not too intimately as this can also add to some embarrassing questions. (David Lodge’s character, retired Linguistics Professor Desmond Bates, in Deaf Sentence got himself into quite a pickle with hearing difficulties – same, but different.)
Try to anticipate who you may see at events and refresh your mind with their names. This can only be helpful when the element of surprise is removed.
Grow feathers so that your embarrassment can be like water off a duck’s back.

I would also suggest you refer to the following, perhaps more robust, experts: Ita Buttrose - A Guide to Australian Etiquette and neurologist, Oliver Sacks who recounts incredible stories of people unable to recognise people or objects in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
When all else fails, follow this simple advise that was given to me – as you walk down the street or into a room, smile. If someone catches your eye, brighten your smile.
On that note, I throw it back to our readers to send me your questions for next month.
Yours confidentially,
Uncle Jeffrey

Featured Fiction
Sweet Tooth - Ian McEwan

A riveting new novel from one of Britain's finest writers. Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence services. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially in the cultural sphere. Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a ‘secret mission’ which brings her into the literary world of Tom Healey, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage – trust no one. McEwan’s mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.

Featured Non Fiction
The Art Book - Phaidon

An accessible, informative and fun A - Z guide to artists from medieval times to the present day. The updated and expanded edition with 100 new works, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, video, installations and performance art. Each artist is represented on a full page with a definitive work and explanatory and illuminating information on each image and its creator. A celebrated and award-winning title published in over 20 languages, The Art Book debunks art historical classifications by juxtaposing brilliant examples of all periods, schools, visions and techniques. Includes glossaries of artistic movements and technical terms. An essential family reference book or a fantastic school prize.

Featured Children's Books
This Moose Belongs to Me - Oliver Jeffers
An exquisite new book, featuring a boy and his moose, from internationally best-selling, multi-prize-winning picture book creator, Oliver Jeffers. "Wilfred owned a moose. He hadn't always owned a moose. The moose came to him a while ago and he knew, just KNEW, that it was meant to be his. He thought he would call him Marcel." Most of the time Marcel is very obedient, abiding by the many rules on "How to Be a Good Pet". But one dark day, while deep in the woods, someone else claims the moose as their own! Is Marcel really Wilfred's pet after all? An exquisitely-illustrated, witty and thought-provoking story, exploring the concept of ownership, from international picture book sensation, Oliver Jeffers.

August 2012 at Jeffreys Books

We have done well this winter with some great titles and August raises the bar again. We have had trouble narrowing down the list for this newsletter, so you'll have lots of treats waiting for you when you next visit.
The Man Booker Longlist was announced during the week. Click here to see the titles - some more familiar than others.
National Bookshop Day is the 11th of August. If you can make it in on the day, please do. If you can't make it on the 11th, never fear, some of the celebrations extend throughout August. Here is just a taste of what we have in store:
- A Vintage Classic promotion where you could win a sample pack of the new Children's Vintage Classics (many thanks to Random for supporting this)

- Spend some time Living the Dream of working in a bookshop. We have extended the entry date. Simply submit a 50 word review of a book you love.

- Book Bites - 11am and 3pm. Come and share your thoughts on your favourite titles - fiction or non-fiction.

- Gifts and give-aways

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
Foal's Bread - Gillian Mears

Set in hardscrabble farming country and the high-jumping circuit that prevailed in rural New South Wales prior to the Second World War, Foal's Bread tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes as dictated by the vicissitudes of the land. It is a love story of impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams 'turned inside out', and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard.
7pm Tuesday 28 August. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
The Boy Who Wouldn't Die - David Nyoul Vincent & Carol Nader

David Nyuol Vincent was a little boy when he fled southern Sudan with his father, as war raged in their country. He left behind his distraught mother and sisters, his village and his childhood. He would never return. For months David and his father walked across southern Sudan, barefoot, desperately searching for safety, food and water. They survived the perilous Sahara Desert crossing into Ethiopia only to be separated. David was taken in and trained as a child soldier, surviving the next 17 years of his life alone in refugee camps. Told with frankness and humour, this is the powerful account of a young man's resilience. The story of a boy who refused to die.
11am Wednesday 15 August. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
My mother shocked me the other day with a reference to Fifty Shades of Grey (E.L.James). I didn't know where to look - whether I should giggle conspiratorially or let it go through to the keeper as I reigned in my terrible-2. In the end I hung her out to dry and let the moment pass. Was I cruel to leave her hanging? Of course I've read it, everyone has.

Thanks,
SD

Dear SD,
Ah, if I had a penny for every conversation I've had about Fifty Shades. There is a moment for all of us where we glimpse the child in our parents and realise that they just barely manage to out-grow us. Yes, this is the mother that hideously embarrassed you with birds and bees details when she could have just left Where Did I Come From - Peter Mayle, floating innocuously somewhere within your reach. And how many times has she listened as you whinged about your terrible-2? Let's not forget she also agonised over her parenting methods. Puberty Blues by Kathy Lette (TV series and book!) will also have us all revisiting the great divide between parent and child.
Don't worry, she's probably down at the golf club chuckling about your careful dodge of her curve ball. (Sports pun intended!)

Regards,
Uncle Jeffrey
PS Ongoing sales figures of the afore-mentioned book would suggest that not everyone has yet read it (sales figures also indicate that many have).

Featured Fiction
The Housemaid's Daughter - Barbara Mutch

Cathleen Harrington leaves her home in Ireland in 1919 to travel to South Africa and marry the fiance she has not seen for five years. Isolated and estranged in a harsh landscape, she finds solace in her diary and the friendship of her housemaid's daughter, Ada. Soon, Ada is compromised and finds she is expecting a mixed-race child. She flees her home, determined to spare Cathleen the knowledge of her betrayal, and the disgrace that would descend upon the family. A heart-warming story of friendship, like a South African version of The Help.

Featured Non Fiction

Antarctica - David Day

A groundbreaking history of human interaction with Antarctica, the last continent on earth. For centuries it was suspected that there must be an undiscovered continent in the southern hemisphere. But explorers failed to find one. On his second voyage to the Pacific, Captain James Cook sailed further south than any of his rivals but failed to sight land. It was not until 1820 that the continent's frozen coast was finally discovered and parts of the continent began to be claimed by nations that were intent on having it as their own. That rivalry intensified in the 1840s when British, American and French expeditions sailed south to chart further portions of the continent that had come to be called Antarctica.

Featured Children's Books

Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked - Derek Landy

The seventh instalment in the biggest, funniest, most thrilling comedy-horror-adventure series in the universe...DEATH BRINGER, book 6 in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, was the number-one bestselling children's book for two weeks running in September 2011, as well as outselling the number one adult fiction hardback. Valkyrie will finally come into her destiny. The end will finally come. And the last part of your minds will be totally and utterly blown... Here at Jeffreys, we recommend these to girls as well (even though there is no pink on the jackets!).

