It is 1696. Louis XIV, absolute monarch in his sunset years, with his secret wife by his side, believes his grandson will succeed him and will continue the dynasty. As part of the spoils of war, he brings from Savoy, a child, a youthful bride for that grandson. In this bride the king gets more than he could ever have bargained for. She is enchanting, and he is bewitched. Has the king fallen madly in love with this Princess Marie-Adelade of Savoy? What exactly is the bond between these two?

At the court of Versailles, there is lavish magnificence including the vast gardens and the Hall of Mirrors. But it is also where dark, enchanting fairytales come to prominence. News of war is never far away. And tantalising beauty is undercut by threat. The tale is narrated in part by Sister Clare, a childhood friend of Marie-Adelade, who after losing the young man she loves to war and then the Princess to disease, becomes a nun. For Clare it is her devoted mission to tell the story of Marie-Adelade, mother of the child who will become Louis XV.

Crimson Velvet Heart is a visionary novel on Adelade's life both strange and enthralling where Carmel Bird's exquisite language and rich understanding of history and human nature capture both the spirit and the mystery of love and loss.

'This astounding novel speaks for devotion and wisdom even as it eviscerates the monstrous glory of 17th century France. Grounded in research, Carmel Bird's historical imagination is glitteringly bright.' Gregory Day

But this illusion of peace is ripped apart by the start of the state's historical gay-hate crime inquiry, and the reappearance of the Joneses, who waltz back into Kippen professing to be queer allies. Yet when one of that notorious dynasty is found dead at a local water tower, it is James who stands accused.

With an under-resourced sergeant and a tech-savvy podcaster on his heels, James refuses to trust in a police force that has proven its inadequacy with gay-hate crime. In order to clear his name and flush out which member of this remote community took justice into their own hands, he will need to expose every secret, including his own.

'Crime fiction at its most vital. A fearless reckoning with queer history and institutional failure. Dirt Trap lays bare the human cost of silence within the closed ranks of a rural Australian town and what it takes to break it. Can justice be found in a community that does not want it?' R. W. R. McDonald author of The Nancys

'Michael Burge's Dirt Trap is everything you love about classic rural noir but with diverse characters who better represent the complexity of Australian country towns. His compelling plot will have you racing to the finish and leave you wanting more. What a breath of fresh air!' Gabrielle Chan author of Rusted Off

James Brandt didn't look back when he got away from his rural hometown as a teenager. Now he has returned to Kippen for the first time in twenty years because his cousin Tony has been found dead under the local bridge.

The news that Tony has left him the entire family farm triggers James's journalistic curiosity and his anxiety both of which cropped up during his turbulent journey to adulthood. But it is the unexpected homophobic attack he survives that draws James into a hunt for the reasons one lonely Kippen farm boy in every generation kills himself.

Standing in the way is James's father, the town's recently retired top cop, who is not prepared to investigate crimes no-one reckons have taken place. James must use every newshound's trick he ever learned in order to uncover the brutal truth.

A coming-of-age story and crime thriller with a large and gentle heart.

'The parochial under-belly of rural Australia is laid bare in this raw and powerful story that delves into the emotional toll and tragic consequences of gay-hate crime.' Nicole Alexander, bestselling author of The Cedar Tree

'Clear-eyed and suspenseful, Tank Water exposes more than one taboo of Australian life away from the big cities. An unforgettable ride.' Nigel Featherstone, author of Bodies of Men

'Written in a matter-of-fact way, Mike's confrontational first novel made me think about life, death and sexuality in the country, because Burge has the rural lineage to make it real.' Margo Kingston, author and journalist

'Beautifully written narrative gripping to the last page.' Mary Moody, author and broadcaster

'It's time to move beyond a city perspective on rural gay Australians so often imbued with pity, condescension and silly stereotypes to hear our own voices on our own terms. Michael Burge is one of our most compelling, nuanced and enjoyable voices.' Rodney Croome AM, LGBTIQ equality advocate

The book begins with introductory words and framing by its 2025 editors, multiple award-winning and highly respected poets, authors and editors, Nam Le and Jill Jones. Both Jill and Nam enjoy the highest reputations in their literary vocations. Jill is one of the longest-standing Australian poets of enduring innovation and prodigiousness, with her New & Selected, Acrobat Music, published in 2023. Nam's 2008 short-story collection, The Boat, was seen to restore the genre to centrestage, garnering national and overseas attention. His debut poetry book, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem, won Book of the Year (2024) at the recent NSW Literary Awards, while also gathering a range of other commendations and award listings, including for the ALS Gold Medal.

