Take a walk through Melbourne’s streets and discover a world of fascinating historical tidbits with renowned writer and history buff Robyn Annear.

Robyn Annear lends her signature wit to this fantastic history of second-hand: from the origins of the op shop to eBay, up-cycling and how new became normal.

First published in 1966, Naguib Mahfouz’s Adrift on the Nile is an atmospheric novel that dramatizes the rootlessness of Egypt’s cosmopolitan middle class. Anis Zani is a bored and drug-addicted civil servant who is barely holding on to his job. Every evening he hosts a gathering on a houseboat on the Nile, where he and a motley group of cynical and aimless friends share a water pipe full of kif, a mixture of tobacco and marijuana. When a young female journalist—an “alarmingly serious person”—joins them and begins secretly documenting their activities, the group’s harmony starts disintegrating, culminating in a midnight joyride that ends in tragedy.

Gold was discovered in Australia in 1851, and within a year the infant colony was transformed from a sump for convicts to a Land of Opportunity. Robyn Annear's lively history describes in detail life on the diggings: the mud of winter and dust of summer, the pluckiness of the women and children, the grog shanties, the flies, the mania of mining, the despair and the delirium, and the much hated licensing system which was to culminate in the Eureka Stockade. 'Robyn Annear tells the story of the 1852 gold rushes in imaginative detail ... she tells us how it felt to be there. You find yourself worrying about the problems long ago resolved, sharply aware of the gold diggers' hopes and ordeals, diverted by the high comedy of a chaotic life. Like all good narratives, it looks easy because it is so easily read and enjoyed ... She makes a mosaic out of small moments of experience ... The physical realities of the diggings are evoked, with all the ingenious ways of managing tent space, cooking, guarding gold, finding feed for horses, keeping off wind and rain, ants and mice.' Brenda Niall Robyn Annear was born in Melbourne in 1960. She spends her time writing and researching, typing for other people and looking after her family. She is also a part-time bookseller and President of the Friends of the Castlemaine Library. 'History from the inside; wonderfully entertaining.' Age 'A welcome addition to Australian history, pointing to badly needed ways in which history can be made more reader-friendly.' Quadrant

When Tom Castro declared himself to be Roger, the Tichborne heir, and headed for London to claim his inheritance, not even Roger’s mother could tell them apart. By 1871 he was the most notorious celebrity in Great Britain or Australia. But who was he? And what was his story?

“Just a little way down Collins Street, beside Henry Buck's, is a perpetually dark but sheltered laneway called Equitable Place. Here you'll find a number of places to eat and drink. Settle yourself in the window of one, shut your eyes, and picture this scene of yore ...” In this much-loved book, Robyn Annear resurrects the village that was early Melbourne – from the arrival of white settlers in 1835 until the first gold rushes shook the town – and brings it to life in vivid colour. Bearbrass was one of the local names by which Melbourne was known and Annear provides a fascinating living portrait of the streetlife of this town. In a lively and engaging style, she overlays her reinvention of Bearbrass with her own impressions and experiences of the modern city, enabling Melburnians and visitors to imagine the early township and remind themselves of the rich history that lies beneath today's modern metropolis. The original Bearbrass won the A.A. Phillips Award for Australian Studies in the 1995 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. “... [Annear] writes with an historian's eye for detail and a flair for ironic observation. An affectionate journey, rich in detail and character.” – The Age Robyn Annear is an ex-typist who lives in country Victoria with somebody else's husband. She is the author of A City Lost and Found, Bearbrass, Nothing But Gold, The Man Who Lost Himself, and Fly a Rebel Flag. She has also written several pieces for The Monthly magazine.

We often live in transit, shifting between jobs, cities and countries, trying to build communities in a virtual world, but longing - maybe before dropping off to sleep at night - for some stronger connection. The savage playground of speed dating. High-risk, low-loyalty workplaces, scattered around the world. Friendships and love affairs conducted through technology. Globalisation and the long boom have changed the way young people love, work and travel. In This Restless Life, journalist Brigid Delaney looks at the impact that hyper-mobility and the excesses of consumer culture have had on the restless generation. She hears stories from young Australians in the departure lounges of outer London airports, at parties in Rome and Sydney, in the caf s of Berlin and Paris. They feel 'nation-stateless', adrift. Their affluence in the new economy has come at a cost. Having lived the restless life herself - fifteen cities over the past fifteen years - Delaney laments the loss of the things that for previous generations held life together, like romantic love, full-time permanent work and real-world communities. But just as the pace of the new economy changed us into restless human beings, might the global financial crisis provide this generation with an opportunity to slow down and reassess how it might live?