Staff Favourites > Mel M's Book Talkers
If you enjoy literary fiction with a gothic and/or humorous sensibility - and a bit of a feminist consciouness - take heed of Mel M's suggestions!
Trust: Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction by Hernán Diaz
22.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
"Buzzy and enthralling ...A glorious novel about empires and erasures, husbands and wives, staggering fortunes and unspeakable misery...Fun as hell to read." --Oprah Daily"A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City's elite in the roaring '20s and Great Depression."--Vanity Fair"A riveting ...Show more
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
32.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
From the Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure - an eerie and erotic historical mystery about desire, memory and madness. In 1951, still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit succumbed to a mass poisoning. The poison induce ...Show more
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
24.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
FROM THE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GOLDFINCH Truly deserving of the accolade Modern Classic, Donna Tartt's bestseller The Secret History is a remarkable achievement - both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. 'What we did was terrible, but still I don't think any of us were ...Show more
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
24.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 'A classic, but with contemporary urgency thumping through it.' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond A woman invites a famed artist to the remote coastal landscape where she lives. Drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision may penetrate the mystery at the cent ...Show more
Strangers to Ourselves: Stories of Unsettled Minds by Rachel Aviv
35.00 AUD
Category: Non-Fiction
We place a great deal of trust in the medical system. But does a mental health diagnosis have the power to perpetuate, or even create, symptoms as its subject adapts to live within it? Is there another way of talking about their experience? And are patients being truly heard? In an attempt to answer t ...Show more
Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata
29.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
From the author of international bestseller Convenience Store Woman comes a collection of short fiction: weird, out of this world and like nothing you've read before. An engaged couple falls out over the husband's dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deepl ...Show more
The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning by Justin E. H. Smith
34.99 AUD
Category: Non-Fiction | Series: Princeton ANZ Paperbacks Ser.
An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it — and explains why they have died today.Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What Yo ...Show more
Hold Your Fire by Chloe Wilson
32.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
Dark and dangerous, brilliantly unsettling and chillingly funny, this extraordinary debut shows us what we usually deny - the uneasy truce we make with our ruthless desires and gothic fears, and how easily it can be broken. Prize-winning author Chloe Wilson's stories will pin you to the page. 'Chilling ...Show more
The Left Hand of Darkness: A groundbreaking feminist literary masterpiece by Ursula K. Le Guin
22.99 AUD
Category: Sci-fi & Fantasy | Series: S. F. Masterworks Ser.
A literary masterpiece from one of the great writers of our time: 'Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart' David Mitchell 'Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new' Two people, until recently strangers, find themselves on a long, tortuous ...Show more
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
19.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
One by one the boys begin to fall...In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the 'glorious war?. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young 'unknown soldier? experiencing th ...Show more
Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford
26.95 AUD
Category: Non-Fiction
The hidden costs of artificial intelligence--from natural resources and labor to privacy, equality, and freedom"This study argues that [artificial intelligence] is neither artificial nor particularly intelligent. . . . A fascinating history of the data on which machine-learning systems are trained."--Ne ...Show more
The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
32.99 AUD
Category: Fiction
Meet the happy couple. Luke and Celine, are in mutual unrequited love with each other, set to marry in a year's time. The best man, Archie, is meant to want to move up the corporate ladder and on from his love for Luke; yet he stands where he is, admiring the view. The bridesmaid, Phoebe, Celine's sis ...Show more