Previous editors of this prestigious series have been Ellen van Neerven and Toby Fitch (2021); Jeanine Leane and Judith Beveridge (2022); Panda Wong and Gig Ryan (2023); and Kate Lilley and Shastra Deo (2024).

The Best of Australian Poems (BoAP) series is published by Australia's national poetry organisation, Australian Poetry, and features two different guest editors each year, to amplify the range of voices selected. It is funded by Creative Australia, Creative Victoria and individual patrons.

Jill Jones' latest book is Acrobat Music: New & Selected Poems (2023), short-listed for the 2024 John Bray Poetry Prize, long-listed for the 2024 ALS Gold Medal and commended in the 2023 Wesley Michel Wright Prize. In 2021 her book, Wild Curious Air, won the 2021 Wesley Michel Wright Prize, and in 2015 she won the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry for The Beautiful Anxiety. Her work is widely published in Australia and internationally. From 2008-2022, she was Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, and is currently a titleholder at the University. She has also previously worked as an arts administrator, film reviewer, journalist and book editor.

Ender Bakan's debut poetry collection depicts the intensity of life as a parent of young children. It maps the shifting trains of thought which go with the experience of being a new parent, when one's attention is drawn in many different directions between child-rearing and house-keeping, domestic crises, the need to earn a living, and the responsibilities you have to the past as well as to the future, to your own parents and grandparents, as well as to your children. Work, friendships, social life and creative practice are all altered. The poet reflects on his own childhood, and his grandparents' exile from their homeland in Turkey, to which he returns several times in the course of the book, with his own young family. But there is also an increased awareness of the future, not only to the world his children will grow up in, but to the kind of world that is being built right now, in homes, workplaces, and in social and political allegiances.

Perhaps most tellingly, since Ender Bakan is a poet, he is subsumed in the flood of language, as it emerges from the mouths of his youngsters, indeed from his own mouth, as he talks to them. Words and sounds and the effects of language come to the fore. The imagination of children lends its own wonder and surrealism to that of the poet. His writing is direct, playful, absurd, staunch and political. In these respects, Bakan follows in the footsteps of the previous generation of Australia's poets of migrant background, all of them masters of language Pi.O., Chris Mann, Antigone Kefala and above all the late Ania Walwicz, his close friend and mentor.

'Two Hundred Million Musketeers is a compelling debut which weaves the idiosyncrasies of the world into its pages. Bakan's poetics are lively and utterly ungovernable, in his refusal to bend to the idea of what a poetry collection should be. Bakan's spirited stream-of-consciousness invites the reader into the family of this collection, by drawing from the imaginative language of children, the peculiarities of waged labour and the return to his ancestral home of Turkey. The lived world, with its clamour and complexity, spills out of the book in unexpected ways.' VPLA judges' report

A middle-aged man journeys through Japan with his wife, drifting between Kyoto's hushed temples and Tokyo's incandescent streets, while traversing the more elusive terrain of his own restless mind. Encounters with art, literature, and fleeting strangers awaken buried desires and long-dormant regrets, pulling him into a reckoning with the ghosts of youthful passion, lost friendships, and the fragile intoxication of beauty glimpsed in passing.

With prose that is both precise and tender, Xavier Hennekinne captures the ache of nostalgia and the gravity of the present. Unequal Loves is a profound and atmospheric novel, unafraid to linger in the silences between people, the impermanence of connection, and the bittersweet shimmer of what we almost had.

'Hennekinne's style is direct, witty, evocative and engaging.' Saturday Paper

When Gaia meets two local girls, Agata and Carlotta, the trio builds a fragile friendship. Gaia's encounters with callous boys and contemptuous teachers convince her that she might always be an outsider excluded from a privileged life and beyond the possibility of happiness.

When tragedy strikes her friend group. As more friends slip away and her family fractures, Gaia vows to make the world pay for all the things it has denied her.

Winner of the Campiello Prize, The Bitter Water of the Lake is an unflinching portrait of a generation, striving to make a place for themselves in a world markedly different from the one their parents promised them.

