Dive into a book and be whisked away on a wild adventure, or fall down the rabbit hole into another land.

Travel from the dumpster fire of reality into the many engrossing worlds of books! Live vicariously in a far-away fantastical place, solve the crime of the century, discover the creatures at the bottom of the ocean, or be swept away in the romance of a lifetime. Or, get some tips on how to embrace the apocalypse!

Wherever you’d like to be, we’ve got a book for you.

Apocalypse Avoidance

 

A Field Guide to the Apocalypse
RRP $32.99

A common sense field guide to understanding, surviving, and thriving in our time of complex chaos and crises.

From Covid-19 to runaway technology to climate change, we are currently living in an apocalyptic state. Illustrated with 2-color illustrations throughout that both teach and entertain, the book is organized into five chapters that guide readers through our history with apocalypses, how we’re evolved to survive them by cooperating with each other, and how to thrive amidst our multi-apocalyptic reality.

 

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook
RRP $42.99

The doomsday clock is seconds from midnight. Extinction-level dangers draw closer with every tick. But fear not! Here is an indispensable guide to preparing for and surviving the ultimate in worst-case scenarios, with humor to lighten the load. You can’t panic if you’re laughing.

Dozens of survival experts provide illustrated, step-by-step instructions on surviving.

You’ve gotten this far. Don’t let zombies take you out.

 

Notes from an Apocalpyse
RRP $24.99

In the remote mountains of Scotland, in high-tech bunkers in South Dakota and in the lush valleys of New Zealand, small groups of determined men and women are getting ready.

They are environmentalists who fear the ravages of climate change; billionaire entrepreneurs dreaming of life on Mars; and right-wing conspiracists yearning for a lost American idyll. One thing unites them: their certainty that we are only years away from the end of civilization as we know it.

Not unconcerned himself by the possibility of the end of days, Mark O’Connell set out to meet them.

 

The Rest of us just live here
RRP $22.99

Award-winning writer Patrick Ness’s bold and irreverent novel powerfully asks what if you weren’t the Chosen One? The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death? What if you were like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again. Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life. Even if your best friend might just be the God of mountain lions… An exceptional novel from the author praised by John Green as “an insanely beautiful writer”.

 

Survive: The All-In-One Guide to Staying Alive in Extreme Conditions 
RRP $44.99

Whether you’re going for a leisurely hike or setting off into the wilderness, there is nothing more important than being properly prepared. Being knowledgeable about survival techniques can be the difference between having fun outside and an emergency rescue. Join experienced survivalist, global adventurer and stuntwoman Ky Furneaux as she equips you with essential tips and tricks for your time outdoors.

You will learn how to survive in any conditions should an emergency arrive. From fishers and hunters to hikers and cyclists, this critical guide is perfect for anyone in your life who enjoys the great outdoors so they can stay safe while spending time in nature!

 

How to Apocalypse : An illustrated guide
RRP $29.99

Life Skills for a Broken World
RRP $27.99

In this helpful, practical, and realistic guide to good psychological health, Dr Ahona Guha shows us how to cope, thrive, and still feel hopeful for the future. Combining techniques from a range of therapeutic modalities, she demonstrates how we can build a range of essential psychological skills, and apply them to live a more tranquil and joyful life.

Life Skills for a Broken World is a breath of fresh air, cutting through the confusion to provide solid, practical, and evidence-based answers to existential questions, big and small.

 

 

Wonder

 

The Little Prince
RRP $24.99

The timeless, enchanting story of the little prince who lives on a tiny planet with three volcanoes and a haughty flower, which he must protect from the baobabs, the bad seeds. The rulers of the other planets he visits all suffer from the cares and stupidities of the everyday world. Only the little prince, through his clear, loving eyes, knows that the simplest of things can be of the utmost importance.

Translated by T. V. F. Cuffe, and with the original illustrations, the story is complete and unabridged.

