MAR2018_(3)

NON - FI CT I ON MARCH 2018

The Good Mothers: The Story of the Three Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia A L E X P E R RY

You are born into it or marry in. Loyalty is absolute — bloodshed revered. You go to prison, your grave or kill your relatives before betraying The Family. The ̕Ndràngheta is the most powerful, stealthy organised crime network in Italy and worldwide, upheld by the omertà (silence) code. This is the story of the women who broke the silence. The ̕Ndràngheta’s power rests on omertà enforced through violence. Underpinning this iron rule is murderous misogyny. Girls are married off in arranged clan alliances at 13, beatings are routine and a woman who is unfaithful — even to a dead husband — can expect her sons, brothers or father to kill her, then dissolve her body in acid to erase the family shame. But in 2009, when one abused ̕Ndràngheta wife is murdered for turning in state evidence, state prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti realises the ̕Ndràngheta’s bigotry may be its greatest flaw. To bring down a criminal empire, Alessandra must persuade two more mafia wives to testify. The stakes could not be higher. Alessandra is fighting to save a nation. The mafiosi are fighting for their existence. Their women are fighting for their lives. Not all will survive.

9780008222116 | AU $32.99 NZ $36.99 Trade paperback | 336pp | Released: 19/02/18

Publicity Contact: nicola.woods@harpercollins.com.au

The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History

A I DA E D EMA R I AM

Born in 1916, and a child bride at eight years old, Aida Edemariam’s grandmother, Yètèmegn, has stood, shaking, as fascist troops searched her home for guns she knew were there; in the late 1930s and early ’40s she fled both Italian and Allied bombardment. She begged for mercy from Emperor Haile Selassie, for a husband imprisoned for treason, then, widowed, spent the ’50s personally wresting from the Emperor a promise to educate five of her seven living children. For 13 years, she fought through courts unused to women defending their assets. Aida records her grandmother’s enthralling stories, which span the most extraordinary century in Ethiopian history. This is a story with an astonishing cast of characters, from emperors and empresses to lords and archbishops and slaves, from Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents to soothsayers and spirit doctors, from saints and martyrs to the Virgin Mary — but above all, Yètèmegn herself, who was grand and haughty and sometimes difficult, but also incredibly generous and who, despite everything, still provided an infectious sense of mischief and joy.

9780008191757 | AU $32.99 NZ $36.99 Trade paperback | 350pp | Released: 19/02/18

Publicity Contact: nicola.woods@harpercollins.com.au