'Caminito's gripping narrative takes many twists and turns but always remains focused on her compelling protagonist, so painfully vulnerable and unhappy that we understand even her most egregious acts... Ferocious and riveting.' Kirkus Reviews

'Marked by aching realism, this volatile coming-of-age novel is about the precariousness of growing up.' Foreword Reviews

'Raw, radiant, and relentless Giulia Caminito's unforgettable novel ignites like a match struck in darkness, inviting readers into a world where beauty and brutality exist in perfect, devastating harmony. You won't just finish this book; you'll emerge from it transformed. Achingly intimate and visceral.' Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman and Godshot

'Powerfully evokes the lonely rage of being female, poor, young, bright, and powerless. Giulia Caminito's Gaia is a heroic antiheroine with flaming hair and an indomitable will, and this novel is a firecracker, illuminating as it colourfully explodes.' Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner award-winning author of Welcome Home, Stranger

'A devastating, tender, utterly beautiful coming-of-age story. I am in awe of Caminito's writing, both unflinching and generous.' Ayegl Sava, authorofThe Anthropologists

'Achingly stylish and emotionally resonant, The Lake's Water Is Never Sweet maps the razor's edge between tenderness and violence, revealing how the wounds of social inequality can transform a young woman's yearning for connection into something far more dangerous. This is a stunning and profoundly moving novel from an outrageously gifted writer.' Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe

'Both harsh and hypnotic, this deeply observed coming-of-age story hinges on two ideas: betrayal by others, betrayal of self. In a series of breathtaking and heartbreaking moments, we watch in what often feels like real time the awakening of a brave girl.' Betsy Lerner, author of Shred Sisters

'The Bitter Water of the Lakeis a striking coming-of-age novel that demands to be read. It is provocative, compelling, and darkly poetic, achieving a powerful and humane vision at the end.Gaia, the protagonist, struggles to reconcile her own needs with those of her forceful mother while navigating the often careless, often cruel world outside her home. Gaia's voice is unique, incisive, at once intimate and expansive, unsparing and ironic.Born of destitution, it challenges and upsets, leaving a lasting mark on the readers. At times lustful, at times harrowing, the story has a deep sense of searching, without apology yet with ferocity, for what might become a meaningful life. Something too close to the heart is happening on the page.' Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, author of Between Dog and Wolf

'In a visionary and original novel, so literary and lush in its prose, the protagonist Gaia, while facing tragedies and separations, experiences a ferocious determinism that falls upon her and seems to deny any possibility of redemption.' Corriere della sera

'Caminito writes about first friendships and first loves, money troubles, family arguments, betrayals without resorting to ordinary cliches of the "dolce vita". Caminito's narrative voice is direct, raw, cold, but never distant. This book won't let anyone ever get away like the lake of Bracciano.' Der Spiegel

The Bitter Water of the Lake won the 2021 Campiello Prize and was a finalist for the Strega Prize. Caminito's books have been translated in over 20 countries. She lives in Rome.

Hope Campbell Gustafson's previous book-length translations include Commander of the River by Ubah Cristina Ali Farah and Islands-New Islands by Marco Lodoli. She lives in Brooklyn.

In the wake of a client's sudden death, Claudia convinces his ex, an industry insider, to turn on his employer and feed the verifiers information about what the powerful dating platforms are really up to. But even as Claudia starts to get a feel for this new genre just call her Lin, Claudia Lin she's distracted by the possibility of romance with both Becks and a very charming target. She also fears that her beloved older brother is unwittingly being drawn into the matchmakers' deadly web. And as Becks reminds Claudia: spy tropes dictate that someone you trust will betray you.

'In this sequel to The Verifiers, Pek again brilliantly combines a corporate espionage thriller with the messy drama of Lin's family life.' Washington Post (10 Best Mystery Novels of 2024)

'The sweetly sardonic amateur sleuth Claudia Lin, who first appeared in The Verifiers, returns to solve another mystery when a client of her online-dating detective agency dies in a suspicious accident.' New York Times

'A clever, clear-eyed take on the modern spy novel, full of wisdom and sly humor. I'd follow Claudia Lin anywhere.' Grace D Li, author of Portrait of a Thief

'Jane Pek's writing is really fun and will keep you hooked.' Emily Henry, author of Funny Story

'Claudia Lin serves as the perfect guide to this captivating mystery.' Kevin Wilson, author of Now Is Not the Time to Panic

A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she's landed her ideal job. But when a client vanishes, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate - and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit.

Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices and the nature of romantic love in the digital age.

'Your go-to summer read...Really fun and will keep you hooked.' Emily Henry, author of Beach Read

'This book is exhilaratingly well-written. I loved it so much that I didn't want it to end.' Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

'Pek's engrossing debut novel gives us a thoroughly modern twist on classic detective fiction.' New York Times (Editors' Choice)

'Clever, dryly funny...This is a fascinating, carefully layered mystery novel as well as a love letter to New York City and complicated families.' Washington Post

In the colonized nation of Viryana, Poppy Sutherland lives between cultures. As the brown-skinned adopted daughter of the Viceroy, she is both rejected by white high society and alienated from the people of her native island. When she discovers her opportunistic fiance's plot to exile her, Poppy flees straight into the clutches of the Jackal.

