Parlour Games for Friends and Family

Winner of the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for Older Children (age range 8 to 14 years)

Parlour Games for Friends and Family sets out to revive the tradition of indoor family games: push aside the consoles, turn off the telly, and bring some mental stimulation, silliness and laughter, joy and connection back into your living room.

This book is bursting with games of logic and memory, wordplay, card games, role-play, and rough and tumble. Not a single game requires equipment that you won't find in your average home: a pack of cards, a dictionary, an hourglass, dice, paper and pen.

Games are organised thematically and referenced for age appropriateness. All are set out with clear rules and instructions. There are games that will challenge and stimulate you, and games that will have you in fits; games that can last all night, and games to fill that empty half-hour before tea; games for adults and older children, and games for your four-year-old's birthday party.

Parlour Games for Friends and Family, a book for fun-lovers aged four to 104, winds back the clock to remind you of games you'd forgotten and then a whole lot more. Whether you dip into it as the urge takes you or read it from cover to cover, a very good time is guaranteed.

A paperback stacked with a paper carnival of fun ... Adults will delight in the whimsy of memorable games from childhood and will love enthralling the kids when hauling them out of the past.
— Tania McCartney, Australian Women Online

In this day and age, it's hard to prise the kids away from their electronic equipment (TV, computers, game consoles and on the list goes), not to mention you, the parent from your chores. But this little corker of a book should help you out. Written by two mothers, it's packed full of fabulous games that families used to play years ago ... Gather up the clan into one room, choose a game (Farkle, Pontoon, Flip the Kipper or Picture Consequences, perhaps) and have a bit of genuine fun, and family time.
— Herald Sun

What a fascinating book it is, there's history, literature, cooking, lots of humour, and some droll one-liners ... Parlour Games for Friends and Family will be an invaluable resource book for rainy days, heatwave days, impossibly windy days, and all Melbourne's usual weather surprises. It's a book that every family should own.
— Dr Gwenda Beed Davey, Neos Kosmos