Abbey's is proud to be involved with the Indie Award. Chosen by Australian independent booksellers, the $18,000 prize will honour an Australian author for the best book of the past twelve months. The award is being managed by Leading Edge Books, a group of independent bookstores with member stores across Australia, both metropolitan and regional, including many of Australia's iconic independent bookshops. The award will demonstrate independent booksellers' commitment to Australian books and writers, with over 120 bookshops working together to sponsor this annual award.

Over 100 titles have been submitted to The Indie Award panel in the categories of Fiction, Debut Fiction, Non Fiction and Children's Books. Independent booksellers around the country are now madly reading, with the winner from each of the four categories to be announced on Monday 25th August. The winner of The Indie Award for the book of the year will be chosen by the booksellers from the four shortlist category winners and announced on Monday 6th October.

When Delia Bennet, author and domestic advice columnist, is diagnosed with cancer, she knows it's time to get her house in order. After all, she's got to secure the future for her husband, their two daughters and their five beloved chickens. But as she writes lists and makes plans, questions both large and small creep in. Should she divulge her best culinary secrets? Read her favourite novels one last time? Plan her daughters' far-off weddings? Complicating her dilemma is the matter of the past, and a remote country town where she fled as a pregnant teenager, only to leave broken-hearted eight years later. Researching and writing her final Household Guide, Delia is forced to confront the pieces of herself she left behind. She learns what matters is not the past but the present, that the art of dying is all about truly living. Fresh, witty, deeply moving, and a celebration of love, family and that place we call home, this unforgettable story will surprise and delight the reader until the very last page.

Religion in Public Life
Roger Trigg

How far can religion play a part in the public sphere, or should it be only a private matter? Roger Trigg examines this question in the context of today's pluralist societies, where many different beliefs clamour for attention. Should we celebrate diversity, or are matters of truth at stake? In particular, can we maintain our love of freedom, while cutting it off from religious roots? In societies in which there are many conflicting beliefs, the place of religion is a growing political issue. Should all religions be equally welcomed in the public square? Favouring one religion over others may appear to be a failure to treat all citizens equally, yet for citizens in many countries their Christian heritage is woven into their way of life. Whether it is the issue of same-sex marriages, the right of French schoolgirls to wear Islamic headscarves, or just the public display of Christmas trees, all societies have to work out a consistent approach to the public influence of religion. Read the transcript of Roger Trigg's interview on Radio National's The Religion Report.

Snowdon: The Biography
Anne De Courcy

The parents of Anthony Armstrong-Jones (he was given the title Earl of Snowdon in 1961) were very different. He was Welsh to his fingertips, she an exotic mixture of English and Jewish. They divorced when he was five and Tony's relationship with his aloof glittering mother never recovered. His inventiveness was soon apparent, at Eton and then Cambridge, where as cox in 1950 he designed a new rudder for his (winning) Boat Race crew. The engagement of this motorbike-riding freelance photographer in 1960 to Princess Margaret was a bombshell. Friends privately predicted disaster. And so it proved. But meanwhile in the 1960s, mixing with actors, artists and pop stars, they were the epitome of stylish and unstuffy arts-loving Royals. Along with John and Jackie Kennedy or Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, they were one of the iconic glamorous couples of that era. Tony continued to work and both began to have affairs. They divorced in 1978, the first royal divorce since Henry VIII divorced Anne of Cleves in 1540.

Death of a Murderer
Rupert Thomson

One night in November 2002, PC Billy Tyler is called to a mortuary in Suffolk to guard the body of a notorious child-killer. But in the eerie silence of the hospital, the killer's presence begins to assert itself. A vivid evocation of an extraordinary moment in crime history, Death of a Murderer is a dark and gripping meditation on the fears and temptations that haunt us all.

Murder at Deviation Junction
Andrew Martin

A train hits a snow drift in the frozen Cleveland Hills. In the process of clearing the line a body is discovered, and so begins a dangerous case for struggling Edwardian railway detective, Jim Stringer. Jim's new investigation takes him to the mighty blast furnaces of Ironopolis, to Fleet Street in the company of a cynical reporter from The Railway Rover, and to a nightmarish spot in the Highlands. Jim's faltering career in the railway police hangs on whether he can solve the murder - but before long the pursuer becomes the pursued, and Jim finds himself fighting not just for his job, but for his very life as well.

Revelation
C J Sansom

The eagerly-anticipated fourth Shardlake novel. Spring 1543: King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, whom he wants for his sixth wife. But this time the object of his affections is resisting. Archbishop Cranmer and the embattled Protestant faction at court are watching keenly, for Lady Catherine is known to have reformist sympathies. Matthew Shardlake, meanwhile, is working on the case of a teenage boy, a religious maniac who has been placed by the King's council in the Bedlam hospital for the insane. Should he be released as his parents want, when his terrifying actions could lead to him being burned as a heretic?

Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq
Patrick Cockburn

This is the first title about Muqtada al-Sadr, the most important political figure in post-occupation Iraq, who leads a movement that opposed both Saddam Hussein and the US occupation. The rise of Muqtada has been one of the great surprises of the occupation. At first grossly underestimated by the US, he has become the kingmaker of Iraq and a force that is indispensable to any Iraqi government. His combination of nationalism and religious fervour proved deeply attractive to countless angry and impoverished Iraqi Shia: the Mehdi Army, his devoted militia, now rules half of Baghdad. Far from being the 'firebrand cleric' portrayed in the Western media, Muqtada is an astute and experienced politician who struggles to lead an anarchic mass movement that he only half controls. In a compelling narrative, award-winning war correspondent Patrick Cockburn charts the rise of Muqtada.

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