News & Blog
Read the latest news and bulletins, essays, features, opinions from our bestselling authors. Find out what's being said, debated, and discussed in the world of books and ideas.
On 7th April 2006 I drove across the flat fertile volcanic plain that stretches west from Geelong to the South Australian border. I was heading for Koroit, a small town just north of Port Fairy. It was autumn and all along the road oaks and elms, planted by Scottish, Irish and English settlers, were turning dry and golden. Koroit takes its name from the Koroitch Gundidj people who occupied the...
I love pace and tension in a story. Not just in my writing but in my reading too. The challenge for me in writing Siege was to try to keep the pace cracking along for close to 400 pages, when almost all the action was set in the confined space of a hotel, and where the inevitable stand-off between police and terrorists always acted as an anchor trying to slow things down. I countered this in...
WANTING National Year of Reading ‘Our Story’ Winner
by Random House Australia on 14 February 2012
Thousands of Australians voted for the book to represent their state or territory during the National Year of Reading 2012 and we are excited to announce that WANTING by Richard Flanagan has won for the state of Tasmania. Inspired by historical events, WANTING is a novel about art, love, and the way in which life is finally determined never by reason, but only ever by wanting. This bestselling,...
Call me a romantic, but I love a good love story. From the electricity of that first glance to the magic of that first kiss, the broken hearts, the foiled plans, the soul mates, the ones that got away, or the screaming ex-wives in the attic, I love all the crazy things our favourite characters do for love. Without a doubt the best affairs of the heart are found between the pages of a good book...
Last Wednesday Book Club: The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman
by Random House Australia on 6 February 2012
Join Random House's very own Last Wednesday Book Club where we discuss some of the most exciting soon-to-be released books on our publishing calendar. This month, we join the discussion of THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS by M.L. Stedman with Beverly Cousins, Fiction Publisher. ******************************** At our latest Last Wednesday Book Club we had a fascinating discussion about THE...
Choice is a wonderful and sometimes overwhelming thing. If I were a mathematician I could tell you how many variations of lists could be produced for an A – Z of Vintage Classics. I know it would be a very large number. I confess I have taken a few liberties in interpreting the alphabet in this list, thus increasing the possibilities. Oh dear, not very helpful! We hope this list of titles...
After more than 10 years working in weight loss, with children, teens, adults and athletes, I can pick with about 95% accuracy those who will go on to achieve their weight loss goals and those who will not. Call it a dietitians sixth sense, or good intuition in general but I can remember just 2 clients over 10 years with who I got it wrong. That is a pretty good statistic I think? So what...
Of late, great novels have acquired the added allure of the derided and the denied. Though not yet forbidden, children are taught that there are no such things as novels but only texts, or, in a fashionable variant, data; our multi-streaming media constantly repeats that if there are novels they are from the past, dying or dead, exotic strange things like a Himalayan snow leopard or Barbary lion,...
