What to read: Michael Gawenda's memoir and the new Cormoran Strike

Subtitled A Guidebook for Getting Your Way, this motivational guidebook on how to gain power will teach you how to emulate the cunning of "King George" from Survivor Australia. Each chapter is grounded in an insightful anecdote from his life and lessons are drawn from key moments that have formulated his mindset, from his upbringing in a tight-knit Macedonian-Greek household in Bankstown, to his careers in politics, poker and TV - two times masterminding entire tribes on Survivor and sprinting around the world in The Amazing Race.

Benjamin Oldroyd. Melbourne University Press. $35.

For nearly a century, evolutionary biologists have understood that evolution proceeds by substituting better genes for less good ones. But consensus is growing that this is not the whole story: geneticists are now revealing that spores, sperm, pollen and ova are packed with personalised genetic information that plays an important role in offspring development and has lifelong effects. This epigenetic - or "extra-genetic" -inheritance makes significant contributions to evolutionary processes Oldroyd explains how a greater appreciation of the role of epigenetics is helping to solve a multitude of previously intractable problems such as why invasive plants and animals can rapidly adapt to changes in their environment.

Michael Gawenda. Scribe. $35.

Gawenda, a former editor-in-chief of The Age, was born in a displaced persons' camp two years after the end of the Holocaust. He grew up in a left-wing non-Zionist Jewish youth group in Melbourne. This shaped the sort of Jew he became - a secular Jew who loved the Yiddish language and Yiddish culture. Throughout his life and career, he became dismayed and pained by the growing hostility of the left to Israel and to Jews like him who were not prepared to declare themselves as anti-Zionists. This has also forced him to examine his own Jewish identity and his relationships with his Jewish friends, and to forensically examine the basis of the critiques of Israel.

Rob Drummond. Scribe. $32.99.

Why do we have different accents and where do they come from? Why do you say "tomayto" and I say "tomahto"? And is one way of speaking better than another? Linguist Drummond explores the enormous diversity of our spoken language to reveal how we perceive (and judge) other people and how we would like ourselves to be perceived. He investigates how and why we automatically associate different accents with particular social characteristics and how we, consciously or subconsciously, change the way we speak in order to create different versions of ourselves to fit different environments.

Mitch Albom. Hachette Australia.

In the novel by the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, 11-year-old Nico Crispi is offered a chance to save his family when the Nazis invade Salonika, Greece. He is instructed to convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading towards the east, where they are promised jobs and safety. He dutifully goes to the station platform every day and reassures the passengers that the journey is safe. Only after it is too late does Nico discover that the people he loved would never return. Nico's story is interweaved with other individuals affected by the occupation: his brother Sebastian, their schoolmate Fanni and the Nazi officer who radically changed their lives.

Robert Galbraith. Hachette Australia. $34.99.

J,K, Rowling under her pseudonym brings back Cormoran Strike. The private detective is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside.The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceful organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths. Strike's business partner Robin Ellacott decides to infiltrate the cult and she travels to Norfolk to live incognito amongst them. But she is unprepared for the dangers that await her.

Armando Lucas Correa. Simon & Schuster. $32.99.

For as long as she can remember, 28-year-old Leah has suffered from akinetopsia - her eyes can't process movement, only still images. As she walks around her neighbourhood in upper Manhattan, her white stick tapping the pavement, most people assume she's blind. But Leah sees a good deal, and she remembers every image Leah's routine is thrown out of whack when Alice moves in next door and starts to opens up about her abusive, alcoholic ex-husband, who refuses to let her go. Leah will be forced to make a decision that will test her courage, her strength and ultimately her sanity.

Olivia Spooner. Hachette Australia. $32.99.

This story takes place at two different times. In 1940, young British schoolteacher Ruth is helping to evacuate children from England to Australia and New Zealand. She forms a bond with nine-year-old Fergus. On the return voyage, the ship is sunk by the Germans, the surviving passengers are taken as prisoners of war. In New Zealand in 2005. Hazel boards a plane to London and on her lap is a treasured book from her grandfather, Fergus - a book that will finally reveal Ruth's story.