E Penguin imprint: 558 books

A collection of twenty-five narrative sketches, Cantonese Love Stories offers an intimate look into the cultural, commercial and romantic milieu of Hong Kong in the 1990s. Two lovers ruminate on the power of their photo booth stickers to keep them together. Peach-pocket Girl reads stolen love letters...

While violent revolution and social upheaval rocked Europe, far away in New South Wales, Governor Lachlan Macquarie was sowing the seeds for the Australian idea of the 'fair go' Macquarie was a reformer and an emancipator. He believed that a person's worth - be they gentry, infantry or convict - lay...

At the conclusion of 'the war to end war', the victorious powers set about redesigning the world map at the Paris Peace Conference. For China, Versailles presented an opportunity to regain territory lost to Japan at the start of the war. Yet, despite early encouragement from the world's superpowers,...

A classic short story from one Australia's most celebrated writers. Squeaker, a selector, is slowly clearing his piece of the Australian bush. However, lazy and shiftless, he leaves most of the work to his uncomplaining and hardworking mate. When she is crushed under a falling yellow gum, Squeaker...

As the young men of Europe were fighting in the trenches, a little known contingent of Chinese labourers crossed the world to provide support vital to the Allied war effort. Largely illiterate farmers from northern China, these men were simply attempting to make a better life for themselves, ignorant...

When ordinary bloke Peter Mitchell took what he hoped would be a quiet public service job in the Department of Immigration in 1990, he couldn't imagine he would end up as manager of the infamous Villawood Detention Centre. The detention of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants remains one of the nation's...

Where have all the fishballs gone? From a journalist deeply attuned to the subtleties of Hong Kong life comes Borrowed Spaces, a chronicle of the ways in which the grassroots citizens of Hong Kong reshape their city to make up for the shortcomings of their bureaucratic government. Mango trees sprouting...

The great crises that threaten Australia's national prosperity come from abroad. So do the grandest opportunities. But in Australian politics the big matters are commonly crowded out by the small. International policy is used for domestic point-scoring. Leaders are criticised for travelling beyond...

While society generally espouses the value of logic and certainty, we grow because we doubt. Humans have not spent millennia traversing oceans and experimenting with explosives because of confidence in their beliefs. Culture and science are rooted in unknowns, and when we accept doubt we are more...

At the turn of the twentieth century, London was a breeding ground for the avant-garde. Modernist writers like T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound became infatuated with the Orient. Pound in particular was inspired by the clarity and precision of Eastern poetry to rethink the nature of an English...

As England suffered heavy casualties at the front during World War One, the nation closed ranks against outsiders at home. England sought to reaffirm its racial dominance at the heart of the empire, and the Chinese in London became the principal scapegoat for anti-foreign sentiment. A combination...

When a movie about an Australian war hero takes Alby Murdoch to Vietnam, he discovers that some old soldiers never die and that it's not just the cameras doing the shooting . . . A job as stills photographer and some top-notch nosh were two good reasons for Alby Murdock to be in Saigon. The third...

After decades of prosperity Australians are now worried about their jobs, their incomes and their future. The mining boom, said to explain Australia's past success, is declared to be over. Unemployment has increased, carmakers have folded, the government is running a huge deficit. In a striking analysis,...

What do we actually cook? And how do we make decisions about what to cook and eat when surrounded by overwhelming messages in the media? Here writer and social researcher Rebecca Huntley attempts to answer these questions, and to show that the 'cooking' that's presented in food media (like MasterChef) is less valuable than 'food wisdom': understanding how to prepare food on a daily basis.