Category Archives: 2020

Download of the Day: David Walliams free audio books.

We have found a hilarious way to spend the evening with your children: listening and laughing along while David Walliams reads Bad Dad for free! If you want your own copy to read along with you can find it here.


The Best Books to gift this Mother’s Day

It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday and while we are all staying safe we may not be able to visit her in person but we can all try to call, celebrate or think of our Mums.

Because of these trying times, many book launches have been delayed or have simply been quietly popped onto bookstore shelves without the usual press or social media fanfare. So we have rounded up our favourite new releases that you may have missed as there are so many beautiful books that would make fabulous gifts.

London in Bloom by Georgianna Lane

This book takes us back to when our cities were what we remembered as opposed to what they are today. Acclaimed photographer Georgianna Lane chronicles the flower markets, gardens, and floral boutiques of London. This beautiful book showcases the floral abundance of the English capital’s extraordinary parks, gardens, florists, and flower markets. In this companion to her popular books Paris in Bloom and New York in Bloom, Georgianna Lane takes us on a romantic floral tour of London, juxtaposing luscious blooms with intricate floral details found in the city’s iconic architecture. The book also includes a detailed list of recommended parks, gardens, markets, and floral designers; a spring tour of blossoms and blooms; a field guide of common spring-blooming trees and shrubs; and step-by-step instructions for creating a London-style bouquet. For flower lovers and Anglophiles alike, London in Bloom offers a unique and irresistible view of London.

Now for Something Sweet by Monday Morning Cooking Club

The irrepressible, unstoppable women of the Monday Morning Cooking Club are back, with the very best, most delicious sweet recipes curated and perfected from Jewish homes across Australia and the world. ‘We are always dreaming of soft, airy, pale chiffon cake, thinking about chocolate-swirled, glossy yeasted babke, imagining flaky, chewy, jammy strudel, baking almond-studded, citrus-glazed Dutch buns, frying golden, syrup-drenched coiled fishuelas, biting into hot, sugared jam-filled doughnuts, eating crisp-shelled, marshmallowy vanilla-flecked meringues, feasting on sticky, steaming, sweet butterscotch pudding and sharing it all with abundance and love.

Life in a Box by Sarah Jane Adams

Treasures and mementos from the estate of Sarah Jane Adams, aka @mywrinklesaremystripes on Instagram. Auction catalogues can reveal a lot about a person – their lives, loves and style. Sarah Jane Adams, a jewellery and antiques dealer who became an international model and Instagram sensation overnight in her 60s, tells her story through a lifetime’s collection of rare pieces, valuable jewellery and worthless objects, as well as personal photographs and effects from her ‘estate’. Told with wit, pathos and charm. Life In A Box illustrates how style is always deeply personal to the wearer, laden with rich meaning and adventure and above all, redolent of our stories.

Happy Inside by Michelle Ogundehin

Be happier, healthier and more empowered with Michelle Ogundehin’s step-by-step practical guide to creating a home that supports your well-being.

Whether your home is owned or rented, small or large, and regardless of how much money you have, Happy Inside shows you how to harness its potential in pursuit of becoming your best self. If you want to feel calm, content, soothed or energised, you must begin with what surrounds you.

This comprehensive guide covers everything from how to create more light and space to how to get a good night’s sleep; the path to a perfect sofa and why a dining table is your most vital piece of furniture. Plus, how to decorate to promote joy; the importance of play (and circular side tables); your definitive capsule kitchen kit; and why your hallway is where it all starts. Combining Michelle’s knowledge of Buddhist philosophy, mindfulness, colour psychology and good design, Happy Inside is your one-stop guide to living well.

Not So Mumsy by Marcia Leone

For mamas everywhere, this is your Mother’s Group in a book. Parenting is hard, but it’s also beautiful. For women who have embraced motherhood but also yearn to retain a sense of self and style, Not So Mumsy has been a pioneering site driving the Modern Mama movement. Bridging the gap between pre-mama life and the whole new world of leaky boobs and pureed banana, Marcia Leone (aka Not So Mumsy) has always shared her journey with honesty and humour, providing a warm and inclusive support network for like-minded women. With powerfully uplifting perspectives from inspirational mamas across the world, including Jaime King, Teresa Palmer, Megan Gale and Tammin Sursok, Not So Mumsy will help you navigate pregnancy, your first year and beyond with style, humour and confidence.

Petal by Adriana Picker

This is a beautiful book to gift mum when you can’t make it to a florist. It’s a compendium of floral wonder, Petal reveals the colours, details and unique sculptural beauty of nature’s most remarkable creations. Botanical artist Adriana Picker has curated specimens from all over the world to celebrate through her stunning illustrations, accompanied by writer Nina Rousseau’s words on the folklore, fame and meaning of both favourite blooms and herbaceous curiosities. Mum will love it.

