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.

Translated by Yoko Ishiguro

Alexander McCall Smith

Here at last is the complete bible for those who never wish to grow up. A massive collection of all the useless tricks, facts and gags that make life worth living.

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader

Rob Minshull produces Weekends with Warren and is an avid reader. You can hear Dan Gardner being interviewed by Warren Boland on Sunday 13th Weekends with Warren.

Gordan Lomas

Rare insights into leading authors with Radio National's Ramona Koval.

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.

Paul French

This year's NAIDOC Week theme is Voice. Treaty. Truth. But the truth is that many Indigenous people feel voiceless when it comes to expressing where Australia stands on treaty today.

Tony Mulvihill has only one secret for training a good working dog, a lesson he learned 30 years ago from an Oregon buckaroo.

Purebred or mixed-breed Staffordshire terriers have killed at least four people in Australia in the past six months but the RSPCA says a dog's breed alone is not a reliable predictor of aggressive behaviour.

A braille teacher says technology is causing a decline in literacy among people who are vision-impaired, prompting her to bring the tactile language into the mainstream.

MORNING BRIEFING: NSW police hunt for Sunjay Dayal, who escaped while undertaking maintenance work in Mount Kiera, while three cars set alight in a garage triggers the fire alarms inside a Liverpool unit block.

An inmate from a prison once touted as housing criminals with "no escape risk" is on the run after he fled into bushland while on a work assignment.

A woman on trial accused of murdering her partner allegedly poisoned him with a "cocktail of dangerous medication" so she could benefit financially from his death, an Adelaide court is told.

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.

The NDIS cuts off at 65, so anyone who gets an acquired disability has to make do with an aged care supplement. This is not enough, according to a family caring for a quadriplegic.

A major crime review into the suspected murder of three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer, who was taken from a Wollongong Beach almost 50 years ago will be conducted, as her family desperately pleads for the state coroner to hold a second inquest into her death.

Shopping these days is no private affair as shopper surveillance ramps up towards the Christmas period. What you might not be aware of is that traders and their employees are also being keenly observed.

The train Harris Cheung catches to work in Sydney each day takes an hour-and-a-half the same time it took to travel the route on a steam train in the 1930s.

The Australian Tax Office reports a "small amount of fraudulent activity" related to its early superannuation access scheme, which was designed to provide financial relief to people left without income due to coronavirus.

Imagine trying to eradicate COVID-19 without knowing how many cases there are in Australia. That is the situation mental health advocates say is hampering the fight against suicide.

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren visit the national capital each year to study history and democracy — except, of course, this year.

Two Jewish convicts sent to Van Diemen's Land, both named Solomon, would go on to lead very different lives. While one became the inspiration for Dickens' Fagin, the other became rich and "respected" — yet could never leave his convict past behind.

One of two US citizens captured off the Caribbean Coast this week has appeared on camera during an interrogation, backing the Venezuelan government's theory over the failed invasion.

A property search fails to uncover the remains of missing man Michael Purse, but SA Police say two men they suspect of murdering him are already in custody for unrelated crimes.

NASA is calling tonight's full moon a supermoon. Not everyone agrees, but it is a great opportunity to catch a lovely photo.

The WA Government drills down on its decision to reject a home and away AFL season, saying the state's borders "would not and should not" be compromised to accommodate players.

A Norwegian man suspected of killing his ethnic Chinese stepsister before storming an Oslo mosque and opening fire says on the first day of his trial that it was an act of "emergency justice" and that he regrets not having caused more damage.

It seems famed street artist Banksy is particularly inspired by the challenge the coronavirus pandemic has presented humanity as he gifts a new artwork honouring the live-saving efforts of medical professionals to a British hospital.

Research from multiple studies across the world points to evidence that being overweight or obese might also make the impacts of COVID-19 more severe, particularly for those aged under 60.

A lucrative but illegal trade in alcohol known as sly-grogging has developed in remote towns and there are allegations it is being facilitated by rogue taxi drivers.

MORNING BRIEFING: The NSW Transport Minister will no longer serve as Leader of the House, the latest episode in a tumultuous week for Mr Constance in which he announced his bid for the federal seat of Eden-Monaro before withdrawing from the race 24 hours later.

A clay pipe depicting a Tasmanian tiger has the archaeology community in a buzz.

Bright, bold and ethereal — the sight of May's supermoon rising behind world landmarks will take your breath away.