First Paragraph

Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.

Twenty years, they all say, sprawling and drinking. There's ginger beer, staggerjuice and hot flasks of tea. There pasties, a ham, chickenlegs and a basket of oranges, potato salad and dried figs. There are things spilling from jars and bags.

The speech is silenced by a meodious belch which gets big applause. Someone blurts on a baby's belly and a song strikes up. Unless you knew, you'd think they were a whole group, an earthly vision. Because, look, even the missing are there, the gone and taken are with them in the shade pools of the peppermints by the beautiful, the beautiful the river. And even now, one of the here is leaving.

Winner of the Miles Franklin and NBC Awards in Australia, Cloudstreet is a celebration of people, places and rhythms which has fuelled imaginations world-wide.

Cloudstreet - Tim Winton - 9780140273984

Imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina. He would find anger and pathos. A dark fable, perhaps. His villains would be evil and incompetent, even without Heckuva-Job-Brownie. In the end, though, he would not be able to constrain himself; his outrage might overwhelm the tale.

In "Zeitoun," what Dave Eggers has found in the Katrina mud is the full-fleshed story of a single family, and in telling that story he hits larger targets with more punch than those who have already attacked the thematic and historic giants of this disaster. It's the stuff of great narrative nonfiction.

Eggers, the boy wonder of good intentions, has given us 21st-­century Dickensian storytelling ? which is to say, a character­-driven potboiler with a point. But here's the real trick: He does it without any writerly triple-lutzes or winks of post­modern irony. There are no rants against President Bush, no cheap shots at the authorities who let this city drown. He does it the old-fashioned way: with show-not-tell prose, in the most restrained of voices.

In that sense, "Zeitoun" has less in common with Eggers's breakthrough memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" (which met with mostly deserved trumpet-blaring in 2000), than it does with his 2006 novel "What Is the What," the so-called fictionalized memoir of a real-life refugee of the Sudanese civil war. In that book, Eggers's voice took a back seat to his protagonist's outsize story. But it was an odd hybrid.

"Zeitoun" is named for the family at the center of the storm. Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a middle-aged Syrian-­American father of four, owner of a successful painting and contracting firm. He works hard and takes good care of his loved ones, in America and in Syria. He is also the kind of neighbor you wish you could find at Home Depot.

His wife, Kathy, has Southern Baptist big-family roots, but drifts after a failed early marriage until she finds a home in Islam and a doting husband in Abdul. Her hijab is a problem for her family, and for many citizens in post-9/11 America. Yet her charms and his smarts make for a good pairing at home and at the office ? which is often the same place, an old house in the Uptown neighborhood of New Orleans.

Zeitoun - Dave Eggers - 9780241144855

Nancy Friday's phenomenal bestsellers My Secret Garden and Forbidden Flowers broke new ground, revealing for the first time the complexity of women's secret sexual fantasies.

In Women on Top, she returns to the subject that made her famous, examining the erotic fantasy lives of more than one hundred and fifty modern women. Drawn from Friday's personal interviews and letters, Women on Top contains transcripts of real sexual fantasies that will change your mind-set about women and sex.

A revolutionary exploration of female eroticism, Women on Top reveals the powerful and astounding sexual attitudes that are forever changing our intimate lives.

Women On Top - Nancy Friday - 9780099462392

Adolf Hitler's reading habits were singular indeed. In the first volume of "Mein Kampf," written in 1924, Hitler explicitly stated that "reading is no end in itself, but a means to an end." He explained what this meant:

A man who possesses the art of correct reading will, in studying any book, magazine, or pamphlet, instinctively and immediately perceive everything which in his opinion is worth permanently remembering, either because it is suited to his purpose or generally worth knowing. Once the knowledge he has achieved in this fashion is correctly coordinated within the somehow existing picture of this or that subject created by the imagination, it will function either as a corrective or a complement, thus enhancing either the correctness or the clarity of the picture.

Yet this man with such an anti-intellectual approach to reading came to own an enormous private library of around 16,000 books, kept in his residences in Berlin and Munich, and in the mountain retreat he had built above Berchtesgaden.

The first description of this book collection, published in 1942, divides the volumes into military history, the largest grouping; a section on art and architecture; another comprising many works on astrology, spiritualism, nutrition, and diet, and around a thousand books of often trashy popular literature, including a complete set of the Karl May cowboys-and-Indians stories, of which he was particularly fond. Most of Hitler's books, those kept in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, were shipped off by the victorious Soviet authorities to Moscow. They allegedly surfaced in a disused church in the city in the early 1990s, but then disappeared without trace. Many of the books in Munich and at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden fell victim to souvenir hunters among the American soldiers trampling through the ruins of the Reich in Bavaria, but around 3,000, discovered in a Berchtesgaden salt mine, found their way to the Library of Congress in Washington. These were eventually weeded out to leave around 1,200 books ? less than 10% of the original collection ? that contained undoubted evidence of Hitler's personal possession. Another 80 books that belonged to Hitler were identified only recently in the basement vault library of Brown University. Others doubtless still exist in private hands.

