AUSTRALIAN
AUSTRALIAN
THE AUSTRALIAN WARS
Rachel Perkins, Stephen Gapps, Mina Murray, Henry Reynolds
( eds.)
HB $ 59.99 due nov 4
This is the first book to tell the story of the continental sweep of massacres, guerrilla warfare, resistance and the contests of firearms and traditional Aboriginal weaponry as Indigenous nations resisted colonial occupation of their lands, territory by territory. Black and white writers tell the stories of these battles across three crucial time periods, noting the lands that were unconquered, as well as the role of disease, weapons and tactics, and the story of women on the frontier.
LOOKING FROM THE NORTH
Henry Reynolds
PB $ 34.99
In Looking From the North, acclaimed historian Henry Reynolds explores the stories of the European, Chinese, Japanese and Pacific Islander people who were vital to the settlement of the north. Along with the experience of First Nations peoples, from employment on stations and as native police, to the land rights and homelands movements. Reynolds shows how the colonisation of the north was a very different venture to settlement in the south, and argues that it provides profoundly important lessons for the world we live in today.
SHUTTER CITY
Robyn Annear
PB $ 49.99
Suppose that you could travel back in time to a Melbourne city street from 150 years ago or even longer. What might meet your eye that has eluded history’ s gaze? Shutter City presents city street views spanning the hurly-burly decades of the 1850s to 1870s, between the gold rushes and Marvellous Melbourne. Among the sightings there are barbers’ poles, neighbourhood dogs( and a cat), and ladders, lots of ladders. Let Shutter City be your time-machine and Robyn Annear your guide: her lively and insightful commentary weaves the street views and their‘ sparks’ into a vivid narrative of a near-forgotten Melbourne and the photographers who captured it.
due nov 11
THE MUSHROOM TAPES
Helen Garner, Chloe Hooper, Sarah Krasnostein
PB $ 36.99
The essential analysis of the‘ mushroom murder’ trial that gripped the world, from three award-winning authors – this is the book that will outlast the news cycle. The Mushroom Tapes is a true crime book like no other, an unputdownable record of the writers’ private conversations about their impressions from inside the courtroom. They explore the gap between the certainties of the law and the messiness of reality, their own ambivalence about the true crime genre, and all that remains unknowable about Erin Patterson.
due nov 11
FIRST NATIONS WRITING
Jeanine Leane( ed.), Dan Bourchier( ed.)
PB $ 34.99
First Nations Writing captures the powerful Aboriginal and Torres Strait writers who have shaped the national conversation across peoples, place and time. It showcases the richness of First Nations writing and ideas that reflect on the past, even as it imagines a future built on respect, fairness and truth. It includes works by poets, public intellectuals, writers, philosophers, critics and social commentators that altogether show what it is to be an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in Australia, then and now.
SNAKE TALK Tyson Yunkaporta, Megan Kelleher
PB $ 36.99
The Serpent in Aboriginal stories is both creator and destroyer, dwelling between physical and spiritual worlds, between story and history, weaving across earth and sky. The Great Dividing Range is the body of the Serpent, but he does not separate us. He brings us together. What if the stories of the Basilisk, Wyvern, Naga, Quetzalcoatl and many other mythic Serpents also contain the knowledge we need in this moment of crisis? This exhilarating new book, like Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story, shines an Indigenous light on contemporary society. Snake Talk invites us to see the world through the eye of the Serpent.
shop online at hillofcontentbookshop. com or hillofcontentbalmain. com. au Summer Reading Guide 2025 | 5