Enjoy!

How to support local businesses with Booko

While we are all staying safe at home and turning to online shopping we thought we would make it a little easier for you to support your local stores. We have compiled a list of booksellers with local warehousing in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Please note that some stores (such as The Book Depository, Boomerang Books, The Nile and Amazon) dispatch their products from various warehouses, so make sure you check where the product is getting shipped from and what the delivery estimate is.

Remember to ensure your local region is set to the country you are shipping to (this is done by clicking on the flag in the top right hand corner of the booko website). Also, it is important to check that the book, DVD, LEGO set or game you are looking to purchase is ‘in stock’ before clicking to buy, this will ensure a swift delivery time.

Booko is user-supported. When you buy through affiliate links on our site we may earn an affiliate commission. This doesn’t affect the results of the searches.

Here are some of the top selling books in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Top Selling Books in Australia this month:

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes

They’re a glamorous family, the Caseys. Johnny Casey, his two brothers Ed and Liam, their beautiful, talented wives and all their kids spend a lot of time together – birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, weekends away. And they’re a happy family. Johnny’s wife, Jessie – who has the most money – insists on it. Under the surface, though, conditions are murkier. While some people clash, other people like each other far too much. Everything stays under control until Ed’s wife Cara, gets concussion and can’t keep her thoughts to herself. One careless remark at Johnny’s birthday party, with the entire family present, starts Cara spilling out all their secrets. In the subsequent unravelling, every one of the adults finds themselves wondering if it’s time, finally, to grow up.

The Mirror and The Light by Hilary Mantel

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves.Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

Top Selling Books in the United Kingdom this month:

Blue Moon by Lee Child

In the next highly anticipated installment of Lee Child’s acclaimed suspense series, Jack Reacher comes to the aid of an elderly couple . . . and confronts his most dangerous opponents yet. Once in a blue moon things turn out just right. This isn’t one of those times. Reacher is on a Greyhound bus, minding his own business, with no particular place to go, and all the time in the world to get there. Then he steps off the bus to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. But you know what they say about good deeds. Now Reacher wants to make it right. An elderly couple have made a few well-meaning mistakes, and now they owe big money to some very bad people. One brazen move leads to another, and suddenly Reacher finds himself a wanted man in the middle of a brutal turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs. Reacher has to stay one step ahead of the loan sharks, the thugs, and the assassins. He teams up with a fed-up waitress who knows a little more than she’s letting on, and sets out to take down the powerful and make the greedy pay. It’s a long shot. The odds are against him. But Reacher believes in a certain kind of justice . . . the kind that comes along once in a blue moon.

The Dark Side by Danielle Steel

The Dark Side is a powerful and unsettling novel of loss, motherhood and the innocence of childhood from the world’s favourite storyteller, Danielle Steel. Zoe Morgan was just ten years old when her life changed forever. Her sister, Rose, died of a rare illness, her parents turned into people she didn’t know, and Zoe’s lonely childhood drove her to excel in her studies. As a graduate of Yale, Zoe takes a leave of absence from medical school to work in a shelter for abused children in New York, where she meets well-known child advocacy attorney, Austin Roberts. Austin is bowled over by her beauty, brains and talent. He is her first love and the man she marries. Austin and Zoe have a perfect life and, after the birth of their longed-for daughter Jaime, Zoe knows that the aching void she had lived through for twenty-four years is finally complete. But it is only then that the true impact of Rose’s death all those years ago affects their lives in a way that nobody could ever have imagined.

Top Selling Books in the United States this month:

Joy at Work by Marie Kondo

In Joy at Work, KonMari method pioneer Marie Kondo and organizational psychologist Scott Sonenshein will help you to refocus your mind on what’s important at work, and as their examples show, the results can be truly life-changing. With advice on how to improve the way you work, the book features advice on problem areas including fundamentals like how to organize your desk, finally get through your emails and find what sparks joy in an open plan office. Like how the key to successful tidying in the home is by tackling clutter in the correct order, Joy at Work adapts the inspirational KonMari Method for the workplace, taking you step-by-step through your professional environment so that you can identify the most joyful way to work for you. Once you’ve found order in your work life, you can feel empowered to find confidence, energy and motivation to create the career you want and move on from negative working practices.

