Top 10 - January 12

Detective Inspector Lynley is approached by business magnate Bernard Fairclough for a confidential review - not a formal investigation - of the circumstances of his nephew's demise. The coroner's verdict is accidental death. Recovering from the murder of his wife, Lynley has personal reasons for welcoming a spell away from London. He heads to the wild beauty of the Lake District, with Deborah and Simon St James to provide cover for his inquiries. Barbara Havers, back at base, makes her own unique contribution to the case, distrac... read more

The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffman's most ambitious and mesmerizing novel, a tour de force of imagination and research, set in ancient Israel. In 70 C.E., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman's novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different pat... read more

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver...There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and, white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman fin... read more

'When Hitler came to power I was in the bath. The wireless in the living room was turned up loud, but all that drifted down to me were waves of happy cheering, like a football match. It was Monday afternoon ...' Ruth Becker, defiant and cantankerous, is living out her days in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. She has made an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past - and a part of history that has been all but forgotten.Another lifetime away, it's 1939 and the world is going to war. Ernst Toller, self-doubting revolutionary and poet,... read more

"There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel." Anthony Trollope
It's the early 1980s. In American colleges, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard... read more

Ron Barassi is an iconic figure in Australian sporting culture, with a record of personal and team success that is unrivalled. Beyond sport, he has become a greatly respected elder in our broader society. In Wisdom, he shares with us 31 maxims and quotations that he has collected and which have been integral in forging that reputation. Ron reflects on each and explains their importance in delivering ideas, motivation and inspiration and how he applied them in sport and in life - words of wisdom, indeed. Containing beautiful illustr... read more

Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, was Australia's greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December, 1911, he led an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. After setting up Main Base at Cape Denision and Western Base on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an extraordinary sledging trek with his companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz. After five weeks, tragedy struck. Ninnis was swallowed whole by a snow-covered crevasse, an... read more

The Dukan Diet is a unique 4-step programme, combining two steps to lose your unwanted weight and two steps to keep it off for good: Step 1: Attack For 2-7 days eat as much as you want of 72 protein-rich foods. Step 2: Cruise Continue eating the protein-rich foods with the addition of 28 vegetables. Step 3: Consolidation Add fruit, bread, cheese and starchy foods, and 2 celebration meals a week, allowing 5 days for every pound lost. Step 4: Stabilisation Eat what you like without regaining weight by following 3 simple rules, includ... read more