July 2012 at Jeffreys Books

While July may seem like a month of hibernation or sunny escape for many, here at Jeffreys we're getting excited about the second half of the year. Here are three good reasons to be excited:
July - Kathryn Fox at Stonnington Library, Malvern - Wednesday 11 July at 6.30 pm
Kathryn Fox will appear to discuss her most recent crime novel.
Forensic physician Dr Anya Crichton needs a break. Cocooned from the world aboard a luxury cruise ship, nothing can interrupt time with her precious six-year-old son. Peace is shattered when the body of a teenage girl is discovered shoved in a cupboard, dripping wet. With no obvious cause of death and the nearest port days away, Anya volunteers her forensic expertise. She quickly uncovers a sordid pattern of sexual assaults, unchecked drug use and mysterious disappearances. With crew too afraid to talk, she is drawn into the underbelly of the cruise line, its dangerous secrets and the murky waters of legal accountability. Shadowed by a head of security with questionable loyalties, Anya can trust no one. Her family's lives depend on what she does next. One thing is certain. There is a killer on board.
Phone Stonnington Library on 8290 1366 for reservations

August - Live the Dream Competition
Win the chance to spend 2 hours working with us at Jeffreys Books on National Bookshop Day - Saturday 11 August. If you've only ever dreamed of working in a bookshop now is your chance to give it a go. Submit a shelf talker describing, in less than 50 words, a book that you'd 'handsell' if you worked in a bookshop and go into the draw to win one of three opportunities. Entries will be displayed in store and must be received before 31 July. Entries can be emailed to orders@jeffreysbooks.com.au or handed in at the counter. Don't dream it, do it! (Entrants must be 13 years and above)

September - J K Rowling's next book
On September 27 we will have J K Rowling's new title 'Casual Vacancy'. It is her first adult title. Here is a short blurb - When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils. Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?

Pre-order a copy in-store or by emailing orders@jeffreysbooks.com.au

And Lonely Planet are running an amazing travel promotion in conjunction with Jetstar, Catherine Manuell Design and Nikon - Win a share of the $70,000 in giveaways. See in-store for details.

Happy Reading from all at Jeffreys

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk - Ben Fountain
"This book will be the Catch-22 of the Iraq War". (Karl Marlantes). Nineteen-year-old Billy Lynn is home from war. Back in Texas, he has become a national celebrity. A Fox News crew filmed Billy and the rest of Bravo squad defeating Iraqi insurgents in a ferocious firefight. Now Billy is a decorated soldier and Bravo's three minutes of extreme bravery under fire are a YouTube sensation. Seizing on this PR gift, the Bush administration has sent the surviving members of Bravo on a nationwide 'Victory Tour' to reassure the homeland. Today, during the final hours of the tour, they arrive at Texas Stadium, guests of honour in a nationally broadcast Thanksgiving Day game. The story follows Billy and his fellow Bravos through a climactic afternoon, as they mix with the rich and powerful, endure the politics and affections of their fellow citizens, aspire to sex and marriage with the famous Cowboys cheerleaders, share centre stage with Destiny's Child and attempt to close a movie deal. They will learn hard truths about love and death, family and friendship, duty and honour. Tomorrow, they must go back to war. Tender and full of humanity, this is a wickedly funny, powerfully contemporary novel about a young man, the citizens who sent him to war, the family he left behind and the era that let it happen. In "Billy Lynn", Ben Fountain has created a new American hero for our times.
7pm Tuesday 31 July. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
In The Garden of the Beasts - Erik Larson
In 1933, a year that would prove to be a turning point in history, William E. Dodd becomes America's first ambassador to Hitler's Germany. He brings his family with him to Berlin, where they experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance, and - ultimately - horror. The ambassador's daughter is at first entranced by the pomp and parties, and by the young men with their infectious enthusiasm for the 'New Germany'. As evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, however, Dodd telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. He watches with growing alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character. Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of historical figures such as Goring and Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognise the grave threat posed by Hitler until Europe was awash in blood and terror.
11am Wednesday 18 July. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
I’m on a rotating wheel of housesitting and dog watching as all my friends and family go on holidays. I’m so distracted I use the wrong code on my own security system. Not to mention that my cat has moved in with my neighbours. Am I the only silly guinea pig who volunteers to spend a winter in Melbourne? And why am I being shamed for my choice?
Cold and loving it
Ice Queen

Dear Ice-y,
Toughen up, I say. Winter is a time for all shades of grey. And Melbourne delivers on that. If you can’t take the pain of chills in your fingertips – wear gloves. We have many hardy readers visiting in these cold winter months – often looking for something to add a little fire to their belly, spice to their life and spark to their flames.
Now, that addresses the overarching question but there seems to be underlying themes of forgetfulness, abandonment and shame. Forgetfulness we can work with. Plenty of things to exercise the brain muscle. I’d like to say I’ll always be here for you but that would just establish dependency issues. Better that I suggest you fulfil your own needs and desires – find what it is you need and grrrab it with both hands. You don’t need me dominating your inner being. And let’s not play the shame game. Life is about challenges.
But, do take a moment while all your friends are out of town to plan a little getaway of your own. Sounds to me like you may deserve a little holiday. Need I remind you about the travel promo that Lonely Planet has on??

Regards,
Uncle Jeffrey

Featured Fiction
An Absolute Deception - Lesley Lokko
Known as 'The Ice Queen', Anneliese Zander de St Phalle is one of the world's most celebrated fashion designers. With an empire that stretches across continents, she's a truly global brand, in every sense. Yet despite her success, she's a mystery; a reclusive disciplined perfectionist who rarely grants interviews. She's successful and she's talented, and that's all anyone needs to know. Anneliese never talks about her past - not even to her only daughter, Callan. She's worked hard to leave it all behind her and it's a time and place to which Anneliese will never return. Or so she thinks. Until, at an exclusive New Year's Eve party at her glamorous island hideaway, a woman appears whom Anneliese has done her best to forget. On the cusp of her retirement, at the height of Anneliese's fame, the stranger brings a story that demands to be told. To Anneliese's horror, the past cannot be left behind; it is here, part and parcel of the present, despite everything she's done to forget it'

Non-Fiction - My Animals and Other Family
The Final Cursey - Margaret Rhodes
The Queen Mother regarded Margaret Rhodes as her "third daughter", and she has been extremely close to her cousins the Queen and Princess Margaret throughout their lives. The book is full of charming anecdotes, fascinating characters, and personal photographs and is an unparalleled insight into the private life of the British monarchy. This is an enthralling account of a special life, and a unique insight into the intimate moments of the British Royal family.

Featured Children's Books

Katy Cat and Beaky Book - Lucy Cousins
This is a fabulous flap-filled book from the best-selling creator of "Maisy"! Katy Cat, a marmalade kitten, has whiskers. Katy Cat asks her puffin friend, "What do you have Beaky Boo?" Is it a trunk? Maybe it's long ears? Ooh, could it be a beak? Let's lift the flap and see! With a simple question and answer formula, this vibrant, fun-filled book encourages little children to seek the answers for themselves by exploring and playing with the pages. Cheery, bright colours! Over forty fabulous flaps! HOURS of fun! This title teaches children a whole range of first concepts including colours, patterns, counting and animal noises!

June 2012 at Jeffreys Books

The big news for June is our end of financial year promotion. Throughout June, each time you spend $30 or more in one transaction you’ll be given a 20% discount card that can be used on any transaction until 31 July 2012. This is certainly a great opportunity to pick up those cookbooks with winter warming recipes or grab a book with some new inspiration for your slow cooker. Or like many of us celebrating multitudinous birthdays throughout June – come in and save a bundle on birthday presents and cards. Happy Birthday to the Queen and Happy Diamond Jubilee!
We also have items to help out with any tax activities you might find yourself involved in at this time of year - from files, green pens and clip boards to books on tax planning.
Read ahead to find out about some of the books we’d like to highlight for June and for details on our book clubs and upcoming Stephanie Alexander event!
Happy reading, from all at Jeffreys.

