History, Philosophy & Religion

"Peta Mathias has encountered many a lovelorn tale on her gastronomic travels around the world. Searching further, she has unearthed more stories - the heart-warming and heart-rending, the passionate and poignant, the macabre and merry - and in these retellings brings them all to... life. With her characteristic wit and colour, she also dishes up many of the ingredients of love: intriguing courtship rituals, such as bundling and the apple slice dance; poetry penned by those with their own stories to tell; and, of course, romantic recipes, purported aphrodisiacs and alluring delicacies. Entertaining, hilarious and informative, this book is a smorgasbord of love"--Publisher information.
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That September 2, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles' splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe. Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever change...d. Together with his sister-in-law, the pianist Roser Bruguera, he is forced out of his beloved Barcelona and into exile. When opportunity to seek refuge in Chile arises, they take it, boarding a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda to the promised `long petal of sea and wine and snow' over the seas. There, they find themselves enmeshed in a rich web of characters who come together in love and tragedy over the course of four generations, destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world. A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea is Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.
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Gordon McLauchlan continues his bestselling Short History series with an in-depth look into the history of the farming industry in New Zealand.

'They kill us, they crucify us, they throw us to beasts in the arena, they sew our lips together and watch us starve. They bugger children in front of fathers and violate men before the eyes of their wives. The temple priests flay us openly in the streets and the Judeans stone us.... We are hunted everywhere and we are hunted by everyone. We are despised, yet we grow. We are tortured and crucified and yet we flourish. We are hated and still we multiply. Why is that? You must wonder, how is it we survive?' Christos Tsiolkas' stunning new novel Damascus is a work of soaring ambition and achievement, of immense power and epic scope, taking as its subject nothing less than events surrounding the birth and establishment of the Christian church. Based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focusing on characters one and two generations on from the death of Christ, as well as Paul (Saul) himself, Damascus nevertheless explores the themes that have always obsessed Tsiolkas as a writer: class, religion, masculinity, patriarchy, colonisation, refugees; the ways in which nations, societies, communities, families and individuals are united and divided - it's all here, the contemporary and urgent questions, perennial concerns made vivid and visceral. In Damascus, Tsiolkas has written a masterpiece of imagination and transformation: an historical novel of immense power and an unflinching dissection of doubt and faith, tyranny and revolution, and cruelty and sacrifice.
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"Johannes is an avid member of the Hitler Youth. As the war rages on, he discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl called Elsa behind a false wall in their large house in Vienna. His initial horror turns to love and obsession. Both manipulating and manipulated, Johannes soon... finds he is the only one aware of Elsa's existence in the house, the only one responsible for her survival ... A film tie-in edition with new cover and abridged text"--Publisher information.
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