Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

Scope and content: "An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a young Jewish boy in Munich, living with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor. Watching events unfold from his window, Edgar bore witness to the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallna...

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range ...

WORLD HISTORY: SECOND WORLD WAR. First published in 1938 "I Knew Hitler" is the missing link in the literary trail which traces the fortunes of Adolf Hitler from Linz to Berlin. There are surprisingly few personal accounts of life with Hitler from inside the inner circle during the years before h...

Katie Nicholl, bestselling author and royal correspondent for The Mail on Sunday, gives an inside look into the life of the future Queen of England, Kate Middleton. Since becoming Duchess Catherine of Cambridge in 2011, Middleton has captivated royals fans around the world and now, Nicholl delive...

After more than forty years, Charles Manson continues to mystify and fascinate us. One of the most notorious criminals in American history, Manson and members of his mostly female commune killed nine people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Now, drawing on new information, bestselling auth...

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: GENERAL. Stephen Hawking is one of the most brilliant cosmologists of our time, and author of the 10 million copy bestselling A Brief History of Time, one of the iconic books of its generation. Now, for the first time, he tells the story of his life in his own words, in...

In 1939, as Europe approaches war, Isherwood, an instinctive pacifist, travels west to California, seeking a new set of beliefs to replace the failed Leftism of the thirties. There he meets Swami Prabhavananda, a Hindu monk, who will become his spiritual guide for the next thirty-seven years. Lat...

"Actor, director, producer, biographer, critic and journalist, Blundell established theatre companies and was there when they closed, watched the film industry through its many renaissances, and television as it became an addictive digital environment. In The Naked truth Blundell writes about Aus...

Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers' ploughs. Historians still disagree over virtually eve...

Brendan O'Carroll now performs to tens of thousands of people a night in packed-out stadiums across the country. In the last four years he has become one of the most popular comedians in the UK and his show MRS BROWN'S BOYS reaches more viewers than Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife. But this wa...

Pink is the double-Grammy winning singer-songwriter who has now been a regular fixture on the world's charts since 2000, hitting the heights with the autobiographical pop/rock of 'Missundaztood'. This book traces the extraordinary story of Pink, from her modest roots in Pennsylvania through to gl...

Tall Ships and Tall Tales is a unique account of a historian who has always refused to let the past be forgotten. This special book includes newspaper photos and political cartoons about the momentous events it describes.

Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest is the public face of Australia's once-in-a-life time mining boom. A swashbuckling entrepreneur in the finest West Australian tradition, Twiggy took on mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto at their own game - and won. Yet he has also been embroiled in two of the most heated deb...

Going in first or seventh, wearing whites or colours, Adam Gilchrist was the most exhilarating cricketer of the modern age. This is the most complete, intimate and fascinating illustrated autobiography of ‘Gilly’, one of the most loved sportsmen of his generation. Featuring personal photographs, ...

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: SPORT. This Muhammad Ali title explores the athletic feats, political views and poetic showmanship of the unrivalled sports personality of the century. Ages 5+

Novelist, comics writer, scriptwriter, poet, and occasional artist, there are few creative avenues Neil Gaiman hasn't ventured down-from unforgettable books like The Ocean at the End of the Lane and American Gods to groundbreaking comics and graphic novels like The Sandman and Violent Cases; from...

The architectural work of Joseph John Talbot Hobbs is impossible to overlook in Perth and Western Australia. It dominates public spaces as well as domestic and business streetscapes. A strong sense of duty determined that the diminutive fifty-year-old architect-soldier J.J. Talbot Hobbs would in ...

David Walsh - the creator of MONA in Hobart - is both a giant and an enigma in the Australian art world. A multi-millionaire who made his money gambling, David has turned a wild vision into a unique reality; he is in turns controversial, mysterious and idolised. 'A bone of fact' is his utterly un...

A young Dawn French, bluffing her way to each BBC series, shooting Lulu, trading wild faxes with Joanna Lumley, touring India with Ruby Wax and Goldie Hawn. There's cancer, too, when she becomes 'Brave Jen'. But her biggest battle is with the bane of her life: the Laws of Procrastination.

Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother -- a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games. She no longer considered Dave a son, but a slave; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement, his clothes were torn and un...

In this idyllic pastoral setting, unencumbered by the callous father who so quickly abandoned his family responsibilities, Laurie's adoring mother becomes the centre of his world as she struggles to raise a growing family against the backdrop of the Great War. The sophisticated adult author's ret...

An account of time spent in Auschwitz concentration camp.

An account of the extraordinary life of Josephine Bonaparte, the charming and promiscuous socialite who stole Napoleon's heart.

Considered to be one of the finest works of Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire, children and adults alike will delight in the adventures of Leif the Lucky, son of Erik the Red, who "sailed with his father to Greenland and who later sailed farther west and found the continent of America."In this char...

When the Call the midwife books became bestsellers, Jennifer Worth was inundated with correspondence. People felt moved to write to her because the books had touched them, and because they wanted to share memories of the world her books described, the East End of London in the late 1940s and earl...

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Arguably the most gifted artist of her generation, Amy Winehouse died tragically young, aged just 27. With a worldwide fanbase and millions of record sales to her name, she should have had the world at her feet. Instead, the years prior to her passing she battled with a...

Gough had no small talk, Margaret had the gift of easy conversation. He was often ill-at-ease in company and preferred his books. She was warm, inclusive and jollied him along. He had a vicious tongue and a quick temper. She always tried to see the best in people. He knew everything about the ide...

Pain and poverty paved the way to peace and spiritual prosperity in the life of the author, Patricia Ann Boyes, ordinary person. In this memoir, she takes us from a three-year-old child witnessing her mother's brutal beatings, to a seventeen-year-old suffering the throes of childbirth; through a...