Stephanie Alexander at Stonnington Library
I'm guessing that there are few kitchens across our readership that don't have a Stephanie Alexander on the shelf. I've used my Cook's Companion recently as a reference for apricot jam and veal - not necessarily on the same day! Now is your chance to meet the lady face to face. Stephanie (I think first names are OK for someone whose spent so much time in my kitchen) will be discussing her latest book A Cook's Life at the Toorak/Stonnington Library on 20 June. Call 8290 8000 for bookings.

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Red House - Mark Haddon
Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky. After his mother's death, Richard, a newly remarried hospital consultant, decides to build bridges with his estranged sister, inviting Angela and her family for a week in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children, a single family and all of them strangers. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks. But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours. And watching over all of them from high on the dark hill, Karen, Angela's stillborn daughter. "The Red House" is about the extraordinariness of the ordinary, weaving the words and thoughts of the eight characters together with those fainter, stranger voices - of books and letters and music, of the dead who once inhabited these rooms, of the ageing house itself and the landscape in which it sits. Once again Mark Haddon, bestselling author of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" and "A Spot of Bother" has written a novel that is funny, poignant and deeply insightful about human lives.
7pm Tuesday 26 June. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
The Woman Who Changed Her Brain - Barbara Arrowsmith-Young
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young was born with severe learning disabilities that caused teachers to label her slow, stubborn - or worse. As a child, she read and wrote everything backward, struggled to process concepts in language, continually got lost, and was physically uncoordinated. She could make no sense of an analogue clock. But by relying on her formidable memory and iron will, she made her way to graduate school, where she chanced upon research that inspired her to invent cognitive exercises to fix her own brain. The Woman Who Changed Her Brain interweaves her personal tale with riveting case histories from her more than thirty years of working with both children and adults. Recent discoveries in neuroscience have conclusively demonstrated that, by engaging in certain mental tasks or activities, we actually change the structure of our brains - from the cells themselves to the connections between cells. The capability of nerve cells to change is known as neuroplasticity, and Arrowsmith-Young has been putting it into practice for decades. With great inventiveness, after combining two lines of research, Barbara developed unusual cognitive calisthenics that radically increased the functioning of her weakened brain areas to normal and, in some areas, even above normal levels.
11am Wednesday 20 June. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
I seem to visit Jeffreys on alternating weeks – firstly to buy a diet book and the following week to buy a cook book? Is there any way out of this devilish loop?
Kirstie (not skinny, and not too fat!)

Dear Circuitous Kirstie
Some would call this balance – the alpha and the omega, the ying and the yang, the light to your shade. To Shakespearians it is the comic relief. But make no mistake, I do not consider it a joke, it is a valid question.
Consider some other parallels: you work hard in PR, let’s say, all day and for relaxation you visit the local cinema to see ‘The Dictator’. Or maybe you’re a five-star chef who invites friends over for take-away Chinese. We all need the contrasts.
May I suggest it is better than only buying cook books or only buying diet books? Do not fret. Exercise for endorphins and relaxation, cook and be happy.
If I’m really to be of assistance here, maybe I can suggest some of our most addictive fiction with a long backlist that will keep you away from both kitchen and gym? Where do I start: Matthew Reilly, Lee Child, Kerry Greenwood, Alexander McCall Smith….maybe?
Here's to health and balance
Uncle Jeffrey

Featured Fiction - Books to look forward to...

Peaches for Monsieur le Cure
When a teenaged boy is discovered stabbed to death in the woods adjoining the local high school, a wave of shock ripples through the suburban community of Newton, outside of Boston. Assistant district attorney Andy Barber is used to dealing with murder and its after-effects, but with his own son, Jacob, also a student at the school, he too is anxious for a swift arrest and conviction. But as the kids appear to be stonewalling the cops and the investigation stalls, evidence emerges that ties Jacob to the crime - and suddenly Andy faces a very different challenge: preventing his son from being convicted of murder.Together with his wife, Laurie, the family closes ranks in the midst of an increasingly hostile community as Andy prepares for the trial of his life, the one trial he cannot afford to lose. Especially when the emergence of his own dark family secrets threatens to undermine Jacob's defence.As the drama reaches its climax, Andy and Laurie have to face every parent's toughest questions: how well do you really know your own child and how far would you go to save them?

Featured Personal Development - Books to Look Inwards ...
C. G. Jung - A Biography in Books
In 1912, C. G. Jung wrote, Should it happen that all traditions in the world were cut off with a single blow, the whole mythology and history of religion would start over again with the succeeding generation. With this, Jung gave new understanding to the concept of world literature: that the history of human thought lay in the soul, passed from generation to generation, always ready to reemerge. This book shows how Jung's theory evolved through classics of Western literature, annotated books from his library, manuscripts of his Black Books and The Red Book, other major works in which he attempted to translate insights from The Red Book for a scientific public, the Gnostic and alchemical texts he studied and presented as parallels to his psychology of the unconscious, and Eastern texts he presented in collaboration with leading scholars, establishing a cross-cultural psychology of the process of higher development.

Featured History and Politics - Books that Look Back ...
Mrs Robinson's Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady - Kate Summerscale
On a mild winter's evening in 1850, Isabella Robinson set out for a party. Her carriage bumped across the wide cobbled streets of Edinburgh's Georgian New Town and drew up at 8 Royal Circus, a grand sandstone house lit by gas lamps. This was the home of the rich widow Lady Drysdale, a vivacious hostess whose soirees were the centre of an energetic intellectual scene. Lady Drysdale's guests were gathered in the high, airy drawing rooms on the first floor, the ladies in dresses of glinting silk and satin, bodices pulled tight over boned corsets; the gentlemen in tailcoats, waistcoats, neckties and pleated shirt fronts, dark narrow trousers and shining shoes. When Mrs Robinson joined the throng she was introduced to Lady Drysdale's daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Edward Lane. She was at once enchanted by the handsome Mr Lane, a medical student ten years her junior. He was 'fascinating', she told her diary, before chastising herself for being so susceptible to a man's charms. But a wish had taken hold of her, which she was to find hard to shake...A compelling story of romance and fidelity, insanity, fantasy, and the boundaries of privacy in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality, Mrs Robinson's Disgrace brings vividly to life a complex, frustrated Victorian wife, longing for passion and learning, companionship and love.

Featured Children's Books - Books that look forward for our younger generation
The Very Hungry Bear - Nick Bland
The Very Cranky Bear is back, and now he's hungry! When the Very Hungry Bear goes fishing, he ends up catching more than he bargained for - a polar bear, with an armful of fish, who needs help finding a new home! Vibrant illustrations and a fun, engaging story make this book perfect for reading aloud. This is the third book about the delightful and endearing 'Very Cranky Bear'. The Very Cranky Bear was first published in 2008 and has become an international best-seller.

