Neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli has devoted himself to unravelling the mysteries of Alzheimer's disease since his grandfather succumbed to it.

The Barrier uses action-packed, tech-savvy speculative fiction to examine intractable problems from the world today.

Cold Vein is a frank, detailed account of how Chloe, Anne Tonner and her husband fought for their daughter's life.

Kelly Chandler's The Other Mother, and Chloe Shorten's Take Heart are both about the trials and tribulations of being a step-parent – albeit from very different perspectives.

According to Kate Cole-Adams, anaesthesia is as much a mystery to the specialists who pump in the drugs as it is to philosophers and thinkers.

A Forger's Tale is an excellent introduction to the seething underworld of the art trade. What's more, its publication was championed by one of the author's better-known victims.

Laura Barnett's latest novel offers romance as retrospective. It has enough emotional heft to draw her many fans in.

This Trumpian version of Gulliver's Travels has lashings of ridicule and scorn, it just doesn't get the complex politics behind Trump's rise.

See You in September is a creepy portrayal of an ordinary young woman, feeling the lure of total belonging.

• Turning Pages

The Clumber Bible, a monster medieval tome circa 1395, weighs 23 kilograms.

On her birthday, Manal al-Sharif posted a YouTube video of her in the radical act of driving a car. It was a hit and got her arrested. This is her story.

Haruki Murakami provides access to what is unique and what is universal about Japan.

The women in The Husband Hunters had money, but they also had an attractive flirtatiousness, assertiveness and confidence that their European counterparts didn't.

Judges for the $60,000 Miles Franklin award have unveiled a shortlist of five novels in line for Australia's most significant literary prize.

'On Tyranny' is not alarmist. The decline of democracy is unfolding around us.

June 18: Join political journalist Karen Middleton at 2pm for conversation and afternoon tea in the Conference Room, Level 4, National Library of Australia. In association with the Australian Women's Archive Project.$15. 

Every word matters in this supreme example of the writer's craft, says judge.

The latest winner of the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript award hopes to follow in the footsteps of his successful predecessors.

It doesn't take much to provoke US President Donald Trump into blocking a follower on Twitter - anything from an insult to an unflattering gif to a mild "covfefe" joke seems enough to do the trick.

Hungarian-born author is inspired by the simple wisdom of Paulo Coelho's The Alcehmist.

In the post-literate world of the Oval Office, language is the new chew toy.

• BOOKS

There's nothing unlucky about the 13th Lincoln Rhyme novel.

Tracy Chvalier's Othello is set in a Washington DC school in the mid-1970s: Othello is a Ghanaian boy called Osei; Desdemona becomes Dee, who dares befriend him; and Ian is the bully who seeks to destroy their love.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour, John Curtin's "call to America", and the fall of Singapore finally convinced us that as well as needing to maintain allies, we should be engaging with Asia.

• Review

Wildly divergent plots and grand vision in a celebration of resilience and recovery.