Australian Memoir

The best-selling author of The Anti-Cool Girl returns with a devastating, heartbreaking, brilliant, brave, and laugh-out-loud funny memoir of telling lies and being on the brink....

As a young girl growing up in a strict ultra-Orthodox family, Dassi's life was preordained - marry young, live a devout life and raise children within the Adass community's religious rules. This righteous path would keep her safe from the immodest, secular world just a few blocks away in suburban Melbourne. But the Adass community was not safe for Dassi. She was fifteen when her revered school principal, Malka Leifer, started to single her out. Dassi's cloistered and harsh upbringing meant she didn't have the words for what was happening to her, but she knew it was very, very wrong.

Outback Outlaw is an unflinching and uncompromising account of a man forever cemented in the annals of Australian true crime. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the listeners into the real-life horror experienced by the victim, and has all the elements of a classic thriller.

Murriyang: Song of Time, in part Grant’s response to the Voice referendum, eschews politics for love. In this gorgeous, grace-filled book, he zooms out to reflect on the biggest questions, ranging across the history, literature, theology, music and art that has shaped him, setting aside anger for kindness, reaching past the secular to the sacred and transcendent.

In the spring of 2012, the Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the future of the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. It has already been deployed to cure deadly diseases, fight the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and make inheritable changes in the genes of babies.

Felicia Djamirze is a counsellor, an advocate for women's justice, a three-time Miss Australia winner and a convicted drug dealer. Growing up surrounded by drug abuse and crime in a rough Sydney neighbourhood, she had little hope of escaping the cycle of violence and poverty. So when her looks seemed to offer her a way out, she took it—even if it involved attracting men on the wrong side of the law.

Tim Booth is shocked when his first emergency call-out for someone short of breath turns out to be an adult man with a blocked nose. Far from beginner's luck, this turns out to be an omen for the rest of his paramedic career. Between the obligatory stories of objects lodged in body cavities to grown men who can't look after themselves when their wives are away, Tim finds that the promised life-saving moments are far outweighed by the trivial, frustrating and bizarre ambulance callouts.

This is the wartime diary of J.D. McLauchlan, covering July 1943 to September 1944. In 1943, the Australian government sent a team to England to send back everything needed to build the Avro Lancaster in Australia. The mission was cloaked in secrecy, most of which still appears to be in place even now. While Australia never did build a Lancaster, the Lancaster’s replacement, the Avro Lincoln, was built after the war. Jim McLauchlan was sent to coordinate the flow of information back to Australia, and lived for a while in Manchester, traveling around England, Scotland, and Wales. This ...

Taking us from the suburbs of Western Sydney and Australia's military army bases, to the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, this is a remarkable audiobook that reveals the as-yet untold story of the battle for Mosul and the secret involvement of Australians on both sides of the war - both our commandos and Australian ISIS fighters. Mosul details the rise of ISIS influence in Australia, the Iran and Australia allegiance to fight Daesh and shows what led up to the battle and the ramifications that are still being felt at home - by our soldiers and the victims of that war.

John Ibrahim's incredible life story told in his own words. Last King of the Cross lays bare Australia's most notorious underworld figure. In the mongrel tongue of the streets, John writes of fleeing war-torn Tripoli with his family and growing up in Sydney's rough and tumble west - before establishing himself as a tough guy and teen delinquent, then a bouncer, enforcer and nightclub king on the Golden Mile.

Over a decorated 34-year career, Commodore Scott served in 10 submarines, passed the most demanding military command course in the world and served as the Head of Profession of the Submarine Arm of the Royal Australian Navy. During that time his character was forged by the challenges of naval service, success and failure as a leader, catastrophic onboard disasters while dived, and life-threatening traumas. Along the way, he also endured personal battles with self-doubt, addiction, depression and anxiety.

From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations with his indelible command of stage and screen. Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, MAKING IT SO, a revealing portrait of an artist whose astonishing life—from his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim—proves a story as exuberant, definitive, and enduring as the author himself.

Swinging from a meat-hook, his entire skin was in one piece including his hair, face, ears, nose, mouth and genitals. Slashes and stab holes tore through the human pelt, a testimony to the wounds he suffered before dying. Cruel and evil, Katherine Knight showed no mercy when she butchered her de facto in a crime that put her behind bars in an Australian prison for a record life sentence.

Not many have lived as many lives as Archie Roach - stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader - but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was. Roach was only two years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of.

Nick moved to Russia in 1998 to help build the British Embassy in Moscow, but ended up on the run with his wife and two children after leaking secrets from Vladimir Putin’s one-time deputy. Hiding off grid on Australia’s final frontier—remote beaches on the Dampier Peninsula on the far north Kimberley coast—the family faced crocodiles, sharks, snakes, raging bushfires and the devastating Cyclone Yvette, and survived only by catching fish and crabs and learning how to kill wild animals. It was a life-or-death move, but Nick felt he had no choice.

Colditz Castle was Nazi Germany’s infamous "escape-proof" wartime prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful Allied prisoners were sent. Despite having more guards than inmates, Australian Lieutenant Jack Champ and other prisoners tirelessly carried out their campaign to escape from the massive floodlit stronghold, by any means necessary.

The Lady Vanishes is an engrossing story of how a small team of seasoned investigative journalists and storytellers, a daughter's intuition, and a team of listener super-sleuths uncovered a web of intrigue spanning nine decades and three continents, and how—after 57 episodes, 20 million downloads, and sparking a coronial inquiry—they discovered at the heart of the mystery a stranger-than-fiction international man of mystery who could hold the key to what really happened to Marion.

‘Harry’ Harris—Thai Cave Rescuer, joint Australian of the Year—has an unusual idea of fun: he crawls though pitch-black, confined caves, deep underground and usually underwater. To most, that’s a nightmare. To him, it’s recreation. He’s prepared for all conceivable risks, he’s completely focused. And the discipline and danger involved leave him better prepared for everyday life. In this ultimate armchair adventure, Harry takes us into the lives of other ‘risk-takers’, to find out why they do what they do.

It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged toward Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city’s infamous Fresnes Prison, they were about to face evacuation into the blackest, bloody heart of Germany and experience the most acute evil of the war. Amid great secrecy, those 168 airmen—including several from Australia and New Zealand—were transported on a filthy, overcrowded nightmare train journey which ended at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, accompanied by orders for their execution.

In rural Victoria, Arnold Dix is known to locals as a farmer and a part-time truck driver. But his name reached global recognition when he played a pivotal role in rescuing forty-one Indian workers trapped after a deadly tunnel collapse. What many don’t know is that Arnold is also a barrister, scientist, engineer—a ‘quirky’ Aussie bloke who proves that extraordinary courage can come from the most unexpected places. In vivid detail, Arnold recounts the unlikely rescue that transformed him into a global hero.