Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

Drawing on years of original research conducted in Italy and abroad, this book lays bare the hidden aspects of Enzo Ferrari's career. From his earliest failed business ventures, to his political dealings with Italy's fascist government, Allied occupiers, and even Communist leaders. Revisit all th...

A wild ride through a disaffected youth by a gifted writer. Dominic Gordon explores his memories in tight prose bursting with insight, audacious ideas and dark humour. What happens to the adolescent spirit when all vestiges of innocence about the world are foregone, replaced within the grinding s...

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 ...

From the award-winning New York Times-bestselling author, Alexandra Fuller, comes a career defining memoir about grieving the sudden loss of her twenty-one-year-old child. "Fair to say, I was in a ribald state the summer before my fiftieth birthday." And so begins Alexandra Fuller's open, vivid n...

The unforgettable true story of one Jewish orphan's survival against impossible odds and her lifelong search for a place to belong. Elida Friedman was never supposed to have been born. In the Kovno Ghetto, Nazi law forbade Jewish women from giving birth. Yet despite the danger they faced, one cou...

Khin's sister Theda has a strange illness and a euthanasia drug locked in a box under her bed. Her doctor thinks her problem is purely physical, and so does she, but Khin is not so sure. He knows what they both went through growing up in Perth – it wasn't welcoming back then for a Burmese-Austral...

"At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion's legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early twenties, he shared a Manhattan apartment with his best friend and soulm...

In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir. A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved. Riley got ...

Gambling Man is the biography of one of the world's least known but most consequential investors. Japan's Masayoshi Son has made and lost several fortunes, investing or controlling assets worth $1 trillion in the past two decades through his media-tech giant, SoftBank. He bankrolled Alibaba, Chin...

Drafted in 2001, Gary Ablett's incredible career has spanned two great clubs, two Grand Finals and two Brownlow medals among many other accolades. In his audiobook, Gary takes listeners through the trials and triumphs of his life: his close bonds with his family; his famous father Gary Ablett Sen...

The gripping, true story of how leading Israeli journalist Amir Tibon, along with his wife and their two young children, were rescued on 7 October 2023 by Tibon's father - an incredible tale of survival that also reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures that led to Hamas's attacks that day...

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...