April 2012 at

May 2012

May 2012 at Jeffreys Books

May is the month of many things. Melbourne grows colder and Melburnians merge to the MCG. And mid-month everything pauses and we celebrate Mums (or maybe we’re just stuck in traffic from the Mother’s Day Classic). If you’re looking for something for Mum let us help you find the perfect gift. You’ll find some suggestions below and much more inspiration in-store.
In literary news, we’ve had the announcement of the Vogel winner for 2012 Eleven Seasons by Paul D Carter. This is a coming-of-age story of a high school dropout obsessed with football. This novel is proof that sport and literature can meet.
The National Year of Reading continues with the theme this month of Escape. Text has tied in perfectly with the release of a series of Australian Classics. Many of these titles have recently been out of print. There are many treasures to discover – or escape with.
The Orange Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing throughout the world (orangeprize.co.uk). The shortlist was announced on the 17^th of April in London: Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood Blues, Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz, Georgina Harding’s Painter of Silence, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Cynthia Ozich’s Foreign Bodies and Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder . Some great book club suggestions!

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
A Perfectly Good Man - Patrick Gale
When 20-year-old Lenny Barnes, paralysed in a rugby accident, commits suicide in the presence of Barnaby Johnson, the much-loved priest of a West Cornwall parish, the tragedy's reverberations open up the fault-lines between Barnaby and his nearest and dearest. The personal stories of his wife, children and lover illuminate Barnaby's ostensibly happy life, and the gulfs of unspoken sadness that separate them all. Across this web of relations scuttles Barnaby's repellent nemesis - a man as wicked as his prey is virtuous. Returning us to the rugged Cornish landscape of Notes from an Exhibition, Patrick Gale lays bare the lives and the thoughts of a whole community and asks us: What does it mean to be good?
7pm Tuesday 29 May. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
Us and Them: The Importance of Animals - Anna Krien
In this dazzling piece of reportage, Anna Krien investigates the contemporary animal kingdom and our place in it. From pets to food, from wildness to science experiments, Krien also reveals how animals are faring in this new world order. Examples range from the joyful to the deeply unsettling.
11am Wednesday 16 May. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Joy Dettman Event in conjunction with Malvern Library
It is a delight to present Joy Dettman at Stonnington Library - Malvern.
Joy Dettman will discuss her new book Wind in the Wires, the latest saga in the hugely popular Woody Creek series.
Why not make it a date with Mum? Some quality time together shared with a fantastic author.
6.30pm, Wednesday 23 May at Malvern Library. For bookings call 8290 1366

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,

Since Easter I have been suffering a severe chocolate addiction. I’m lucky to make it to lunchtime without indulging. In the evening, once I’ve finished my daily intake of three portions vegetables, one portion protein (and sometimes one portion carbohydrate) my mind snaps to chocolate. I’ve snuck chocolate into my children’s lunchboxes just to decrease the temptation at home not to mention how I covet my children’s chocolate stashes as I collect their dirty washing.

Please help
Charles

Dear Choc-top Charlie,
When one faces a problem the best fix is to go to the source. And when it comes to chocolate I am the golden ticket. I am Willy Wonka’s chocolate stream. I am the chocolate fountain at the high tea buffet. But just don’t ask me how to avoid all forms of the cacao bean. For that, turn to David Gillespie of Sweet Poison Quit Plan fame.
If you want my advice, become a connoisseur. Immerse yourself in knowledge, appreciate its true beauty and chocolate can be your friend. Start out with a history of our great chocolate families with Deborah Cadbury’s The Chocolate Wars. From here, step it up to Le Cordon Bleu Chocolate Bible and everything in between – David Herbert’s Best-Ever Baking Recipes , Belinda Jeffery’s Mix and Bake and for the gluten intolerant, Indulge by Rowie Dillon.

Go forth and melt, curl and temper
Uncle Jeffrey

Fiction to Escape With
The Red House - Mark Haddon
Family, that slippery word, a star to every wandering bark, and everyone sailing under a different sky. After his mother's death, Richard, a newly remarried hospital consultant, decides to build bridges with his estranged sister, inviting Angela and her family for a week in a rented house on the Welsh border. Four adults and four children, a single family and all of them strangers. Seven days of shared meals, log fires, card games and wet walks. But in the quiet and stillness of the valley, ghosts begin to rise up. The parents Richard thought he had. The parents Angela thought she had. Past and present lovers. Friends, enemies, victims, saviours. And watching over all of them from high on the dark hill, Karen, Angela's stillborn daughter. The Red House is about the extraordinariness of the ordinary, weaving the words and thoughts of the eight characters together with those fainter, stranger voices - of books and letters and music, of the dead who once inhabited these rooms, of the ageing house itself and the landscape in which it sits. Once again Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and A Spot of Bother has written a novel that is funny, poignant and deeply insightful about human lives.

Celebrating Life
Lives - Peter Robb
In Lives, an extraordinary writer encounters some remarkable people - and evokes their inner lives. Peter Robb has an uncanny ability to get into the skin of other people: to show them in a new light, to home in on what makes them tick. In Australia, these range from Alex Dimitriades to Ivan Milat, from Marcia Langton to Julian Assange. In Italy, Robb immerses the reader in the worlds of Fellini, Caravaggio, Calvino and Pasolini. Elsewhere, his observations of EM Forster, Arthur Rimbaud, Peter Carey and Gore Vidal illuminate the real people behind the public image. Featuring much previously unpublished material, this is a fascinating exploration of some notable lives - in all their variety, glamour and idiosyncrasy.

Growing Minds - Mature and Younger
Australian Story: Stories of Courage, Determination and Love
Australian Story is without doubt one of the best-loved shows on the ABC. A cornerstone of Monday night viewing for 15 years, it has brought into our homes and hearts the very personal accounts of our fellow Australians. The epsiodes chosen for this fourth collection of Australian Stories include the exciting tale of Black Caviar, the Aussie horse that has equalled Phar Lap's record and is the first animal to feature on Australian Story; the incredible seventy-year struggle to recognise the actions of two truly heroic World War II sailors, Teddy Sheean and Captain Hec Waller; the dedication of Jan Cameron, a successful businesswomen who now devotes her life to improving the way factory farmed animals are treated in this country; and the powerful story of love, hope and determination between Sally Nielsen and her fiance Sam Goddard, who wakes from his coma for an hour each day in extraordinary circumstances.

Some for Mums and Bubs
My Mum is Beautiful
Let me tell you all the ways I love my mum...My mum is beautiful because she points out tiny things in books to me. In her newest picture book, Jessica Spanyol succeeds in capturing, with great warmth and humour, the incredible bond between a mother and a child. Told from the perspective of a small bear, these very true words perfectly embody how love is measured in a child's mind: a gesture so simple, can mean so very much. With beautiful art, Jessica has created a lively and charming world for her characters, infused with contemporary patterns and humorous details. The book's simplicity and vibrancy will enchant young children and parents alike, no doubt establishing itself as a firm bedtime favourite.

April 2012

April, what a wonderful month you are. Welcome. And welcome to the Miles Franklin 2012 Long List (click on the link for titles). It’s another big month at the movie box office with corresponding books – The Hunger Games, The Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Lorax, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and The Titanic. Your holiday entertainment is all stitched up whether you’re staying at home, travelling or camping. Luckily this month has five weekends in it! And after Easter we have a Lonely Planet Promotion – purchase a guide book priced at $20 or more and receive a stunning Catherine Manuell Design luggage tag. Supply of the luggage tags will be limited, so be quick. My plan is to choose a destination over Easter and buy the guide the following weekend. Must check if staff are eligible for the deal?
Happy Easter and Passover and safe travels.