 

Elements
RRP $49.99

A remarkable compendium of diverse and evocative imagery exploring the wide-ranging and profound associations of the five natural elements, masterfully curated by image alchemist and cult social media figure Stephen Ellcock.

At a time when humanity’s relationship with the Earth teeters on the edge of catastrophe, this compendium of images exploring the natural elements promises the possibility of earthly and spiritual harmony emerging from the chaos.

 

Off to the Nursery
RRP $24.99

Amid the Sand Dunes
RRP $19.99

 

 

Other Worlds

 

His Dark Materials
RRP $55.00

In his award-winning fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman invents a richly detailed and marvellously imagined world that is complex and thought-provoking enough to enthrall readers of all ages.

This special collection features all three titles in the award-winning trilogy- Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Now a major critically acclaimed BBC series

 

 

 

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts
RRP $75

Telling the long, circuitous and often inexplicable story of Arthur Dent, left homeless and rather annoyed after the Earth is destroyed in order to build a hyperspace expressway, this edition collects all five parts of the trilogy-

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long and Thanks For All the Fish
Mostly Harmless

along with a wealth of extra material prefaced and contextualised by Jem Roberts, the official biographer of Douglas Adams, to complete the canon.

Introduced by Richard Dawkins and Nick Harkaway

 

The Dispossessed
RRP $22.99

Shevek is brilliant scientist who is attempting to find a new theory of time – but there are those who are jealous of his work, and will do anything to block him. So he leaves his homeland, hoping to find a place of more liberty and tolerance. Initially feted, Shevek soon finds himself being used as a pawn in a deadly political game.

With powerful themes of freedom, society and the natural world’s influence on competition and co-operation, The Dispossessed is a true classic of the 20th century.

 

 

Off With Their Heads
RRP $22.99

In a world where Saints are monsters and Wonderland is the dark forest where they lurk, it’s been five years since young witches and lovers Caro Rabbit and Iccadora Alice Sickle were both sentenced to that forest for a crime they didn’t commit-and four years since they shattered one another’s hearts, each willing to sacrifice the other for a chance at freedom.

Now, Caro is a successful royal Saint-harvester, living the high life in the glittering capital and pretending not to know of the twisted monster experiments that her beloved Red Queen hides deep in the bowels of the palace. But for Icca, the memory of Caro’s betrayal has hardened her from timid girl to ruthless hunter. A hunter who will stop at nothing to exact her vengeance- On Caro. On the queen. On the throne itself.

But there’s a secret about the Saints the Queen’s been guarding, and a volatile magic at play even more dangerous to Icca and Caro than they are to each other…

 

Fight not flight

 

Danger and Other Unknown Risks
RRP $29.99

A twisty, spellbinding adventure about a girl and her dog who want to save the world, Danger and Other Unknown Risks is the highly anticipated YA graphic novel debut from Eisner Award-winning and New York Times bestselling creators Ryan North and Erica Henderson.

Here’s the deal-on midnight of January 1st, 2000, the world ended. But it wasn’t technology that killed it- It was magic. Now, years later, the Earth has transformed. Magic works (sort of). People are happy (sort of). But this new world isn’t stable, and unless Marguerite de Pruitt and her canine pal, Daisy, do something about it, it’ll tilt into deadly chaos. Good thing they’ve been training their whole lives for this and are destined to succeed. Or so they think.

 

Clementine
RRP $27.90

Clementine is back on the road, looking to put her traumatic past behind her and forge a new path all her own.

But when she comes across an Amish teenager named Amos with his head in the clouds, the unlikely pair journeys North to an abandoned ski resort in Vermont, where they meet up with a small group of teenagers attempting to build a new, walker-free settlement.

As friendship, rivalry, and romance begin to blossom amongst the group, the harsh winter soon reveals that the biggest threat to their survival…might be each other.

