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Alex Miller's Lovesong wins the Age Book of the Year Award

Alex Miller's Lovesong wins the Age Book of the Year Award

Winners in the Age Book of the Year Awards were recently revealed and we are absolutely delighted to announce that Alex Miller's novel Lovesong won both the Fiction category and the overall Book of the Year!

Lovesong was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the QLD Premier's Literary Awards, and is one the 'Fifty Books You Can't Put Down' in this year's Get Reading! campaign.

Congratulations Alex!

More about the book

More about the award


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The Body in the Clouds

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What if you looked up and out of the corner of your eye you saw something so marvellous, so extraordinary, that it transformed time and space forever?

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Even the meekest of mice have their breaking point...This provocative thriller will have you asking: What would you do if you were pushed to the limit?

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Puzzled

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From teenage word-nerd to Australia's pre-eminent (and most fiendish) puzzle-maker, Puzzled is a memoir of a life lost in words as well as a revealing guide to the deepest mysteries of crossword and other word puzzles.

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Odo Hirsch: Three Favourites

by Odo Hirsch

Three warm, wise stories from one of Australia's master storytellers, about three children, their friends and families, and the way a bit of luck and a lot of determination can make everything turn out for the best.

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King Brown Country

by Russell Skelton

'Why don't you check out Papunya? It's the sniffing capital of Australia, it's a Bermuda triangle for taxpayer funds. Nobody in the NT government gives a rats. The council just tossed out World Vision. People are frightened to talk.'
For award-winning journalist Russell Skelton a five year journey of inquiry that coincided with one of the biggest shifts in indigenous policy in Australian history began on the day he received this email. Set with the backdrop of Papunya, a Northern Territory Aboriginal community whose history showed so much promise but whose dysfunction is now more prominent that its famous artwork, this is a book that had to be written.
Digging down into the core of indigenous issues today, Skelton exposes unmitigated misery, shocking levels of neglect and the devastating consequences of substance abuse. But above all, he reveals how systematic failure of indigenous policy betrayed a once secure community. He also introduces us to Alison Anderson, the woman whose presence has so dominated Papunya and the politics of the Northern Territory
King Brown Country is a powerful and shaming portrait of a community in crisis. Papunya remains an emblem for the failure of all Australians to come to terms with the continent's oldest inhabitants.


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Dogs At War

by Graeme Hughes

For the past ten years the Canterbury-Bankstown Rugby League Club (the Bulldogs) has reeled from one crisis to the next. Once known as the 'Family Club' and the 'Entertainers', the Bulldogs have since figured in many off-field dramas including rape allegations, executive reshuffles and rorting the salary cap.
Three families have dominated the club in the past thirty years - The Moores - whose patriach was long-time club boss Peter 'Bullfrog' Moore who ran the club with an iron fist and whose sons-in-law include several former players like recent coach Steve Folkes and previous coach Chris Anderson. The Mortimer brothers - Steve, Peter and Chris - and The Hughes Brothers - Graeme, Garry and Mark - nephews of Peter Moore.
How did the club disintegrate and lose its way?
Graeme Hughes autobiographically walks us through his first associations with the Bulldogs culminating in the great Grand Final win of 1980 in which he played. Then we follow the Bulldogs' fortunes through Graeme and his brothers' official roles with the club and Graeme as TV sportcaster. The death of Peter 'Bullfrog' Moore was a key turning point and soon bastardry, disintegration and the scandal cited above dominated the club.

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by Barbara Kingsolver

The Lacuna is the heartbreaking story of a man torn beween the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America.
Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, he is an inadvertent witness to their revolutionary talk.
Years later, Shepherd has become an international star - a novelist. His fame brings the unwanted attentions of the American authorities and Shepherd's attempts at anonymity are futile as he is drawn into a conflict of historic proportions.
A gripping story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people. The Lacuna is as deep and rich as the New World.

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by C J Box

They were running away from home, now they're running for their lives ...
If twelve-year-old Annie hadn't been angry with her mother, she would never have taken her younger brother William on a secret fishing trip deep into the North Idaho woods and they would never have witnessed the execution nor looked straight into the eyes of the four executioners.
Now they're running for their lives.
They can't go home: the killers know exactly who they are. And where they live.
They can't turn to the law: the killers are four respected Los Angeles policemen.
There's nowhere for William and Annie to hide. And no one they can trust.
Until they meet Jess Rawlins.
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The Reversal

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Longtime defense attorney Mickey Haller is recruited to change sides and prosecute the high-profile retrial of a brutal child murder.
After 24 years in prison, convicted killer Jason Jessup has been exonerated by new DNA evidence. Haller is convinced Jessup is guilty, and he takes the case on the condition that he gets to choose his investigator, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch.
Together, Bosch and Haller set off on a case fraught with political and personal danger. Opposing them is Jessup, now out on bail, a defense attorney who excels at manipulating the media, and a runaway eyewitness reluctant to testify after so many years. With the odds and the evidence against them, Bosch and Haller must nail a sadistic killer once and for all. If Bosch is sure of anything, it is that Jason Jessup plans to kill again.