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Cat’s Table – Michael Ondaatje
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy boards a huge liner bound for England - a 'castle that was to cross the sea'. At mealtimes, he is placed at the lowly 'Cat's Table' with an eccentric group of grown-ups and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys become involved in the worlds and stories of the adults around them, tumbling from one adventure and delicious discovery to another, 'bursting all over the place like freed mercury'. And at night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner - his crime and fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever.
As the narrative moves from the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story about the difference between the magical openness of childhood and the burdens of earned understanding.
7pm on Tueday 24 April. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
A Tragedy in Two Acts – Fiona Harari
This was not the ending either of them expected. Marcus Einfeld, former Federal Court judge and human rights champion, and his old friend Teresa Brennan, an exuberant, sometimes controversial US-based academic, had each spent years establishing demanding careers and international reputations, to create two lives that, on paper at least, exuded success. Then Einfeld was caught speeding. But rather than pay a small fine, the former judge told a court that Brennan had been driving his car. In reality she had been dead for three years. Through a chain of events that at times seemed exceedingly unlikely, Einfeld's lie was exposed, with once unimaginable consequences. His world, and virtually every honour he had earned, rapidly disappeared. And his old friend Brennan, who had died in suspicious circumstances, was suddenly, posthumously, attracting attention for all the wrong reasons. This is the remarkable story of two outstanding Australians whose lives have been lived large, and who, ultimately, have been bound by tragedy.
11am on Wednesday 18 April. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
I was recently asked to suggest a birthday wishlist and duly included a few book titles on the list. I needn’t tell you that book vouchers would suffice but many gift givers think vouchers are cheating. S o you can imagine my shock at receiving ‘Sins of the Father’ by Eamonn Duff instead of Jeffrey Archer and ‘The Dressmaker’ by Rosalie Ham instead of Beryl Bainbridge Please know, UJ, that I’m not an ungrateful recipient. I read both and although not necessarily my choice I could appreciate content or style (not always both). I can say I was particularly taken by the Dressmaker and will now read the version I had initially intended.
Yours
Roslyn, Brighton

Dear Roslyn the Reader
You have touched upon a number of curiosities within the literary world. Firstly, there are no copyright laws for titles. Certainly there exists severe penalties for plagiarism but this does not extend to a name. While those at the Jeffreys counter are trained to decipher the greyest of notions as to title (hence The Glass-Eyed Rabbit becomes Edmund de Waal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes – true example, I’m told), it is often most prudent to approach armed with title and author (this does cause issues for those of us that with one eye open and the other dosing catch all sorts of book recommendations from the radio in the middle of the night – or day, as we’re driving along – neither situation lending themselves to grabbing pen and paper!) Equally, I wouldn’t have been surprised if you ended up with The Seamstress by Maria Duenas. Secondly that choosing one’s reading matter based on presumed tastes cannot always be relied on. We all know how different authors can make a scenario sing or gargle depending on their skill. Thirdly, you highlight again the intrigue those law abiding citizens such as myself (and yourself, I’m sure) have with sharpening our teeth on some meaty crime novel – true or fictional. Crime is most addictive. Though not customary to include, fourthlies – Fourthly, if you want my advice, and you clearly do, I sit on the fence when it comes to vouchers. I love a voucher – the promise of a chance to browse – and I love a book.

May your reading circles be ever widening

Regards,
Uncle Jeffrey
Editors Note: Jeffreys Books is happy to hold a wishlist for you. It works much like a wedding register but you don’t need to be getting married to have one!

Featured Fiction
The Hanging Garden - Patrick White
Two children are brought to a wild garden on the shores of Sydney Harbour to shelter from the Second World War. The boy's mother has died in the Blitz. The girl is the daughter of a Sydney woman and a Communist executed in a Greek prison. In wartime Australia, these two children form an extraordinary bond as they negotiate the dangers of life as strangers abandoned on the far side of the world. With the tenderness and rigour of an old, wise novelist, Patrick White explores the world of these children, the city of his childhood and the experience of war. The Hanging Garden ends as the news reaches Sydney of victory in Europe, and the children face their inevitable separation. White put the novel aside at this point and how he planned to finish the work remains a mystery. But at his death in 1990 he left behind a masterpiece in the making, which is published here for the first time.

Featured Australiana
Lake Eyre – Paul Lockyer
Lake Eyre occupies a vast mythological and real landscape - its basin makes up one sixth of the Australian continent and it is the 'inland sea' so many early explorers died trying to discover. But for most of the time the lake is empty, a vast salty desert plain. Only once in a generation when the great rains sweep in from Queensland, does the lake fill up. When this happens an astonishing transformation occurs; overnight the lake changes, the desert blooms, great flocks of birds, brumbies, dingoes and other wildlife find their way to the water's shores. And for the people who live there, the deluge changes everything. In this stunning book, reporter Paul Lockyer tells the story of the great lake - from its ancient beginnings to its present day - and the tales of all those it affects, from intrepid early explorers like Burke and Wills and pioneers like Birdsville mailman Tom Kruse to characters like racing car driver Donald Campbell, showmen like Fred Brophy, artists like John Olsen and cattle kings like Sir Sydney Kidman. Along with environmental scientist Professor Richard Kingsford, Paul explores one of the world's great wonders and reveals why it holds such resonance for so many Australians.

Featured Design and Style
Culture Chanel – Jean-Louis Froment
Culture Chanel interprets Mademoiselle Chanel’s universe through her designs, her iconic pieces and her literary and artistic inspirations. Throughout her life, Chanel was close to the greatest artists of her time, including poets Jean Cocteau and Pierre Revertly, painters Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali and composer Igor Stravinsky. The creative heritage of the House of Chanel continued through the decades from Mademoiselle Chanel to Karl Lagerfeld, in the form of a dialogue established between artists and authors. The impact of these individuals and others on Chanel's designs is explored in detail throughout the book; examining this tradition of collaboration and inspiration. The book is organised around five themes central to this history of Chanel; Origin, Abstraction, Invisibility, Liberty and Imaginary. For example, the Origin section examines how traces of the orphanage in Aubazine where Chanel was abandoned by her father. The Cistercian abbey there can be identified in both her designs and her contemplative, almost spiritual approach to her work. The stained glass windows of the church had a pattern that inspired the double C, the iconic symbol of Chanel.
Designs, artworks, letters, documents and rare archival photographs come together to illustrate the creative dialogue between different eras and inspirations. Culture Chanel demonstrates the bold path of a brand that has always known how to express the essence of its times, a fashion house that continues to be an enduring symbol of modernity.

Featured Children's Books
Grandpa Green – Lane Smith
From the creator of the national bestseller "It's a Book" comes a timeless story of family history, legacy, and love. Grandpa Green wasn't always a gardener. He was a farmboy and a kid with chickenpox and a soldier and, most of all, an artist. In this captivating new picture book, readers follow Grandpa Green's great-grandson into a garden he created, a fantastic world where memories are handed down in the fanciful shapes of topiary trees and imagination recreates things forgotten. In his most enigmatic and beautiful work to date, Lane Smith explores aging, memory, and the bonds of family history and love; by turns touching and whimsical, it's a stunning picture book that parents and grandparents will be sharing with children for years to come.