 

Kaiju No. 8, Vol. 1
RRP $17.98

With the highest kaiju-emergence rates in the world, Japan is no stranger to attack by deadly monsters. Enter the Japan Defense Force, a military organization tasked with the neutralization of kaiju. Kafka Hibino, a kaiju-corpse cleanup man, has always dreamed of joining the force. But when he gets another shot at achieving his childhood dream, he undergoes an unexpected transformation. How can he fight kaiju now that he’s become one himself?!

 

 

 

Assassination Classroom, Vol. 1

RRP $17.98

When the misfits of Class 3-E get stuck with a smiley-faced, octopus-tentacled schoolteacher with bizarre superpowers, they discover they have a lot to learn…

Koro Sensei has already blown up the moon. He promises not to do the same to the Earth on one condition…that he be allowed to teach a certain junior high school remedial class for one year. In addition, he’ll allow the students to attempt to take him out at any time without retaliating. Whoever succeeds gets a huge cash reward from the Ministry of Defense. But now the students of Class 3-E are the only ones standing in the way of the destruction of the planet!

 

Don’t Worry About It!

 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
RRP$22.99

Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.

 

 

Reasons Not to Worry
RRP$29.99

We’re all searching for answers to the biggest questions: How can we be good? Find calm? Properly grieve? Beat FOMO? Work out what truly matters? Well, the good news is that the wisest minds in history asked the exact same questions – and they found answers. The ancient philosophy of Stoicism shows us that we are already in possession of the very tools we need to excavate this much-needed wisdom for ourselves.

Reasons Not to Worry is an accessible introduction to Stoic principles of virtue, moderation and self-discipline, adapting this ancient knowledge to inspire practical advice for everyday life.

 

How to Let Things Go
RRP$36.99

Think of letting things go as setting them free.

Amid the relentless cycle of news, social media, emails and texts, it can be hard to know when, if ever, you can take a break. In this insightful book, renowned Zen Buddhist monk, Shunmyo Masuno, offers us a radical message- sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing at all.

You will learn 99 empowering tips and truths that will help you ease the pressure, to relinquish control and find a way to a calmer, more fulfilling life.

 

Nothing to See Here
RRP$22.99

Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. Then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help.

Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their carer. However, there’s a catch- the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth.

Thinking of her dead-end life at home, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other-and stay cool-while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for?

 

Keep Going

 

Not the End of the World
RRP $24.99

We are bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, that we should reconsider having children.

Packed with the latest research, practical guidance and enlightening graphics, this book will make you rethink almost everything you’ve been told about the environment. It will give you the tools to understand what works, what doesn’t and what we urgently need to focus on so we can leave a sustainable planet for future generations.

These problems are big. But they are solvable. We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone. Let’s turn that opportunity into reality.

 

The Myth of Sisyphus
RRP $16.99

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves – and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives – and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Inspired by the myth of a man condemned to ceaselessly push a rock up a mountain and watch it roll back to the valley below, The Myth of Sisyphus transformed twentieth-century philosophy with its impassioned argument for the value of life in a world without religious meaning.

 

Catastrophe Ethics
RRP $34.99

Philosopher Travis Rieder outlines a new ethics for the age of humanmade catastrophe. We are all asking, in a hyperglobalised world hurtling towards environmental destruction: how do we determine the right actions? Do our individual efforts to avoid plastic or air travel, or to drive electric, make any real difference?

We urgently need to expand our ethical toolkit. The mental tools most of us rely on to ‘do the right thing’ just don’t work when it comes to reasoning about large collective problems. From the small stuff like single-use plastics to major decisions like whether to have children, Rieder defines exactly how we can change our thinking and lead a decent, meaningful life in a scary, complicated world.

 

A City on Mars
RRP $24.99

The bestselling and hilarious investigation into space settlement

In a world hurtling toward human expansion into space, A City on Mars investigates whether the dream of new worlds won’t create a nightmare, both for settlers and the people they leave behind.

With deep expertise, a winning sense of humour and art from the beloved creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, the Weinersmiths investigate perhaps the biggest questions humanity will ever ask itself – whether and how to become multiplanetary.

