First Tuesday Book Club December 2025, with guest authors!

We hope you'll be there for our First Tuesday Book Club meeting for DECEMBER 2025

Tickets are $40 each and include entry, a welcome drink, and a selection of canapes served prior to the presentation. Plus, a FREE reading copy from our free book selection, as donated to us by our lovely publishers.

These days, it's easy to get the impression that people are really very anxious. Who? you ask. Well, people you hear about. People who tell you they are. Friends. Lovers. Acquaintances. Colleagues. The Youth. The term is around and people are applying it to themselves, or having it applied to them, willy-nilly.

What would it mean to be able to live a plain life? Would a plain life just be an unambitious one a drab or routine life, without colour, variation, unknowing or luck? Or would a plain life be one in which we'd fret slightly less, suspect ourselves less, and thus listen to ourselves and others in new ways? We may not need to do more and be more in the quiet spaces already within us, lurking in the interstices of our days and conversations, there are ways and choreographies to nurture a plainer, saner, odder, less reactive and therefore less terrifying life. In Plain Life, Antonia Pont questions our thinking about capacities, virtue, envy, wanting, love and kindness suggesting that it might be fine, more than enough, indeed so much, to live a plain life.

Antonia Pont is Associate Professor in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University, Australia. She publishes poetry, fiction and essays as well as theoretical work across writing, literature, philosophy and the creative arts. Her research is concerned with time, habit, ethical capacity, thought, movement and transformation.

The much awaited new novel from the Miles Franklin Award-winning author, Sofie Laguna.
The Underworld is for every reader you know; thinkers, laughers, empaths, quirky folk, queer folk, nostalgists, the young and those getting on. Readers seeking a happy ending and anyone ready to feel. Anyone who has ever been fourteen. The Underworld is a wondrous novel from an author who wields her considerable powers with assuredness and grace. Funny, brave, insightful and clever, Martha will break your heart - then mend it - many times over.

When Mother Bird and Father Bird discover a large blue egg in their nest, they treat it as their own. A beautiful story about love and kindness and loyalty in the face of adversity, from the award-winning creators of many much-loved picture books including Iceberg and When You're Older.

SOFIE LAGUNA's many books for young people have been published in the US, the UK, and in translation throughout Europe and Asia. She has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Awards, and twice been awarded Honour Book by the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA). She is also a highly acclaimed author for adults. Sofie lives in Melbourne with her husband, Marc McBride, and their two sons.

JESS RACKLYEFT creates a variety of illustrated things - picture books, paintings, prints, pins and cards - mainly in watercolours. Jess worked in publishing sales for almost a decade before making the leap to full-time illustration and writing, and since then has won several illustration accolades including CBCA Picture Book of the Year for Iceberg (written by Claire Saxby). Her work can now be found in bookshops and libraries across Australia, and her days are happily spent in a messy studio creating books or visiting schools.

Australian service personnel played a significant role in four Cold War conflicts throughout the 20th century, yet the Malayan Emergency remains one of the least recognised. This pivotal chapter in history tells the story of the Royal Australian Air Force’s No. 1 (B) Squadron during its deployment from 1951 to 1958—an arduous, often frustrating deployment that deserves high praise. As a contemporary RAAF review put it, this was a ‘different war,’ one where Lincoln bombers flew ‘through mist-swathed valleys and below rugged mountains,’ engaging the battle both above the dense jungles and within them. Wing Over Malayan Jungle seeks to document and preserve this crucial chapter of Air Force history, ensuring the valour and strategic impact of Australia’s role in the conflict are not forgotten.

David Mitchelhill-Green began his career working abroad as a medical scientist in London. A love of history and photography led to globetrotting investigations for the UK magazine After the Battle. Several years in rural Japan sparked an interest in the country’s feudal history and the co-authoring of Castles of the Samurai and Samurai Castles. Returning home to Australia, David resumed his interest in military writing, authoring Rommel in North Africa, With Rommel in the Desert, Air War Over North Africa, Fighting in Ukraine: A Photographer at War, Tobruk 1942 and Rommel’s Ghost Division. David lives in Melbourne with his wife Jennifer and two children and enjoys escaping into the Victorian High Country to write.

“Hidden Headlines” is a captivating collection of extraordinary personal stories, intimate confessions, and inspirational encounters. It’s more than a book it is an invitation to explore the untold narratives that lie beneath the surface of our news.
It’s a selection of stories by those who may not have made the news but unknowingly shaped the news - one headline at a time.