Hasan Devar, the ruthless criminal known as the Jackal, has long been targeted for his family's divine magic, a gift the colonisers have tried to stamp out. When his brother is arrested, he seizes Poppy as leverage. But Poppy has powerful secrets and political ambitions of her own. As allies, they could do more than just free Hasan's brother and keep Poppy safe. They could topple the very power structures that hold them all back.

The first book in the Reckoning Storm duology, To Bargain with Mortals is a stunning reflection on politics and purpose, blood and allegiance and what we do with the histories we inherit.

'As a Chinese Australian who lived through the early 2000s, this stunning novella gave me cultural whiplash, taking me straight back to my salad days of early internet, teen fashion mags, Charlie perfume in the girl's locker rooms and rites of passages with privileged Western students! I laughed out loud at the biting humour, I wept for these flesh and bone characters and I nodded along to our shared Asian experience until my neck hurt. Olivia is an exciting new powerhouse and I will be following her career keenly.' Shirley Marr

'Delightfully raucous and rich in detail, Eggshell is packed with all the cringe, colour, heartache and hilarity of high school. De Zilva has created a cast of memorable characters that you'll fall in love with, groan at, despair for and ultimately cheer on with both fists raised.' Erin Gough

Olivia De Zilva is a writer based on Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide. She has been awarded prizes including the AAWP Novella Prize, Deakin University Non-Fiction Prize, the Kat Muscat Fellowship and the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers. Olivia holds a Master of Philosophy from the University of Queensland; her thesis explored the representation of Asian-diasporic identity in contemporary Australian publishing. Her memoir, Plastic Budgie is published by Pink Shorts Press.

The Life of an Amorous Man is a groundbreaking work by Ihara Saikaku, Japan's first popular novelist. This is the only unabridged English translation of Saikaku's seminal work, which includes the 54 illustrations drawn by the author and published in the original Japanese version.

The story follows Yonosuke, a passionate man whose never-ending quest for pleasure leads him from the glitzy brothels of Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and the refined courtesans of Kyoto to moonlit trysts in quiet villages in the Japanese countryside. Along the way he weaves a tapestry of fleeting affairs and forbidden romances.

Brimming with scandalous encounters, witty anecdotes, and poignant reflections, Yonosuke's tale is a candid glimpse into the hedonistic world of Edo-period Japan (1680-1770), where courtesans, gamblers, and pleasure-seekers mingle in a whirlwind of indulgence. The Life of an Amorous Man is both a celebration of life and a fascinating glimpse into a vibrant, bygone era. It is a glimpse into a beautiful and bittersweet world, a mesmerising portrait of life's most passionate and ephemeral moments.

Chris Drake is a translator, writer, and expert on Ihara Saikaku's works. He has a PhD in Japanese Literature from Harvard University and was formerly a professor at Atomi University in Niiza, Japan. He has published many essays and books on Saikaku and other Japanese writers.

First published in 1895, The Lost Stradivarius has garnered a revered status as a true classic of strange fiction, described by the famed critic E. F. Bleiler as the novel M. R. James might have written, had he written novels.

With possibilities of mind-melding and sublime spiritual awakenings already documented, it is not long before Skale pivots towards a grander master plan to intone a forbidden name beyond the preserve of humanity while a gathering storm of disastrous cosmic consequences threatens to break.

First published in 1910 but lost for most of the twentieth century, Blackwood's tour-de-force novel is long overdue rediscovery.

When Miles Hammond is invited to a meeting of the Murder Club in London, he is met instead with just two other guests and is treated to a strange tale of an impossible crime in France from years before; the murder of a man on a tower with only one staircase, under watch at the time at which the murder took place. With theories of levitating vampires abounding, the story comes home to Miles when he realises that the librarian he has just hired for his home is none other than Fay Seton, a woman whose name still echoes from the heart of this bizarre and unsolved murder of the past.

First published in 1946, in later years Carr considered this novel one of his finest works. It shows the masterful author at the height of his powers, boasting an ingenious plot delivered with an astounding pace and striking characters including none other than the great detective, Dr Gideon Fell.

