5 books to look out for this month
A new year means new books! From essential travel guides to spine-chilling true crime, here are January release books we can’t wait to read.
1. The Solo Travel Handbook by Lonely Planet (January 1)
Don't let the idea of travelling alone stop you from living out your dreams. Packed with tips and advice for before and during your travels, The Solo Travel Handbook gives you the confidence and know-how to explore the world on your own, whether you're planning a once-in-a-lifetime adventure or short city break.
Developed with Lonely Planet's expert travel writers, it explains how and why individual travel is such a valuable and rewarding experience.
Covered topics include:
- Confront and overcome any travel worries
- Decide where to go and plan your itinerary
- Set a budget strategy and organise money
- Find deals on flights and accommodation
- Choose the right luggage and pack like a pro
- Meet fellow travellers and befriend locals
- Ensure you stay safe, happy and healthy
We also rank the best destinations for road-tripping, food, nightlife, culture, island escapes and more, as well as how to fund your travels while you're away.
2. The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin (January 9)
It's 1969, and holed up in a grimy tenement building in New York's Lower East Side is a travelling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the date they will die. The four Gold children, too young for what they're about to hear, sneak out to learn their fortunes.
Over the years that follow, the siblings must choose how to live with the prophecies the fortune-teller gave them that day. Will they accept, ignore, cheat or defy them? Golden-boy Simon escapes to San Francisco, searching for love; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician; eldest son Daniel tries to control fate as an army doctor after 9/11; and bookish Varya looks to science for the answers she craves.
A sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists is a story about how we live, how we die, and what we do with the time we have.
3. 30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Anxiety by Bev Aisbett (January 22)
From Australia's bestselling anxiety expert, Bev Aisbett, comes a proven and practical workbook to help people manage their anxiety, with simple daily strategies for work and for home.
A clear, practical day-by-day workbook, written by experienced counsellor and bestselling author of the classic national bestseller about anxiety, Living with IT, Bev Aisbett, to help people control their anxiety.
Based on many of the exercises Bev has been teaching and writing about for the past twenty years, the book provides clear, simple daily building blocks to help people manage their anxiety and assist in recovery. Designed to be carried in handbags or backpacks as a daily companion, this is a highly approachable, concise, practical, simple and above all proven method of overcoming anxiety.
Bev Aisbett is Australia's leading author in books around managing anxiety. In 1993, after recovering from severe anxiety and depression herself, Bev turned to her artistic talents to create the first of her ground-breaking illustrated self-help books Living with IT – A Survivor's Guide to Panic Attacks, which rapidly became a national bestseller, with over 200,000 copies sold. In 2013, HarperCollins published the fully revised and updated 20th anniversary edition of this classic book.
4. On the Bright Side by Hendrik Groen (January 29)
85-year-old Hendrik Groen is fed up to his false teeth with coffee mornings and bingo.
He dreams of escaping the confines of his care home and practicing hairpin turns on his mobility scooter. Inspired by his fellow members of the recently formed Old-But-Not-Dead Club, he vows to put down his Custard Cream and commit to a spot of octogenarian anarchy.
But the care home's Director will not stand for drunken bar crawls, illicit fireworks and geriatric romance on her watch. The Old-But-Not-Dead Club must stick together if they're not to go gently into that good night. Things turn more serious, however, when rumours surface that the home is set for demolition. It's up to Hendrik and the gang to stop it – or drop dead trying…
He may be the wrong side of 85, but Hendrik Groen has no intention of slowing up - or going down without a fight.
5. The Suitcase Baby by Tanya Bretherton (January 30)
In the early hours of Saturday morning, 17 November 1923, a suitcase was found washed up on the shore of a small beach in the Sydney harbourside suburb of Mosman. What it contained – and why – would prove to be explosive.
The discovery of 'the suitcase baby', and the revelations that followed, generated unprecedented newspaper coverage and public interest. The murdered baby, a little girl, was one of many dead infants who were turning up in the harbour, on trains and in other public places. These innocent victims, born from unmarried mothers, were a devastating symptom of the clash between public morality, private passions and unrelenting poverty in a fast-growing metropolis with little capacity for public welfare.
Police tracked down Sarah Boyd, the mother of the suitcase baby, and the murder trial of Sarah and her friend Jean Olliver became a media sensation. The extraordinary story of the suitcase baby will keep you riveted until the very last page. True history that is both shocking and too real, this unforgettable tale is rich in historical detail yet moves at the pace of a great crime novel, with characters and events as vivid as if they are happening now.