 

Embrace Oulipo

 

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller
RRP $22.99

You go into a bookshop and buy If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You like it. But there is a printer’s error in your copy. You take it back to the shop and get a replacement. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading but end up with a different narrative again. This remarkable novel leads you through many different books including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the real hero of them all is you, the reader.

 

 

The Penguin Book of Oulipo
RRP $22.99

Brought together for the first time, here are 100 pieces of ‘Oulipo’ writing, celebrating the literary group who revelled in maths problems, puzzles, trickery, wordplay and conundrums. Featuring writers including Georges Perec, Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino, it includes poems, short stories, word games and even recipes. Alongside these famous Oulipians, are ‘anticipatory’ wordsmiths who crafted language via unusual constraints and literary tricks, from Jonathan Swift to Lewis Carroll.

Philip Terry’s playful selection will appeal to lovers of word games, puzzles and literary delights.

 

Zazie in the Metro
RRP $22.99

The cult classic from one of France’s most stylish writers

Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with her uncle Gabriel. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau’s cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever.

 

Life: A User’s Manual
RRP $22.99

In this ingenious book Perec creates an entire microcosm in a Paris apartment block. Serge Valene wants to make an elaborate painting of the building he has made his home for the last sixty years. As he plans his picture, he contemplates the lives of all the people he has ever known there.

Chapter by chapter, the narrative moves around the building revealing a marvellously diverse cast of characters in a series of every more unlikely tales, which range from an avenging murderer to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime…

 

 

Step Into The Weird

 

The House on the Borderland
RRP $22.99

A manuscript is found. Filled with small, precise writing and smelling of pit-water, it tells the story of an old recluse and his strange home – and it’s even stranger, jade-green double, seen by that old man on an otherworldly plain where gigantic gods and monsters roam. Soon his earthly abode is no less terrible than this strange vision, as swine-like creatures boil from a cavern beneath the ground and besiege it. But a still greater horror will face the recluse, one more awful than any creature that can be fought or killed.

The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson’s great masterpiece of cosmic fear, is an extraordinary novel that defied all accepted conventions of horror writing, forging in an instant a new, weird direction for the form.

 

The City and the City
RRP $22.99

When the body of a murdered woman is found in the extraordinary, decaying city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks like a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he probes, the evidence begins to point to conspiracies far stranger, and more deadly, than anything he could have imagined. Soon his work puts him and those he cares for in danger. Borlu must travel to the only metropolis on Earth as strange as his own, across a border like no other.

With shades of Kafka and Philip K Dick, Raymond Chandler and 1984, The City & The City is a murder mystery taken to dazzling metaphysical and artistic heights.

 

The Vorrh (Book One in the Vorrh Trilogy)
RRP $22.99

In B. Catling’s twisting, poetic narrative, Bakelite robots lie broken – their hard shells cracked by human desire – and an inquisitive Cyclops waits for his keeper and guardian, growing in all directions. Beyond the colonial city of Essenwald lies the Vorrh, the forest which sucks souls and wipes minds. There, a writer heads out on a giddy mission to experience otherness, fallen angels observe humanity from afar, and two hunters – one carrying a bow carved from his lover, the other a charmed Lee-Enfield rifle – fight to the end.

Thousands of miles away, famed photographer Eadweard Muybridge attempts to capture the ultimate truth, as rifle heiress Sarah Winchester erects a house to protect her from the spirits of her gun’s victims.

 

Annihilation
RRP $24.99

In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s now-classic Southern Reach series, Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades and nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilisation. Expedition after expedition into Area X has failed to uncover its mysteries and the true nature of its danger to the world.

Now a twelfth expedition makes the attempt, a group of four women: an anthropologist, a surveyor, a psychologist and the narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X.

A harrowing cosmic mystery at the vanguard of eco-fiction, Annihilation has only become more pertinent to our reality ten years after its first publication.

