Non-Secondhand Books

Damon Courtenay died on the morning of April Fool's Day. In this tribute to his son, Bryce Courtenay lays bare the suffering behind this young man's life. Damon Courtenay died...

In A Spy in the House of Love, Anais Nin's vision of feminine sexuality is expressed with a ferocious dramatic force. Sabrina is a firebird blazing through 1950s New York-...

Boy is the story of Roald Dahl's very own boyhood, including tales of sweet-shops and chocolate, mean old ladies and a Great Mouse Plot - the inspiration for some of...

Philip Marlowe's client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband's collection. Easy. Probably too...

In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of twenties Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of...

In America at the turn of the twentieth century, when society abounds with movers and shakers such as Houdini, J.P Morgan, Henry Ford and Emma Goldman, and the sultry rhythms...

In 1914 Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya with her husband to run a coffee-farm. Drawn to the exquisite beauty of Africa, she spent her happiest years there until the plantation...

Pearl Barley and Charlie Parsley are the best of friends. But they are different in almost every way . . . Pearl likes solving mysteries and moves rather fast in...

Enter the World of Graeme Base's Magical Forest Enter the world of Graeme Base's forest, filled with wild and wonderful animals, Uno's unique family and friends - and the elusive...

Kip, Annie, Grace, David, Ted. Five different people, one terrible night. There's a storm at Point Nepean, and the ocean has swept into the bay. Kip is in the wrong...

It's 1919, Richmond football club is on top of the ladder, cream buns are threepence each and four boys are gunning for the best job in town. Charlie is lucky...

One day, not so very many years ago, a small peasant boy was chosen to study ballet at the Beijing Dance Academy. His mother urged him to take this chance...

First published fifty years ago, this classic novel was Albert Wendt's first published book. This classic has been released in the Popular Penguin format to mark 50 years of publishing...

The game is called Beatie Bow and the children play it for the thrill of scaring themselves. But when Abigail is drawn in, the game is quickly transformed into an...

Judy's father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible - but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their...

I Can Jump Puddles is Alan Marshall's story of his childhood - a happy world in which, despite his crippling poliomyelitis, he plays, climbs, fights, swims, rides and laughs. His...

In a world struggling back from the brink of apocalypse, life is harsh. But for Elspeth Gordie, born with enhanced mental abilities that would see her sterilised or burned if...

Lou Connor wants to escape her emotionally crass family and life of poverty, so she travels from Sydney to the USA as an exchange student. But her host-family, the Hardings...

Wresting his family from the easy living of nineteenth-century Sydney, Cornelius Laffey takes them to northern Queensland where thousands of hopefuls are digging for gold in the mud. They confront...

As life slips away, Gabriel looks back over his brief twenty years that have been clouded by frustration and humiliation. A small town and distant parents ensure that he is...

Blueback is an achingly beautiful story about family, belonging, and living a life in tune with the environment, from Tim Winton, one of Australia's best-loved authors. Blueback is an achingly...

As uplifting as it is moving, Holding the Man is a funny, sad and celebratory account of growing up gay, and a powerful love story. In the mid-seventies at an...

The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea allows us a precious glimpse into a simpler kind of childhood in a country that no longer exists. In 1941, Rob Coram is six. The...

Scarcely out of print since the early 1870s, For the Term of His Natural Life has provided successive generations with a vivid account of a brutal phase of colonial life....

The year is 1977, and Adrian is nine. He lives with his gran and his uncle Rory; his best friend is Clinton Tull. He loves to draw and he wants...

Tim Winton's first Miles Franklin-winner, Shallows revolves around the ruthless commerce of whaling, and Queenie Cookson, who joins the fight to end it. Angelus is a frontier town with a...

Set among the surf and sandhills of the Australian beach - and the tidal changes of three generations of the Lang family - The Bodysurfers is an Australian classic. A...

A classic novel that became a classic film. An international bestseller that was made into a multiple award-winning film. Eight-year-old Kahu craves her great-grandfather's love and attention. But he is...

First with your head and then with your heart . . . So says Hoppie Groenewald, boxing champion, to a seven-year-old boy who dreams of being the welterweight champion of...

The definitive new history of East Germany by a highly acclaimed historian In 1990, a country disappeared. When the iron curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over...

A riveting exploration of the unforeseen consequences of technological disruption, from the no.1 international bestselling author What is the price of progress? In this tale of innovation and obsession Gladwell...

An incisive follow-up to the Sunday Times bestseller White Fragility asserting that it is white progressives who are responsible for inflicting the most daily harm on people of colour Racism...

A compelling history of Chinese resistance to state oppression, told through the stories of three remarkable individuals In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize-winning Ian Johnson describes a China caught between the...

An illuminating - and deeply personal - exploration of the essence of Buddhist thought, from the author of Lost Japan Powerful, mystical and concise, the Heart Sutra is believed to...

A captivating and highly original retelling of key stories from the Bible- the culmination of a lifetime's literary work A man named Saul is sent to search for some lost...

Two thousand years of Japanese history, told through interconnected portraits of twenty fascinating individuals Chris Harding's enormously enjoyable new book distils Japan's long, complex and fascinating history into the stories...

The international bestseller - a whip-smart, entertaining exploration of the geometry that underlies our world, from the author of How Not to Be Wrong How should a democracy choose its...

An intimate, powerful account of Stephen Hawking and his universe An icon of the last fifty years, Stephen Hawking seems to encapsulate genius- not since Albert Einstein has a scientific...

A user's guide to rationality during an epidemic of unreason In the twenty-first century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to...

An enthralling memoir from the inspiring astronaut who spent six months in space -- and is going back to the International Space Station just as the paperback is published In...

A playful yet profound examination of what cats can teach us about life and how to live it 'When I play with my cat, how do I know she is...

An astonishingly prescient journey through one of the fastest-growing phenomena of our age, by one of our most exciting young thinkers and urban explorers Today, the bunker has become the...

Sabato's masterpiece of obsessive love and murder in 1950s Buenos Aires, new to Penguin Modern Classics Sabato's dark, philosophical novel is woven around a violent crime committed by Alejandra, the...

Essential reading for anyone who wants a fresh take on our cultural values that goes beyond economics, psychology and politics What is anthropology? What can it tell us about the...

In these haunting reflections, Primo Levi, a chemist by training takes the elements of the periodic table as his inspiration. He ranges from young love to political savagery; 'Iron' honours...

No one has done more to shape our view of what makes us human than Charles Darwin, whose seismic theory of evolution turned the Victorian world upside down, utterly rewrote...

In the sixteenth century, Zen monks in Japan developed the haiku, an unrhymed poetic form consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines. Now, in One Hundred Great Books in...

High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time. The judge, broken by a world too messy for justice, is haunted by...