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Ape House

by Sara Gruen

Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani, and Makena are no ordinary apes. These bonobos, like others of their species, are capable of reason and carrying on deep relationships - but, unlike most bonobos, they also know American Sign Language.
Isabel Duncan, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab, doesn't understand people, but animals she gets, especially the bonobos. Isabel feels more comfortable in their world than she's ever felt among humans . . . until she meets John Thigpen, a very married reporter who braves the ever-present animal rights protesters outside the lab to see what's really going on inside.
When an explosion tears apart the lab, severely injuring Isabel and 'liberating' the apes to an unknown destination, John's human interest piece turns into the story of a lifetime, one he'll risk his career and his marriage to follow. Then a reality TV show featuring the missing apes debuts under mysterious circumstances, and it immediately becomes the biggest-and most unlikely-phenomenon in the history of modern media. Millions of fans are glued to their screens watching the apes order greasy take-away food, play with their toys, have generous amounts of sex, and sign for Isabel to come get them. Now, to save her family of apes from this parody of human life, Isabel must connect with her own kind, including John, a green-haired vegan, and a retired porn star with her own agenda.
Ape House is a riveting, funny, compassionate, and, finally, deeply moving new novel in which a family of apes teaches us what it means to be human.
"Sara Gruen knows things-she knows them in her mind and in her heart. And, out of what she knows, she has created a true thriller that is addictive from its opening sentence. Devour it to find out what happens next, but also to learn remarkable and moving things about life on this planet. Very, very few novels can change the way you look at the world around you. This one does."-Robert Goolrick, author of A Reliable Wife

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Museum of Thieves

by Lian Tanner

'You're in the Museum now - and ANYTHING can happen!'
Goldie Roth lives in the city of Jewel, where impatience is a sin and boldness is a crime. But Goldie is both bold and impatient. She runs away to the mysterious Museum of Dunt, where she meets a boy named Toadspit and discovers dangerous secrets. A monstrous brizzlehound stalks the museum's corridors, and only a thief can find the way through its strange, shifting rooms.
Goldie and Toadspit have a talent for thieving. Which is just as well, because the treacherous Fugleman has his own plans for the museum, plans that threaten the lives of everyone Goldie loves. And it will take a very bold thief to stop him.
A thrilling tale of action and adventure.
"I loved it because it took me to a world of my own ... An amazing, captivating novel." - Ryan, 13
"The way Lian Tanner uses her imagination is awesome. The best thing was the way Lian used the word 'thief' and how she transformed the word and made it sound beautiful." - Paige, 13
"The mystery, the suspense, the action, all in one book - it just makes me want to keep reading and reading! It never gets boring and you just have to know what happens next." - Willis, 13

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Jack Fothergill worked on Melbourne's trams before he went to war and was killed on Pine Ridge on 25 April 1915. In Gallipoli, Michael McKernan tells Jack's story and that of his family, who never recovered from their grief. He also tells the stories of journalist Charles Bean, Chaplain Bill McKenzie, John Treloar and General Ian Hamilton, capturing the essence of what it was really like for the men who fought on the Gallipoli peninsula during that long campaign.
While saluting the bravery, determination and resourcefulness of the Anzacs, McKernan also tells of the failed leadership in London and on the Peninsula that caused great loss of life. He makes clear that 'the most dramatic moment in Australian history' was known to be unwinnable within fifteen hours of the first Anzacs going ashore.
There are few, if any, new issues to emerge from the story of Anzac, but Gallipoli puts the facts in a new context and brings to the fore the essential moments in the campaign. This intense account gives clarity to the story and is a reminder that loss of life in war is always personal, always tragic an always has consequences.

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The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king!
Denmark is in turmoil. The palace is seething with treachery, suspicion and intrigue. On a mission to avenge his father's murder, Prince Hamlet tries to claw free of the moral decay all around him. But in the ever-deepening nest of plots, of plays within plays, nothing is what it seems. Doubt and betrayal torment the Prince until he is propelled into a spiral of unstoppable violence.
In this sumptuous staging of Shakespeare's enigmatic play on the page, Nicki Greenberg has created an extraordinary visual feast that sweeps up all in its path as the drama intensifies both on stage and off.
An astounding work - unique, gripping and, as ever, tragic.