 

Authority
RRP $22.99

After thirty years, the secret government agency known as the Southern Reach has been unable to solve the mysteries of Area X, a seemingly malevolent landscape wiped clean of human civilisation. Or is “pristine wilderness” a better description? Expedition after expedition has failed to come up with answers, often disastrously. The Southern Reach, in the process, has become a backwater agency, forgotten and underfunded despite the urgency of its mission. Following the tumultuous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the agency is in complete disarray.

Enter John Rodriguez (aka “Control”), the Southern Reach’s newly appointed director. Working with a distrustful team desperate for success, Control must navigate a maze of frustrating interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage. What does it all mean? Can he reach some kind of understanding before it’s too late?

In Authority, the second volume of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, many of Area X’s most disturbing questions are answered … but the answers are far from reassuring.

 

Acceptance
RRP $22.99

Area X has rebuffed expedition after expedition for decades, refusing to reveal its secrets. As it expands alarmingly, the Southern Reach agency tasked with its investigation has collapsed in confusion. Now, one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may yet hold vital answers. How was Area X created, and why? Can it be stopped?

In this climactic volume of the Southern Reach trilogy, reality mutates and mysteries resolve, but now that so many questions have answers, the consequences are no less profound – or terrifying.

 

 

The Library at Mount Char 
RRP $24.99

Carolyn’s not so different from the other people around her. After all, she was a normal American herself once. That was a long time ago, of course. Before her parents died. Before she and the others were taken in by the man they called Father.

Now, Father is missing – perhaps even dead – and the Library that holds his secrets stands unguarded. And with it, control over all of creation. As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her, all of them with powers that far exceed her own.

But Carolyn has accounted for this. And Carolyn has a plan. The only trouble is that in the war to make a new God, she’s forgotten to protect the things that make her human.

The End is Near, But When Is My Day Off?

 

Mr. Villain’s Day Off, Vol. 1
RRP $27.99

The mysterious and dastardly man known only as the General within the evil organization plotting to take over the world is one of the top targets of Earth’s defensive unit, the Rangers.

But on his precious days off, he’s more likely to be at the local zoo staring at his beloved pandas or trying out new ice cream flavors! Will his secret hobbies be jeopardized forever when his natural enemy – a Ranger hero out to save the Earth – catches him in the act?

 

Tokyo Alien Bros. Vol. 1
$26.70

Fuyunosuke Tanaka is a perfectly ordinary college student, except for one thing—he’s secretly an alien. He and his brother Natsutaro have traveled across the galaxy to study the people of Earth and evaluate the planet’s resources, but adapting to life on this new world may prove a bit harder than they thought.

Fuyunosuke’s been living the good life in Tokyo. In fact, he’s almost got the whole “being human” thing down. His brother Natsutaro, on the other hand, can’t figure out the first thing about blending in on this strange planet. There’s still a lot they don’t know about humans, but with any luck, Fuyunosuke might just be able to show his bro that life on this little blue ball isn’t so bad after all.

 

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: Deluxe Edition 1
$45.90

In a future Japan, long after an environmental catastrophe, Alpha the android runs a small cafe in a seaside town. As she wonders if her absent owner will ever return, she stands witness to the twilight of humanity with coffee, a slice of watermelon, and the sound of her moon guitar. Alpha and her fellow residents enjoy the melancholy beauty of life, even as the end approaches.

Savor chapters 1-24 of this beloved manga classic in English for the first time, in this deluxe five-volume set.

 

The Hard Switch
$36.14

Ada, Haika, and Mallic are on a mission . . . one last mission, before everything, everywhere shuts down. They’re raiding old, abandoned spaceships and wrecks for the (sometimes-expensive) parts – and they make just enough money to get by. But living their nomadic, exploring life isn’t sustainable when they can’t afford fuel anymore.

The time is coming when the mineral that makes inter-system jumps possible runs out. When it does, the scattered inhabitants of the vast galaxy will be stuck where they are. Everything will be different . . . unless the discovery in the latest wreck Ada, Haika, and Mallic are scavenging can unlock a whole new kind of interstellar transit.

