K ey questions of non-fiction are: how did we do things in the past and what can we learn for the future?
The questions are a pressing one for a number authors as they examine violence and power and what NSW Premier Mike Baird described as a plague of domestic violence across the country.
The new titles, timed for release around International Women's Day and US Women's History Month,  acknowledge the language we use to describe violence has changed over time but abuse and the quest for its eradication is not a new effort.
High-profile Australian journalist Anne Summers picks up on violence campaigner Rosie Batty's successful lobbying and argument that society must address family violence, in the latest update of feminist classic Damned Whores and God's Police  (NewSouth $40, ebook $13).
Summers notes new terminology for violence and abuse has been introduced since her book first came out in 1975, using the third edition to argue finding names and new ways of talking about things helps us understand key issues.
"It seems extraordinary today, but in the mid-70s we did not use terms such as 'domestic violence', 'sexual harassment', 'date rape' or 'glass ceiling' - let alone 'same-sex marriage' - because they had not yet been coined ... even though they certainly existed," she writes in the just-released update.
The Misogyny Factor author holds grave concern for the number of women dying from domestic violence in Australia - 79 last year, according to Destroy the Joint's Counting Dead Women Australia count, and 11 this year, with the list just updated on news a 20-year-old woman had been found dead on Sunday night.
Summers, an influential adviser to the Paul Keating government and the former head of the Office for the Status of Women under Bob Hawke, believes violence against women and an inability to deal with women in power are holding women back from equality in the community.
The author describes Australian feminism's history of pragmatic action on "domestic terrorism", giving a nod to $160 million in Federal and NSW government efforts to the cause in the past six months, while also presenting the international women's rights agenda as a crucial mission for new generations to adopt.
"The fight has become not just necessary but urgent because of the shocking increase in violence against women in Australia, more and more of it fatal," she writes.
Batty will examine the idea of whether gender equality frees women from family violence during a trip to Sweden with ABC's Foreign Correspondent in an episode called Rosie's Journey , to air tonight at 9.30pm on ABC and iView.
Author Ruth Clare examines violence and emotional abuse at home in her memoir Enemy  (Penguin $33, ebook $13), the tale of her experiences as the daughter of a Vietnam War veteran.
Clare takes an empathetic approach despite her pain, using her experience to highlight the post-traumatic stress soldiers bring home and the effects of war service on Australian families.
Shards of Ice  (New Holland $27), by former Albany Advertiser journalist Alison Sampson is another book examining domestic violence, this time in the context of drug and alcohol abuse and family breakdown.
Sampson's book is a biography of a man who killed his girlfriend while struggling with a crystal meth addiction.
It's an interesting story of the man's descent, which acts as a warning against a slide into meth and ice use after a history with alcohol and cannabis.
Violence at home was a reality businesswoman and philanthropist Millie Phillips knew too well, and it's one the mother-of-three catalogues in the first volume of her memoirs, Clouds of Glory  ($30, ebook $10).
Phillips left a violent marriage at 30 and became an entrepreneur and one of Australia's wealthiest women. She has given away more than $20 million to schools and other causes and has argued Australian women need to depart traditional domestic roles to assume their rightful place in society.
Summers believes the only way to end the national emergency on domestic violence is to act on it to end inequality.
All the latest releases provide an interesting context in a wider probe of power and violence, as readers develop their own theories on what lessons society needs to learn from the past to improve its future.
'The fight has become not just necessary but urgent because of the shocking increase in violence against women in Australia, more and more 
of it fatal.'
Alison Sampson  will sign copies of Shards of Ice   at Dymocks Joondalup this Saturday (11.30am) before meeting fans at Dymocks Morley on   April 2 (11.30am). To register, phone the Joondalup store on 9300 0895, Morley on 9276 7500, or email joondalup@dymocks.com.au