The much anticipated and darkly comic first novel from a prize-winning storyteller "I grew up on a farm." The year is l974, the place Sweetwater College, and Beatrice Wolfe is telling the story of her life to the glamorous young professor Philippa Sayres. So begins the achingly funny, often heartbreaking story of Beatrice's double quest to find out who she might be, and to escape the gothic eccentricity of her family. Married in a misbegotten passion, her parents are totally unsuited to any kind of business. The four Wolfe children's lives are ruled by their mother whose larger-than-life demands and fears encircle them in a darkly comic web of contradictions. When their father's ping pong business collapses and he loses their "farm," Bea's family spirals out of control. Bea, under Philippa's romantic spell, joins a lesbian community and is so committed to her new gay identity that she barely notices she's falling in love with a man--a man just risen from the ashes of addiction, whose re-creation of himself she threatens to undo. In The Bride of Catastrophe, Heidi Jon Schmidt explores the magnetic effect of love in all its variations--its power to form and sometimes deform us, to make us who we are.

We’ve all had days when if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry. Whether it’s a domestic drama, career cockup or just a run-of-the-mill disaster, we’ve all been there – no matter who we are. In this hilarious and moving collection, well-known Australians from all walks of life share their stories as a kind of mass therapy; a feel-good tonic for when the proverbial sh*t hits the fan. From Annabel Crabb’s tale of Russian interference in the birth of her first child to Kate McClymont on how to manage mobsters, or Frank Moorhouse on the worst possible Valentine’s Day to Emma Alberici on moving to London with three small children, these entertaining tales of woe remind us that this too shall pass.

Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe is a landmark work in the areas of anthropology and migration studies. Since its first publication in 1989, this classic study has remained in demand. The third edition is published to mark the centenary of the 1923 Lausanne Convention which led to the movement of some 1.5 million persons between Greece and Turkey at the conclusion of their war. It includes updated material with a new Preface, Afterword by Ayhan Aktar, and map of the wider region. The new Preface provides the context in which the original research took place, assesses its innovative aspects and explores the dimensions of history and identity which are predominant themes in the book.

H. G. Wells wrote almost a hundred books, yet he is generally remembered for only a handful of them. He is known above all as a writer who heralded the future, yet throughout his life he clung to fixed attitudes from the Victorian past. He began his career as a draper's apprentice; by the age of forty-five he had secured an international reputation as the author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, Kipps and Tono Bungay; he went on to establish himself as an influential educator, polemicist and sage. In this book John Batchelor offers a readable introduction to Wells's huge and varied output as a writer and thinker. He guides the reader through the whole oeuvre, and argues persuasively that at his best Wells was a great artist: a man with a remarkable, restless imagination (not limited, as many critics have implied, merely to his early romances) and with a coherent and responsible theory of fiction.

How does a Southern Belle plan the perfect wedding in the midst of COVID? By conquering one catastrophe after the next. The COVID Bride is the hilarious, straight-talking wedding guide that could put a '90s rom-com to shame. Determined not to cancel her special day, Sara La Chapelle threw her fancy wedding checklists out the window and hit the ground running. Laugh along with her as you learn how to plan the wedding of your dreams-no matter what it takes-all while maintaining the poise and grace of a true Southerner. Loaded with first-hand advice you won't get anywhere else, The COVID Bride is the ideal resource for brides in the post-pandemic wedding boom. So pour a glass of wine and hang on tight as Sara grits her teeth and smiles her way through the wild bridal ride you won't want to miss.

German Jewish novelist Grete Weil fled to Holland, but her husband was arrested there and murdered by the Nazis. Chilean novelist Isabel Allende fled her country after her uncle Salvador Allende was assassinated, and she later lost her daughter to disease."