"In the summer of my nervous breakdown, I went to live in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada.' So begins John Gregory Dunne's neglected classic of first-person writing, a mordant, deadpan, grotesque tale that blurs the line between autobiography and fiction, confession and reportage.

Panicked by his own mortality, despondent over his many failings as a writer and a man, Dunne leaves his wife and their three-year old child for the solitude of a crummy apartment off the Vegas Strip. There he plans to write an account of the city as he finds it; the book he ends up writing is 'a fiction which recalls time both real and imagined'. The remarkable central characters are Artha, a student at cosmetology college by day, a sex worker by night; Buster Mano, a private detective whose specialty is tracking down errant husbands; and Jackie Kasey, a lounge comic who opens for Elvis at $10,000 a night and wonders why he is still only a 'semi-name'. Pimps, bail bondsmen, parking-lot moguls, used-car tycoons, ex-jockeys, and women who look as if they had 'spent a lifetime meeting guys in Vegas or Miami Beach or Louisville for the Derby': these are the people who wander through the lives of Artha, Buster, and Jackie and, for a dark season, the life of the narrator.

John Gregory Dunne captures a low point in American culture and in one American life with rare vitality, honesty, and perception. Sad, powerful, wildly funny, Vegas is like no memoir before or since.

Stephanie Danler is a novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. She is the author of Stray and the international bestseller Sweetbitter. She is the creator and executive producer of the Sweetbitter television series on Starz.

Alex Delmore needs a miracle. She wants out of her dead-end suburban town, but her parents are broke and NYU seems like a distant dream.

Good thing there's a genie in town and he's hiring at the Wellspring Mall. It'd help if the Jinn-formerly-of-the-Ring-of-Khorad knew even one thing about 21st-century America. It'd help if he weren't at least as stubborn as Alex. It'd really help if her brother didn't sell her out to her conspiracy theory-loving, gnome-hating dad.

When Alex and the genie set up their wishing kiosk, they face seemingly-endless setbacks. The mall is failing and management will not stop interfering on behalf of their big-box tenants.

But when the wishing biz might start working, the biggest problem of all remains: People are really terrible at wishing.

In this shocking, and at times darkly comic, novel, a psychiatrist hired to write a short piece on Francis Bacon becomes obsessed with the artist, his life, and the characters who surrounded him. As he becomes consumed with the need to understand Bacon, and to create his own art, his grip on reality becomes increasingly tenuous, and he is haunted by disturbing figures. This short, bold piece of fiction explores how the passion needed to create art can also destroy the artist.

Tade Thompson is a writer best known for his Arthur C Clarke Award and Nommo Award-winning novel Rosewater, and the Shirley Jackson Award nominated novella The Murders of Molly Southbourne.

'A darkly weird thunderbolt of a novella... by the end you can practically taste the tang of scorched earth in the air.' Daily Mail

'An exquisite, razor-sharp exploration on the nature of all-consuming art. Tade Thompson is a wonder.' Irenosen Okojie

In her new collection Who Will Make The Fire, published in association with New River Press, Bellamacina employs metaphors of wind, dawn, trees and fire to explore an interior world. A personal book about love, loss, nature, depression and recovery, the wind in Who Will Make the Fire becomes the biographer of the self; a way to trace this ever evolving garden, that must die, again and again, like a wild bird shedding its unimaginable feathers.

Who Will Make The Fire questions what it is to really live, to live with stillness and fire; to combat the digital world and to get back to the earth and let the hidden circle of nature find its way back into the self.

'Who Will Make The Fire is a spell-binding collection of poems' Nick Cave

'Dreamlike, with bite. Bellamacina's work is brutal, floral, blood-soaked and knowing, in the way that nature is both cruel and beautiful' Florence Welch

'Elegiac, guttural and gorgeous. To sit down and read them is such a welcoming halting of time.' Pandora Sykes

A man bets all he has on a horse race to pay for an expensive operation for his dog. A young refugee wants to box her way straight off the boat to the top of the sport. Old friends talk all night after meeting up by chance. She imagines a future together.

Stories about people who have lost out in life and in love, and about their hopes for one really big win, the chance to make something of their lives. In silent apartments, desolate warehouses, prisons and by the river, Meyer strikes the tone of our harsh times, and finds the grace notes, the bright lights shining in the dark.

Years later, journalist Duncan Fletcher hears rumours of sightings of the two women. Keen to impress his editor, Duncan investigates the aftermath of the murder trial. With cobbler Joseph Campbell in tow, Duncan's quest leads him to the backstreets of London, where the horrors of the past collide with the present.

The time for retribution has come.

