Some of Australia's best known writers share their wise and searingly honest experiences of losing a parent.

The fairy tale lives again in this book of forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction. Neil Gaiman, “Orange” Aimee Bender, “The Color Master” Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover” Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans” These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party. Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico. Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.

A true story of a neurosurgeon and a pianist In 2001 the brilliant young concert pianist Aaron McMillan was diagnosed with a rare type of brain tumour and given six weeks to live. He was just 24 years old. He underwent 12 hours of emergency surgery; days later he was back at the piano, preparing to perform. Years later, he was still performing. His doctor was Charlie Teo, one of Australia's most celebrated and controversial neurosurgeons. Charlie's specialty is inoperable brain tumours and his radical techniques have earned him praise around the world. But in his own country he is regarded by some as reckless and even dangerous. Aaron McMillan presented Charlie with his most challenging case yet. In return, Charlie Teo gave Aaron hope. Life In His Hands is the remarkable true story of a medical maverick and an artist who refused to be daunted by death. It is a book full of heartache and joy and scientific marvels, written by a journalist who found that with some stories, staying on the sidelines is the hardest thing to do.

Winner of the PEN/Voelcker career achievement award in poetry Misgivings is C. K. William's searing recollection of his family's extreme dynamics and of his parents' deaths after years of struggle, bitterness, inner conflict, and, finally, love. Like Kafka's self-revealing Letter to His Father, Misgivings is a full of doubt, both philosophical and personal, but as a work of art it is sure and true. Williams's father was an "ordinary businessman"--angry, demanding, addicted to the tension he created with the people he loved; a man who could recite the Greek myths to his son yet vowed never to apologize to anybody. Wiiiams's mother was a housewife, a woman with a great capacity for pleasure, who was stoical about the family's dire early poverty yet remained affected by it even when they became well-off. Together, these two formed what Williams calls the "conspiracy that made me who I am." His account of their life together and of their deaths--his father's in a final abandonment of the will to live, his mother's with calm resignation--is a literary form of the reconciliation the family achieved at the end of his parents' lives, composed as a series of short takes, a double helix of experience and recollection.

If God is My Father, Who is My Mother? is a spiritual journey out of the depths of conservative patriarchy to the enlightenment of a Mother/Father God. Paula tells a story of family and church dysfunction without condemnation or blame. Her story is about the education and guidance of her daughters and female students at both the high school and college levels, It was during these tenures that Paula began to recognize the conditioning of females by a patriarchal society. She dedicated herself first to healing, and then to discovery and enlightenment. Journey with her through this memoir of revelations, questions, and proposed answers.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS/AGES 4-8