AustLit

'Sam Dastyari wants you to like him. Made general secretary of the Sydney branch of the ALP when he was barely out of nappies, he was elected to the Senate in 2013, the first person of Iranian origin to sit in an Australian parliament. Ever since, it’s been hard to escape the 34-year-old senator. He’s a grand vizier of social media, appears on every TV show that’ll have him ... and now there’s the furore over his memoir, One Halal of a Story.' (Introduction)

'Do we really know our parents? When Daniel Whittaker, a prosperous real-estate agent, dies at 88, his will includes a surprising demand: ­access to his estate is denied until his three ­middle-aged children deliver a dozen letters.' (Introduction)

'With 150,000 copies in print, rights sold to 20 countries and the movie option bought by Reese Witherspoon, Jane Harper’s debut novel The Dry is the runaway success story of Australian publishing this year.

'Set in the fictional Victorian town of Kiewarra, The Dry, published in February, introduces Melbourne federal police officer Aaron Falk. He travels home to investigate the alleged murder-suicide of his best friend and his family.' (Introduction)

'The list of literary couples is a distinguished one: Percy and Mary Shelley, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, to name a few. Curiously, none of the just-mentioned duos ever wrote and published a book together. Whether due to differing prose styles or competing egos — or both — cohabiting and co-writing is highly uncommon.' (Introduction)

'Yes, I’m back here today. It’s not because­ I’ve irked the books editor. I know for a fact he tries to make the final page as good as the first. It’s so I have space to run a handful of photos from some books about animals, ahead of World Animal Day this coming Wednesday.' (Introduction)