“I don’t find writing romance restrictive. I find it liberating.” Mills & Boon author Michelle Douglas tells us why she loves being a romance author and reader. The romance genre speaks to me more than any other genre and I’ve wondered about this a lot. One of the reasons, perhaps, is that at heart romance is about joy and there are so few books out there that deal in joy. Please don’t thin... Read more

In the lead up to the 2013 Sydney Writer’s Festival we’ll be featuring a few of the key events we’re really looking forward to. We’ve also highlighted some great books to prepare you before basking in the warm glow of the festival. Here’s a couple of events that caught our eye… Read more

Booktopia’s Editorial Director Caroline Baum lets us in on her amazing bookish US adventure Good to see Anna Funder settled in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in a street that feels like something out of Henry James. It was used to shoot a TV adaptation of Dickens’ A Winter’s Tale a few months ago, and they laid down fake snow. Each house has an individual gas lamp in its front yard. I have no idea... Read more

Sofia Coppola only deals in great stories. The daughter of immortal director Francis Ford Coppola, her eye for simmering trauma underneath otherwise perfect lives has redefined contemporary film making. From the whimsical mystery of her 1999 debut The Virgin Suicides (adapted from the Jeffrey Eugenides novel of the same same) to her award-winning film masterpiece Lost In Translation, the tragic... Read more

Booktopia’s Head of Romance Haylee Nash ponders her vicarious rebellious streak. When I was small, I was the good girl. My parents love to recount how, even as a baby, I was always content. They would go out to dinner with friends and happily take me along, knowing I would sleep quietly in my carrier (once so quiet that they nearly left me there). When I got to talking age, I would happil... Read more

In the lead up to the 2013 Sydney Writer’s Festival we’ll be featuring a few of the key events we’re really looking forward to. We’ve also highlighted some great books to prepare you before basking in the warm glow of the festival. Here’s a couple of events that caught our eye… Read more

The Sydney Writer’s Festival remains one of the most anticipated events on the calender of book lovers everywhere. With new hands on deck and fresh new ideas, the 2013 installment has created a huge buzz and looks like one of the best yet. In keeping with new ideas, The City of Sydney’s cleansing trucks (formally known as garbage trucks) are being transformed into literary treasures this ... Read more

There’s nothing quite as nostalgia-inducing as first love. Get any random group of female friends and throw in a few bottles of wine and chances are first love will come up. Chances are this discussion will lead to the discussion of other firsts – the first time you had sex, the first time you moved out, first car. Kate Belle’s The Yearning explores, in a way that is both raw and poetic, a firs... Read more

The 19th century British philosopher John Stuart Mill once remarked, “The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.” The world of writing is filled with just the eccentric folk Mill was talking about. We’ve pi... Read more

The Booktopia Book Guru asks Natasha Walker the Australian author of the bestselling Secret Lives of Emma series… Six Sharp Questions _______ 1. Congratulations, on completing your new book. What is it about and what does it mean to you? Thanks. Unmasked is the final book in The Secret Lives of Emma trilogy. At the end of book two, Distractions, I was a bit mean and left readers hanging r... Read more