Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

Melanie C, aka Sporty Spice, tells her life story in her own words and gives a full and honest account of what life was really like in The Spice Girls.

'I had seen dozens of people die horrible deaths ... This time was different. This time it was a friend of mine dying in the dirt in front of me, and it was my job to save him.' Dr Dan Pronk served on over 100 combat missions in Afghanistan as a frontline special forces combat doctor, where the c...

He is one of the most beloved athletes in history and one of the most gifted men ever to step onto a tennis court -- but from early childhood Andre Agassi hated the game. With its breakneck tempo and raw candor, this book will be read and cherished for years. A treat for ardent fans, it will also...

Vince Copley was born on a government mission into poverty in 1936. By the time he was 15, five of his family had died. But at a home for Aboriginal boys, he befriended future leaders Charlie Perkins, John Moriarty and Gordon Briscoe. They were friendships that would last a lifetime. 'Always reme...

Larry Emdur is one of Australia's most popular and enduring TV personalities. Happy As is a memoir of becoming Larry. Long before the game shows and morning TV, Larry Emdur was just Larry, a cheeky kid from Bondi who grew up paddling round the kiddies' pool on a foam surfboard, and rocking a safa...

Global bestselling author Raynor Winn returns with her third and most ambitious memoir, a chronicle of her journey across Great Britain. As the fracture lines between nations grow wider, how do we relate to each other, and to the land? Are we united enough to see protection of the environment as ...

Bushrangers are Australian legends. Ned Kelly, Ben Hall, 'Captain Thunderbolt' and their bushranging brothers are famous. They're remembered as folk heroes and celebrated for their bravery and their ridicule of inept and corrupt authorities. But not all Australian bushrangers were white men. And ...

From being told he couldn't have dance lessons as a kid in Great Yarmouth to having to conform to the stereotypes of the gay scene in London's East End, people have always been trying to put Bimini Bon Boulash in a box. It was only through discovering the art of drag that he began to fight back a...

Even after he left his former career as a British spy and agent runner during the height of the Cold War, John le Carré still pursued a secret life, not just in the labyrinthine intrigue and double-dealing of his novels, but also in his personal involvements. He guarded the secrets of his private...

March 1938: German soldiers are massing on the Austrian border, on the cusp of fulfilling Hitler's dream of absorbing the country into the Third Reich. Many Jews make frantic plans to flee to safety. But one of the most famous men in the world, unable to contemplate leaving his beloved Vienna, is...

Hudson Fysh was a decorated World War I hero who not only founded Australia's national airline, Qantas, but steered it for almost half a century from its humble beginnings with two rickety biplanes to the age of the jumbo jets. One of Australia's celebrated Light Horsemen at Gallipoli, Fysh went ...

The long-awaited memoir of the late Bryce Courtenay Australia's bestselling author as told by his wife, Christine Courtenay.

A Year with Wendy Whiteley sees the biographer and critic Ashleigh Wilson painting a portrait of the inimitable Wendy Whiteley--in her own words.

Impossible is a recurring theme in Eddie's life - from the streets of Stoke-on-Trent to the pinnacle of Strongman - at every step on his journey he has blasted through the obstacles in his way. Now he faces a mountain - or rather The Mountain. Eddie brings readers behind the scenes and into the h...

Creative icon, visionary, and dreamer, Stan Lee co-created many of pop culture's most significant characters, including Spider-Man, Black Panther, and the Avengers. Stan Lee: A Life is biography of the Marvel legend by cultural historian Bob Batchelor, celebrating the centennial of Lee's birth.

Alan Rickman remains one of the most beloved actors of all time across almost every genre, from his breakout role as Die Hard's villainous Hans Gruber to his heart-wrenching run as Professor Severus Snape, and beyond. His air of dignity, his sonorous voice and the knowing wit he brought to each r...

Ewan Forbes was born Elisabeth Forbes to a wealthy landowning family in 1912. It quickly became clear that the gender applied to him at birth was not correct, and from the age of six he began to see specialists in Europe for help. With the financial means of procuring synthetic hormones, Ewan was...

Roald Dahl was one of the world's greatest storytellers. He conceived his vocation as one as intrepid as that of any explorer and, in his writing for children, he was able to tap into a child's viewpoint throughout his life. He crafted tales that were exotic in scenario, frequently invested with ...

A puddle of water on a highway changed Dinesh Palipana's life forever. Halfway through medical school, Dinesh was involved in a catastrophic car accident that caused a cervical spinal cord injury. After his accident, his strength and determination saw him return to complete medical school -- now ...

This is not a war story about heroism or healing trauma, but an attempt to fill the gaps in a family story in the wake of the Vietnam War and re-animate a father never really known. "Life with Birds" invests in the small scale, the domestic and the ordinary as an overlooked part of Australian mil...

Marie Curie, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrodinger, and Albert Einstein didn't only revolutionise physics; they redefined our world and the reality we live in. In The Age of Uncertainty, Tobias Hürter brings to life the golden age of physics and its dazzling, flawed, and un...

As a Pakistani-Australian teenager growing up in Western Sydney, Sarah Malik came of age in the shadow of September 11. At the age of twenty, she moved out of home to begin her life as a university student, young Muslim feminist and journalist. In this energetic and timely book, Malik dissects th...

Fearless. Tough. Uncompromising. This was the persona of former elite footballer and senior AFL coach Danielle Laidley. Fearful. Vulnerable. Uncertain. This is how Danielle felt for most of her life. For the best part of five decades, within a hyper-masculine sporting environment, Danielle Laidle...

Harold Holt was a pivotal prime minister in Australian history. Ambitious, modern and telegenic, he helped bring his party and nation into the late twentieth century, following the Menzies years. Nowhere was Holt's legacy more significant than in the 1967 referendum, and in helping to end the Whi...

Though many have never heard her name, Alice Prin - Kiki de Montparnasse - was the icon of 1920s Paris. She captivated as a ground-breaking nightclub performer, wrote a memoir, sold out exhibitions of her paintings, and shared drinks and ideas with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim, an...

It is in the midst of a swirling river, casting a line, that Mark Wormald meets Ted Hughes. He stands where the poet stood, forty years ago, because fishing was Ted Hughes's way of breathing and because the poet's writing has made Mark understand that it has always been his way of breathing, too....

This book is haunting memoir of poet - a story of love, heartbreak and coming of age, and a fearless exploration of queer identity and trauma. When Sean meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story, but they soon come face-to-face with crisis, after Elias sets out on the path to suicide, ...

Mark Doty's partner, Wally, is dying from AIDs. To keep Wally company alongside their dutiful black retriever, Arden, Mark begins looking for a calm lap dog. But at the pound, Mark cannot resist the charm of a three-year-old golden retriever called Beau. Bounding into his new home, Beau hops up o...

Vince Copley was born on a government mission into poverty in 1936. By the time he was 15, five of his family had died. But at a home for Aboriginal boys, he befriended future leaders Charlie Perkins, John Moriarty and Gordon Briscoe. They were friendships that would last a lifetime. 'Always reme...

James Patterson's best stories are the stories of his life. He worked at a psychiatric hospital when he was younger where he met the singer James Taylor and the poet Robert Lowell. Both were patients. He was at Woodstock and was also an usher at the Fillmore East. When he was just 37, he became t...