Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected tw...

Bruce Jenner, the celebrated Olympic icon and later the patriarch of one of the most famous families in the world, seemed to be living a dream life of success, fame, and prosperity. But the all-American image and million-dollar smile belied a lifelong struggle with gender dysphoria, and it wasn't...

The real story of a complex man whose star is still shining two decades after his death. Michael Hutchence was a superstar, an internationally respected musician and a great bloke. There will never be another one to replace him. Born into an eccentric and difficult marriage, Hutch grew up in diff...

Everything about me is in my films, Steven Spielberg has said. Taking this as a key to understanding the hugely successful moviemaker, Molly Haskell explores the full range of Spielberg's works for the light they shine upon the man himself. Through such powerhouse hits as Close Encounters of the ...

In June 1986 Diego Maradona, considered by many to be the greatest footballer of all time, proudly hoisted the '86 Mexico World Championship Cup in his hands. Now thirty years on from that magical game, and after a life in sports marked by controversy, Maradona tells, for the first time, the unto...

A collective memoir of one of Aboriginal Australia’s most charismatic leaders and an epic portrait of a period in the life of a country .Miles Franklin Award-winning novelist Alexis Wright returns to non-fiction in her new book, Tracker, a collective memoir of the charismatic Aboriginal leader, p...

"My story will open some wounds; hopefully it will heal others. I have written it with honesty and candour, and I will be ever grateful to the people of WA for their support and their trust. That so many believed I breached that trust is a burden I will always carry." --Brian Burke. In this book,...

This is a story of Jelena Dokic's survival. How she survived as a refugee, twice. How she survived on the tennis court to become world No. 4. But, most importantly, how she survived her father, Damir Dokic, the tennis dad from hell.

The Who defined a generation and rocked the world. "My Generation," "Pinball Wizard," and "Baba O'Riley" are some of the most well known tracks in rock history. The rock opera Tommy, the genre-defining Live at Leeds, and the classic Quadrophenia are just some of The Who's albums.

The sequel to Working class boy. It's a life too big and a story too extraordinary for just one book. Jimmy Barnes has lived many lives - from Glaswegian migrant kid to iconic front man, from solo superstar to proud father of his own musical clan. In this hugely anticipated sequel to his critical...

In the early hours of a February morning in 2012, Dana Vulin was the victim of a hideous, unprovoked attack. A woman who’d been stalking and harassing her for weeks – incorrectly and baselessly thinking Dana was having an affair with her estranged husband – burst into her apartment, doused her wi...

Helen Garner is one of Australia's most important and most admired writers. She is revered for her fearless honesty in the pursuit of her craft. But Garner also courts controversy, not least because she refuses to be constrained by the rules of literary form. She has never been afraid to write he...

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: GENERAL. AUSTRALIAN. Including new chapters. Frank, fearless, funny, articulate and inspiring, Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a dynamo, a young Muslim dynamo offering a bracing breath of fresh air - and hope. At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig; she...

When Adolf Hitler went to war in 1914, he was just 25 years old. It was a time he would later call the 'most stupendous experience of my life'.That war ended with Hitler in a hospital bed, temporarily blinded by mustard gas. The world that he opened his newly healed eyes on was new and it was ter...

Provides in-depth, fascinating facts about the famous scientist and mathematician - including details about his personal life, scientific discoveries, interactions with his contemporaries, thoughts on war, religion, and politics, and his impact on the world since his death. Whether you're seeking...

"What does it mean to lose your roots--within your culture, within your family--and what happens when you find them? Nicole Chung was born severely premature, placed for adoption by her Korean parents, and raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town. From childhood, she heard the story of...

The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary. Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possibl...

A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson is rightly recognised as Australia's greatest storyteller and most celebrated poet, the boy from the bush who became the voice of a generation. He gave us our unofficial national anthem, 'Waltzing Matilda', and treasured ballads such as 'The Man from Snowy River' and 'Clancy...

When Silverchair shuddered suddenly to a halt in 2011, there was no swansong, no farewell tour, just a brief statement and then they were gone, after 15 years of brilliant music, five hit albums, legions of fans, millions of record sales, scores of ARIAs and the odd controversy. Three teenagers f...

At the tender age of two, baseball prodigy Christian Haupt began sharing vivid memories of being a baseball player in the 1920s and '30s. From riding cross-country on trains, to his fierce rivalry with Babe Ruth, Christian described historical facts about the life of American hero and baseball le...

Kitty Flanagan has been locked in an industrial freezer in Western Australia, insulted about the size of her lady parts in Singapore and borne witness to the world's most successful wife swap in suburban Sydney. It's these valuable lessons from The University of Life that have taught her so many ...

Before turning to her life of crime -- running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI -- Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her seco...

Winston Churchill dominates our view of the history of Britain in the twentieth century - the brash, brave and ambitious young aristocrat who sought out danger in late Victorian wars, the mercurial First Lord of the Admiralty who was responsible for the Dardanelles disaster in 1915, the Colonial ...

In July 1986, Greg LeMond stunned the sporting world by becoming the first American to win the Tour de France, the world's pre-eminent bicycle race, defeating French cycling legend Bernard Hinault. Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his ca...

Since 1997, the London-based Asian Art Newspaper has been covering on a monthly basis the world of Asian and Islamic art. Each issue has been featuring an interview with a contemporary artist (painting, sculpture, installation, photography, performance, video, film or music), providing the reader...

Since his elevation to Red Bull in 2014, Daniel Ricciardo has cemented himself as one of Formula One's most exciting talents. He has established a reputation for brilliant one-lap speed, thrilling overtaking and a competitive spirit that has helped him claim some of the most exhilarating race vic...

Written over two years while the author battled depression, in and out of hospital, Dear Friend is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Interweaving personal memoir with a wide-ranging celebration of writers and books, this is a journey of recovery throu...

Written by bestselling author Alan Axelrod, The Disruptors presents engaging profiles, accompanied by original line drawings, of 50 visionaries who upended cultural, technical, spiritual, or scientific paradigms. Their innovations range from the printing press (Johannes Gutenberg) to the fight fo...

The story of the 'Dunera Boys' is an intrinsic part of the history of Australia in the Second World War and in its aftermath. The injustice these 2000 men suffered through British internment in camps at Hay, Tatura and Orange is well known. Less familiar is the tale of what happened to them after...