Booktopia Buzz: Staff favourites, award winners and The Great Book Binge

Pre-Order Barbara Kingsolver, Stephen Hawking, Haruki Murakami and more [Booktopia Buzz] Dear {NAME}, A few weeks ago, I went into a big meeting of Booktopia staff and tried to communicate just how good Trent Dalton’s [Boy Swallows Universe]( is. I told them it was like Steve Toltz’s [A Fraction of the Whole]( crossed with Craig Silvey’s [Jasper Jones]( crossed with a rainbow paddle pop, crossed with a nuclear explosion. I’ve since then composed a slightly more elegant summary of my feelings for this novel in a review you can [read here](. I’m very happy to introduce it to you as our book of the month. [The Great Book Binge]( has been center stage this May at Booktopia - it offers readers a further 10% off our already discounted prices to buy a full series in one go. Below I’ve highlighted some selections from our Literary Fiction page. A bookshelf is made infinitely better with a matching set of [Elena Ferrante]( or [Edward St Aubyn]( on top. Read on for these plus all our usual buzz goodness - noteworthy new books from Australia and around the world, books that have won awards, books that have taken to the screen, books to provoke and books to celebrate, and some books coming later this year that you definitely need to know about. Happy reading! Ben Hunter Booktopia team Book of the Month [Boy Swallows Universe]( [by Trent Dalton]( [Boy Swallows Universe]( Review by Ben Hunter In Boy Swallows Universe, Walkley-winning journalist Trent Dalton bends his own horrific story of a chaotic youth in the heroin-drenched suburbs that Brisbane forgot into a bright and brilliant phantasmagoria – an instant classic of Australian storytelling. Eli Bell has unfortunate circumstances. His brother is mute, his dad is drunk, his mum is headed for jail, his step-dad deals heroin, his babysitter is a convicted murderer and his only friend seems to be his pen pal… [Read the Full Review](. [RRP $32.99]( [$24.50]( [Save 26%]( Recent Award Winners [The Yellow House]( [by Emily O'Grady]( [The Yellow House]( Ten-year-old Cub lives with her parents, older brother Cassie, and twin brother Wally on a lonely property bordering an abandoned cattle farm and knackery. Their lives are shadowed by the infamous actions of her Granddad Les in his yellow weatherboard house, just over the fence... [RRP $29.99]( [$22.50]( [Save 25%]( [Less]( [by Andrew Sean Greer]( [Less]( Less is the story of a 49-year-old writer, Arthur Less, who learns that his former boyfriend is about to get married. To avoid the wedding and heartbreak, he decides to embark on a trip around the world, accepting invitations to a series of half-baked lectures and literary events. From... [RRP $19.99]( [$16.75]( [Save 16%]( [Tracker]( [by Alexis Wright]( [Tracker]( Winner of the 2018 Stella Prize. Alexis Wright returns to non-fiction in her new book, a collective memoir of the charismatic Aboriginal leader, political thinker and entrepreneur Tracker Tilmouth, who died in Darwin in 2015 at the age of 62. Taken from his family as a child and brought up in... [RRP $39.95]( [$30.75]( [Save 23%]( [See What I Have Done]( [by Sarah Schmidt]( [See What I Have Done]( A deeply atmospheric novel by a startling new Aussie talent; an incredibly unique look inside the mind of Lizzie Borden, famously accused of murdering her father and stepmother in 1892. 'He was still bleeding. I yelled, "Someone's killed Father." I breathed in kerosene air, licked the thickness from... [RRP $19.99]( [$16.75]( [Save 16%]( [More in Book News]( [Purchase any book from the Good Reading Must Reads Range and receive a FREE copy of Good Reading magazine!]( New and Coming Soon in Fiction [My Year of Rest and Relaxation]( [Bluebottle]( [Swan Song]( [The Parentations]( [Where the Line Bleeds]( [Saint Antony in His Desert]( [The Female Persuasion]( [Mr Peacock's Possessions]( [More Fiction New Releases]( [Visit the Booktopian for the latest news and reviews]( New in Non-Fiction [The Year Everything Changed: 2001 - Signed Copies Available!]( [by Phillipa McGuinness]( [The Year Everything Changed: 2001]( 2001. It's not over yet. On New Year’s Eve 2001, with her husband by her side, Phillipa McGuinness buried her son. They stood with a young priest in Chua Chu Kang Cemetery and watched a small coffin go into the ground. Later that night, shattered, they sat looking out at the hundreds of... [RRP $34.99]( [$24.95]( [Save 29%]( [Calypso]( [by David Sedaris .]( [Calypso]( The long-awaited new collection of stories from David Sedaris, America's favourite humourist. If you've ever laughed your way through David Sedaris's cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you're getting with Calypso. You'd be wrong. When he buys a beach house on the... [RRP $29.99]( [$23.95]( [Save 20%]( [Welcome to Country]( [The Little Virtues]( [Wild Sea]( [Waiting for Elijah]( [More in Non-Fiction]( [Tune in to Booktopia's podcast]( Short Fiction [Last Stories]( [by William Trevor]( [Last Stories]( The last collection of short stories by the master storyteller William Trevor. For more than half a century William Trevor was widely regarded as the greatest writer of short stories in the English language. In this final collection of ten exquisite stories, Trevor illuminates the lives of ordinary... [RRP $29.99]( [$23.95]( [Save 20%]( [Ayiti]( [by Roxane Gay]( [Ayiti]( From New York Times bestselling powerhouse Roxane Gay, Ayiti is a powerful collection exploring the Haitian diaspora experience. In Ayiti, a married couple seeking boat passage to America prepares to leave their homeland. A young woman procures a voodoo love potion to ensnare a childhood... [RRP $29.99]( [$23.95]( [Save 20%]( [More in Short Fiction]( Books on Screen [On Chesil Beach]( [by Ian McEwan]( [On Chesil