Booktopia Buzz: The books we're reading and loving this month.

Win a $1000 Book Pack. Simply order from the Mother’s Day Gift Guide to go into the draw. To view this email as a web page, go [here.]( [Visit our online store]( Dear {NAME}, This month we're proud to celebrate the 2017 Stella Prize-winner Heather Rose and her soaring achievement, [The Museum of Modern Love](. The Stella Prize champions Australia’s best female talent, and the prize announcement comes in a month full of fantastic new writing by women. Firstly, have a read of the captivating [The River Sings]( by Sandra Leigh Price, and [A Hundred Small Lessons]( by Ashley Hay. And don’t forget [Elena Ferrante]( and [Anita Shreve]( who also present us with ravishing and wonderfully written novels. We also have staff reviews for Robert Dessiax, who in his latest work, [The Pleasures of Leisure,]( offers a wonderful and witty examination of leisure. Plus, Hanif Kureishi returns with [The Nothing]( another polarising tale sure to get people talking. As the days get colder and shorter, there'll be no shortage of great books to devour, and no shortage of gifts to choose from with Mother's Day only three Sundays away. Happy reading! Kind Regards, Ben Hunter Booktopia [Click here to view our top titles for Mother's Day!]( [2017 STELLA PRIZE WINNER] [The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose]( by Ben Hunter In a list dominated by powerful works of non-fiction, Heather Rose has taken out the 2017 Stella Prize for her wonderfully peculiar novel, The Museum of Modern Love. Rose uses her fiction to look at the life-threatening struggle of artist Marina Abramovic, and her gruelling 75-day performance piece, The Artist is Present, which took the art world by storm. This book is possibly as strange and brilliant as the artwork itself. Rose traces her narrative against the unravelling world of Arky Levin - a man set adrift between his music, his family and himself - and invests deeply in the lives of each of her characters - school teachers, writers, photographers, butchers, and the almost mythical artist herself. No stone is left unturned in this relentless interrogation of art's purpose in our lives. A moving book that invites the reader to revel and re-evaluate. [BLOG: Heather Rose explains what it's like when a character in your book gives you feedback.]( RRP: $27.99 $20.95 Save 25% [More]( [Buy now]( [Buy Ebook]( [Australian Fiction] [The River Sings by Sandra Leigh Price]( by Ben Hunter The River Sings is a novel of a mother and daughter living in a place between magic and reality, amid a clash of Romany tradition and imperial England. The abandoned Eglantine hears her mother's voice calling to her in the flow of the Thames, while her father, ensnared with a Dickensian set of great expectations, teaches her the way of the pickpocket, a trade that sees him transported to the colony of New South Wales. In a dual narrative, her mother will lose everything to a man who shrugs off the ways of her family in search of the shine of silver and gold. Readers will be captivated by the mysteries of this novel, where birth and death, love and destruction, become entwined. RRP: $32.99 $25.50 Save 23% [More]( [Click here for more details or to order]( [MOTHERS DAY STAFF PICKS] [My Brilliant Friend - Order Now For Your Chance To Win! The Neapolitan Novels: Book 1 by Elena Ferrante]( [My Brilliant Friend : The Neapolitan Novels : Book 1 - Elena Ferrante]( My friendship with Lila began the day we decided to go up the dark stairs that led, step after step, flight after flight, to the door of Don Achille's apartment... This title is eligible for the [Mother's Day]( Book Pack Prize! RRP: $22.99 $17.95 Save 22% [More]( [Buy now]( [Buy Ebook]( [The Stars are Fire - Pre-Order For Your Chance To Win! by Anita Shreve]( [The Stars are Fire - Anita Shreve]( The stunning new novel from the author of The Pilot's Wife, Rescue, and The Loves of Stella Bain. 1947. After a summer-long drought, fires are racing along... This title is eligible for the [Mother's Day]( Book Pack Prize! RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [A Hundred Small Lessons Order Now For Your Chance To Win! by Ashley Hay]( [A Hundred Small Lessons - Ashley Hay]( Luminous and deeply affecting, A Hundred Small Lessons is about the many small decisions - the invisible moments - that come to make a life. The intertwined... This title is eligible for the [Mother's Day]( Book Pack Prize! RRP: $32.99 $25.50 Save 23% [More]( [Buy now]( [Buy Ebook]( [Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout]( [Anything Is Possible - Elizabeth Strout]( An unforgettable cast of small-town characters copes with love and loss in this new work of fiction by #1 bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout. Recalling Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything is Possible explores... RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [Browse the Mother's Day Gift Guide]( [Click here for more details or to order]( [Management] [The Nothing by Hanif Kureishi]( by John Purcell In the eighties, Hanif Kureishi rocked my middle class suburban teenage brain with two films, My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. Kureishi was exploring race, sexuality, violence, gender, and religion in a contemporary urban setting using elements which shocked audiences (i.e., me) - casual violence, graphic sex, dark humour, unconventional romance, extreme views and conflict. Later, Kureishi would write the screenplay for a film, The Mother , which explored another taboo - the sexual life of a woman over fifty. An award-winning novelist since his debut, The Buddha of Suburbia, Kureishi has continually pushed boundaries - most notably the boundary between fact and fiction. He has come in for criticism from friends and family members for his revelatory style. His novel, Intimacy, released in the middle of the book club craze, shocked women and angered men in its depiction of 'the way men really think'. Now Kureishi gives us a new novel, The Nothing, told from the point of view of Waldo - a successful filmmaker who is in his diseased, near bedridden, declining years. It opens with us (the reader and Waldo) listening to sounds coming from the next room which might or might not be his wife having sex with his friend. Foul, grotesque, funny, shocking and bizarre, The Nothing is a comic riff by a writer who is, along with many of us, despairing at the current and very rapid rate of cultural decline. Like nearly all of Hanif Kureishi's work, The Nothing will polarise opinion. But I think that's the point. RRP: $24.99 $19.