March 2012 at Jeffreys Books

Guess what? Monday is the Labour Day public holiday which means many of you will have the day off – including us. Enjoy a leisurely day and please drop in before then if you need a book to keep you amused or distracted. There are lots of great books around!
It’s also the time of year when Jeffreys Books loads up the shelves with Dummies titles. We have the bestselling titles – including MYOB, Pregnancy (Australian Edition), French, Puppies* and more – plus some that will appeal to more specific tastes such as Sustainable Gardening, Job Searching, Body Language and one that would help those of us with a huge wishlist of books – Speed Reading for Dummies.
Happy Reading

* Speaking of pets – if you have a pet, head on down to Pets in the Park in Central Park on 24 March. http://www.stonnington.vic.gov.au/events/pets-in-the-park/

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Paris Wife - Paula McLain
Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition to write. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip, is no place for family life and fidelity. Ernest and Hadley's marriage begins to founder and the birth of a beloved son serves only to drive them further apart.Then, at last, Ernest's ferocious literary endeavours begin to bring him recognition - not least from a woman intent on making him her own.
7pm Tuesday 27 March. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World - Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson's Empire is one of the most successful and controversial history books of recent years. Brilliantly re-telling the story of Britain's imperial past, it shows how a gang of buccaneers and gold-diggers from a rainy island in the North Atlantic came to build the most powerful empire in all history, how it ended, and how - for better or worse - it made our world what it is today.
11am Wednesday 21 March. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey,
This may be taking you out of familiar territory but where is the book for ‘Ladies on the 6^th Floor’? I’ve kicked off the year with a wonderful stint of movie going which I can usually follow up or precede with the book but this movie has no back up?
Thanks,
Rene

Dear Rene,
I like your style. I’m also a movie goer. I know, I know, where do I find the time?
I was recently sitting through the movie shorts, thinking, this is familiar but I know I haven’t seen this only to realise at the end of the ad that it was ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’. What a great book – haven’t seen the movie. However, I digress.
You pose an interesting question – I don’t think there is a book. The closest book I can think of that deals with the situation is The Elegance of the Hedgehog but this had its own movie? Can anyone else help Rene out?
Maybe we need to simplify and revert to reading The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. I’m pretty sure this is never going to be a movie.
I wake up not remembering if I read it or saw it – Kerry Greenwood’s Phyrne Fisher (currently on ABC), Janet Evanovich – also now a movie, The Descendants (even I can’t forget sitting through a movie with George Clooney), The Invention of Hugo Cabret (ahhhh). Do I also add the Euro-crime of Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson?
It’s when McDonald’s start making a Jack Reacher doll (Tom Cruise look-a-like) that I never see a movie again. (Ok, that’s an in joke for the Lee Child fans).
Until your next bookish question
Regards,
Uncle Jeffrey

Featured Fiction

Defending Jacob - William Landay
When a teenaged boy is discovered stabbed to death in the woods adjoining the local high school, a wave of shock ripples through the suburban community of Newton, outside of Boston. Assistant district attorney Andy Barber is used to dealing with murder and its after-effects, but with his own son, Jacob, also a student at the school, he too is anxious for a swift arrest and conviction. But as the kids appear to be stonewalling the cops and the investigation stalls, evidence emerges that ties Jacob to the crime - and suddenly Andy faces a very different challenge: preventing his son from being convicted of murder.Together with his wife, Laurie, the family closes ranks in the midst of an increasingly hostile community as Andy prepares for the trial of his life, the one trial he cannot afford to lose. Especially when the emergence of his own dark family secrets threatens to undermine Jacob's defence.As the drama reaches its climax, Andy and Laurie have to face every parent's toughest questions: how well do you really know your own child and how far would you go to save them?

Featured Non Fiction

Mad Women - Jane Maas
Mad Men is one of the hottest shows on television, and its fans are dying to know how accurate it is: did people really have that much sex in the office? Were there really three-martini lunches? Were women really second-class citizens? Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally yes. And her book, based on her own experiences and those of her peers, gives the full stories behind the scenes, from the junior account man whose wife nearly left him when she found the copy of Screw magazine he'd used to find 'entertainment' for a client, to the Ogilvy & Mather agency's legendary annual sex-and-booze filled Boat Ride, from which it was said no virgin ever returned intact. Wickedly funny and full of juicy inside information, Mad Women also tackles the tougher issues of the era, such as equal pay, rampant jaw-dropping sexism, and the difficult choice many women faced between motherhood and their careers. Maas's crisp and funny prose shows what made her an award-winning copywriter.

Featured Food and Cooking

Cooking from the Heart: Tales from the Migrating Jewish Kitchen - Gaye Weeden and Hayley Smorgon
Australia is home to a vibrant and close-knit Jewish community, drawn together by the customs of the kitchen. But the roots of this community reach across the globe. From the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the tropical paradise of 1930s Rangoon, these brave and resilient migrants have overcome untold hardships and found a welcoming home in Australia, while creating a culture and cuisine enriched by many diverse backgrounds. Featuring the compelling stories and nourishing recipes of 26 migrants from across the globe, Cooking from the Heart features traditional classics such as latkes and onion soup along with less typically Jewish fare, such as the Brazilian-inflected Picanha with farfale. With dishes that reflect their far-flung origins, such as the Scandinavian lingonberry pie and coconut babas, this book is an eclectic sampling of the dishes that characterise the Jewish community. Beautifully photographed by Mark Roper, Cooking from the Heart gives readers a feast for the eyes and food for the soul.

Featured Children's Books

A Day to Remember – Jackie French
Anzac Day is the day when we remember and honour ANZAC traditions down the ages, from the first faltering march of wounded veterans in 1916 to the ever-increasing numbers of their descendants who march today. Containing reference to the many places the ANZACs have fought, and the various ways in which they keep the peace and support the civilians in war-torn parts of the world today, this is a picture book that looks not only at traditions, but also the effects of war. Ages: 7-12

February 2012 at Jeffreys Books
I’m guessing that you receive this newsletter because you love to read. You probably seek information on books from many sources – newspapers, radio and friends, for example. And you probably read for pleasure, learning, research and work. I was surprised to read a statistic that there ‘…are 46% of Australians who can't read newspapers; follow a recipe; make sense of timetables, or understand the instructions on a medicine bottle’. To address thisNational Libraries and library associations have instigated the National Year of Reading. Log on to www.love2read.org.au for more information, competitions and events. This is a great chance to reflect on how lucky we are to read and to share this joy. I love it when a new generation of readers come through the store - those who are just learning to read and practice their skills on signs at the counter and then those children who rush to the back of the store throwing a comment over their shoulder to their parents ‘I’ll just be looking at the books!’

What are you doing on Valentine's Day?
To launch the National Year of Reading, Jeffreys Books is inviting you on a date – That’s if you haven’t already been booked for Valentine’s Day. On 14 February, join us for a night of enjoying one of your favourite places. You never know who you’ll meet over a quiet time browsing in Fiction, stimulating your taste buds in Cooking or dreaming over our Travel books. (Bring your partner if you must!)

Tuesday 14 February
We'll be open until 8pm

Jeffreys Last Tuesday Book Club
The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
It's the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead -- charismatic loner and college Darwinist -- suddenly turns up in a seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus -- who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange -- resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate. With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.
7pm Tuesday 28 February. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Jeffreys Brain Food Book Club
Modigliani-A Life – Meryle Secrest
Amedeo ('Beloved of God') Modigliani was considered to be the quintessential bohemian artist, his legend almost as infamous as Van Gogh's. In Modigliani's time, his work was seen as an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists but not part of their movement. In this major new biography, Meryle Secrest, one of our most admired biographers, gives us a fully realized portrait of one of the twentieth century's master painters and sculptors: his upbringing, a Sephardic Jew from an impoverished but genteel Italian family; his going to Paris to make his fortune; his striking good looks…And throughout, we see the Paris that Modigliani lived in, a city in dynamic flux where art was still a noble cause; how Modigliani became part of a life in the streets and a world of art and artists then in a transforming revolution. Secrest's book, written with unprecedented access to letters, diaries, and photographs never before seen, is an extraordinary revelation of a life lived in art . . . Here is Modigliani, the man and the artist, seemingly shy, delicate, a man on a desperate mission, masquerading as an alcoholic, cheating death again and again, and calculating what he had to do in order to go on working.
11am Wednesday 15 February. Purchase the book to reserve your place.

