Truth Is Trouble

From the marriage equality debate to the COVID-19 lockdown, ‘free speech’ has become the new battleground in Australian society. What does the furore over one footballer’s social media postings reveal about how it got that way? For a period in 2019, a tweet from rugby player Israel Folau became the biggest story in the nation. His urging of homosexuals to ‘repent’ or face damnation cost him his job and divided the country. Churches and politicians, employers and labour lawyers, sponsors and shock jocks, even people who had never heard of Folau – everyone had an opinion about his right to express his view, and many shouted it from the digital rooftop. Now that the dust has settled, the real question emerges. When celebrities, and sportspeople in particular, are regularly ‘rehabilitated’ after incidents involving drink, drugs and domestic violence, why was it religious belief that got someone fired? In this powerful and insightful work, triple Walkley Award-winning journalist Malcolm Knox explores how freedom of expression has become our national faultline. Truth is Trouble explores the rise of the religious right and its political consequences; the ‘right to be a bigot’ versus ‘cancel culture’; the changing nature of our rights at work and the separation between public and private lives; and above all, the incendiary power of social media. And by interrogating his own experience, Knox offers a convincing and heartfelt argument for the virtues of uncertainty and an open mind.

Every week on the public radio show On the Media, the award-winning journalist Brooke Gladstone analyzes the media and how it shapes our perceptions of the world. Now, from her front-row perch on the day’s events, Gladstone brings her genius for making insightful, unexpected connections to help us understand what she calls—and what so many of us can acknowledge having—“trouble with reality.” Reality, as she shows us, was never what we thought it was—there is always a bubble, people are always subjective and prey to stereotypes. And that makes reality actually more vulnerable than we ever thought. Enter Donald J. Trump and his team of advisors. For them, as she writes, lying is the point. The more blatant the lie, the easier it is to hijack reality and assert power over the truth. Drawing on writers as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Walter Lippmann, Philip K. Dick, and Jonathan Swift, she dissects this strategy, straight out of the authoritarian playbook, and shows how the Trump team mastered it, down to the five types of tweets that Trump uses to distort our notions of what’s real and what’s not. And she offers hope. There is meaningful action, a time-tested treatment for moral panic. And there is also the inevitable reckoning. History tells us we can count on it. Brief and bracing, The Trouble with Reality shows exactly why so many of us didn’t see it coming, and how we can recover both our belief in reality—and our sanity.

'A book of resistance and love, as urgently necessary now as it was thirty years ago' Olivia Laing First published in 1990, discover this blistering novel about a love triangle in New York during the AIDS crisis. The perfect novel to read after bingeing It's A Sin. It was the beginning of the end of the world but not everyone noticed right away. It is the late 1980s. Kate, an ambitious artist, lives in Manhattan with her husband Peter. She's having an affair with Molly, a younger lesbian who works part-time in a movie theater. At one of many funerals during an unbearably hot summer, Molly becomes involved with a guerrilla activist group fighting for people with AIDS. But Kate is more cautious, and Peter is bewildered by the changes he's seeing in his city and, most crucially, in his wife. Soon the trio learn how tragedy warps even the closest relationships, and that anger - and its absence - can make the difference between life and death. 'Strong, nervy and challenging' New York Times

In an era when the cult of personality has overtaken the task of preaching, Charles W. Fuller offers an engaging query into the necessary boundaries between the person of the preacher and the message preached. By thoroughly evaluating Phillips Brooks's classic "truth through personality" de?nition of preaching, Fuller brings to light a substantial error that remains in contemporary homiletics: namely, the tenuous correlation between Christ's incarnation and Christian preaching. Ultimately, Fuller asserts a sound evangelical framework for preaching on revelational, ontological, rhetorical, and teleological grounds. Preachers who desire to construct pulpit practice upon a robust evangelical foundation will bene?t from Fuller's contribution.

A unique story about first—and last—loves from the celebrated and bestselling author of We All Looked Up. Parker Santé hasn’t spoken a word in five years. While his classmates plan for bright futures, he skips school to hang out in hotels, killing time by watching the guests. But when he meets a silver-haired girl named Zelda Toth, a girl who claims to be quite a bit older than she looks, he’ll discover there just might be a few things left worth living for.

Hiro Though I was born with the ability to see the dead, I struggled with it until my brother was killed and his ghost was left behind. Now, I'm determined to figure out who is responsible for his death... the problem is that Detective Maddox Booker, the one working the case, is a grumpy and stubborn man who wants nothing to do with me and definitely doesn't believe in ghosts. It doesn't help that I keep finding myself looking ridiculous in front of the detective, thanks to interfering ghosts who enjoy laughing at my expense. Still, the more I'm around Maddox, the more I realize that beneath that surly exterior is a kind and caring man who will do anything to help. Maddox When another man dies, I know we have a serial killer on our hands-the same murderer who has remained elusive for a year and a half. To add to my frustration, I keep running into Hiro at crime scenes only to hear him claim that he can talk to ghosts. The words of the dead could lead us to the serial killer and even tell us who is next, but ghosts? There's no such thing as ghosts. Hiro is determined and charming, and no matter what I do, I can't stop letting him get involved. He's definitely snagged my attention, but when he nearly winds up dead, I know he's getting closer to the truth-and if I don't do something soon, he might be next. Ghost of Lies is full of action, mystery, humor, and romance. Though more is planned for this couple, the mystery is solved and there is a happy ending.

Innkeeper’s daughters Adele and Eleda are “mirror twins”—identical twins whose looks are reflections of each other’s—and their special talents are like mirrors, too. Adele is a Safe-Keeper, entrusted with hearing and never revealing others’ secrets; Eleda is a Truth-Teller, who cannot tell a lie when asked a direct question. The town of Merendon relies on the twins, no one more than their best friend, Roelynn Karro, whose strict, wealthy father is determined to marry her off to the prince. When the girls are seventeen, a handsome dancing-master and his apprentice come to stay at the inn, and thus begins a chain of romance, mistaken identity, and some very surprising truths and falsehoods.

Liberty is the new girl at school, and everyone wants to be her friend. When she accuses a teacher of assault, doubts start to surface about her motives.