Bittersweet and funny, Home Bird draws on Fran Hill's own experiences as a teenager in foster care.

'Warm and wonderful' Adele Parks, Author of the #1 Sunday Times bestseller One Last Secret

'Fresh, authentic and darkly funny.' Ruth Hogan, Author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Keeper of Lost Things

'Vivid, funny, nostalgic and utterly charming I loved every word of this moving story.' Veronica Henry, bestselling author of The Long Weekend

Someone has big plans for Stoirm, and they'll stop at nothing to get what they want.

Investigative journalist Rebecca Connolly returns to the Scottish island to find out who is terrorising the locals who favour a community buyout of the estate over plans by a faceless consortium to turn it into an upmarket playground for the rich and shameless.

But before she even sets off, she is threatened by two men, men who are no strangers to inflicting pain. Rebecca being Rebecca, this only serves to heighten her curiosity, and she heads for the island, leaving behind romantic troubles and, she thinks, a young woman set on making her name in journalism.

It isn't long before threats become murder and Rebecca finds herself in mortal danger from an old adversary among the breaking waves of Thunder Bay.

'I am delighted that we are together, my son, becoming what we will both be.'

A man awaits his son's birth. Captivated, he follows the mother's pregnancy, imagining the child that will transform his house, his language, his relationship, and his family history. For a year, he annotates the memorable first steps leading the three of them into these new existential situations: being a father, a mother, a son; three different characters in a universal story, told in newly born words. A situation further complicated when the child begins speaking and articulating his world.

A Father Is Bornis a lyrical tale that resonates both on intimate and collective levels. Its understanding of fatherhood faces masculinity with the miracle of life and its incessant rereading of the present. In a time that redefines traditionally attributed roles, A Father Is Bornaccepts Anne Waldman's invitation:'Tell the man to give up tumult for the while / To wonder at the sight of baby's beauty.'But it is also, and above all, a love statement.

Robin Myers is a poet, translator, essayist, and 2023 NEA Translation Fellow. Her latest translations include Last Date in El Zapotal by Mateo Garca Elizondo (Charco Press), A Strange Adventure by Eva Forest (Sternberg Press), What Comes Back by Javier Pealosa M. (Copper Canyon Press); The Brush by Eliana Hernndez-Pachn (Archipelago Books); and Bariloche (Open Letter Books) and Love Training (Deep Vellum Publishing), both by Andres Neuman.

Though nothing is as simple as it might appear to be, we could describe this as a story about Allen, who is married to Maud but having an affair with Elizabeth, who lives with Maud. Or say it is a story about fraud in the art world, horse racing, and sexual intrigues. Or, as one critic did, compare it to a Jane Austen creation, or to an Aldous Huxley novel and be right and wrong on both counts.

With a new introduction by Lucy Sante, Cigarettesreturns to print in full force: abrilliant display of Harry Mathews's ingenuity and deadly playfulness.

Lucy Sante's books include Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, The Other Paris, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, and I Heard Her Call My Name. Her awards include a Whiting Writers Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman Center fellowships. She recently retired after 24 years teaching writing and the history of photography at Bard College.

Pantun Baba Chan is a collection of 100 original pantun poems written in Baba Malay over a period of 15 years by Baba Chan Eng Thai, a prominent member of Singapore's vibrant Peranakan community. Chan's poetry celebrates the traditions of his community and a nostalgia for the old ways ranging from favourite foods to rites of passage to commemorations of famous people. The book also includes a hilarious pantun "duel" between the author and G. T. Lye over WhatsApp.

The pantun is an oral poetic form with a rich tradition dating back many centuries. Written in Baba Malay, a Creole tongue merging Malay with Hokkien Chinese, these poems express complex emotions in quatrains with an ABAB rhyming scheme. They were extremely popular in prewar Singapore but are now considered a dying art, although a revival is currently underway.

Makan Sampay Mabok [a pantun on Life]
Sedap enak makanan Embok,
Kuah lada masak ikan pari;
Bila Baba makan itu laok,
Sampay mabok tak perduli.
***
Exquisite food of the ancestors,
Stingrays stewed in spicy pepper;
A Baba will eat till he's dizzy,
And carry on fully unbothered.

Pantun Bukit Brown [a pantun on Death]

Kopek kachang buang kulit,
Baru boleh makan biji,
Hidopan dunia mata kelek,
Beranak mati nasib janji;

Empat penjuru suma manusia,
Putus jiwa tak balik dunia,
Perkara ini bukan rusia,
Di-sini Bukit Brown akibat-nya.
***
Peel a peanut to find its seed,
Discarding skin and shell,
Life ends in the blink of an eye,
Birth and Death meet us all;

All beings from all lands,
Cease to be when life ends,
Not at all a secret,
We meet this truth at Bukit Brown.

