Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

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...

The Cambridge Spies continue to fascinate -- but one of them, John Cairncross, has always been more of an enigma than the others. He worked alone and was driven by his hostility to Fascism rather than to the promotion of Communism. During his war-time work at Bletchley Park, he passed documents t...

This is the incredible story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo. Agent Zo was the only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, and then in Britain she became the only woman to join the Poli...

Ah, Well, Nobody's Perfect is a funny, eye-opening, nostalgic, warm and utterly compelling collection of Molly's best stories and anecdotes from across his life. They feature everyone from Prince, Madonna, David Bowie and The Beatles to the St Kilda Football Club, the Melbourne Storm and the Aust...

The first ever biography of Masayoshi Son, Silicon Valley's legendary investor and SoftBank's founder, chairman and CEO.

From a National Book Award-winning biographer, the first complete life of legendary gangster Al Capone to be produced with the cooperation of his family, who provided the author with exclusive access to personal testimony and archival documents. Born in 1899 in Brooklyn, New York, to poor, Itali...

The twists and turns of the last 15 years of the Qantas story contains all the ingredients of a corporate thriller, with its constant shocks to the system, boardroom dramas and disasters narrowly avoided. During this tumultuous period, as CEO of Australia's iconic airline, Alan Joyce has had to s...

Review: "Aldous Huxley's letters offer an engaging encounter with one of the twentieth century's liveliest minds. Of the ten thousand letters Huxley wrote, only a fraction have previously been published. James Sexton's thoughtful selections, coming almost forty years after the first appearance of...

Entrepreneur, aviator, publisher, publicist, propagandist, playwright, songwriter, motorist, land developer, dreamer: for five brief years it seemed like there was nothing Clement John DeGaris couldn't do. He'd inveigle your life savings out of you with a promise of doubling them in a year and th...

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+

This is Tanya Heaslip's story of growing up in the late 1960s and early 70s on a vast and isolated outback cattle property just north of Alice Springs. Her parents, Janice and Grant 'the Boss', were pioneers. They developed the cattle station where water was scarce, where all power was dependent ...

In 1954, aged three, Rhonda Collard-Spratt was taken from her Aboriginal family and placed on Carnarvon Native Mission, Western Australia. Growing up in the white world of chores and aprons, religious teachings and cruel beatings, Rhonda drew strength and healing from her mission brothers and sis...

All About Me! charts Mel Brooks's meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experi...

The legendary comedian, actor, and film producer and director traces his rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to his stellar film career, offering insight into the inspiration for his ideas and the many close friendships and collaborations behind his success.

"Was I always trans, part boy beneath my skin, or was it that I landed in a place where 'girl' was a container so small it could break your bones? I learn that a ready smile and sympathetic ear are the only props required to impersonate a woman. The performance becomes so familiar I almost forget...

Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semi-feral cattle, a pi...

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, ...

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, ...

TRUE STORIES. AUSTRALIAN. On Saturday, 9 May 2015, Sally Faulkner hugged her children as they left for a three-week holiday to Beirut with their father, Ali Elamine. Though Sally and Ali were separated, custody of four-year-old Noah and six-year-old Lahela had never been an issue. The kids lived ...

Maya Angelou's seven volumes of autobiography, beginning with I know why the caged bird sings, are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Though she fiercely loves the world, as a black woman, she also knows its cruelty. Angelou has known discrimination and extrem...

Some secrets should never be kept - a candid and heartfelt memoir about authenticity, difference, resilience, hope and love by an exciting new Australian voice. When Jason Om was just twelve, he witnessed his mother die of a heart attack. No one else was home and he blamed himself for her death. ...

Seven years ago, Ben was loveless, overweight, in debt and living in his parents' rumpus room, trying to find a way to quietly die. Days passed by in a haze of marijuana smoke and self-loathing. Then, one day, Ben decided not to die. He decided to change everything - starting with the Ben bit. Be...

After years of struggling in a tumultuous marriage, writer Rebecca Woolf was finally ready to leave her husband. Two weeks after telling him she wanted a divorce, he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Four months later, at the age of forty-four, he died. In All of This, Woolf chroni...

Published to celebrate Katherine Mansfield's centenary, this is a compact but comprehensive new portrait of her life, work, relevance and wonderfully inspiring personality. In this dynamic and perceptive study, Claire Harman takes a fresh look at Mansfield's life and achievements side by side, th...

In 1850s South Carolina, Rose, an enslaved woman, faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag with a few items. Soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered...

In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth Coker Burks visits a friend in hospital when she notices that the door to one of the patient's rooms is painted red. The nurses are reluctant to enter, drawing straws to decide who will tend to the sick person inside. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined s...

From Elizabeth Hay, one of Canada's most celebrated novelists, comes a startling and beautiful memoir about the drama of her parents' end, and the longer drama of being their daughter. Jean and Gordon Hay were a formidable pair. She was an artist and superlatively frugal; he was a proud and princ...