 

The End of Days?

The Last Bookstore on Earth
RRP $19.99

It’s been a year since a devastating storm ripped Liz’s world apart. Haunted by the memories of those she couldn’t save, Liz is holed up in the only place she felt safe before her world fell away- the bookstore where she used to work.

Enter Maeve, a spiky out-of-towner who breaks into the bookstore looking for shelter one night. When Maeve’s secrets and Liz’s inner demons come back to haunt them both, they find themselves fighting for their lives and asking themselves one big question.

As the end of the world approaches, is there time for one final love story?

 

Zero Stars, would not recommend
RRP $24.99

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a break. Then the sun explodes.

With the island suddenly plunged in darkness, the ultra-rich guests hijack the remaining supplies and declare themselves as the new ruling class. Led by a fitness influencer turned ruthless dictator, martial law is declared and the hoi polloi are press-ganged into service. And it’s just Dan’s luck that he could land an even worse job while on holiday.

As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, Dan might have found a way for himself and Mara to escape the island. But sneaking away would also mean abandoning the burgeoning revolution that he might-have-kind-of-sort-of single-handedly started.

 

Chris Mould’s War of the Worlds
RRP $39.99

1894. Across space, this earth is being watched by envious eyes. What seems to be a meteorite falls to earth, but from the debris unfolds a terrifying alien threat . . .

As war descends, Leon and his scientist wife race against the clock to discover the science behind these invaders in the hopes of ending the war of all worlds.

A stunning full-colour illustrated adaptation of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic, from the illustrator of The Iron Man and Animal Farm.

 

The Art of Darkness
RRP $49.99

Throughout history, artists have been obsessed with darkness – creating works that haunt and horrify, mesmerise and delight and play on our innermost fears.

From Dreams & Nightmares to Matters of Mortality, Depravity & Destruction to Gods & Monsters – this book introduces sometimes disturbing and often beautiful artworks that indulge our greatest fears, uniting us as humans from century to century. With over 200 carefully curated artworks from across the centuries, The Art of Darkness examines all that is dark in a bid to haunt and hearten.

 

Worse Case Scenario Survival Guide
RRP $22.99

Erupting volcanoes. Ravenous sharks. Pooping in the woods.

The great outdoors is a weird, wonderful, and scare-your-pants-off terrifying place. Whether you’re freezing in the Arctic, escaping quicksand in the jungle, or befriending tarantulas in the desert, this guide has you covered. (Figuratively, not literally. We didn’t have the budget for a blanket-sized book.)

Yeah, the outdoors can be scary, but you’ve got this indispensable, laugh-out-loud survival guide. So what are you waiting for? Get out there!

 

Healing Fiction

 

The Marigold Mind Laundry KINOKUNIYA EDITION
RRP $34.99

Overnight, in the village of Marigold on top of a hill, old Jieun has conjured up a magical Mind Laundry, where she cleanses painful experiences from her customer’s hearts, transferring them into stains on a T-shirt and transforming them into dazzling red petals.

We meet five of Jieun’s customers to her laundry: a frustrated young filmmaker; a tortured social-media influencer; a distraught mother who has discovered her husband’s other family; a young woman two-timed by her lover, and Yeonghui, a victim of bullying, who works as a delivery man to escape his pain in routine.

After washing away their pain and ironing out their creases, Jieun discovers an astonishing revelation about memory, pain and moving on.

 

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
RRP $24.99

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations, the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru.

When Takako’s boyfriend reveals he’s marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle’s offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.

 

The Full Moon Coffee Shop
RRP $32.99

Under a glittering full moon, a Kyoto coffee shop with no fixed location or fixed hours appears only where and when it’s needed. It is run by talking cats serving the finest teas and coffees, delicious desserts and age-old astrological wisdom.

The Full Moon Coffee Shop attracts customers who have lost their way in their life, from a down-on-her-luck screenwriter to a failed video game developer. In the middle of the night, the feline guides will set them back on their fated paths.

