The Serpent in Aboriginal stories is both creator and destroyer, dwelling between physical and spiritual worlds, between story and history, weaving across earth and sky. The Great Dividing Range is the body of the Serpent, but he does not separate us – he brings us together. What if this ancient Lore can be found everywhere? What if the stories of the Basilisk, Wyvern, Naga, Quetzalcoatl and many other mythic Serpents also contain the knowledge we need in this moment of crisis? In Snake Talk, Tyson Yunkaporta and Megan Kelleher follow these stories around the world from Kathmandu to Aotearoa, from Mesoamerica to China to northern Europe. They ask how we can align our human gifts with the patterns of creation, seeking answers from makers who pay homage to the Serpent in images and objects. This exhilarating new book – like Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story – shines an Indigenous light on contemporary society. Snake Talk invites us to see the world through the eye of the Serpent. Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story. His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises. Megan Kelleher belongs to the Barada and Kapalbara peoples of Central Queensland and the branch of the Kelleher clan living in regional Victoria. She is currently undertaking her PhD at RMIT University in the School of Media and Communication and was honoured to be awarded one of RMIT's Vice Chancellor’s Indigenous Pre‑Doctoral Fellowships in 2018. Megan is investigating whether the affordances of blockchain technology are culturally appropriate for Indigenous governance, and is undertaking this research as a core member of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) and as a PhD Candidate within The ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). When she is not training to be an academic, Megan is a devoted mother of her three beautiful children, Eden, Diver and Onyx. ‘I love this book. Every page is an illumination.’ Bronwyn Bancroft ‘An extraordinary invitation into the world of the Dreaming…Unheralded.’ Melissa Lucashenko on Sand Talk ‘Bristles with revelation…vigorous brilliance…both sensible and subversive.’ Age on Right Story, Wrong Story

From award-winning journalist and writer Rick Morton comes Mean Streak, the gripping, utterly compelling and horrifying story of how, over the course of four and a half years, Australia's government turned on its most vulnerable citizens. Robodebt was the automated debt recovery system, in which close to half a million Australian welfare recipients were illegally pursued over false debts. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a "massive failure of public administration" caused by "venality, incompetence and cowardice". Essentially, Australia was gaslit by its own government. From ministers to public servants - they backed something that was illegal, just to shake down innocent people for money, then they lied about it for four and a half years. In the tradition of Chloe Hooper (The Tall Man) and Helen Garner (This House of Grief and Joe Cinque's Consolation), Rick Morton tells a powerful and emotionally compelling story of one of the most shocking, large-scale failures of the Australian government, a historic and appalling political tragedy, which clearly displayed the wide-reaching and systematic contempt that a government had for its most vulnerable citizens. The saga of robodebt tells us deeply disturbing things about the country we are, the people we are, the bureaucrats we have (both good and bad) and the government that was. This is a powerfully moving, deeply compelling cautionary tale of morality in public life gone badly awry.

The triumphant conclusion to the Tawny Man trilogy, from the author of the bestselling Farseer and Liveship Traders trilogies. The moving end to the tale of the Farseers, in which kingdoms must stand or fall on the beat of a dragon's wings, or a Fool's heart. A small and sadly untried coterie - the old assassin Chade, the serving-boy Thick, Prince Dutiful, and his reluctant Skillmaster, Fitz - sail towards the distant island of Aslevjal. There they must fulfil the Narcheska's challenge to her betrothed: to lay the head of the dragon Icefyre, whom legends tell is buried there deep beneath the ice, upon her hearth. Only with the completion of this quest can the marriage proceed, and the resulting alliance signal an end to war between the two kingdoms. It is not a happy ship: tensions between the folk of the Six Duchies and their traditional enemies, the Outislanders, lie just beneath the surface. Thick is constantly ill, and his random but powerful Skilling has taken on a dark and menacing tone, while Chade's fascination with the Skill is growing to the point of obsession. Having ensured that his beloved friend the Fool is safely left behind in Buckkeep, Fitz is guilt-stricken; but he is determined to keep his fate at bay, since prophecy foretells the Fool's death if he ever sets foot on the isle of the black dragon. But as their ship draws in towards Aslevjal a lone figure awaits them...

A spaceship called Audition is hurtling through the cosmos. Squashed immobile into its largest room are three giants: Alba, Stanley and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing. Talk they must, and as they do, Alba, Stanley and Drew recover their shared memory of what has been done to their former selves – experiences of imprisonment, violence and misrecognition, of disempowerment and underprivilege. Pip Adam’s uncategorisable new novel, part science fiction, part social realism, asks what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much room – about how we imagine new forms of justice, and how we transcend the bodies and selves we are given.