Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: GENERAL. AUSTRALIAN. Including new chapters. Frank, fearless, funny, articulate and inspiring, Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a dynamo, a young Muslim dynamo offering a bracing breath of fresh air - and hope. At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig; she...

In a remote area of deserts and mountains where the Silk Road once ran, China has built the world's largest prison. The Uyghur population of Xinjiang is being systematically rounded up, with as many as a million citizens being held in detention. In Australia, Sadam was desperate to keep his wife ...

Reliving key moments and events in his life, this memoir not only explores Gary's great success at the very top of the AFL, but also his journey to get there. Drafted in 2001, Gary's incredible career has spanned two great clubs, two Grand Finals and two Brownlow medals among many other accolades...

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...

Alice Achan was only twelve years old when the Lord's Resistance Army began to terrorise her peaceful village in northern Uganda. She spent five years on the run from the brutalities of the LRA, and then became the caretaker of her brother's young children after their mother died of HIV/Aids. Whe...

Rome, 1964. As 13-year-old André stands at the foot of the gangway to the ship, his mother fusses over their luggage - 32 suitcases, trunks and tea chests that contain their world. The ship will refuel and return to Alexandria, the home where they have left their father, as the Aciman family begi...

The name Ada Lovelace perhaps is not a name that you would automatically link to computer science but she was in fact the first person to create a computer algorithm. Working with the renowned scientist Charles Babbage, Lovelace translated a set of notes on Babbage's new mechanical computer, The ...

The Last Yakuza tells the history of the yakuza like it's never been told before. Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can s...

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...

In his widely anticipated memoir, Ai Weiwei - one of the world's most famous artists and activists - tells a century-long epic tale of China through the story of his own extraordinary life and the legacy of his father, Ai Qing, the nation's most celebrated poet. At once ambitious and intimate, 10...

"When civil war broke out in his home country in 2011, Hassan Al Kontar was a young Syrian living and working in the UAE. He refused to return to Syria for compulsory military service and lived illegally before being deported to Malaysia in 2018. Unable to obtain a visa for any other country, he ...

This is the true story of Mecak Ajang Alaak, leader and educator, who in the early 1990s assumed command of 20,000 of the Lost Boys of South Sudan during the conflict of the Second Sudanese Civil War, and led them on a harrowing dangerous journey of several thousand kilometres to the safety of th...

'When you are someone that falls outside of categories in so many ways, a lot of things are said to you. And I have had a lot of things said to me.' In None of the Above, Travis Alabanza examines seven phrases people have directed at them about their gender identity. These phrases that have staye...

Not long after he was born in 1990, Dylan Alcott was found to have a tumour on his spine. The surgery to remove it was successful but left Dylan a paraplegic. The youngest of two sons growing up in the suburbs of Melbourne, Dylan experienced his fair share of bullying and loneliness. By early hig...

With the intimacy and wit of a Second World War Bridget Jones, Eileen Alexander offers a portal into life during the Blitz: The sex, joys and cruelties of young love - for Eileen with a man who had just inadvertently involved her in a car crash, for her friends with some less-than-honourable spec...

We love our parents, of course we do. But have you noticed how many things they do seem designed to drive us bonkers? It's the way they never follow doctor's orders, or conveniently relay only part of their treatment. It's the way Mum taps her fingernail on the car window when she sees a place of...

How do you begin your life again when you've lost everything you've worked for and your dreams have been shattered? That was the question Australian author Belinda Alexandra faced one freezing winter night when she ran from her home in terror. She had only her wallet, her phone and her latest man...

More words have been written about about Muhammad Ali than almost anyone else. And yet, until now, the one voice missing has been the one belonging to the man who knew him best. Muhammad Ali was, without doubt, the world's most-loved sportsman and people. At the height of his celebrity he was the...

In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working al...

Marie Laveau may be the most influential -- and is among the most famous -- American practitioner of the magical arts. She is the subject of songs, films, and legends and the star of New Orleans ghost tours. Her grave in New Orleans ranks among the most popular spiritual pilgrimages in the US. Th...

Since the day Charles Philip Arthur George was born, he has been groomed to be King. After more than seventy years of waiting, he finally ascends the throne. The King examines the private life of this historically important and controversial figure, set against the grand, thousand-year sweep of t...

An intimate memoir by blues legend Robert Johnson's step-sister, including new details about his family, music, influences, tragic death, and musical afterlife.

Rarely does a trauma therapist disclose their own trauma history ... yet it's the untold, brutally honest, incredibly heartbreaking story of Dr. Frank Anderson that made him the world-renowned trauma expert he is today. Known for his magnetic and radiant personality, Frank spends his time trainin...

Pamela Anderson is an icon: an international superstar whose blonde bombshell image was ubiquitous in the 1990s. Discovered by Playboy during a football game in her native Canada, Pamela was quickly launched into superstardom, gracing the cover of the infamous gentleman's magazine a record of 14 ...

Rob Anderson was a magnet for trouble long before he went to sea at 15. But when he became Captain Rob Anderson, one of the youngest Australian masters ever, it was suddenly his responsibility to keep everything afloat, no easy feat when the seas were unregulated, full of madmen, and more like th...

What do you get when a house-bound comedian is left with no option but to make comedy using only a rampant washing machine, a lot of Vaseline (it's for the pipes - no not that pipe), a roast chook and an unused exercise bike to keep him company? You get "I Am Not Fine, Thanks". From prime ministe...

The story begins in a public square in New Delhi. On a cold December evening a young European woman of noble descent appears before an Indian street artist known locally as PK and asks him to paint her portrait--it is an encounter that will change their lives irrevocably. PK was not born in the c...

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...

Baby Boomers claim to have been humanity's greatest liberators, but their children would happily trade that so-called liberation for a little less debt, the chance to own a home before fifty, and a shot at extracting some commitment from the bosses and romantic partners who view their relationshi...