October New Releases

Could you marry a man you’ve never met? Three Korean women in 1918 make a life-changing journey to Hawaii, where they will marry, having seen only photographs of their intended husbands.

Different fates await each of these women. Hongju, who dreams of a marriage of ‘natural love’, meets a man who looks twenty years older than his photograph; Songhwa, who wants to escape from her life of ridicule as the granddaughter of a shaman, meets a lazy drunkard. And then there’s Willow, whose 26-year-old groom, Taewan, looks just like his image …

Real life doesn’t always resemble a picture, but there’s no going back. And while things don’t turn out quite as they’d hoped, even for Willow, they do find something that makes their journey worthwhile — each other.

‘Are you going into town today?’ she says, which annoys me because it’s something she says all the time, having forgotten she said it before, and I say, ‘Jesus, Mum, not this again,’ and she says, ‘What again?’ and I say, ‘Town is shut down,’ and while she can see I am upset and wants not to upset me like this, she is also wounded by my tone, and I am ashamed then and can only look at my plate, and I decide not to bring up what I intended to bring up, about the past, and about my need for her to apologise for it.

Gavin is spending the quarantine in a small flat in south Dublin with his eighty-year-old mother, whose mind is slowly slipping away. He has lived most of his adult life abroad and has returned home to care for her and to write a novel. But he finds that all he can write about is her.

Moving through a sequence of remembered rooms — the ‘cells’ — Gavin unspools an intimate story of his upbringing and early adulthood: feeling out of place in the insular suburb in which he grew up, the homophobic bullying he suffered at school, his brother’s mental illness and drug addiction, his father’s sudden death, his own devastating diagnosis, his struggles and triumphs as a writer, and above all, always, his relationship with his mother. Her brightness shines a light over his childhood, but her betrayal of his teenage self leads to years of resentment and disconnection. Now, he must find a way to reconcile with her, before it is too late.

Written with unusual frankness and urgency, Cells is at once an uncovering of filial love and its limits, and a coming to terms with separation and loss.

A long-overdue exposé of the astonishing yet shadowy power wielded by the world’s largest law firms.

Though not a household name, Jones Day is well known in the halls of power, and serves as a powerful encapsulation of the changes that have swept the legal profession in recent decades. Founded in the US in 1893, it has become one of the world’s largest law firms, a global juggernaut with deep ties to corporate interests and conservative politics.

A key player in the legal battles surrounding the Trump administration, Jones Day has also for decades represented Big Tobacco, defended opioid manufacturers, and worked tirelessly to minimise the sexual-abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. Like many of its peers, it has fought time and again for those who want nothing more than to act without constraint or scrutiny — including the Russian oligarchs as they have sought to expand internationally.

In this gripping and revealing new work of narrative nonfiction, New York Times Business Investigations Editor and bestselling author David Enrich at last tells the story of ‘Big Law’ and the nearly unchecked influence these firms wield to shield the wealthy and powerful — and bury their secrets.

A startling investigation of how some of Australia’s best-known companies have abused their power to systematically underpay their workers in recent years.

Whether it’s at McDonald’s, Coles, 7-Eleven, Woolworths, the major banks, high-end restaurants, or on farms, wage theft has become endemic. Billions of dollars have been unlawfully taken from workers at countless businesses, large and small.

Hard Labour is an examination of why this has occurred and what it says about inequality and power in twenty-first century Australia. It tells the stories of individual workers, temporary migrants, and those without influence and connections. It also describes how many businesses — whether owned by private equity or wealthy families, or operating through tax havens or on the stock exchange — have structured themselves to avoid paying minimum wages.

Drawing on years of extensive research, economic data, and hundreds of interviews, Ben Schneiders puts the issue of wage theft in a broader context to describe how the loss of worker power in Australia has led to rising inequality and what this means for our democracy. Hard Labour examines some of the shifts of power in Australian history between capital and labour — from the living-wage Harvester decision of 1907 to the Accord of the 1980s, the rise of neoliberalism, and the continuing decline of the union movement.

Hard Labour shows the scale of the wage-theft problem, and what needs to be done to change what is, in effect, a massive rip-off of ordinary workers.

New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti provides an inside look at the complicated, co-dependent, and at-times rocky relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, which has shaped Democratic politics over the past 16 years.

Delving deeper than the bromance narrative that’s held the public eye, The Long Alliance examines the past, present, and future of this historic partnership — its twists and turns, ruptures and reunions, and the pivotal moment in each man’s legacy at which we’ve arrived.

Obama needed Biden’s experience to help him win in 2008, and he relied on him heavily during his first years as president. But their relationship soured over policy disagreements and Biden’s blundering approach to Congress and voters. Then Obama’s decision to support Hillary Clinton’s nomination in 2015 created a rift that lasted for years. Now, in an ironic twist, President Biden is in the position to restore Obama’s legacy — one that Donald Trump spent years trying to dismantle — and to implement a progressive agenda that the former president could only have dreamed of.

The real tale of this relationship is significantly more complex, dramatic, and consequential than is generally believed. The original mismatch between the know-it-all worshipper of legislative procedure and the hot-shot political Messiah moulded not just four different presidential campaigns and two different political parties, but also wars, a devastating near-depression, the lives of millions of immigrants, and movements for social equality. Now their relationship is shaping a second presidential administration, and the future of America.

An enchanting collection of annotated historical images and contemporary photographs, revealing the change and development that Melbourne has experienced over the years.

In 1835, as he walked the sacred grounds of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nations, John Batman wrote in his diary, ‘This will be the place for a village.’ That small village rapidly grew into the vibrant city of Melbourne.

Historical photographs are a window to the past — a time capsule that allows us to walk in the footsteps of our predecessors. Now, this collection enables us to imagine strolling down Bourke Street in 1875, or catching a Collins Street tram in 1910, or walking through the city’s inner suburbs many years ago. As well, a series of then-and-now photographs reveals a striking contrast between the Melbourne of yesteryear and the city we are familiar with today.

Adapted from the popular ‘Old Vintage Melbourne’ Instagram account, this book invites you to reminisce about and cherish the important heritage of the city of Melbourne. Turn back the clock and immerse yourself in these captivating chronicles of an incredibly diverse, unique city.