Mary Ann Cornelius' Little Wolf is an adventurous story about the western frontier. We meet the "Generous, warm-hearted, and strikingly handsome, Edward Sherman who "appeared a perfect type of manhood." in New England and follow him to the Upper Mississippi region. When Edward meets Little Wolf all excitement breaks loose "Her beautiful, bewitching face had been half hidden by curls, and covered with blushes, from the moment her faintness had passed off, and, but for the twinkle of those mischief-loving brown eyes, and certain unmistakable movements of her slight figure, she might have passed for meekness itself. To those, therefore, who were unacquainted with her peculiarly nervous and impulsive temperament, the change in her appearance was rather surprising. With one sweep of her plump little hand, she tossed back the ringlets from her brow, and frowningly declared she wished she had killed them."

So This is Life is a wonderfully evocative account of youth that will surely take its place among the classics of Australian childhood. At age seven, after her parents' marriage broke down, Anne Manne travelled with her mother and sisters from Adelaide to the Central Victorian countryside to begin a new life. So This Is Life is not a conventional memoir but a haunting and luminous account told through stories - unexpected moments of epiphany - where meaning, suddenly and sometimes shockingly, reveals itself. Possessing an astonishingly faithful and vivid memory of the pain, fear and joy of childhood; a sensibility keenly alive to the beauty of the landscape, the fellow-creatureliness of animals and the comedy, tragedy and dignity of the lives of the country folk she grew up among, So This Is Life shows a powerful moral vision being shaped, about the meaning of kindness, and the desolation of grief. It depicts worlds as far apart as the faded gentility of former goldfields wealth, and the patriarchal spivvery of the country racetrack. Full of inconsolable pain but also impish humour, these stories sparkle like gems.

In Love & Money, Anne Manne looks at the religion of work - its high priests and sacrificial lambs. As family life and motherhood feel the pressure of the market, she asks whether the chief beneficiaries are self-interested employers and child-care corporations. This is an essay that ranges widely and entertainingly across contemporary culture- it casts an inquisitive eye over the modern marriage of Kevin Rudd and Therese Rein, and considers the time-bind and the shadow economy of care. Most fundamentally, it is an essay about pressure- the pressure to balance care for others and the world of work. Manne argues that devaluing motherhood - still central to so many women's lives - has done feminism few favours. For women on the frontline of the work-centred society, it has made for hard choices. Eloquently and persuasively, Manne tells what happened when feminism adapted itself to the free market and argues that any true definition of equality has to take into account dependency and care for others. 'It is falling fertility ...above all else, which gives women a political bargaining chip of a new and powerful kind. Policy makers, formerly deaf to mothers' needs, will have no choice but to listen to them.' - Anne Manne, Love & Money