Chasing Wrongs and Rights


Book Description

The Australia Director at Human Rights Watch shares her experiences defending human rights – from human trafficking in Nepal to the 'drug war' in the Philippines to treatment of detainees in Papua New Guinea and in Australia – offering an extremely involving personal account of how far we’ve come, and how far we’ve got to go. Growing up in Perth, Elaine Pearson always dreamt of the wider world. Her British father and Singaporean-Chinese mother meant that her family extended beyond our shores, but it wasn’t until later in life that she fully understood how her professional calling might have been influenced by personal history: she learned that her beloved maternal grandmother had been sold to an opera troupe as a child to save the family from starvation. As soon as she could, Elaine followed her interest in women’s rights and people-trafficking, interviewing sex-workers and victims of trafficking on the streets of Bangkok and Amsterdam’s red light district. Her experiences in Nepal and Nigeria profoundly shaped her understanding of how governments and NGOs need to protect the rights of victims, as well as how poverty, corruption and war drive trafficking in the first place. Elaine’s story takes us on a panoramic survey of human rights across the world – into the UN committee rooms of New York and Geneva, as well as to the front-lines of Sri Lanka’s search for those who disappeared in the country’s civil war, examining death squad killings on the Philippines island of Mindanao and the detention of asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea. And her work on the appalling treatment of prisoners, many of whom are Aboriginal, vividly demonstrates that human rights abuses are something that happens at home as well as out in that wider world. In exploring human rights abuses and governments’ failure to address them, Chasing Wrongs and Rights sometimes shows humanity at its worst. Just as often, though, we see people at their best – compassionate, resilient, determined. Deeply informative and inspiring, Elaine Pearson’s story will leave you understanding how much needs to change, and how individuals can make a difference.




Chasing Wrongs and Rights


Book Description

The Australia Director at Human Rights Watch shares her experiences defending human rights - from human trafficking in Nepal to the 'drug war' in the Philippines to treatment of detainees in Papua New Guinea and in Australia - offering an extremely involving personal account of how far we've come, and how far we've got to go. Growing up in Perth, Elaine Pearson always dreamt of the wider world. Her British father and Singaporean-Chinese mother meant that her family extended beyond our shores, but it wasn't until later in life that she fully understood how her professional calling might have been influenced by personal history: she learned that her beloved maternal grandmother had been sold to an opera troupe as a child to save the family from starvation. As soon as she could, Elaine followed her interest in women's rights and people-trafficking, interviewing sex-workers and victims of trafficking on the streets of Bangkok and Amsterdam's red light district. Her experiences in Nepal and Nigeria profoundly shaped her understanding of how governments and NGOs need to protect the rights of victims, as well as how poverty, corruption and war drive trafficking in the first place. Elaine's story takes us on a panoramic survey of human rights across the world - into the UN committee rooms of New York and Geneva, as well as to the front-lines of Sri Lanka's search for those who disappeared in the country's civil war, examining death squad killings on the Philippines island of Mindanao and the detention of asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea. And her work on the appalling treatment of prisoners, many of whom are Aboriginal, vividly demonstrates that human rights abuses are something that happens at home as well as out in that wider world. In exploring human rights abuses and governments' failure to address them, Chasing Wrongs and Rights sometimes shows humanity at its worst. Just as often, though, we see people at their best - compassionate, resilient, determined. Deeply informative and inspiring, Elaine Pearson's story will leave you understanding how much needs to change, and how individuals can make a difference.




Rights from Wrongs


Book Description

A noted legal scholar examines the source of human rights, arguing that rights are the result of particular experiences with injustice and looking at the implications in terms of the right to privacy, voting rights, and other rights.




Signs and Wonders


Book Description

Winner of the 2022 Nib Literary Awards. Chosen as a 2021 ‘Book of the Year’ in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Book Review. The celebrated, Walkley Award-winning author on how global warming is changing not only our climate but our culture. Beautifully observed, brilliantly argued and deeply felt, these essays show that our emotions, our art, our relationships with the generations around us – all the delicate networks that make us who we are – have already been transformed. In Signs and Wonders, Falconer explores how it feels to live as a reader, a writer, a lover of nature and a mother of small children in an era of profound ecological change. Building on Falconer’s two acclaimed essays, ‘Signs and Wonders’ and the Walkley Award-winning ‘The Opposite of Glamour’, Signs and Wonders is a pioneering examination of how we are changing our culture, language and imaginations along with our climate. Is a mammoth emerging from the permafrost beautiful or terrifying? How is our imagination affected when something that used to be ordinary – like a car windscreen smeared with insects – becomes unimaginable? What can the disappearance of the paragraph from much contemporary writing tell us about what’s happening in the modern mind? Scientists write about a 'great acceleration' in human impact on the natural world. Signs and Wonders shows that we are also in a period of profound cultural acceleration, which is just as dynamic, strange, extreme and, sometimes, beautiful. Ranging from an ‘unnatural’ history of coal to the effect of a large fur seal turning up in the park below her apartment, this book is a searching and poetic examination of the ways we are thinking about how, and why, to live now. ‘Only the finest of writers can hope to convey the mercurial nature of the times we are living though: the sense of slippage; of terror and beauty. Falconer is such a writer. Signs and Wonders is an essential collection.’ Sophie Cunningham, author of City of Trees ‘Delia Falconer is one of the best writers working today, and in Signs and Wonders she demonstrates everything that makes her writing so necessary. Brave, beautiful, and breathtaking in its elegance and intelligence, it is, quite simply, a marvel.’ James Bradley ‘Scintillating. Delia Falconer is at the peak of her powers as a critic, and as an observer of the natural world. Signs and Wonders looks outward from Sydney, and from literature, to trace the contours of our environmental moment.’ Rebecca Giggs, author of Fathoms ‘Exquisite … From reflections on feeding birds, analyses of literary trends, to Falconer’s Covid and fire diaries, the essays are complex, ambitious, rewarding … Delia Falconer’s mesmerising Signs and Wonders helps us to process the disorienting complexity of living in this time of great beauty and loss.’ Jonica Newby, Australian Book Review




Generation F


Book Description

‘For me these Ormond College women were, and are, the first voices of the revolution that is #MeToo in Australia.’ Twenty-five years ago, Australia was in the grip of another debate about sex and power. The Master of Ormond College at the University of Melbourne had been acquitted of indecent assault after complaints by two female students. Helen Garner’s bestselling book about the case, The First Stone, polarised readers over whether the students had been right to take their allegations to the law. Was the feminist movement poisoning gender relations? In Generation F, the young award-winning journalist Virginia Trioli offered a vigorous, incisive and compelling argument for the ongoing need for feminism, while exploring her own bewilderment and anger. She described the real state of sexual harassment, violence, the workplace and the law in Australia: how most women just copped it, but those who felt able to confront it needed all the support they could get. Now – as women around the world speak up about how sexual harassment has destroyed their work, families and lives – Trioli revisits that cultural moment in a new foreword, and in a new afterword considers the situation women face today. Dismayingly, her original text is just as relevant, and her call to action just as powerful.




Chasing Aphrodite


Book Description

A “thrilling, well-researched” account of years of scandal at the prestigious Getty Museum (Ulrich Boser, author of The Gardner Heist). In recent years, several of America’s leading art museums have voluntarily given up their finest pieces of classical art to the governments of Italy and Greece. Why would they be moved to such unheard-of generosity? The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world’s richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and candid interviews, these two journalists give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum, and tell a story of outlandish characters and bad behavior that could come straight from the pages of a thriller. “In an authoritative account, two reporters who led a Los Angeles Times investigation reveal the details of the Getty Museum’s illicit purchases, from smugglers and fences, of looted Greek and Roman antiquities. . . . The authors offer an excellent recap of the museum’s misdeeds, brimming with tasty details of the scandal that motivated several of America’s leading art museums to voluntarily return to Italy and Greece some 100 classical antiquities worth more than half a billion dollars.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “An astonishing and penetrating look into a veiled world where beauty and art are in constant competition with greed and hypocrisy. This engaging book will cast a fresh light on many of those gleaming objects you see in art museums.” —Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting




28 Questions


Book Description

They say it takes 28 Questions to fall in love. Then what? 'If it's an addictive read you're after, consider this your next stop.' Stylist A queer When Harry Met Sally for the Sally Rooney Generation 'Reader, imagine yielding to someone with a power so strong she has the ability to slice time. Before. Her. After.' When first-year music student Amalia stumbles into her Oxford college bar, she has no idea that everything is about to change. Seated across from her is Alex, a velvety-voiced fellow Australian with eyes the colour of her native sky. They strike up a friendship that is immediate - its intensity both thrilling and terrifying. As the days and weeks go by, they spend more and more time together: philosophising, hypothesising, questioning everything. There is nothing they cannot talk about, except the one thing that matters most. Dare they risk a romantic entanglement if it threatens this most perfect of friendships? Set across four years and five cities, and suffused with music, literature, art, dance, sex, and the exquisite pain and pleasure of first love, 28 Questions is a passionate and unforgettable first novel about love in all its guises, growing up, and figuring out who you are along the way.




Gulliver's Wife


Book Description

Birth. Death. Wonder … One woman’s journey to the edge of love and loyalty from the bestselling author of The Lace Weaver London, 1702. When her husband is lost at sea, Mary Burton Gulliver, midwife and herbalist, is forced to rebuild her life without him. But three years later when Lemuel Gulliver is brought home, fevered and communicating only in riddles, her ordered world is turned upside down. In a climate of desperate poverty and violence, Mary is caught in a crossfire of suspicion and fear driven by her husband’s outlandish claims, and it is up to her to navigate a passage to safety for herself and her daughter, and the vulnerable women in her care. When a fellow sailor, a dangerous man with nothing to lose, appears to hold sway over her husband, Mary’s world descends deeper into chaos, and she must set out on her own journey to discover the truth of Gulliver’s travels . . . and the landscape of her own heart. Praise for Gulliver’s Wife 'An absolutely gripping read, with a powerful and ultimately hopeful story to tell' Booktopia ‘Gulliver’s Wife is utterly spellbinding. Lauren Chater is a master of story-weaving and exquisite detail. I adored this book.’ Melissa Ashley, bestselling author of The Birdman’s Wife ‘Lauren Chater’s Mary Gulliver is an extraordinary character – a performer of everyday miracles, a woman of quiet strength and compassion in a world where nothing can be relied on, least of all her flamboyant fantasist of a husband. Set in a fictional past, this superbly written story of love, loss, motherhood, and letting go is highly relevant to the issues we face today. Do not miss it.’ Meg Keneally, author of Fled ‘Bold, evocative and brave – Gulliver’s Wife is a revelation in story-telling. I am in awe of Lauren Chater’s talent. Gulliver’s Wife had my heart from the opening line and didn’t let go until long after I finished the final page. An exquisitely told tale of love, loss and the magic of life.’ Tess Woods, author of Love and Other Battles ‘An imaginative tour-de-force!’ Bestselling author Kate Forsyth ‘The most impressive aspect of this novel is the finely tuned and nuanced treatment of the relationship between a mother and her rebellious teenage daughter.’ Sydney Morning Herald ‘A heartfelt tale of female solidarity.’ Daily Telegraph




Wrong Bed, Right Guy


Book Description

Prim and proper art gallery coordinator Elle Walser is no good at seducing men. Heck, she's been throwing hints at her boss for months, but he's completely clueless. Desperate to escape her mother's matchmaking efforts, she comes up with a plan—buy some lingerie and climb into her boss's bed. The plan goes brilliantly...until she accidentally seduces a sexy stranger instead. Bad boy nightclub mogul Gabe Schultz just had the best almost-sex of his life. Too bad the smoking hot blonde thought he was his brother and bolted before he could finish what they started. Though her holier-than-thou attitude puts a serious damper on his mood, Gabe's never been one to give up on something he wants. And he wants Elle. Now he just needs her to convince her to give him a chance... Each book in the Come Undone series is STANDALONE: * Wrong Bed, Right Guy * Chasing Mrs. Right * Two Wrongs, One Right * Seducing Mr. Right




Last Shot


Book Description

A coming-of-age memoir of addiction, ambition and redemption in the high-stakes world of Michelin star kitchens. From reckless drug addict to one of Australia’s top chefs and television stars: MasterChef judge Jock Zonfrillo's powerful life story will shock and inspire. Jock’s life spiralled out of control when he tried heroin for the first time as a teenager while growing up in 1980s Glasgow. For years he balanced a career as a rising star amongst legendary chefs with a crippling drug addiction that took him down many dark paths. Fired from his job at a Michelin star restaurant in Chester, England, after a foul-mouthed rant, Jock made his way to London looking for work and found himself in front of the legendary Marco Pierre White. He credits White for saving his life, but Jock continued to struggle with addiction in a world of excess, celebrity, and cut-throat ambition. On New Year’s Eve 1999, Jock shot up his last shot of heroin before boarding a plane to Sydney, where he would find passion and new meaning in life in the most unexpected places. There would be more struggles ahead, including two failed marriages, the closure of his prized restaurant during COVID-19, his time on-country, and some very public battles. This is the unforgettable story of an incredible life cut short too soon. Praise for Last Shot 'I’ve known Jock for 25 years. He is not only a great mate but an incredibly talented chef - in Australia and around the world. Last Shot really shows how resilient Jock is and how far he has come in his personal and professional life. I’m inspired by how brave Jock has been for putting this biography out there. I couldn’t put it down. Loved it!’ Matt Moran ‘Zonfrillo climbed his way to the top of the gastronomic ladder only to abdicate his position. He still inspires chefs worldwide.’ Marco Pierre White ‘An amazingly candid story of a prolific but complicated chef who made it back from the brink despite the obstacles, surely one of the best comeback stories there is!’ Gordon Ramsay ‘Jock absolutely lives and breathes his passion for food, which began in childhood. And between the incredible ups and downs of his life that we read about in Last Shot, what really comes through for me is his search for knowledge of Indigenous foods – I so admire how the depth of his learning combined with his amazing skill and creativity has allowed him to celebrate the uniqueness of the cultures he has embraced.’ Maggie Beer AO




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