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. Abel Jackson's boyhood belongs to a vanishing world. On an idyllic stretch of coast whose waters teem with fish, he lives a simple, tough existence. It's just him and his mother in the house at Longboat Bay, but Abel has friends in the sea, particularly the magnificent old groper he meets when diving. As the years pass, things change, but one thing seems to remain constant: the greed of humans. When the modern world comes to his patch of sea, Abel wonders what can stand in its way. Blueback is a deceptively simple allegory about a boy who matures through fortitude and who finds wisdom through living in harmony with all forms of life. 'In true fable style, this is a simple story, but one so beautiful, poignant and moving it is impossible to ignore.' Daily Telegraph 'Winton . . . convince[s] us of the preciousness of our oceans not through lectures but through his characters' steady wonder.' New York Times

Western Australian author. Abel Jackson loves to dive. He's a natural in the water. He can't remember a time when he couldn't use a mask and snorkel to glide down into the clear deep. Life is tough out at Longboat Bay. Every day the boy helps his mother earn their living from the sea and the land. It's hard work but Abel has the bush and the sky and the bay to himself. Until the day he meets Blueback, the fish that changes his life.

From the Introduction: "This sets Webster's spelling book in an altogether different light. It was just a book that taught children how to spell (although of course it did that as well); it was the book that taught them to read. Although they may well have seen a primer at home, the speller was the first school text to instruct them in the art of reading. So the Webster spelling book, in its various forms, is of more importance to the history of American education than has formerly been appreciated. It deserves to be examined as the most popular reading instructional text of its day. A second purpose of this book, then, is to examine the spelling book on its own terms and in its own context. For Webster, of course, did not write his textbook in a vacuum. He had, it turns out, a useful model: a spelling book written by an Englishman, Thomas Dilworth, who titled his work A New Guide to the English Tongue. (Benjamin Franklin had been the first to produce an American edition, publishing it in 1747.) Webster himself learned to read from "Dilworth," as the work was affectionately known, and he would appropriate Dilworth's book for his own work."--page 14.

New York Times Bestseller Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal "Hilarious…This book charmed my socks off." —Patricia O’Conner, New York Times Book Review Mary Norris has spent more than three decades working in The New Yorker’s renowned copy department, helping to maintain its celebrated high standards. In Between You & Me, she brings her vast experience with grammar and usage, her good cheer and irreverence, and her finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.