My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me by Jason Rosenthal

On March 3, 2017, Amy Krouse Rosenthal penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column —”You May Want to Marry My Husband.” It appeared ten days before her death from ovarian cancer. A heartbreaking, wry, brutally honest, and creative play on a personal ad, in which a dying wife encouraged her husband to go on and find happiness after her demise. The column quickly went viral, reaching more than five million people worldwide.  In My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, Jason describes what came next: his commitment to respecting Amy’s wish, even as he struggled with her loss. Surveying his life before, with, and after Amy, Jason ruminates on love, the pain of watching a loved one suffer, and what it means to heal, how he and their three children, despite their profound sorrow, went on. Jason’s emotional journey offers insights on dying and death and the excruciating pain of losing a soulmate, and illuminates the lessons he learned.  As he reflects on Amy’s gift to him, a fresh start to fill his empty space with a new story, Jason describes how he continues to honour Amy’s life and her last wish, and how he seeks to appreciate every day and live in the moment while trying to help others coping with loss. My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me is the poignant, unreserved, and inspiring story of a great love, the aftermath of a marriage ended too soon, and how a surviving partner eventually found a new perspective on life’s joys in the wake of tremendous loss.

Enjoy and stay safe!

Best Book Series for Children

There has never been a better time to get reading – reading can provide entertainment, knowledge and comfort, and is a perfect thing to do at home!  We know that many of you are having more time to kill, and are asking for suggestions of series books – something substantial that can hold your attention for longer.  So this week we are showcasing some of the most popular multi-volume children’s books, guaranteed to give kids hours of reading pleasure – even those who are usually reluctant to pick up a book!

Wings of Fire 1-5 Boxed set by Tui T Sutherland

This fantasy series, set in a world of dragons, has enormous word-of-mouth cred amongst upper-primary aged readers.  Five young dragonets strive to fulfil a prophecy that they will end an ancient war and finally bring peace to the dragon tribes of Pyrrhia.  What sets Wings of Fire apart is that its dragons are the main characters, with a rich and complex civilisation, whilst humans are considered “scavengers” and peripheral to the story. Tui T Sutherland’s impressive world-building has now grown beyond the 20+ books into a big and active fandom.  The first three books are now available in graphic novel format

Slime by David Walliams 

Slime is hot off the presses and sure to delight David Walliams’ many fans (as well as creating many more).  Inspired by the recent craze for slime, this story sees young Ned discover the origins of slime, and use it to wreak revenge on the horrible grownups who love nothing more than making children  miserable.  David Walliams is often compared to Roald Dahl and it is easy to see why – his stories are funny, with touches of the grotesque and the fantastical, all underlaid with a call for empathy.   David Walliams has published 18 children’s novels.  While these are mostly standalone, there are recurring characters to spot, such as Raj the newsagent.

WeirDo 1-9 Boxset by Anh Do

Weir Do is a thoughtful boy with a weird name and a weirder family.  The WeirDo books are slice-of-life stories that are packed with illustrations and laugh-out-loud funny – perfect for fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  The latest is #14 – WeirDo: Vote WeirDo! where Weir’s chances of being elected class captain may be derailed by an EPIC HAIR DISASTER.  WeirDo is the first children’s series written by the multi-talented Anh Do, who has gone on to create other bestselling series including Hot Dog, Ninja Kid, Wolf Girl, as well as Mythix.

Kensy and Max 5: Freefall by Jacqueline Harvey

You may already know Jacqueline Harvey from her delightful Clementine Rose and Alice-Miranda series; now she is trying her hand at spy thrillers aimed at both boys and girls. Kensy and Max are twins whose lives are turned upside-down when they are whisked off to London and  discover their parents are missing.  The race is on to understand the strange things happening around them, and find their parents!  There’s mystery, spy craft, exotic locations and lots of chases.  Volume 5, Freefall, sees Kensy and Max as agents-in-training, struggling with ethical dilemmas while trying to capture a master criminal in New York.

Welcome to the Brilliant World of Tom Gates box set by Liz Pichon

This is a box set of the first 12 books in the Tom Gates series.  (We’re now up to Book 17.)  Tom Gates is a series of illustrated diary stories about an endearing but chaotic boy and his family.  The pages are heavily illustrated with distinctive doodles and funny little details, the tone is chatty, and the situations are funny and totally relatable.  What’s more, Tom Gates is a tried-and-true recommendation for reluctant readers and those who need extra reading support – perhaps Tom Gates books are so accessible because Liz Pichon is herself dyslexic, and she has written these stories to be just what she would have loved to read as a child.  The illustrated diary format might even inspire young fans to create their own Tom Gates-style stories!

The Last Kids on Earth by Max Brallier

The Last Kids on Earth is dystopian fiction with a twist! Unlike dystopian YA, which tends to be dark and grim, this tweens-and-early-teens series shows that a zombie apocalypse can be pretty funny.  13-year old Jack recruits four of his classmates to fight off a succession of monsters after a zombie outbreak hits his hometown.  They have to learn to work as a team to stay alive, and they are the world’s last chance against the evil overlord Rezzoch!  This Wimpy-Kid-meets-Walking-Dead series has zombies, monsters, wisecracks, and crazy gadgets – no wonder it’s a New York Times bestseller.  Now also an animated series on Netflix.