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [Closing Down by Sally Abbott]( [Closing Down - Sally Abbott]( Conjuring a dark future for Australia, Closing Down gives us a glimpse into a world fractured by a financial crisis and the effects of global climate change. The inaugural winner of The Richell Prize for Emerging Writers. No matter how strange, difficult and absurd the... RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [House of Names - Pre-Order For Your Chance To Win! by Colm Toibin]( [House of Names - Colm Toibin]( From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra - spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful... This title is eligible for the [Mother's Day]( Book Pack Prize! RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [New Boy: Hogarth Shakespeare by Tracy Chevalier]( [New Boy (Hogarth Shakespeare) : Hogarth Shakespeare - Tracy Chevalier]( 'O felt her presence behind him like a fire at his back.' Arriving at his fourth school in six years, diplomat's son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day - so he's lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can't stand... RRP: $35.00 $26.40 Save 25% [More]( [Buy now]( [Gravity Well by Melanie Joosten]( [Gravity Well - Melanie Joosten]( Lotte is an astronomer who spends her nights peering into deep space rather than looking too closely at herself. When she returns to her hometown after years in South America, reeling from a devastating diagnosis, she finds that much has changed. Lotte's father... RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [More in Modern & Contemporary Fiction]( [Click here to view our Clearance Sale titles]( [Management] [The Pleasures of Leisure by Robert Dessaix]( by Ben Hunter Are you, like me, genuinely exhausted by life? Do the events we work towards - weekend escapes, family reunions, the away game on Saturday - leave you even more tired than when you left the office in the first place? We're desperate to fill our time with these activities, but seldom do we stop and ask what we gain, if anything, from them. The much celebrated cultural thinker and essayist, Robert Dessiax, has set his sights on the lost art of leisure; lost in plain sight though it may be. Taking a casual stroll from the Franklin to the Ganges, and across thousands of years of Western and Eastern thought, he teases apart leisurely pursuits in all their incarnations, and imbues this work with liberal helpings of his well-seasoned wit. The result is a particularly thoughtful book that is something of a holiday in itself. RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, A Father, A Cult by Rebecca Scott]( [In the Days of Rain : A Daughter; A Father; A Cult - Rebecca Stott]( 'At university when I made new friends and confidantes, I couldn't explain how I'd become a teenage mother, or shoplifted books for years, or why I was afraid of the dark and had a compulsion to rescue people, without explaining about the Brethren or the God... RRP: $27.99 $21.95 Save 22% [More]( [Buy now]( [Understory: A Life with Trees by Inga Simpson]( [Understory : A Life With Trees - Inga Simpson]( "The understorey is where I live, alongside these plants and creatures. I tend the forest, stand at the foot of trees and look up, gather what has fallen." Each chapter of this absorbing memoir explores a particular species of tree, layering description, anecdote, and... RRP: $32.99 $25.50 Save 23% [More]( [Buy now]( [More in Non-Fiction]( [Visit The Booktopian for the latest news and reviews]( [Hot Pre-Orders] [Vogel Winner 2017 Announced April 2017]( [Vogel Winner 2017 - Vogel Winner]( The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award is Australia's richest and most prestigious award for an unpublished manuscript. It has launched the careers of some of its most successful writers, including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears and more... RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [Theft by Finding Diaries: Volume 1 by David Sedaris]( [Theft by Finding : Diaries: Volume One - David Sedaris]( The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can't. Won't people turn away if they know the real me? You wonder. The me that hates my own child, that put my perfectly healthy dog to sleep? The me who thinks, deep down... RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [The Last Man in Europe by Dennis Glover]( [The Last Man in Europe : A Novel - Dennis Glover]( Forty-three years old and suffering from the tuberculosis that within three winters will take his life, Orwell comes to see the book as his legacy - the culmination of a career spent fighting to preserve the freedoms which the wars and upheavals of the... RRP: $29.99 $23.95 Save 20% [More]( [Buy now]( [The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy]( [The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Arundhati Roy]( A richly moving new novel - the first since the author's Booker-Prize winning, internationally celebrated debut, The God of Small Things, went on to become a beloved best seller and enduring classic. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us... RRP: $49.99 $33.75 Save 32% [More]( [Buy now]( [More Hot Pre-Orders]( [Click here for more details or to order]( [Click here to view our Signed Copies]( 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. 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