Hitlers Private Library - Tim Ryback - 9780099532170

Jacinta Tynan is the editor and a contributor to, ?Some Girls Do. My Life As a Teenager' - an anthology of female writers sharing the true stories of their adolescence - published in April 2007 (Allen and Unwin).

Jacinta created the anthology as a way of raising funds for SISTER2Sister- a mentor program for disadvantaged teenage girls of which she is an ambassador and was also a Big Sister mentor (2006). Authors have donated all royalties to SISTER2Sister, and Allen and Unwin are also donating $1 from every book sale to the program.

A phenomenal 51 authors contributed to Some Girls Do, My Life as a Teenager, including Nikki Gemmel, Kathy Lette, Jessica Adams, Bessie Bardot, Larissa Behrendt, Kate Morton, Jessica Rowe, Di Morrissey, Leigh Redhead, Belinda Alexandra, Bianca Dye, Sarah Wilson, Liane Moriarty.

From adolescent angst, first crushes and being a rock star groupie to battles with anorexia, sexual abuse, and one woman's decision to become a nun, these writers prove that your teenage years aren't necessarily the best days of your life, yet all have lived to tell the tale. Their stories are told with great insight, sensitivity and humour as they lay themselves bare on the page.

Some Girls Do takes you back to your high school formal, your first love, first kiss, first bra, and your first realisation that your Mum and Dad may not know best as you revel in the tales of these inspiring, accomplished women who prove there is life beyond adolescence.

Some Girls Do. My Life As a Teenager is available at all good bookstores. $1 from every sale is donated to The SISTER2Sister Program.

Some Girls Do - Jacinta Tynan - My Life as a Teenager - 9781742372600

No other continent on earth is a prone to bushfires, over such a large area, as Australia. Fires are a constant and ongoing part of our history, our ecology and our culture. Yet despite repeated disasters, across all states throughout the last two centuries, we seem to be no better at surviving bushfires today than we were when fires burnt through the first European settlements? What is it about Australia that makes it so prone to fires? Have humans made thing worse, or better? Is it possible to live in the Australian bush, yet still be safe from fire?

This book is a personal journey of discovery that attempts to answer some of these questions and understand why, after so many years, people are still dying in bushfires.

Danielle Clode lives on a bush block in the fire-prone foothills of the Kinglake Ranges of Victoria. As a psychologist and ecologist, she has long been fascinated and puzzled by the role fire plays in the Australian bush, and the way in which people interact with it. As someone who lives in a high fire risk area, she has a personal interest in understanding how to live safely in the Australian bush.

A Future in Flames - Danielle Clode - 9780522857238

When he ditches school one Friday morning, 17-year-old Marcus is hoping to get a head start on the Harajuku Fun Madness clue. But after a terrorist attack in San Francisco, he and his friends are swept up in the extralegal world of the Department of Homeland Security.

After questioning that includes physical torture and psychological stress, Marcus is released, a marked man in a much darker San Francisco: a city of constant surveillance and civil-liberty forfeiture. Encouraging hackers from around the city, Marcus fights against the system while falling for one hacker in particular. Doctorow rapidly confronts issues, from civil liberties to cryptology to social justice. While his political bias is obvious, he does try to depict opposing viewpoints fairly.

Those who have embraced the legislative developments since 9/11 may be horrified by his harsh take on Homeland Security, Guantánamo Bay, and the PATRIOT Act. Politics aside, Marcus is a wonderfully developed character: hyperaware of his surroundings, trying to redress past wrongs, and rebelling against authority. Teen espionage fans will appreciate the numerous gadgets made from everyday materials.

One afterword by a noted cryptologist and another from an infamous hacker further reflect Doctorow's principles, and a bibliography has resources for teens interested in intellectual freedom, information access, and technology enhancements. Curious readers will also be able to visit BoingBoing, an eclectic group blog that Doctorow coedits.

Raising pertinent questions and fostering discussion, this techno-thriller is an outstanding first purchase.

Little Brother - Cory Doctorow - 9780007288427

Tony Bradman was born in 1954 (not during the Jurassic era, as his children have been known to claim). He went to school in London, and then Cambridge University. After university he worked in the music press, then became Deputy Editor of Parents magazine, and began reviewing children's books. He had his first book for children published in 1985 and became a full-time author in 1987.

He is perhaps best known in the UK for his Dilly the Dinosaur stories. His books have sold more than two million copies worldwide and he has been published in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Sweden, Spain and Japan amongst others.

Tony loves films and popular culture. He lives in Beckenham, Kent with his wife Sally and their three children Emma, Helen and Thomas and Rufus the cat.

My Kind of School - Tony Bradman - Stories in a class of their own - 9781408100905