Queensland Braille Writing Association, Braille House, QBWA

Books and magazines

Braille House offers an extensive free Library of books in braille and is also Australia's only producer and library of titles in the moon script. Books are sent to and from borrowers via free post in canvas bags with reversible address labels.

We look forward to a full online catalogue in the foreseeable future, but catalogues by author or subject, last updated in December 2011, are available as files which can be downloaded and saved to your computer to be browsed at your leisure. (Please note that these text files adhere to an original typed format and are prepared primarily for printing, not for viewing online or accessing easily with a screen reader.)

A few recent additions to our shelves are listed at the bottom of this page for your interest and enjoyment.

Braille catalogues for download

Moon catalogues for download

Moon books

Moon books are available in different sizes and formats:

The Braille Mail and Moon Mail

Edited by Queensland Newspapers and produced in braille and moon by the Queensland Braille Writing Association, The Braille Mail is a community project providing access to the news for people with a print disability and is a compilation of articles on current affairs, sport, lifestyle and more. It is published fortnightly, is free and is available as a 8-9,000-word hardcopy braille or moon edition distributed by QBWA. An audio copy, produced by the Queensland Narrating Service is available from Queensland State libraries.

In Touch Magazine

If you're into cooking; gardening; travelling; playing sport; reading; laughing; loving; learning; and generally living life to the full, then you will love our In Touch magazine! This free magazine, available to all financial members, contains articles on all such things, plus puzzles, braille matters, and news and events of interest to people who are blind or have low vision. It is available in braille and moon script and all we ask is that local readers return your copies in the specially provided mailer bags as soon as you have finished reading them so that others can have a turn.

Download a sample copy of In Touch Magazine (doc 77 kb)

Other magazines

We also hold a wide variety of publications from the United Kingdom, the United States of America and South Africa. Please download the following for a list of magazine titles and additional information (rtf 17 kb)

Some recent additions to the library shelves in 2011

The Russian Album by Michael Ignatieff – 7 vols
Spellbinding … a family history, focusing on the author's grandparents who fled with their young sons from the Russian Revolution … But this is more than a family memoir. It's a meditation on restlessness and belonging, and on the ambivalent feelings we have about the lost past and about our forbears.
The Whole Truth by David Baldacci – 11 vols
This terrifying global thriller delivers all the twists and turns, emotional drama, unforgettable characters and can't-put-it-down pacing that Baldacci fans expect – and still goes beyond anything he's written before.
Tatiana & Alexander by Paullina Simons – 12 vols
Tatiana is eighteen years old, pregnant and widowed when she escapes war-torn Leningrad to find a new life in America. But the ghosts of her past do not rest easily. She becomes obsessed with the belief that her husband, Red Army Major Alexander Belov, is still alive and needs her desperately. Meanwhile oceans and continents away in the Soviet Union, Alexander, having barely escaped execution, is leading a battalion of soldiers, considered expendable by Soviet high command. New recruits survive only days. Yet Alexander is determined to take them across the ruins of Europe in one last, desperate bid to escape Stalin's death machine and see Tatiana once again …
Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith – 4 vols
Following on from the brilliant The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe charts the further adventures of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's only – and finest – female private detective. It's going to take all her intuition and eminent sensibility for Precious to crack her hardest case yet: the decade-old disappearance of an American on the edge of the Kalahari. And if that wasn't enough, there are plenty of matters closer to home to concern her: her highly talented secretary, Mrna Makutsi, eager to be promoted to detective; the unscrupulous maid of her husband-to-be, the wonderful Mr J. L. B. Matekoni; and the sudden – and unexpected – increase in her family by not one, but two.
'Tis - A Memoir by Frank McCourt – 8 vols
'Tis is the story of Frank's American journey from impoverished immigrant with rotten teeth, infected eyes and no formal education to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher. Saved first by a straying priest, then by the Democratic party, then by the United States Army, and then by New York University – which admitted him on a trial basis though he had no high school diploma – Frank had the same vulnerable but invincible spirit at nineteen that he had at eight and still has today. And 'Tis is a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing and often hilarious as Angela's Ashes. Yet again, it is through the power of story-telling that Frank finds a life for himself.

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Updated: 19 December 2011.