Beach]( Ian McEwan's celebrated novel, now an unmissable film starring Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, Brooklyn). It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears... [RRP $19.99]( [$16.75]( [Save 16%]( [Breath]( [by Tim Winton]( [Breath]( When paramedic Bruce Pike is called out to deal with another teenage adventure gone wrong, he knows better than his colleague, better than the kid's parents, what happened and how. Thirty years before, that dead boy could have been him. A relentlessly gripping and deeply moving novel about the... [RRP $22.99]( [$19.25]( [Save 16%]( [The Handmaid's Tale]( [by Margaret Atwood]( [The Handmaid's Tale]( A dark, enduring vision of the future - now a major new TV series. The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither... [RRP $19.99]( [$16.75]( [Save 16%]( [Alias Grace]( [by Margaret Atwood]( [Alias Grace]( By the author of The Handmaid's Tale. Soon to be a major Netflix series. Sometimes I whisper it over to myself: Murderess. Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt along the floor.' Grace Marks. Female fiend? Femme fatale? Or weak and unwilling victim? Around the true story of one of the most... [RRP $19.99]( [$16.75]( [Save 16%]( [More Film & TV Tie-Ins]( [Over 128,000 titles ready to ship. Don't delay, order today!]( New From Rachel Cusk [Kudos]( [by Rachel Cusk]( [Kudos]( The award-winning and critically acclaimed author of Outline and Transit, completes the transcendent literary trilogy with Kudos. A woman writer visits a Europe in flux, where questions of personal and political identity are rising to the surface and the trauma of change is opening up new possibilities of loss and renewal. Within the rituals of literary culture, Faye finds the human story in disarray amid differing attitudes toward the public enactment of the creative persona, and she begins to identify among the people she meets a tension between... [RRP $29.99]( [$23.95]( [Save 20%]( Read the Trilogy [Outline]( [by Rachel Cusk]( [Outline]( A novel about writing and talking, self-effacement and self-expression, about the desire to create and the human art of self-portraiture in which that desire finds its universal form. A woman arrives in Athens in the height of the summer to teach a writing course. Once there, she becomes the audience... [RRP $19.99]( [$15.95]( [Save 20%]( [Transit]( [by Rachel Cusk]( [Transit]( New paperback edition of the novel from the dazzlingly talented author of the Baileys-shortlisted Outline. In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions – personal, moral, artistic, practical... [RRP $19.99]( [$15.95]( [Save 20%]( [More by Rachel Cusk]( [Save 25% on our Top 100 Bestsellers each and every week]( Ongoing Bestsellers [Warlight]( [by Michael Ondaatje]( [Warlight]( A mesmerising new novel from the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of The English Patient. In a narrative as mysterious as memory itself – at once both shadowed and luminous – Warlight is a vivid, thrilling novel of violence and love, intrigue and desire. It is 1945, and London is still... [RRP $29.99]( [$22.50]( [Save 25%]( [The Shepherd's Hut]( [by Tim Winton]( [The Shepherd's Hut]( A rifle-shot of a novel – crisp, fast, shocking – The Shepherd’s Hut is an urgent masterpiece about solitude, unlikely friendship, and the raw business of survival. Jaxie dreads going home. His mum’s dead. The old man bashes him without mercy, and he wishes he was an orphan. But no one’s ever told... [RRP $39.99]( [$29.95]( [Save 25%]( [A Gentleman in Moscow]( [by Amor Towles]( [A Gentleman in Moscow]( On 21 June 1922 Count Alexander Rostov – recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt – is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. But instead of being taken to his usual... [RRP $19.99]( [$14.95]( [Save 25%]( [Home Fire]( [by Kamila Shamsie]( [Home Fire]( Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother's death, she is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London - or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in... [RRP $19.99]( [$15.95]( [Save 20%]( [More in Bestselling Fiction]( [Browse the Great Book Binge Showcase]( The Great Book Binge - Patrick Melrose [Never Mind]( [Bad News]( [Some Hope]( [Mother's Milk]( [Browse the Patrick Melrose Series]( The Great Book Binge - The Neapolitan Novels [My Brilliant Friend]( [The Story of a New Name]( [Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay]( [The Story of the Lost Child]( [Browse the Neapolitan Series]( [Must have Hot Pre-Orders - Shop now!]( Hot Pre-Orders [Killing Commendatore]( [Superior Spectre]( [Brief Answers to the Big Questions]( [Transcription]( [Unsheltered]( [Clock Dance]( [Man Out of Time]( [Melmoth]( [More in Hot Pre-Orders]( [Vote for Booktopia in the 2018 ORIAS People's Choice Awards]( Please Note: Prices displayed in this newsletter are correct at time of publication. Website prices are subject to change at short notice. In these circumstances, the price listed in the newsletter may not be correct. In the event that a price conflict between the newsletter and website does occur, website prices will override prices listed in the newsletter. [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Blog]( [Google+]( [Instagram]( [Youtube]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} The sender is Booktopia, Unit E1, 3-29 Birnie Avenue, Lidcombe NSW 2141 [SIGN UP]( | [CONTACT US]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Prices displayed are correct at the time of sending. Website prices are subject to change at short notice. In these circumstances, the prices listed may not be correct. In the event that a price conflict between this email and the website does occur, website prices will override prices in this email.