The Signature of all things

The signature of all things is the name of the 16th century theory...that god had imprinted a message on every plant on earth about what that plant was for. –Elizabeth Gilbert.

Born in the 'Age of Wonder', Alma Whittaker is the daughter of a wealthy botanical explorer who had traveled on Captain Cook's voyages. She has access to one of the greatest libraries in the New World and has spent her life studying mosses. Alma has an unquenchable curiosity and is driven to try to understand the master clockwork behind every (living) thing. The quest leads her to eminence in science but to disappointment in the realm of romance. The central episode of the novel begins in the 1850s when Alma meets and marries a botanical artist, Ambrose Pike. When intimacy between them fails she sends him to the island of Tahiti. A little more than 3 years later she receives word that Ambrose has died. In her father's footsteps, she travels to Tahiti to unravel the mystery of Ambrose's death where she finally finds some answers, and an understanding of the nature of survival. 

CITATION: Gilbert, Elizabeth, The signature of all things. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

  I know there are few greater pleasures in life than to be completely subsumed by the work you are obsessed with.                                                                     –Elizabeth Gilbert.  

Eat, Pray, Love was a bestseller in 2006...but maybe if you weren't a fan of that book - you might like this one - because its a big, smart and beautifully written novel...an absolute highlight of the year. –Michael Cathcart, ABC radio.

Finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle (USA).

Also available in an illustrated edition, large print, audiobook, kindle ebook.

Viking reader’s  book club notes, including interview with Elizabeth Gilbert.

Go to the Elizabeth Gilbert official author website for interviews, videos, and a TED talk on thinking creatively.

 

Listen to an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert by Michael Cathcart on ABC radio.

Promotional video - Signature of all things:

A tale for the time being

'Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.'

 

Ruth is a novelist living on a remote island off Canada’s Pacific northwest. She discovers a lunchbox washed ashore. It could be debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami. Inside the Hello Kitty lunchbox is a diary written by Nao, a 16 year old Japanese schoolgirl. Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all she wants to document the life of her great-grandmother. In a small cafe in Tokyo, Nao writes about the joy and heartbreak of family life and her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen anarchist nun.  

CITATION: Ozeki, Ruth. A tale for the time being. New York Viking, 2013.  422 pages. 

Also available in large print , audiobook, ebook & kindle. 

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2013. 

Book promotional video.

Watch the author Ruth Ozeki video interview.

The light between oceans

Set in 1918 on a remote island lighthouse off Southwest Australia. A dramatic wild setting where Tom Sherbourne has retreated to live a solitary life in the hope of erasing his emotional scars after distinguished service in World War I. While on leave he meets Isabel, they marry and she joins him at the lighthouse.  In peaceful isolation their romance blooms - but after 4 years and several heartbreaking miscarriages, their marriage is tested to the limit. Two weeks after the tragic loss of a premature baby, a dinghy drifts ashore carrying a dead man and a newborn baby in great distress. Against Tom’s protests, Isabel wants to keep the baby that she sees as a gift from God. Only years later will they understand that the choice they make will haunt them forever.

CITATION: Stedman, M.L., The light between oceans. North Sydney, NSW: Vintage Books, 2012.

The New York Times bestseller soon to be a major motion picture from Spielberg’s Dreamworks that is “irresistible…seductive…with a high concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page.”  –O, The Oprah Magazine.

Also available in large print, audiobook & kindle ebook.
More about this book including video interview with the author and 'browse inside' feature from the Publishers website - Simon and Schuster.

Hollywood comes to Stanley, (Tasmania) starring Michael Fassbender, Rachel Weisz.

Stanley, Tasmania.     photo credit - ABC News

The secret fate of Mary Watson

Based on historical diaries, this fictional 'true story' is set in 1879 on remote Lizard Island in far north Queensland.

Fleeing her family home, 19-year-old Mary Oxnam has few prospects and no connections. Plain and penniless, she must rely on her wit and intelligence to survive. Mary soon finds work as a pianist in a Cooktown brothel. The job serves as a front for her more lucrative side career as a spy in various smuggling operations. 
Within a year she has moved to Lizard Island, locked into a marriage of convenience with a fisherman. It's a rough, isolated place, rife with hidden enemies - and unexpected temptation.

A suspenseful story of peril and intrigue, with a heady combination of wild beauty and foreboding. – HarperCollinsPublishers.


CITATION: Johnson, Judy. The secret fate of Mary Watson. Pymble, N.S.W. : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2011.

By the winner of a Victorian Premier's Literary Award, 2007 (for Jack).

Available in CD audiobook, braille & kindle ebook.

Cloud Atlas

 

An ambitious novel presenting six different stories set in different time periods. Each story is read by the main character in the next chapter. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed. The first begins in Chatham Islands (a remote Pacific archipelago off the coast of New Zealand) with the diary of a 19th-century notary. The second story shifts to 1931 with the letters of a penniless composer in 1931 Belgium. Then we meet a 1970s reporter who gets in the way of a nuclear energy company in California and a genetically engineered serf in a future "corpocracy" who slowly gains awareness of her plight. Finally we return to the Chatham islands, only centuries later in a post-civilisation world.

...brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. – Goodreads   

Citation: Mitchell, David. The cloud atlas. London : Sceptre, 2004.

Available as a CD audiobook, kindle ebook + an enhanced edition with audio and video. Adapted for film starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry.

Watch the video interview with David Mitchell :