George Pell's lawyers lodge an application seeking leave to appeal the jailed 78-year-old's child sexual abuse convictions in the High Court of Australia.

There are only 600 registered British White female cows in Australia, but farmers hope selling the meat will increase consumer demand and breeding.

A judge overturns the convictions of a bus driver who crashed into the Montague Street Bridge in South Melbourne, injuring six people. But Jack Aston will remain in prison while he is assessed for a community corrections order for lesser charges.

A bus driver jailed for seriously injuring six passengers when he crashed into South Melbourne's Montague Street Bridge in 2016 is released after an appeal.

Twelve years ago Paul Preusker was disqualified for possessing an electronic jigger. Now he's back, training the Melbourne Cup favourite and insisting he's a changed man.

A former private investigator is using her skills to try to crack a cold case murder in her own family.

Backyard beekeeping is abuzz with popularity with long waitlists to own a hive in some parts of Victoria.

After fracturing his pelvis and nearly bleeding out after last year's Cox Plate, Kings Will Dream is set to write another chapter in an unbelievable comeback story at Moonee Valley, during a fortnight of intense scrutiny over the treatment of horses within the racing industry.

Sheena Roberts and Rachel Fuller

Alexander McCall Smith

774 Listener Reviewer Goran Stolevski looks at this year's Palme d'or winner

Rob Minshull produces Weekend with Warren and is an avid reader.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader

Rob Minshull is an avid reader, and the producer of Weekends with Warren Boland

Award winning children's writer Kim Wilkins assumes a pseudonym as she turns her hand to 'chick literature' with Wildflower Hill.

Coast FM Book Club reviews Robotham's 'Bleed for Me'

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader

Making the right choice in life is never straightforward but is one of the main reasons we find ourselves and each other so fascinating. Three Dollars is the story of Eddie Harnovey, a honest, compassionate man with a brilliant wife, Tanya, and a beautiful, if possibly epileptic, daughter Abbey. Eddie's life revolves around work and the three women in his life; the third is Amanda, a childhood sweetheart who re-appears in his life with mathematical precision every nine-and-a-half years. Eddie has a lovely house in the suburbs, he has a strong moral conscience, he's intelligent and witty, and the world around him is falling apart. On the brink of bankruptcy with just $3 to his name, has he made the wrong choices?Perhaps a large part of the answer lies in the speed with which we live our lives. It is easy to feel sympathy for Eddie as he bemoans the pace of change: "Everything happens too quickly to be understood while it is happening. Analysis is impossible until the event is over."A more likely cause of Eddie's predicament may lie in the fact that his wife is about to lose her teaching position at the university and Eddie, an engineer working for the Department of Environment, has been asked by his wife's former lover to falsify a report to allow a smelting plant to be built by Amanda's father.The depth of these relationships is explored with insight and great wit, unpicking those worries that come to us at night while, like Eddie, we lie and notice (and usually ignore) the cracks and flaking of paint on the bedroom ceiling. For Eddie, it is a time to rank debts and what has become the persistence and tyranny of the day-to-day struggle to financially survive.Three Dollars was written in 1998, but set in the times of Australia's introduction to what the surely misnamed 'economic rationalism'. The obsession with material goods and the soulless never-ending pursuit of profit are both a target for Eddie's scorn as well as a source of hilarious black comedy. Written with great humour and prose which at times may seem just a little too deliberate, Three Dollars is as pertinent today as it was in the 1990s.There are times, however, when the characters' tendency to editorialise or sermonise is a touch overwhelming, even if the sentiments seem sound or relevant to Australian politics today. Take this monologue from Eddie's wife, Tanya:"People's fear of change and their despair at the lack of certainty in any area of their lives, particularly where the social and the personal meet, that is with respect to their jobs and income, if it lasts long enough, will lead them to abandon reason, to be suspicious of it and to look for scapegoats and simplistic solutions. The wisdom or correctness of a government's decision will scarcely be discussed but instead attention will be focused on the strength with which the decision was made, the apparent certainty, the conviction with which it was implemented."Admittedly, Tanya is a university politics lecturer, but the moral hectoring in the novel can easily distract from the plot and soon become tiring.Ignoring the occasional sermon, however, Three Dollars an entertaining read, beautifully written and extremely funny. It sat on my bookshelf for over a decade and was rescued only because the mixed reviews for Perlman's latest novel, The Street Sweeper, made me curious. No ambiguity about Three Dollars though: compelling, dramatic and a disconcertingly humorous reflection of the way so many of us live our lives. In 2005, Three Dollars was made into an Australian movie, starring David Wenham. A superb interpretation of the novel, both film and book are highly recommended.

Set in San Francisco in the desolate aftermath of World War Terminus, the enjoyable science fiction novel 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' follows the journey of two humans who remain on Earth instead of undertaking the more usual interplanetary emigration.

G. Willow Wilson

COUNTRY GIRL A memoirby Edna O'Brien

Volunteers for Meals on Wheels say the charity is under threat with branches surviving on bequests as Federal Government funding for the service plateaus.

A former ABC journalist, who pressed assault charges after her elderly mother was allegedly hit by a carer, urges Australians with family members in aged-care to install personal surveillance equipment.

Police seize more than $140 million worth of cocaine stashed in the arm of an excavator that was destined for a business in a small NSW town.

Beekeepers in New South Wales are hand-feeding their hives as the drought cripples the bees' ability to make honey, with a shortage expected to sting consumers at the checkout.

The family of a grandmother killed when a minibus clipped a fuel tanker offers generous sympathy to the bus driver at his sentencing in Wollongong District Court today.

Jobs growth versus environmental concerns reignite with a coal company's proposed expansion under Sydney's water supply.

In March 1996, teenager Matthew De Gruchy bludgeoned his family to death in a "frenzied attack" in NSW. Twenty-three years later, he is set to be released from prison as a 41-year-old man.

Fire crews have spent more than two weeks extinguishing a coal wash fire burning underground on a property in NSW.

St George Illawarra's season is all but over, but a sensational debut from young winger Jason Saab in the team's latest loss may be a sign of better things to come.

Lorelei and Peter Murko, and other members of their family, have taken an incredible journey together because of problems they have faced with their kidneys.

Triple murderer Matthew De Gruchy has been driven away from Sydney's Long Bay jail after serving 23 years of his 28-year sentence for bludgeoning to death his mother and younger brother and sister.

Rugby league player Jack de Belin will stand trial on sexual assault charges in March next year, just two weeks before the start of the 2020 NRL season.

Australia has an extensive list of previously banned books that were once considered "obscene" and a threat to the country's morals and literary standards.

Locals say a man who died while under attack from a swooping magpie near Wollongong was in a 'bad way' and they tried to resuscitate him before help arrived.

A New South Wales man claims he has been "deceived" by the state's public trustee after his elderly mother's will was allegedly changed without his knowledge.

A man charged with the manslaughter of Valmai Birch, 34, at her NSW south coast home eight years ago is accused of hogtieing her and causing her death by asphyxiation or other means, before putting her body in a wheelie bin.

Police evidence presented to Wollongong Local Court reveals allegations of violent physical abuse against a 12-week-old baby.