This book is a labor of love the first collection of Baba Malay pantuns published since the early 1900s and the first to present parallel English translations of the poems. Baba Chan hopes that putting his words to paper will inspire others to follow suit and preserve the language and traditions of the Peranakan Chinese community.

G. T. Lye is a Wayang Peranakan actor/playwright and pantun composer/performer. He started his career in Felix Chia's Pileh Menantu, staged at the 1984 Singapore Arts Festival. The play was a landmark in Wayang Peranakan which sparked a revival of Chinese Peranakan theatre in Singapore. He is established as a household name for his performance of the cross-dressing Peranakan matriarch role across stage and screen. In 2020, G. T. was recognised as a Steward of Singapore's Intangible Cultural Heritage by the National Heritage Board for his mastery in the art forms of Wayang Peranakan and Dondang Sayang.

Crop.sg is an independent multidisciplinary design studio based in Singapore, specialising in a broad range of creative work, from campaign strategies and visual identities to printed materials and digital media. Recent publication projects include Becoming Lim Tze Peng for the National Gallery Singapore, Chinese Pagodas on the World Stage for the Asian Civilizations Museum, and Olafur Eliasson: Your Curious Journey for the Singapore Art Museum.

The Republic also addresses the purpose of education and the role of both women and men as guardians of the people. With remarkable lucidity and deft use of allegory, Plato arrives at a depiction of a state bound by harmony and ruled by philosopher kings.

At the older woman's insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.

Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree's playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.

**Winner, NSW Literary Awards 2025, Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry**

**Shortlisted, Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2025, Poetry**

**Shortlisted, NSW Literary Awards 2025, Glenda Adams Award for New Writing**

**Shortlisted, Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2025, Poetry**

A moving testament to the displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

rock flight is a book-length poem that, over five chapters, follows a personal and historical narrative, to compose an understated yet powerful allegory of Palestine's occupation. The poem uses refrains of suffocation, rubble, and migratory bird patterns to address the realities of forced displacement, economic restrictions and surveillance technology that Palestinians face both within and outside Palestine. It depicts a restlessness brought about by dispossession, and a determination to find significance in fleeting objects and fragments. It looks to the literary form as an interactive experience, and the book as an object in flux, inviting the reader to embark on an exploration of space, while limited by the box-like confines of the page. Formally claustrophobic, the poem morphs into irony, declaring everything a box while refusing to exist within one.

'Here is a poetry of passion; a poetry of necessity; a poetry of survival, and a poetry-triumphant.' Maxine Beneba Clarke

'rock flight is a work of timelessness, rigour, precision, relationality and guts just like its poet. A must-read for all of us who yearn and stretch and reach for a world beyond colonies, and an even more urgent read for those who don't.' Alison Whittaker

Harriet Littlemore is an aspiring journalist from a 'good' family, engaged to a rising star of the Tory party - but she wants a successful career of her own.

After witnessing Ruby fleeing the scene of a robbery, Harriet develops a fascination with the young thief that extends beyond journalistic interest. As their personal aspirations bring them into closer contact than society's rules usually allow, Ruby and Harriet's stories become increasingly intertwined.

Their magnetic dynamic, fraught with envy and desire, tells a compulsive, cinematic story about class, morality and the cost of being an independent woman in 1920s London.

Praise for Georgina Clarke:

'Brava to this new, engaging voice' - Karen Odden, author of A Lady In Smoke

'A gripping page-turner with a sassy and fabulously original heroine in the form of Lizzie Hardwicke - I loved it!' - Annie Lyons, author of Not Quite Perfect

'Razor sharp and brilliantly original' - Joe Heap, author of The Rules of Seeing

'Sparkling and twisty' - Celia Anderson, author of 59 Memory Lane

In 2021, Georgina began working as a tutor at The Queen's Foundation in Birmingham, training clergy. When she's not working, she enjoys dressmaking, running and mooching around old houses. She lives in Worcester with her husband, son and two lively cats.

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, the son of a New Jersey state senator was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a nineteen-year-old transgender sex worker, is in custody, and there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict. Because Sharise admits she killed the senator's son - in self-defense.

As a trans woman herself, Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise and duty-bound to protect her from the possibility of a death sentence.

