Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

A mathematician unlike any other, John Horton Conway (1937-2020) possessed a rock star's charisma, a polymath's promiscuous curiosity, and a sly sense of humour. Conway found fame as a barefoot professor at Cambridge, where he discovered the Conway groups in mathematical symmetry and the aptly na...

George Best is widely regarded as a brilliant footballer - one of the best in the world - with a troubled life. A European Cup and Ballon d'Or winner with Manchester United, the Northern Ireland international had all the skills and panache to be at the top of the game. George Best visited four ti...

Girl Friday: A job title used in 1970s workplaces for a junior administration assistant or receptionist. Common synonyms include junior office chick, shit-kicker, donkey worker, general dogsbody or gofer (go for this, go for that). Girl Friday: An Extraordinarily Ordinary Working Life is the hila...

Best known for playing loner rebel Dylan McKay in Beverly Hills 90210, Luke Perry was fifty-two years old when he died of a stroke in 2019. There have been other deaths of 90's stars, but this one hit different. Gen X was reminded of their own inescapable mortality, and robbed of an exciting care...

A coming-of-age graphic memoir set in the West Bank, depicting the reality of growing up in a region split by religious tensions, and sometimes violent conflict.

In 1940 Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland. What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances? Rachmaninoff left Petrograd in 1917 in the ...

Disarmingly witty and poignant, Sloane Crosley's memoir explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of her closest friend. How do we live without the ones we love? Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss that is profuse with lif...

What makes Zenadth Kes / Torres Strait unique? And what is it like to be a Torres Strait Islander in contemporary Australia? Growing Up Torres Strait Islander in Australia, edited by poet and author Samantha Faulkner, showcases the distinct identity of Torres Strait Islanders through their divers...

It was a perfect Wednesday morning when Alex 'Chumpy' Pullin kissed his partner Ellidy, goodbye to go spearfishing. Most days, Ellidy would go to the beach too, but that day she didn't. Later, there was a knock at the door. A man had been found unconscious on the ocean floor. It was Chumpy. From ...

From larger-than-life adventures to vivid and poignant tales of the imagination, Highways and Byways is a collection of stories taking readers on an enthralling tour (complete with the odd detour) through the raucous, well-lived life of one of this country's most successful and beloved artists.

"Discover the life of Som Tamang, a true hero of the Himalayas, and be inspired by his incredible journey of triumph against all odds. Penned by award-winning former ABC journalist Kirsty Nancarrow, Som's life is a testament to the incredible strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of...

In the 1950s, a young Ngāhuia is fostered by a family who believe in hard work and community. Although close to her kuia, she craves more: she wants higher education and refined living. But whānau dismiss her dreams. To them, she is just a show-off, always getting into trouble, talking back and r...

It was dawn in the small rural town of Biloela. Loud thumps on the front door signalled the start of a four-year odyssey that would catapult Priya and her family into the heart of a national debate. For the first time, Priya shares the story of her childhood in war-torn Sri Lanka and her perilous...

On a warm summer's evening in February 2014, eleven-year-old Luke Batty was killed by his father at cricket practice. It was a horrific act of family violence that shocked Australia. The next morning, his mother Rosie bravely stood before the media. Her powerful and gut-wrenching words about fami...

As one of the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria Beckham have attained iconic status. The ultimate power couple have together built a multi-billion-dollar global brand. For decades, adoring fans have been captivated by the glamorous world they have created, while...

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date-a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up.

How to Avoid a Happy Life is the hugely entertaining memoir by children's author Julia Lawrinson, who uses disarming honesty to tell a gripping and wickedly funny story of courage, vulnerability, resilience and survival, and that draws on the power of storytelling as a way to escape tight corners...

Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist. This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability....

"The inspiring story of a young man whose wisdom and strength can teach us all how to live life to the fullest, no matter what it throws at us.Sixteen-year-old Alex Noble was a high school rugby star with a promising sporting career ahead of him when an on-field injury left him fighting for his l...

In 1938, Jewish families are scrambling to flee Vienna. Desperate, they take out adverts offering their children into the safe keeping of readers of a British newspaper, the Manchester Guardian. The right words in the right order could mean the difference between life and death.

Alan Edwards, the godfather of British music PR, has worked with some of the most legendary artists of our time, from David Bowie to the Spice Girls via the Rolling Stones, the Stranglers, Prince and Amy Winehouse. A raucous, funny and deeply insightful memoir from the godfather of modern music P...

Comedian Youngmi Mayer recounts her childhood and adolescence as an offbeat biracial kid in Saipan. With humor and irreverence, she shares difficult moments in her past, including her family's struggles during the last century of colonialism, her mother's marriage to a man who looked like "white ...

Meet little Maurice Vellekoop, the youngest of five children raised by Dutch immigrants in the 1970s in a middle class suburb of Toronto. He loves watching Cher and Carol Burnett on TV, making clothes for his best friend's Barbie dolls, and helping his mum with her hair salon which she runs out o...

This powerful memoir gives extraordinary insight into a secretive sect, and the horror Dassi Erlich had to survive. Dassi's resilience and fight for justice is inspiring. As a young girl growing up in a strict ultra-Orthodox family, Dassi's life was preordained - marry young, live a devout li...

Intelligencer tells the extraordinary story of Australia's greatest spymaster, Walter Cawthorn. Trained as a teacher in Melbourne, he served at Gallipoli before joining the British Indian Army on the Western Front. From the Middle East to Vietnam, Cawthorn spied for four countries: Britain, India...

Whether it's committing to a tackle, being a dad or writing a memoir, if Zach Tuohy goes in, he goes 'all in' Like most Irishmen, Zach Tuohy's first love was Gaelic football. But when an Australian football club came knocking with a professional contract, the then-seventeen-year-old leapt at the ...

'Is that you...?' Matron's voice would ring out across the dormitory. In that pause sixty little girls would stop in their tracks, waiting to hear who was in trouble. All too often the name called out would be that of the high-spirited dormitory girl Ruthie. In the Depression years Queensland's n...

This captivating biography delves into the pioneering work of J. Robert Oppenheimer, from his early scientific achievements to leading the Manhattan Project and his complex legacy as the mind behind the atom bomb. The brilliant theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer is now known primarily f...

Vera Holme, known as Jack, left a career as a jobbing actress to become Emmeline Pankhurst's chauffeur and mechanic. Evelina Haverfield was a classic beauty, the daughter of a Scottish baron and fourteen years older than Jack. They met in 1909, fell in love, lived together and became public faces...

In this memoir, Tracy draws on client stories of trauma, heartbreak, hope and connection from her years of practice, offering a reflection on how the monocultural, one-size-fits-all approach to psychology is failing Aboriginal people and how she's healing those wounds. Jilya is a story of drive a...