Books in the News...

Check out these new fiction and non -fiction titles from 22-23 August Spectrum, you can request them from the Library.




Death is a welcome guest by Louise Welsh
The second instalment in the thrilling new Plague Times trilogy from the author of A Lovely Way to Burn.

Magnus McFall was a comic on the brink of his big break when the world came to an end. Now, he is a man on the run and there is nothing to laugh about.

Thrown into unwilling partnership with an escaped convict, Magnus flees the desolation of London to make the long journey north, clinging to his hope that the sickness has not reached his family on their remote Scottish island.

He finds himself in a landscape fraught with danger, fighting for his place in a world ruled by men, like his fellow traveller Jeb - practical men who do not let pain or emotions interfere with getting the job done.

This is a world with its own justice, and new rules.
Where people, guns and food are currency.
Where survival is everything.


Footy Dreaming by Michael Hyde
Ben and Noah play on opposing teams in a footy-obsessed town. They each dream of playing on the G – and this is their make or break season. Tensions rise as sledging goes too far. Will Noah lose his cool, and his chance, in the face of prejudice? Will Ben reject racism and forge his own path? Noah and Ben have the potential to play in the AFL. It’s up to each of them whether they make it.





Surveillance by Bernard Keane
The government is spying on everyone. But who is spying on the government?

A ruthless online activist group called Kittehsaurus Rox has hacked into top-secret Cabinet information and gone public with it, creating widespread panic and embarrassing a government that will stop at nothing to hunt down 'KSR'.

Journalist and cyber-expert Kat Sharpe is chosen by KSR to break news of their operations, and overnight she becomes the media sensation she has always longed to be. But as she gets closer to KSR and its circle of supporters, she can't shake the feeling that something doesn't add up.

Cybersecurity company Veldtech Industries is in line to make a fortune out of the carnage created by the hackers. But they have their own desperate secrets to protect - from the government and from each other.

The Water Book by Alok Jha
Water is the most every day of substances. It pours from our taps and falls from the sky. We drink it, wash with it, and couldn't live without it. Yet, on closer examination it is also a very strange substance (it is one of only a very small number of molecules which expand when cooled). Look closer again and water reveals itself as a key to a scientific story on the biggest of canvases. Water is crucial to our survival - life depends on it - but it was also fundamental in the origins of life on Earth. The millions of gallons of water which make up our rivers, lakes and oceans, originated in outer space. How it arrived here and how those molecules of water were formed, is a story which takes us back to the beginning of the universe. Indeed, we know more about the depths of space than we do about the furthest reaches of the oceans. Water has also shaped the world we live in. Whether it is by gently carving the Grand Canyon over millennia, or in shaping how civilisations were built; we have settled our cities along rivers and coasts. Scientific studies show how we feel calmer and more relaxed when next to water. We holiday by the seas and lakes. Yet one day soon wars may be fought over access to water. The Water Book will change the way you look at water. After reading it you will be able to hold a glass of water up to the light and see within it a strange molecule that connects you to the origins of life, the birth (and death) of the universe, and to everyone who ever lived.

My life in ruins : from Petra to Glenrowan my adventures and misadventures in archaeology by Adam Ford
Adam Ford is an archaeologist. Not only has be been on expeditions to unlock the mysteries of the past in the Caribbean, British Isles, Jordan, Syria, Israel, United Arab Emirates and Australia. He's also had heat stroke, hypothermia, and dysentery; been chased by camel spiders, walked on by scorpions and pestered by bugs big enough to ride. In more than 20 years roaming the globe, he's lived in some of the most remote locations in the world and suffered the back-breaking and soul-destroying monotony of shifting tonnes of dirt with a shovel. From Cold War bunkers in England to Bronze Age cities on the Euphrates, remotes caves in the Jordan Valley, shipwrecks in Western Australia and burials in Barbados, Adam has dug, dived, abseiled and trekked his way into history. Part memoir, part potted history of civilisation, My Life in Ruins is the story of a life lived in uncovering the past.

The sex myth : the gap between our fantasies and reality by Rachel Hills
Fifty years after the sexual revolution, we are told that we live in a time of unprecedented sexual freedom; that, if anything, we are too free now. But beneath the veneer of glossy hedonism, millennial journalist Rachel Hills argues that we are controlled by a new brand of sexual convention: one which influences all of us - woman or man, straight or gay, liberal or conservative. At the root of this silent code lies the Sex Myth - the defining significance we invest in sexuality that once meant we were dirty if we did have sex, and now means we are defective if we don't do it enough.