While Erin works with her law partner, former FBI agent Duane Swisher, to build a case, the distraught senator begins using the full force of his influence to publicly discredit everyone involved in defending Sharise. And behind the scenes, his tactics are even more dangerous. For his son had secrets that could destroy his own political aspirations - secrets worth killing for...

'An emotionally resonant debut...Welcome - and quietly groundbreaking' - NYT Book Review

'A compulsively riveting page-turner with a complex heroine, a captivating plot, and no easy answers... One of the best thrillers of the year' - Mystery Scene

'An intelligent and resourceful protagonist with an unusual backstory...Erin's ability to navigate the intricacies of the law is just as fascinating as the subsequent perils she encounters' - Publishers Weekly

'Gigl's accomplishment here is to parse the serious flaws with the legal system by way of subtle characterization and seamless plotting...We get engrossing originality - and a brilliant point in a larger argument for the benefits of greater representation in our beloved genre' - Lambda Literary

'Gigl provides provocative insights into the legal system and the challenges of gender identity' - Booklist

A frequent lecturer on diversity issues, she lives in New Jersey where she continues to practice law by day, and work on her next novel by night. Fortunately, she has a very boring social life.

Robyn can be found online at RobynGigl.com or on Twitter @RobynGigl.

Upon arriving, Vera is shocked by the size and extravagance of the family estate which reveals a privileged upbringing that, up until this point, Max had only hinted at. Tensions boil over at dinner as Max attempts to navigate her father, who is hostile and controlling, and the occultist, St James, who is charming but appears to be siphoning family money. The next morning, when Vera wakes up, Max is gone...

In Vera Kelly Lost and Found, Rosalie Knecht gives Vera her highest-stakes case yet, as Vera quickly puts her private detective skills to good use and tracks a trail of breadcrumbs across southern California to find her missing girlfriend. She travels first to a film set in Santa Ynez and, ultimately, to a most unlikely destination where Vera has to decide how much she is willing to commit to save the woman she loves.

Praise for the Vera Kelly series:

'Once more Rosalie Knecht proves herself one of the finest writers in the genre: brisk, witty, and emotionally intelligent. The much-anticipated return of Vera Kelly turns a tight plot around the failures of family and high stakes love, betrayal and the unlikely adventure toward self acceptance. This novel is a pleasure, as wise as it is thrilling' Tracy O'Neill, author of Quotients, on Vera Kelly Lost and Found

'A good old fashioned spy thriller but with a brilliant kick-ass female protagonist' Nicola Sturgeon

'Wonderfully sardonic yet compassionate heroine. Definitely a series to watch' Mail on Sunday

'Unfolding in a persuasively evoked 1967, this smart, stylish mystery fizzes with wit and intrigue' Irish Times (Crime Book of the Year)

'Forget about 007. This heroine has her own brand of spycraft' Washington Post

'Gripping, magnificently written' New York Times

Until one day into the lounge-bar, and out of the blue, walks Fiona McLean. And before long she's moved behind the bar, into the hotel and (remarkably) into Tommy's bed. Fiona blows into Tommy's life and through the hotel, and with the light she brings, Tommy's fortunes might just be turning around; but in her wake has also slipped in darkness names and faces from the past who mean Tommy no goodwill at all, criminal forces that threaten to ruin him, the hotel and what little happiness he's managed, haplessly, to cobble together.

Tommy the Bruce is a precise, chilling and all too believable crime novel scored throughout with a genuinely unsettling menace, which is belied by the ease of Yorkston's storytelling and humour. It's a shot of Southern Gothic poured out in the central Highlands.

A battle lost. A daring escape. A long walk into obscurity. The ultimate failure...

In the aftermath of the disastrous Battle of Culloden, a lonely figure takes flight with a small band of companions through the islands and mountains of the Hebrides. His name is Charles Edward Stuart: better known today as Bonnie Prince Charlie. He had come to the country to take the throne. Now he is leaving in exile and abject defeat.

In prose that is by turns poetic, comic, macabre, haunting and humane, multi- award-winning author Alan Warner traces the frantic last journey through Scotland of a man who history will come to define for his failure.

'Written in carefully crafted prose . . . this reimagining of Charles Edward Stuart's escape from Culloden is a triumph' Stuart Kelly,The Scotsman

Rebecca's investigation leads her to a mysterious cult and local drug dealings. But what she doesn't know is that crime matriarch Mo Burke still has her in her crosshairs. Mo wants payback for the death of her son, and after one failed attempt to hurt Rebecca, she is upping the ante. And this time, it could be lethal.