Humour & Satire

Inspired by a personal moment of profound love and generosity, Trent Dalton, best-selling author and one of Australia's finest journalists, spent two months in 2021 speaking to people from all walks of life, asking them one simple and direct question: Can you please tell me a love story? The result is an immensely warm, poignant, funny, and moving book about love in all its guises.

In Atlas of the Heart, New York Times best-selling author Dr Brené Brown takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. As she maps the necessary skills and lays out an actionable framework for meaningful connection, she gives us the language and tools to access a universe of new choices and second chances - a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heart-breaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.

In this follow-up to the best-selling The Resilience Project: Finding Happiness Through Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness, Resilience Project founder Hugh Van Cuylenburg combines powerful insight with research and his own disarming and candid storytelling to show how it is possible to let go of the things that are stopping us from feeling connected, safe and happy. 

From the outside, the Delaneys appear to be an enviably contented family. Even after all these years, former tennis coaches Joy and Stan are still winning tournaments, and now that they've sold the family business, they have all the time in the world to learn how to 'relax'. Their four adult children are busy living their own lives, and while it could be argued they never quite achieved their destinies, no one ever says that out loud.

I am 93. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary. As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline.

Prussia, 1836: Hanne Nussbaum is a child of nature—she would rather run wild in the forest than conform to the limitations of womanhood. In her village of Kay, Hanne is friendless and considered an oddity...until she meets Thea. The Nussbaums are Old Lutherans, bound by God's law and at odds with their king's order for reform. Forced to flee religious persecution, the families of Kay board a crowded, disease-riddled ship bound for the new colony of South Australia.

Brisbane, 1983: A lost father, a mute brother, a mum in jail, a heroin dealer for a stepfather and a notorious crim for a babysitter. It's not as if Eli's life isn't complicated enough already. He's just trying to follow his heart, learning what it takes to be a good man, but life just keeps throwing obstacles in the way - not least of which is Tytus Broz, legendary Brisbane drug dealer. But Eli's life is about to get a whole lot more serious. He's about to fall in love. And, oh yeah, he has to break into Boggo Road Gaol on Christmas Day, to save his mum.

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites listeners into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. 

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There. She. Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high but soon she realised they had come to her from within. This was the voice she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions and social conditioning. Glennon decided to let go of the world’s expectations of her and reclaim her true untamed self. 

When she arrived in New York on her 18th birthday, carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Now, just one month later, she is the city’s latest Jane Doe, an unidentified murder victim. Ruby Jones is also trying to start over; she travelled halfway around the world only to find herself lonelier than ever. Until she finds Alice’s body by the Hudson River. From this first, devastating encounter, the two women form an unbreakable bond. 

The many voices of The Promise tell a story in four snapshots, each one centered on a family funeral, each one happening in a different decade. In the background, a different president is in power, and a different spirit hangs over the country, while in the foreground the family fights over what they call their farm, on a worthless piece of land outside Pretoria. Over large jumps in time, people get older, faces and laws and lives all change, while a brother and sister circle around a promise made long ago and never kept.... 

Meet Mercy Blain, whose house has just burnt down. Unfortunately for Mercy, this goes beyond the disaster it would be for most people: she hasn't been outside that house for two years now. Flung out into the world she's been studiously ignoring, Mercy goes to the only place she can. Her not-quite-ex-husband Eugene's house. But it turns out she can't stay there, either. And so begins Mercy's unwilling journey.

Darwin, 1942, and as Japanese bombs rain down, motherless Molly Hook, the gravedigger's daughter, turns once again to the sky for guidance. She carries a stone heart inside a duffel bag next to the map that leads to Longcoat Bob, the deep-country sorcerer who put a curse on her family. By her side are the most unlikely travelling companions: Greta, a razor-tongued. 

In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, best-selling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the course of 12 months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably.

Tara Hooper is at breaking point. With two young children, a business in a town struggling under an unexpected crime wave, and her husband more interested in his cricket team than their marriage, life is a juggling act. Then, when new neighbors arrive and they are exactly the sort of people the town doesn't want or need, things get worse. 

For years, the ancient alien AI known as Skippy (the Magnificent, don’t forget that part) has been able to do one impossible thing after another. What is his secret? It’s simple: 100 percent grade-a extreme awesomeness....

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished....

Back in the long ago '90s, Rachel Walsh was a mess. But a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. But with the sudden reappearance of a man she'd once loved, her life wobbles....

This novel is about a woman called Martha. She knows there is something wrong with her, but she doesn't know what it is. Her husband Patrick thinks she is fine. He says everyone has something, the thing is just to keep going....

Mark Manson turns his gaze from the inevitable flaws within each individual self to the endless calamities taking place in the world around us....

The Rosie Effect is the charming and hilarious sequel to Graeme Simsion's bestselling debut novel The Rosie Project....

Discover the deliciously dark and fantastically funny number one best seller about a woman living life rather too well and being whisked away from it all, from the number one best-selling author of Grown Ups....

The top 10 list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face....

Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend....

Random House presents the audiobook edition of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, read by Julia Whelan....

The art of love is never a science.: Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially inept professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife....

He doesn't believe in happy endings. She's lost her faith that they exist. But could they find one together? In telling each other's stories, their worlds might be changed entirely....

Patrick Bateman is 26 and works on Wall Street....

Meet Mercy Blain, whose house has just burnt down. Unfortunately for Mercy, this goes beyond the disaster it would be for most people: she hasn't been outside that house for two years now....

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness....

June the first, a bright summer's evening, a Monday.... And into the busy, bustling homes at 66 Star Street slips, unseen, a mysterious visitor....

If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe....

Things haven't gone well for Simon Larsen lately. He adores his wife, Tansy, and his children, but since his business failed and he lost the family home, he can't seem to get off the couch....

Rabih and Kirsten's friends always ask them the same question: how did you meet? The answer comes easily - it's a happy story, one they both love to tell. But there is a second part to this story....

Thirty years after Douglas Coupland broke the fiction mould and defined a generation with Generation X, he is back with Binge, 60 stories laced with his observational profundity about the way we live and his existential worry about how we should be living....

Meet Helen. She’s easily bored, has an inability to filter her thoughts and was fired from every job she ever had before she found her true calling as a private investigator....