In Love In The Time Of Contempt Joanne Fedler won’t tell you how to be the ‘perfect’ parent. She’s not a psychologist or an academic. But she is the mother of two teenagers, and she knows how it feels to be the parent of someone sprouting hair, zits and attitude all over the place.

This is a gritty, hilarious look at the day-to-day interactions with teenagers, and the tussled, frazzled and complex business of remaining mature while supporting someone to become an adult.

Fedler shares her philosophy that we are meant to parent imperfectly – our mistakes are the start of the important conversations we need to have with our kids. She guides us through enduring intermittent bouts of contempt and not taking it personally, picking the fights that are worth having, and surviving the journey from frustration, to confusion, to elation and back again.

Love In The Time Of Contempt is a funny, poignant account of the dramas and delights of parenting teenagers who know it all, who don’t yet have a fully functioning brain and who desperately need us to parent them – just not in the way we’re used to.

You can do one night, Jo reminds herself as she follows five women into the Australian bush. Where are they going to sleep? And pee? Jo probably should have let her husband Frank know. Just in case. Because you never know what can happen in the wild.

While on her three-month marriage-and-motherhood sabbatical in the country, Jo bumps into an old friend Fiona who invites her on a ‘sacred’, silent walk to mark her 57th birthday – the first since her husband Ben died. The last thing Jo wants is to share anything about herself – these are Fiona’s friends, not hers. And what’s she going to say? That her young adult children have made life choices she doesn’t understand? That she has no idea who she is anymore? That everything is falling apart - even her happy marriage to Frank?

But the unexpected intrusion of a stranger into their secret location unleashes powerful and conflicting emotions in each woman, provoking conversations and confidences that stray into the shadowlands of motherhood, the mysteries of midlife, the future of monogamy and mother Earth. Under the canopy of the open night sky, around a small, tended fire, the women share wise counsel, spill their secrets and offer up their stories, each exposing corners of truth the others need to hear.

Unbecoming is a funny, heartbreaking and provocative homage to the midlife unravelling as women on the brink of elderhood speak honestly about their lives and wonder what the hell to do with vaginas that are not ready to be put out to pasture just yet.

A prisoner in a WWII concentration camp discovers a superpower that could keep him alive – he can make the commandant laugh by telling jokes. Pushed to ends of his wit and humanity, Gagman is propelled into a spiralling madness in which he would sell his soul for a gag simply to live another day.

Evoking themes from The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Dov Fedler weaves the story of a Faustian bargain brokered in hell, where redemption only comes in the form of a punchline. He must stay funny – or die.

Enhanced by Fedler’s own haunting illustrations, Gagman masterfully juxtaposes humour and pathos, while exploring themes of survivor guilt, desperate determination and the search for the meaning of life in the wake of the Holocaust. Swapping his yellow star for a tattered comic book, Gagman roams the new world and our consciousness determined to find answers to the deepest questions about loss, hope and belonging.

Gagman is a touching and unique tale of survival through unimaginable horror.

When Mia was a child she told Asher that the Dreamcloth took away their nightmares. It is 1994 when Mia finally returns home. A strong-willed journalist embroiled for the last decade in ravaged conflict zones; she arrives in Johannesburg to confront a harrowing, violent human drama that has plagued her family for three generations. And hidden in her bra, close to heart, is the Dreamcloth. When Mia finally retrieved the small patchwork cloth of beads and lace from Asher, the depraved man she believes caused her father's death a decade ago, she unwittingly regained the only clue to resolving a expansive tale of wretchedness and anguish that has haunted her family for decades. The cloth, woven in the 1920s by a seamstress in a grim shtetl in Lithuania, veils the mystery of a forbidden love affair that has haunted Mia's paternal grandmother, Maya, as she fled anti-Semitic Europe and will lead Mia to a devastating truth beyond her imagining. In Mia's search to reconnect with the places and people she left behind, she journeys through her childhood as she makes sense of the injustices of her world through her relationships with her beloved father, Issey, her nanny, Sarafina, and best friend, Grace. But the first person she will have to face is her distant mother, obsessed with the roses in her perfectly manicured, northern suburbs garden.

We either think our lives are so special that everyone should be interested in what's happened to us, or so ordinary that we can't imagine anyone would care. The truth lies somewhere in between: yes, we are all special, and no, people will not care-unless we write with them in mind. Joanne Fedler, a beloved writing teacher and mentor, has written Your Story to help all people, even those who don't necessarily identify as "writers," value their life stories and write them in such a way that they transcend the personal and speak into a universal story. She shows how to write from your life, but for the benefit of others. Filled with practical wisdom and tools, this book tackles: - mind-set issues that prevent us from writing - ways to develop trust (in yourself, the process, the mystery) - triggers or prompts to elicit our own stories - Joanne's original techniques for "lifewriting," developed over a decade of teaching and mentoring ... and much more "Joanne understands the writer's loneliness," says one such writer whose life she's touched, the award-winning author Nava Semel. "In this book she has created a menu of encouraging possibilities on how to overcome our fears and dig deep into our souls, so that our true voice can emerge."