Customs & Traditions

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. 

First published three years ago before the print edition of Women Who Run with the Wolves made publishing history, this original audio edition quickly became an underground best seller....

Inspired by a true story. In 1825, in a remote Irish valley lying between the mountains and Flesk River of Killarney, three women are brought together by strange and troubling events....

Campbell outlines the Hero's Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through virtually all of the world's mythic traditions....

A fascinating guide to the monsters that are part of our collective psyche, from the host of the hit podcast Lore....

The pain of abandonment, both real and metaphorical, can cast a shadow over our entire adult experience....

The blue-skinned old woman who made the mountains. Finfolk, selkies, and the Makers of Dreams. Within these sections are the little-known stories of Scotland, collected and retold by an oral storyteller who performs them throughout the world....

Thor, Odin, Loki, Freyja, the Valkyries, Valhalla, Ragnarok — many of the places we encounter these and other names, places, and events from Norse mythology in daily life and pop culture are connected to the medieval sources in name only....

From her first day at Westwind Cremation & Burial, 23-year-old Caitlin Doughty threw herself into her curious new profession....

Drawing on scientific data, historical, and literary sources, the authors argue that our myths are the remains of a preliterate astronomy, an exacting science whose power and accuracy were suppressed and then forgotten by an emergent Greco-Roman worldview....

Mythology succeeds like no other audiobook in bringing to life for the modern listener the Greek, Roman, and Norse myths and legends that are the keystone of Western culture....

This audiobook, narrated by William Roberts, explores the evolution of consciousness through the archetypes and myths that are universal to all humanity....

Traverspine is not a place you will find on most maps. A century ago, it stood near the foothills of the remote Mealy Mountains in central Labrador. Today it is an abandoned ghost town, almost all trace of it swallowed up by dark spruce woods that cloak millions of acres....

Soaked in mist and old magic, Storyland tells a history of Britain and the politics of its people through medieval eyes....

With unflinching gaze and uncompromising intensity Julius Evola analyzes the spiritual and cultural malaise at the heart of Western civilization and all that passes for progress in the modern world....

Drawing on years of research in Japan, Michael Dylan Foster unpacks the history and cultural context of yokai, tracing their roots, interpreting their meanings, and introducing people who have hunted them through the ages....

Myth is our wild way of telling the truth, of sharing stories that have our living earth speaking through them. There is an old insistence that we each have a twin we know nothing about....

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole to help us understand our world....

Evelyn Rysdyk explores the evolution of Norse shamanism from its earliest female roots to the pre-Christian Viking Age....

In his latest book, Alberto Villoldo sets his focus on the medicine men and women of the Andes and Amazon, whose healing practices and visions radically changed his worldview. Villoldo shares some of their time-honored wisdom practices that emphasize the sacred dream...

Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds is the most up-to-date and comprehensive investigation of history's infamous sunken city....

A cultural history of the goddess of love, from a New York Times best-selling and award-winning historian....