Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

The gut-wrenching, heroic story of how one of Australia's finest surfers overcame brain injury and despair to win an Olympic medal.

In 2003, seventeen-year-old Australian exchange student Hannah Kent arrives at Keflavík Airport in the middle of the Icelandic winter. That night she sleeps off her jet lag and bewilderment in the National Archives of Iceland, unaware that, years later, she will return to the same building to wri...

The definitive biography of Ange Postecoglou, Australia's first Premier League manager and instigator of the 'Angeball' phenomenon that has taken the football world by storm. With unparalleled access to Postecoglou himself and a career spent pitch-side, leading Australian football writer Vince Ru...

Straight off the slopes and into the spotlight, Heather Gay is famous for speaking the gospel truth. Whether as a businesswoman, mother, or television personality, she is unafraid to blaze a new trail, even if it means losing family, friends, and her community. Born and bred to be devout, Heather...

Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996) possessed one of the twentieth century's most astonishing voices. In this first major biography since Fitzgerald's death, historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational arti...

From her Destiny's Child days through to her Renaissance era and the arrival of Cowboy Carter, Queen Bey's destiny was always to be fashion royalty. Through stunning photographs and expert text, Icons of Style captures Beyonce's most iconic and defining looks from the Met Gala to the Super Bowl a...

Scion of the great Quaker chocolate dynasty, Adrian Cadbury (1929-2015) was educated at Eton and Cambridge, yet never quite fitted into the mould of the British establishment. As one of the most influential business personalities of the later 20th-century, he was a committed capitalist, but champ...

'It was as though England had never really existed'. Budding zoologist Gerald continues to explore the natural wonders around him, enjoying a night fishing trip, receiving a donkey as a birthday present and accidentally bringing a bear home for tea. Here too are more stories of the eccentric crea...

It is daunting to grow old in a time and place that does not value old people, but the age group known as Boomers should not be so easily dismissed. They marched against the Vietnam War and were the first generation to be liberated by the contraceptive pill from the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Th...

By the acclaimed royal biographer and commentator Robert Hardman, Charles III is a brilliant and intimate portrait of the new monarch that draws on unrivalled access to the Royal Family, their close friends and staff, plus previously unseen papers from the Royal Archives. With damaging headlines ...

The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that's now on the verge of extinction. The realisation that she won't be able to tell her son he's 'living in the days of the aubergines' or 'chopping onions on my ...

CryBaby is Yamatji author Mabel Gibson's highly anticipated collection of micro memoir. Moving across distinct landscapes in Western Australia, the 56 dreamy and fragmented moments in this collection chronicle Mabel's life from age two to twenty-five. They tell her story as a young First Nations ...

What if we could redefine leadership? What if kindness came first? Jacinda Ardern grew up the daughter of a police officer in small-town New Zealand, but as the 40th Prime Minister of her country, she commanded global respect for her empathetic leadership that put people first. This is the remark...

The story of Arthur Leggett, a young man growing up in Australia's developing years, patriotically serving his country in World War II, and surviving four and a half years in the hands of the Germans as a Prisoner of War. Australian larrikanism shines throughout Arthur's journey from boyhood to m...

I'm always asked questions - by fans, by other actors and friends, by my grandchildren. They want to know how I've lasted so long, how I handle fame, why I chose to do some of my films, which films and actors I like best and so forth. They also want to know what makes me tick, what makes me get u...

From S Club 7 pop star to Hollywood starlet, Hannah Spearritt has been on the stage, screen and airwaves since her teens. As one seventh of an iconic pop band that provided the soundtrack to so many childhoods, she has spent most of her life in the limelight. Now, for the first time, she's ready ...

This is the iconic Josephine Baker in her own words. Funny, candid and unconventional- the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells her own story in this enchanting memoir. Baker took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. She be...

In her early 30s, Katie Treble felt stuck - in her life, in her career as an emergency doctor, and in a dead-end relationship. Moving from her home in England to sunny Byron Bay hadn't been the answer she was hoping for. Wanting to kickstart her life and put her starry-eyed idealism into action, ...

An intimate account -- the first from a trail veterinarian -- of the canines who brave the challenges of the Iditarod. Few events attract as much attention, or create as much spectacle, as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Each March, despite subzero temperatures and white-out winds, hundreds of ...

The most important book of the year, publishing 26 November 2024 For 16 years, Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany. She led the country through numerous crises, shaping both Germany and international politics with her actions and attitudes. In her memoirs, co-written with her long-time polit...

The island of Corfu, where the Durrell family live in agreeable chaos, is paradise for aspiring naturalist Gerald. His battalion of creatures has grown to include eleven puppies, a toad named Deirdre and an unwelcome infestation of scorpions. Yet the human visitors to their sun-drenched villa are...

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...

Over the past six decades, Henry Kissinger has been one of America's most lavishly praised -- and most reviled -- public figures. He was hailed as a "miracle worker" for his peacemaking in the Middle East, pursuit of detente with the Soviet Union, negotiation of an end to the Vietnam War, and sec...

Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of Erica Jong, author of the feminist autobiographical novel Fear of Flying. A sensational exploration of female sexual desire, it catapulted Erica into the heady world of fame in the early 1970s. Molly grew up with her mother everywhere - on television, in the c...

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 ...

Sir Hubert Wilkins is truly one of the most remarkable Australians who ever lived. His life was so jam-packed with adventure and achievement it's as though he crammed several lifetimes into one. The son of pioneer pastoralists in South Australia, Hubert studied engineering before moving on to pho...

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...

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

By 1974 the Beatles were a distant memory, and Paul McCartney had already gone on to release a solo album and form a new band, Wings. By the end of the decade Wings would be the bestselling band of the 1970s. The McCartney Legacy, Vol. 2 begins in 1974 at the height of Wings popularity and the be...