Sharply observed, bitter and humorous, The Long Prospect is a story of life in an Australian industrial town. Growing up neglected in a seedy boarding house, Emily Lawrence befriends Max, a middle-aged scientist who encourages her to pursue her intellectual interests. Innocent Emily will face scandal, suburban snobbery and psychological torment.

‘Harrower's greatest novel [is] The Watch Tower (1966), the bitter story of two sisters, Laura and Clare, who lose their parents and fall under the sway of Felix Shaw, an abusive and controlling drunk...[It is] her masterpiece.’ James Wood, New Yorker After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control. Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power. Elizabeth Harrower was born in Sydney in 1928 and moved to London in 1951. She travelled extensively and began to write fiction. Her first novel Down in the City was published in 1957, and was followed by The Long Prospect a year later. In 1959 she returned to Sydney where she began working for the ABC and as a book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1960 she published The Catherine Wheel, the story of an Australian law student in London, her only novel not set in Sydney. The Watch Tower appeared in 1966. No further novels were published until May 2014 when Harrower's 'lost' novel, In Certain Circles, was released. Her work is austere, intelligent, ruthless in its perceptions about men and women. She was admired by many of her contemporaries, including Patrick White and Christina Stead, and is without doubt among the most important writers of the postwar period in Australia. Elizabeth Harrower died in Sydney on 7 July 2020 at the age of ninety-two. 'Haunting and delicate.' Kirkus Reviews 'This is a harrowing novel, relentless in its depiction of marital enslavement, spiritual self-destruction and the exploited condition of women in a masculinist society...It is a brilliant achievement.' Washington Post 'Haunting...Harrower captures brilliantly the struggle to retain a self.' Guardian ‘Each of Harrower’s four novels is concerned with entrapment of one sort or another, through family or youth or love. But The Watch Tower, her last novel, is almost like a distillation in its vision of the forces of good and evil. Something runs clear and strong through this wonderful, painful novel, the dark and the light. The victim and the survivor. Suffering and joy. The knowledge of both. Reality.’ Joan London, Lit Hub 'Elizabeth Harrower's thrilling 1966 novel The Watch Tower comes rampaging back from decades of disgraceful neglect: a wartime Sydney story of two abandoned sisters and the arrival in their lives of Felix, one of literature's most ferociously realised nasty pieces of work.' Helen Garner, Australian 'A superb psychological novel that will creep into your bones.' Michelle de Kretser, The Monthly 'I read The Watch Tower with a mixture of fascination and horror. It was impossible to put down...Her acute psychological assessments are made from gestures, language and glances and she is brilliant on power, isolation and class.' Ramona Koval, Australian ‘To create a monster as continually credible, comic and nauseating as Felix is a feat of a very high order. But to control that creation, as Miss Harrower does, so that Clare remains the centre of interest is an achievement even more rare. The Watch Tower is a triumph of art over virtuosity...a dense, profoundly moral novel of our time.’ H.G. Kippax, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1966 ‘As gripping and terrifying as any horror story...An astonishing book.’ Guardian

Set in Australia and England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, The Cardboard Crown presents an unforgettable portrait of an upper middle-class family who love both countries but are not quite at home in either. Martin Boyd is a deeply humane novelist, a writer of family sagas without peer.

Esther Prescott has seen little of life outside her wealthy family's Rose Bay mansion—until flashy Stan Peterson comes roaring up the drive in his huge American car and barges into her life. Within a fortnight they are living in his Kings Cross flat. Moody and erratic, proud of his well-bred wife yet bitterly resentful of her privilege, Stan is involved with his former girlfriend and a series of shady business deals. Esther, innocent and desperate to please him, must endure his controlling ways. This story of a troubled and obsessive marriage, set against the backdrop of postwar Sydney, is devastating. First published in 1957, Down in the City announced Elizabeth Harrower as a major Australian writer.

Ruth Park’s Miles Franklin-winning novel brilliantly evokes Australia in the midst of the Great Depression. Written with warmth and affection, Swords and Crowns and Rings is a powerful story about human nature and the strength of an unlikely love.

Felix is a quitter, with a poor track record behind him. Until the day the opportunity presents itself to make half a million dollars tax-free - by nurturing 390 acres of cannabis in the lonely hills of northern California.

In 1928 Sydney, Australia, an Irish school girl finds new hope, after polio and personal tragedy, while playing cello in a string quartet. “The author’s … love for and extensive knowledge of music, fine arts and literature shines through” ... “The landscapes are vast and vivid, the seasons sensory and real, and the emotional journey heart-wrenching.” ... “some of the most profound considerations on the meaning of suffering and understanding others, making allowances for their faults” - GoodReadingGuide.com Publisher description: Australia promised a fresh start for Lucy Straughan and her father when they fled war-torn Ireland. Instead, Lucy was stricken by polio. Having mastered the cello during her prolonged confinement, Lucy is now fifteen, lonely and full of questions. Suddenly she is thrust into a string quartet and meets quixotic Della Sotheby, hot-headed Pim Connolly and precocious Phoebe Raye. The experience transforms each of their lives as they forge friendships and share not a few family secrets. Set against the vivid background of 1920s Sydney, A Distant Prospect is an intimate, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving coming-of-age adventure told with a touch of poetry by a quintessentially Irish narrator.

In this delightfully witty, provocative book, literature professor and psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard argues that not having read a book need not be an impediment to having an interesting conversation about it. (In fact, he says, in certain situations reading the book is the worst thing you could do.) Using examples from such writers as Graham Greene, Oscar Wilde, Montaigne, and Umberto Eco, he describes the varieties of "non-reading"-from books that you've never heard of to books that you've read and forgotten-and offers advice on how to turn a sticky social situation into an occasion for creative brilliance. Practical, funny, and thought-provoking, How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read-which became a favorite of readers everywhere in the hardcover edition-is in the end a love letter to books, offering a whole new perspective on how we read and absorb them.

Breaking their poses like trees snapping branches, the women urgently regarded each other, cleared away all signs of work in an instant, examined their souls for defects, in a sense crossed themselves, and waited. After Laura and Clare are abandoned by their mother, Felix is there to help, even to marry Laura if she will have him. Little by little the two sisters grow complicit with his obsessions, his cruelty, his need to control. Set in the leafy northern suburbs of Sydney during the 1940s, The Watch Tower is a novel of relentless and acute psychological power.

Describes the preparation techniques and ingredients used to prepare food in Imperial Rome, with dozens of recipes for authentic dishes from the era.