Mal Walden’s career spans five decades in broadcasting and television. He started his media career in 1961 at Warrnambool radio station 3YB where he was a breakfast announcer for three years. In December 1995 Mal was appointed newsreader of Network Ten’s 5pm Melbourne News. In 2006 Mal became the longest continually serving face on Australian television and in June 2011 he celebrated 50 years in the Australian media.

Winner of the National Seniors Literary Prize (Australia) and the Philpott Prize.

“I saw the flicker of flames as the first plane fired its guns and heard the trees above my head splintering as the stream of bullets hit them. Branches toppled down. Cattle panicked. The ricocheting bullets whined around the valley.”

On September 1, 1939, ten-year-old Paul Cieslar’s peaceful childhood in the Polish countryside came to an end. German fighter planes roared overhead, and with them came the invasion of Poland and the chaos of war. In No Heil Hitler, Paul recounts his extraordinary true story of survival, faith, and quiet resistance in Nazi-occupied Poland. As Seventh-day Adventists, Paul’s family refused to give the “Heil Hitler” salute or work on Saturday—their Sabbath. These simple acts of faith became bold defiance under the watchful eyes of the Gestapo.
Jeff Steel is a child of World War Two. Shocked at the sight of bombed-out London as a child, he has grappled ever since with the simple but profound question ‘what happened’. His deep interest in the war has led to many heart-rending interviews with those who took part. He has undertaken endless reading. He has visited World War Two sites from Churchill’s War Rooms in London to Pearl Harbour via Dresden and the Burma Railway. His first book ‘No Heil Hitler’ as ghost writer, told the compelling story a young boy’s Odyssey through the horrors of Nazi-occupied Poland. It won the Philpott Prize for a (then) unpublished manuscript.

First job. First crush. But it's complicated. A sweet and charming middle-grade romance from bestselling and beloved author Nova Weetman. It's the end of year 7 and Tess wants a summer job. She's keen to earn her own money and buy her own clothes. But her mum has other ideas- it looks like Tess will be stuck at home babysitting her twin brothers. Thirteen-year-old Sonny is tired of moving around. With his dad up north, he's staying with his uncle and aunt above their fish and chip shop. And it just so happens his uncle is hiring extra staff for the holidays. When Sonny and Tess crash into each other outside the shop, sparks and dim sims fly. Soon they're both wondering if the other feels the same way - but, as Sonny loves to say, it's complicated. Over hot chips and chicken salt, can these two work out what they really want? Perfect for readers 11 years and older, Sonny & Tess is a delightful, age-appropriate romance that will captivate fans of To All the Boys I've Loved Before.

Nova Weetman lives in Melbourne with her family. She has written for TV and is the author of many middle grade and young adult novels. Her novels have been shortlisted & noted for numerous awards, including multiple CBCA Awards.

A Bird in the Hand …
George ‘Jogger’ Jensen, columnist for the Bellarine Courier, can’t seem to avoid trouble and in this third book in the crime series, he finds himself in the thick of it again.
Who would have thought a picturesque ferry ride would end so badly? No amount of sea breeze can mask the smell of a story to Jogger and when a dead body turns up on the Queenscliff-Sorrento Ferry it has him sniffing. Is it drug trafficking or endangered wildlife or something else?
Another page-turning thriller from author Rick Wilkinson.

Rick Wilkinson is an award-winning Australian geologist turned journalist/author who has covered the energy resources industry for international magazines and newspapers from London and Melbourne for the past 50 years. He has also written a natural history book about the critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect and a travel/history book about the Bellarine Peninsula where he lives southwest of Melbourne in Victoria.

Dymocks Tooronga

• Email: dG9vcm9uZ2EgfCBkeW1vY2tzICEgY29tICEgYXU=
• Phone: (03) 9045 9845

There will be no door sales, so please secure your tickets early to avoid disappointment. Book with confidence, knowing that a full refund will be provided if we need to postpone or cancel the event for any reason. (Unless the event is cancelled, refund requests are only available until 24 hours before the event. Tickets are not transferable to later dates.)

Sign-in will start 6.15pm, for everyone to be seated by 7pm for the author presentations to start.

We look forward to seeing you at the Rivoli Cinemas.

Also check out other Arts events in Hawthorn, Literary Art events in Hawthorn, Meetups in Hawthorn.