Item category 1: Biographies & Memoirs

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

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...

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...

'The sun is shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious summer day. I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is a child of seventeen i...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

Every 90 seconds in the UK, a missing person is reported to the police. Charlie Hedges' job is to work out the best way to find them. What's going on in their life? When were they last seen? Have they chosen to go missing or is someone else involved? With no two cases ever the same, Charlie has b...

John and Elizabeth Gould sailed into Australia on a cold spring day in 1838, prepared for the most astonishing adventure of their lives. They had crossed three oceans from their London home to find the treasures of Australia's birdlife and showcase them to the outside world. Elizabeth had fallen ...

Bill Bailey always had dogs, including a Patterdale terrier called Rocky who would travel with him in the van to his first shows and occasionally join him on stage. Fast forward a few decades and Bill has shared his home with a variety of birds, dogs, frogs, chameleons, and an armadillo called To...

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...

This beautifully illustrated full-colour hardback explores the life and work of one of the leading lights of Post-Impressionism, Paul Gauguin, alongside a selection of his incredible artwork. Paul Gauguin's mature oil paintings, with their brilliant hues and strong outlines, are among the most be...

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...

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...

'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...

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...

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...