Dear Uncle Jeffrey
I missed you over summer. Where have you been? Are you well?
Yours sincerely
Holiday Humdrum

Dear Hum-by

I yearn for the holidays – there’s a lot more drumming than humming on my breaks!

But I take it you’re back from a safe holiday refreshed and relaxed? And children have returned to school and are probably writing essays (as they were called in my day) about what wonderful holidays they had. So let me set the example and fill you in on my holidays – and please don’t be jealous.

I visited Sydney with Fiona McGregor where we had a very hot summer but managed to wonder down from her beachside family home to the bay and enjoy morning swims (Indelible Ink). I time-travelled with Paula McLain to Paris and visited with Hemingway and his buddies (The Paris Wife). From Paris I zipped across to The South where I found a delightful vintage dress store in Erin McKean’s The Secret Lives of Dresses. Not to mention a little visit down Wall Street to assess the latest in economic theory and recovery in Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.

And I did it all from the comfort of my favourite reading chair – sunny but cool on these Summer morns. (As I said, don’t be jealous that I’m a sittin’ an' a readin’)
And every writer seeks inspiration – allow me to credit mine to cheerful office banter and Annabel Pitcher’s My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece. Jamie, this poor fellow, didn’t have a very happy holiday and was saved by his desk-mate, Sunya, who suggested he ‘make it up’. (It’s a wonderful read and totally took me by surprise!)

Until then
Uncle Jeffrey

Fiction

The Chemistry of Tears – Peter Carey
The Chemistry of Tearsis both wildly entertaining and deeply moving, a portrait of love and loss that is simultaneously delicate and anarchic. At its heart is an image only the masterful Peter Carey could breathe such life into - an object made of equal parts magic, art and science, a delight that contains the seeds of our age's downfall.
When Catherine's lover dies suddenly, she has no one to turn to - their affair had been disguised from their colleagues and his family - except her work. A middle-aged curator in a London museum, Catherine is given a very particular project by the perceptive head of her department: a box of intricate clockwork parts that appear to be the remains of a nineteenth century automaton - a beautifully made mechanical bird. When she discovers that the box also contains the diary of the man who commissioned the machine, she is partially rescued from one obsession by another - who were Henry Brandling and the mysterious, visionary clockmaker he hired to make a gift for his absent son? And what was the end result that now sits in pieces in her studio?

The Soldier’s Wife – Joanna Trollope
Dan Riley is a major in the British Army. After a six month tour of duty in Afghanistan, he is coming home to the wife and young daughters he adores. The outside world sees those reunions as a taste of heaven after months of hell. But are they? Can a man trained to fight adjust again to family and domestic life? And how will the family cope, if he can't? How much, indeed, can Alexa, Dan's wife, sacrifice her own needs and fulfilment to serve his commitment to a way of life that demands everything not just of him, but of her and the children as well? This novel takes a keen look at the home lives of the modern Army. What happens, these days, when love and a vocation collide, head on?

Phantom – Jo Nesbo
Jo Nesbo has now picked up quite a few local fans. His latest translation is Phantom. A boy is lying on the floor of an Oslo apartment. He is bleeding and will soon die. In order to place his life and death in some kind of context he begins to tell his story. Former police inspector Harry Hole returns to Oslo after three years abroad. He seeks out his old boss at Police Headquarters to request permission to investigate a homicide. But the case is already closed: the young junkie was in all likelihood shot dead by a fellow addict. Yet, Harry is granted permission to visit the boy's alleged killer in jail. There, he meets himself and his own history. What follows is the solitary investigation of what appears to be the first impossible case in Harry Hole's career. And while Harry is searching, the murdered boy continues his story. A man walks the dark streets of Oslo. The streets are his and he has always been there. He is a phantom.

The Little Shadows – Marina Endicott
Here is the eagerly anticipated new novel from a brilliant writer whose last book, Good to a Fault, was shortlisted for the prestigious Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean. The Little Shadows revolves around three sisters in the world of vaudeville before and during the First World War. We follow the lives of all three in turn: Aurora, the eldest and most beautiful, who is sixteen when the book opens; thoughtful Clover, a year younger; and the youngest sister, joyous headstrong sprite Bella, who is thirteen. The girls, overseen by their fond but barely coping Mama, are forced to make their living as a singing act after the untimely death of their father. They begin with little besides youth and hope, but Marina Endicott's genius is to show how the three girls slowly and steadily evolve into true artists even as they navigate their way to adulthood among a cast of extraordinary characters. Using her gorgeous prose and extraordinary insight, Endicott lures us onto the brightly lit stage and then into the little shadows that lurk behind the curtain, and reveals how the art of vaudeville - in all its variety, madness, melodrama, hilarity and sorrow - echoes the art of life itself.

The Cartographer – Peter Twohig
Set in Melbourne in the 1950s, an 11-year-old boy witnesses a murder when he is spying through a window of a strange house. In the following weeks he comes to map out all the significant adventures he has in the labyrinthine city, trying to make sure he doesn’t cross the path of the murderer, who he believes wishes to silence and dispose of him. Comics and superheroes inform his strategies for avoiding the bogeyman, as does the memory of his twin brother, Tom, who recently died in a tragic accident. The Cartographer is a touching novel for readers captivated by the stories of Jonathan Safran Foer, Mark Haddon, Craig Silvey and Markus Zusak.

The Prodigal Son – Colleen McCullough
Holloman, Connecticut, 1969. A very rare and lethal toxin, extracted from the blowfish, is stolen from a laboratory at Chubb University. It kills within minutes and leaves no trace behind - unless a doctor knows what to look for - and worried biochemist Dr. Millie Hunter reports the theft at once to her father, Medical Examiner Dr. Patrick O'Donnell. Patrick's cousin Captain Carmine Delmonico is therefore quick off the mark when the bodies start to mount up. A sudden death at a dinner party followed by another at a gala black-tie event seem at first to be linked only by the poison and Dr. Jim Hunter, a scientist on the brink of greatness and husband to Millie. A black man married to a white woman, Dr. Jim has faced scandal and prejudice for most of his life. So what would cause him to risk it all now? Is he being framed for murder - and if so, by whom? Carmine and his team of detectives must navigate the competitive world of academic publishing, fraught with politics and prestige. The stakes are high: an amazing art collection, a large inheritance, old and upstanding local families, a gold-digging wife, jealous relatives and a young couple's future.

French Lessons – Ellen Sussman
Josie arrives in Paris in the hope of healing a broken heart. Riley, a lonely housewife, is struggling to feel connected to her husband, and her new country. Jeremy, a loyal, neglected husband of a famous actress, has accompanied his wife as she films on location, yet he feels increasingly isolated from her world.