 

 

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat
RRP $32.99

A cat a day keeps the doctor away …

On the top floor of an old building at the end of a cobbled alley in Kyoto lies the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. Only a select few – those who feel genuine emotional pain – can find it.

The mysterious centre offers a unique treatment for its troubled patients- it prescribes cats as medication.

As the clinic’s patients navigate their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them towards healing, self-discovery and newfound hope.

 

Escape

 

Howl’s Moving Castle
RRP $17.99

Deciding she has nothing more to lose, Sophie makes her way to the moving castle that hovers on the hills above her town, Market Chipping. But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl, whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the souls of young girls…

There Sophie meets Michael, Howl’s apprentice, and Calcifer the fire demon, with whom she agrees a pact. Her entanglements with Calcifer, Howl and Michael and her quest to break her curse come alive with Diana Wynne Jones’s unique combination of magic, humour and imagination.

 

Magic Beach
RRP $16.99

Visit a perfect beach where you can swim, surf, splash through the waves, build sandcastles, beachcomb, explore rock-pools, muck about in boats, fish from the jetty, and build a bonfire under the stars. Visit Magic Beach, where adventure begins…

 

Wrestle With Existentialism

 

The Trouble With Being Born
RRP $22.99

In The Trouble With Being Born, E. M. Cioran grapples with the major questions of human existence- birth, death, God, the passing of time, how to relate to others and how to make ourselves get out of bed in the morning.

In a series of interlinking aphorisms which are at once pessimistic, poetic and extremely funny, Cioran finds a kind of joy in his own despair, revelling in the absurdity and futility of our existence, and our inability to live in the world.

 

 

Why Fish Don’t Exist
RRP $32.99

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake sends more than a thousand of Jordan’s specimens, housed in glass jars, plummeting to the ground, his story of resilience leads Lulu to believe she has found the antidote to life’s unpredictability. But lurking behind the tale of this great taxonomist lies a darker story waiting to be told: one about the human cost of attempting to define the form of things unknown.

An idiosyncratic, personal approach to this fascinating scientific biography, Why Fish Don’t Exist is an astonishing tale of newfound love, scientific discovery and how to live well in a world governed by chaos.

 

Nausea
RRP $22.99

Nausea is both the story of the troubled life of a young writer, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times – existentialism.

The book chronicles his struggle with the realization that he is an entirely free agent in a world devoid of meaning; a world in which he must find his own purpose and then take total responsibility for his choices. A seminal work of contemporary literary philosophy, Nausea evokes and examines the dizzying angst that can come from simply trying to live.

 

When Breath Becomes Air
RRP $24.99

When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity – the brain – and finally into a patient and a new father.

Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

 

 

Step Back in Time

 

Rapture
RRP $32.99

The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and devote her life to the study she is denied as a woman.

So begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of the revered Fulda monastery, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, Agnes (as John) dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge and wisdom and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful-and deadly-currency.

And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known-and loved.

 

All the Beautiful Things
RRP $22.99

Anna’s little sister, Eva, is frail and needs time to learn new things. She has a huge heart and a gift for loving, but Hitler doesn’t value such riches. And so she’s hidden away. Safe for now, but with the threat of discovery always near.

Anna does her best to bring joy and light to Eva’s small life. But soon, more children need hiding. Risks are taken — by Anna, by her best friend Udo, by a Nazi seamstress and feisty Brunhilde. Until Anna wonders if any of them will make it through the war …

Loyalty and love. Family and friendship. Understanding and tolerance. Right and wrong. Multi-award-winning Australian author Katrina Nannestad explores it all in this thrilling and powerful historical novel.

 

The Safekeep
RRP $34.99

It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother’s country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep – as a guest, there to stay for the season…

In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.

 

Pachinko
RRP $22.99

Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation- a new life in Japan as his wife.

Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja’s salvation is just the beginning of her story.

Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival.