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Allen & Unwin wins Publisher of the Year for a record 11th time!

Allen & Unwin wins Publisher of the Year for a record 11th time!

We are immensely proud to announce that Allen & Unwin was awarded 2012 Publisher of the Year at the recent Australian Book Industry Awards.

Known as the 'Academy Awards' for books, the ABIAs celebrate the very best of Australian writing, publishing and bookselling. The  Awards, including 'Publisher of the Year', 'Bookseller of the Year' and 'Book of the Year', are regarded as the most prestigious in Australian publishing, and winners are voted by an Academy consisting of a panel of 150 booksellers and publishers.

Allen & Unwin have now won this award 11 times - and for the last 3 years in succession.

See all this year's winners here

Spotlight:

Growing Old Outrageously

by Hilary Linstead and Elisabeth Davies

A delightful memoir of a later-life friendship and what happens when two ladies of a certain age decide to test the maxim: Leap and the net will appear!

Spotlight:

Storm: Elementals 1

by Brigid Kemmerer

When Becca Chandler saves Chris Merrick from being beaten up in the school parking lot, she has no idea how dramatically this one action will change her life. Because Chris Merrick is no ordinary guy and neither are his three older brothers.

Spotlight:

Morgan's Law

by Karly Lane

When Sarah Murphy returns to Australia she desperately needs a break from her high-powered London life. And though mystified by her grandmother's dying wish for her ashes to be scattered under 'the wishing tree' on the banks of the Negallan River, she sets out to do just that.

Out now
Coming soon
Spotlight:

The Monster: Troubletwisters 2

by Garth Nix and Sean Williams

After The Evil's assault on Portland, everything returns to relative normality...for the moment. The twins continue to work hard to control their Gifts, and at school they make a new friend, Tara. But then the instruments in Grandma X's antique store begin registering Evil activity, and Tara's dad turns out to be the suspicious big-city property developer working on the house next door. Matters turn from bad to worse when the twins discover that Grandma's cats are fighting an important battle of their own. Can the twins solve the mystery of the Living Ward before it's too late?

Spotlight:

Absolution

by Patrick Flanery

In her garden, ensconced in the lush vegetation of the Western Cape, Clare Wald, world-renowned author, mother, critic, takes up her pen and confronts her life. Sam Leroux has returned to South Africa to embark upon a project that will establish his reputation - he is to write Clare's biography. But how honest is she prepared to be? Was she complicit in crimes lurking in South Africa's past; is she an accomplice or a victim? Are her crimes against her family real or imagined? As Sam and Clare turn over the events of her life, she begins to seek reconciliation, absolution. But in the stories she weaves and the truth just below the surface of her shimmering prose, lie Sam's own ghosts.
Absolution shines light on contemporary South Africa and the long dark shadow of Apartheid, the elusive nature of truth and self-perception and the mysterious alchemy of the creative process. It is a debut of extraordinary strength and power.

Spotlight:

What Your Mother Should've Told You and Nobody Else Will

by Natalie Reilly

If you've ever lost sleep over how to end a friendship or how to recover from an email faux pas at work, or you want to learn how to speak in public or you just simply want the secret to happiness, What Your Mother Should've Told You and Nobody Else Will gives you all the answers.
With everything from homespun wisdoms and invaluable life lessons to navigating the minefield of 21st-century dilemmas and manners, here are all those things your mother should have taught you, but you weren't ready to hear at the time.

Spotlight:

Metro Winds

by Isobelle Carmody

A girl is sent across the world to discover her destiny in the dark tunnels of the Metro. Another seeks a lost sister in a park where winter lasts forever. A young man fulfils a dying wish. A mother works magic to summon a true princess for her son. A man seeks an ending to his story. An old man goes in search of his shadow.
This is a world of desire and transformation, the real and the not real, from the queen of modern fantasy.

Spotlight:

The Reunion

by Joanne Fedler

It's been ages since Jo, Helen, Ereka and CJ first became friends through their mothers' group-back then, life revolved around their small children. Now their kids are pre-teens and teenagers with attitudes, iPods and raging hormones, and life is feeling emptier for some mothers, more liberating for others.
While away together in an old country house with a couple of new friends and plenty of wine and food, it's not long before the women are discussing men, marriage and parenting, sharing intimacies and confiding vulnerabilities. Friendships are put on the line as the bonds between them are tested and the weekend takes some unexpected turns.
Picking up where the international bestseller Secret Mothers' Business left off, The Reunion is an insightful, funny and often biting novel about the challenges women face as their bodies change, dreams fade and kids grow up. Ultimately it explores what it means to be a good friend, a good person and a good mother-and suggests that all love is about learning to let go.

Spotlight:

Why Nations Fail

by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

In the West are the 'haves', while much of the rest of the world are the 'have-nots'. The extent of inequality today is unprecedented. Drawing on an extraordinary range of contemporary and historical examples, Why Nations Fail looks at the root of the problems facing some nations. Economists and scientists have offered useful insights into the reasons for certain aspects of poverty, such as Jeffrey Sachs (it's geography and the weather), and Jared Diamond (it's technology and species).
But most theories ignore the incentives and institutions that populations need to invest and prosper: they need to know that if they work hard, they can make money and actually keep it - and the key to ensuring these incentives is sound institutions. Incentives and institutions are what separate the have and have-nots. Based on fifteen years of research, and stepping boldly into the territory of Ian Morris's Why the West Rules - For Now, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson blend economics, politics, history and current affairs to provide a new, persuasive way of understanding wealth and poverty. And, perhaps most importantly, they provide a pragmatic basis for the hope that those mired in poverty can be placed on the path to prosperity.

Spotlight:

The Taliban Cricket Club

by Timeri N Murari

A soaring novel of resilience, hope, strength and tenderness, The Taliban Cricket Club reveals how love can overcome, and outwit, even the power of tyrants.
Rukhsana, a spirited young journalist in Kabul, is summoned to the infamous Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to face its terrifying minister, Zorak Wahidi. A cricket tournament is announced, with the winning team to travel to Pakistan for training and then represent Afghanistan at an international level.
In reality, the idea is ludicrous. The Taliban will never embrace a game rooted in civility, fairness and equality. And no one in Afghanistan even knows how to play cricket, except Rukhsana. But the tournament offers hope - a means of escape for her brother and young cousins. And for Rukhsana, escape is essential - Wahidi wants to marry her, a frightening proposition which will enslave her in his home.
With the help of her cousins, Rukhsana devises an audacious plan that could ensure their freedom. All they have to do is learn to play cricket - and win.
Dangerous, feisty and funny - totally engaging from the first page.
'A moving, splendidly realized story of courage and grit in modern-day Kabul. I was won over by Murari's uplifting and vastly entertaining tale, which reaffirms the power of friendship, fellowship, and love in the face of all forms of tyranny.' Vikas Swarup, author of Slumdog Millionaire

Spotlight:

The Woman Who Wasn't There

by Robin Gaby Fisher and Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr.

It was a tale of loss and recovery, of courage and sorrow, of horror and inspiration. Tania Head's astonishing account of her experience on September 11, 2001 - from crawling through the carnage and chaos to escaping the seventy-eighth-floor sky lobby of the burning south tower to losing her fiance in the collapsed north tower - transformed her into one of the great victims and heroes of that tragic day.
Tania told her story to schools, politicians, newspapers and to local support groups and women's organisations, eventually becoming a symbol of survival.
Tania selflessly took on the responsibility of giving a voice and a direction to the burgeoning World Trade Center Survivors' Network, helping save the 'Survivor Stairway' and leading tours at Ground Zero, including taking then-governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and former mayor Giuliani on the inaugural tour of the WTC site. She even used her own assets to fund charitable events to help survivors heal.
Tania Head represented the most intense hope to have broken into their lives since that crystal clear September morning in 2001. If Tania could transcend the ruin that the terrorist attack had brought upon her, how could they not step out of their own torment?
But there was a problem that would emerge, much later, with Tania's story. None of it was true.
Told with the unique insider perspective and authority of Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr., a filmmaker shooting a documentary on the efforts of the Survivors' Network, and previously one of Tania's closest friends,The Woman Who Wasn't There is the story of one of the most audacious and bewildering quests for acclaim in recent memory-one that poses fascinating questions about the essence of morality and the human need for connection at any cost.
I used to think I was a filmmaker first and getting the story was only thing that mattered. And I then met Tania Head and everything changed. - Angelo J. Guglielmo, Jr.

Spotlight:

Messy

by Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks

Now that Brooke Berlin's caught a taste of fame and her movie star father's attention, she wants to launch a blog that will position her as the ultimate Hollywood insider. But between schoolwork, party-planning committee meetings, and spa treatments, she hardly has the time to write it herself ...
Enter Max McCormack, an aspiring author with a terrible after-school job pushing faux meat on the macrobiotic masses of La-La Land. Max reluctantly agrees to play Brooke's ghost-blogger for an impressive salary, and the site takes off, but how long can their lie last? In person, Brooke can't live up to the intellectual wit of openbrooke.com, and Max soon begins to resent hiding her genius behind a bandage-dress-wearing blonde. Can the girls work together to stay on top, or will the truth come out and ruin everything they've built?

Spotlight:

My Hundred Lovers

by Susan Johnson

'Confronting the inevitable desiccation of her ageing body, a woman reflects on her life as an erotic adventurer, and through these vivid stories of the flesh, a mind and a soul emerge in full. Susan Johnson is a writer in her prime, and her most enduring love affair is with language itself. ' Geraldine Brooks
That afternoon in the small bedroom the light was blue. The curtains were cream and blew softly in the wind. There was a cry, far off, almost out of earshot. There was a man in my bed and I did not know how he got there.
A woman, on the eve of her fiftieth birthday, reflects on one hundred moments from a lifetime's sensual adventures. After the love, hatred and despair are done with, the great and trivial acts of her bodily life reveal an imperfect, yet whole self. By turns humorous, sharp, haunting and wise, this is an original and exhilarating novel from one of Australia's premier writers.
Lyrical and exquisite, My Hundred Lovers captures the sheer wonder of life, desire and love.

Spotlight:

And Then Life Happens

by Auma Obama

While her younger brother Barack grew up in the U.S. and Indonesia, Auma Obama's childhood played out at the other end of the world in a remote village in Kenya, the birthplace of the siblings' shared father. Barack and Auma met for the first time in the 1980s, and they built a lasting relationship which lead to travels together in Kenya, research into their family history and finally Auma's support for her brother's political career and eventual bid for the U.S. presidency.
Auma spent sixteen years studying and living in Germany, moved to England for love, and gave birth to a daughter there. The tension between her original and chosen worlds and cultures was a constant challenge, and eventually Auma returned to Africa and worked to support young men and women in shaping their futures.
In this candid and emotional memoir, Auma shares her own story as well as recollections of and experiences with her famous brother, who says about their first encounter: 'I hugged her, we looked at each other, and laughed. I knew right then that I loved her.'

Spotlight:

Rainbow Street Pets

by Wendy Orr

What would you do if you lost a pet? Where would you go if you found one? At the Rainbow Street Shelter a cockatoo will greet you and a little round dog will make you welcome. Meet Bear the border collie, Buster the marmalade cat, and Bessy the goat, as well as rabbits and guinea pigs and mice. There's even a pony called Pebbles, and the children who become the animals' friends. But where does a lion cub fit in?