Phryne Fisher novels by Kerry Greenwood
A 13 part series will commence screening on 24 February starring Essie Davis. Books are in-store now. For more information http://www.abc.net.au/tv/phrynefisher/

Non-Fiction

Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power – David McKight
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is the most powerful media organisation in the world. Murdoch's commercial success is obvious, but less well understood is his successful pursuit of political goals, using News Corp as his vehicle. David McKnight uncovers Murdoch's crusade for his unique brand of conservatism over three decades. Drawing on extensive original research, McKnight tracks NewsCorp's pursuit of conservative ideas, from Reagan and Thatcher to the Tea Party and its war on Barack Obama. He shows how Murdoch's political connections underpinned the scandal of phone hacking in Britain and thwarted investigation. For all its power and influence, News Corporation is now in a profound crisis. News Corporation faces an uncertain future as digital technology eats into his newspaper empire which has been the basis of Murdoch's political power.

This Means This, This Means That – Sean Hall
If you’ve just been reading The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides you may like to extend your knowledge of semiotics and here is your answer. Semiotics is the theory of signs, and reading signs is a part of everyday life: from road signs that point to a destination, to smoke that warns of fire, to the symbols buried within art and literature. Semiotic theory can, however, appear mysterious and impenetrable. This book decodes that mystery using visual examples instead of abstract theory.

Religion for Athiests – Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton argues that the supernatural claims of religion are of course entirely false - and yet that religions still have important things to teach the secular world. This book proposes that we should look to religions for insights into how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and more.
The challenge that de Botton addresses in his book: how to separate ideas and practices from the religious institutions that have laid claim to them. In "Religion for Atheists "is an argument to free our soul-related needs from the particular influence of religions, even if it is, paradoxically, the study of religion that will allow us to rediscover and rearticulate those needs.

4-Week Energy Diet – Julie Maree Wood
Tired, listless, no enthusiasm or energy? Join the club. More and more people are suffering the effects of chronic stress, bad diets and busy lifestyles which, in turn, have a terrible impact on the way they look and feel; as well as their physical health. Julie Wood's 4-Week Energy Diet shows you how to turn your life around and transform yourself into the fit, energetic and vital person you have always wanted to be. In the first two weeks you will give your body a spring-clean, ridding yourself of toxins. Then learn how to fit exercise, meditation and enjoyable activities into your everyday life, no matter how pressed for time. In the second two weeks, you will rebuild your body's essential nutrients, restoring your balance, vitality and spirtual health, recharging those important energy reserves. Julie Wood's holistic approach harnesses the healing power of food, enabling you to shed kilos naturally; and restore and nourish your body and soul.

Paris versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities – Vahram Muratyan
When graphic designer Vahram Muratyan began his online travel journal, Paris versus New York, he had no idea how quickly it would become one of the most buzzed-about sites on the Internet. It garnered more than a million and a half page views in just a few months, and the attention of savvy online critics

Memoirs of an Addicted Brain – Marc Lewis
A gripping, triumphant memoir about the power of addiction and its effect on the brain. Marc Lewis knows addiction: that desperate ambition to get high accompanied him around the world for many years. In the 1960s, Lewis was a teenager in boarding school, experimenting with cough syrup and alcohol to assuage his depression. When he moved to Berkeley, California, the pulsing heart of the counter-cultural movement, he began using LSD and heroin. His spiralling journey of addiction eventually led him to Asia, where he sniffed nitrous oxide in the Malay jungle, took speed in Kuala Lumpur, and lost himself in the opium dens of Calcutta. This was the beginning of his descent into a moonlit world of crime, poverty, and desperation. Returning to Toronto, Lewis lived a double life: by day, he was a psychology student; and by night, he stole from homes and laboratories to get high. Thirty-four years on, Lewis is a neuroscientist, and he studies the brains of troubled children. But he never forgets that he was once one of those kids and that, no matter how many scientific conferences he attends, he always will be.

Reframe: How to Solve the World’s Trickiest Problems – Eric Knight
In the tradition of Freakonomics by Stecen de Levitt and Stephen J Dubner and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Reframe brings a fresh perspective to our toughest political problems. This is a book by a young Australian thinker that turns conventional thinking on its head.

Margaret Olley – Barry Pearce
Margaret Hannah Olley AC (24 June 1923 26 July 2011) was an Australian painter. She was the subject of more than 90 solo exhibitions. Margaret Olley was born in Lismore, New South Wales. She attended Somerville House in Brisbane during her high school years. Olley was highly awarded – including a Member of the Order of Australia 'for service as an artist and to the promotion of art', the Companion of the Order, 'for service as one of Australia's most distinguished artists, for support and philanthropy to the visual and performing arts, and for encouragement of young and emerging artists', the degree Doctor of Fine Arts honoris causa by the University of Newcastle. This book celebrates her life and work.

365 Days of Happiness – Lizzie Cornwall
This book is coloured like a little ray of sunshine and there are days when we all need a little help finding our happiness.

Young Adult

Fallen in Love – Lauren Kate

Unexpected. Unrequited. Forbidden. Eternal. Everyone has their own love story. In this title, in a twist of fate, four extraordinary love stories combine over the course of a romantic Valentine's Day in Medieval England.

A Midsummer Tights Dream – Louise Rennison

It's the hotly anticipated sequel to the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, WITHERING TIGHTS. Laugh your tights off as Tallulah Casey and her bonkers mates return for a new term at Dother Hall performing arts college. Boys, snogging and bad acting guaranteed! Yaroooo! Tallulah's triumphant Heathcliff in 'Wuthering Heights' the comedy musical was enough to secure her place at Dother Hall performing arts college for another term. She can't wait to see her pals again, Charlie and the boys from Woolfe Academy and maybe even bad boy Cain! When an international visitor comes to stay could the bright lights of Broadway be calling? And for who? Find out in the next misadventures of Tallulah Casey.

Children's

Alice Miranda in New York – Jacqueline Harvey

Alice-Miranda is in bustling New York City. It's a blur of skyscrapers, hot dog carts, chats with zoo animals and classes at Mrs Kimmel's School for Girls, right next to glorious Central Park. Her family's glamorous department store, Highton's on Fifth, has just been renovated but plans for the fabulous re-opening party are going curiously wrong. Is that why Alice-Miranda's father Hugh seems so worried? And why is her new friend Lucinda so shy about inviting Alice-Miranda home?

So You Think You Know the Olympics – Clive Gifford
I distinctly remember being in school and needing to find out all the symbols for the different sports. I trawled magazines and newspapers and had all my family on high alert to help identify them. This book will help you be the champanion during the Olympics. Test your knowledge on the Olympic Games with this Olympic quiz book.

How to Train Your Dragon – Cressida Cowell
How to Train Your Dragon comes live to Melbourne in March. Make the most of the experience by revisiting the books.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was an awesome sword-fighter, a dragon-whisperer and the greatest Viking Hero who ever lived. But it wasn't always like that. In fact, in the beginning, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was the most put upon Viking you'd ever seen. Not loud enough to make himself heard at dinner with his father, Stoick the Vast; not hard enough to beat his chief rival, Snotlout, at Bashyball, the number one school sport and certainly not stupid enough to go into a cave full of dragons to find a pet!

The Kid’s Book of Crosswords – Gareth Moore
A little book of crosswords that will test word power and keep boredom at bay. It contains over 150 crosswords to complete. For anyone struggling to get the final clue, all the answers are in the back of the book.1

Newsletter January 2012

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