Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

Born in March 1896, Nancy Cunard was a great beauty, rich, promiscuous, with a mesmeric effect on men. She was also highly intelligent, reading widely and writing poetry. Of Nancy's many affairs the five included in this book are the ones with the American poet Ezra Pound, the novelists Aldous Hu...

The first biography of Gwen Harwood (1920-1995), one of Australia's most significant and distinctive poets. Harwood is renowned for her brilliance, but loved for her humour, rebellion and mischief. A public figure by the end of her life, she was always deeply protective of her privacy, and even s...

Lights up on little Grace Lavery: reformed druggie, unreformed pantie-dropper, and 100% all-natural, synthetically-cultivated female hormone monster. From the moment Grace solves what she affectionately calls her "penis problem" in the parking lot of an abandoned Japanese steakhouse (were the tur...

As a child, Anna Wintour was a tomboy with no apparent interest in clothing but seduced by the miniskirts and bob haircuts of swinging 1960s London, she grew into a fashion-obsessed teenager. Her father, the influential editor of the Evening Standard, loomed large in her life, and once he decided...

A moving, confronting and ultimately uplifting story about a young girl's escape, with her family, from war-torn South Sudan to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, and then to Australia.

In this memoir, through both her words and illustrations, Janine Mikosza revisits the fourteen houses she lived in before turning eighteen. Homesickness explores how we remember, the myriad ways childhood lives on in an adult's body, and responsibility versus accountability. It is about finally b...

In this memoir, Anna Goldsworthy recalls her first steps towards a life in music, from childhood piano lessons with a local jazz muso to international success as a concert pianist. As she discovers passion and ambition, and confronts doubt and disappointment, she learns about much more than tone ...

Peter Hudson is one of the greatest footballers in the history of Australian football. He was prolific goal-kicker who broke a string of records during his remarkable career at Hawthorn and in Tasmania, culminating in him being awarded Legend status in the Australian Football Hall of Fame. No VFL...

When Melody Horrill began communications at the University of South Australia, she was a troubled and lost young woman, hiding behind a carefully-crafted exterior. She had experienced a childhood of emotional and physical trauma mainly at the hands of a violent father, that was as damaging as it ...

Kobe Bryant's death in January 2020 did more than rattle the worlds of sports and celebrity. It took the tragedy of that helicopter crash to reveal the full breadth and depth of Kobe's influence, and by tracing and telling the oft-forgotten and lesser-known story of his early life, "The Rise" pro...