Australian Memoir

Gladys Berejiklian was Australia's rockstar premier. The first woman elected to lead NSW, she steered the state through devastating bushfires, drought and a once-in-a-generation pandemic with a steady hand. To many, she was 'The Woman Who Saved Australia' for the way in which she navigated the first wave of COVID, with a sterling reputation as a dedicated and reliable public servant. But for all of her premiership, and well before, Berejiklian was harbouring a secret. That secret would eventually bring down one of the country's most deeply respected leaders.

For more than 30 years, H. G. Nelson has been finding the poetry in the punt and humour during half-time. Now, he turns his keen eye for facts and folly to the illustrious history of our great sporting nation. In his trademark fast and furious style, H. G. dives deep into the moments that have truly made us who we are. He reminds us of our leaders' great sporting triumphs, from Harold Holt's swimming to John Howard's bowling, rewrites the record on legends such as 'Aussie Joe' Bugner and Jack Brabham; and explains why Australia's reality TV is the best in the world.

Paradise is Larry McMurtry's most original and personal work to date. From the harsh violent landscape of west Texas to the lush sensuality and easy living of Tahiti, McMurtry answers some of the questions of what paradise is, whether it exists, and how different it is from life in his hometown.

Growing up, Alyssa Huynh heard stories from her family about their journey from Vietnam to Australia following the fall of Saigon and the racism they experienced upon arrival. While the discrimination she faced was different, she never quite felt like she belonged either. Longing for a safe space, she turned to the internet. Through sharing her writing online, she created a supportive community for fellow Asians and people of color with similar experiences, as well as for allies.

People always asked her if she was ever afraid, living out in the desert alone with all those rough and scruffy men. But Minnie Berrington was not the faint-hearted type, and never had been. Being tough came naturally to her, growing up with three brothers and a family that went from riches to ruins. Only a slip of a girl, Minnie could match any man in stamina, perseverance and strength. She arrived in Coober Pedy when camels still brought in essential supplies, and water was so scarce that no-one washed. Together with the other miners, she braved the heat, the flies and the dust.

Boxing has given Australian sport some of our most inspiring champions and captivating tales. Stories of underdogs overcoming heartbreaks and hurdles, of endless courage and dedication, triumph and tragedy. From the first brawls in old Sydney Town, the travelling boxing tents across the country and the first black world heavyweight champion to today's most celebrated fighters, Australia's pre-eminent boxing journalist and former assistant trainer to some of the ring's most talented champions presents our nation's greatest boxing stories.

Good Arguments shares insights from the strategy, structure and history of debating to teach listeners how they might better communicate with friends, family and colleagues. Touching on everything from the radical politics of Malcom X to Artificial Intelligence, Bo Seo proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that, far from being a source of conflict, good-faith debate can enrich our daily lives. Indeed, these good arguments are more important than ever at time when bad faith is all around, and our democracy seems so imperiled.

John Marsden, the award-winning, best-selling author of the Tomorrow series, has spent his life educating kids and teenagers. He is passionate about the need to prepare them in all ways for the demands of adulthood. As the founder and principal of two schools - Candlebark and Alice Miller - John has put his theories to the test and seen the empowering results of his methods. Take Risks is the compelling memoir of a revered author and educator, and a forthright discussion on teaching, parenting and society as a whole.

In 2003 Kathleen Folbigg was convicted of killing her four babies. Her trial relied on her husband's accusations and diary entries expressing her guilt over her children's deaths. She was sentenced to forty years in prison. In Inside Out Kathleen takes us back to her traumatic childhood, her difficult marriage, her dream of nurturing a family, and the profound souring of that dream into a nightmare.

Though many Australians know lines from Dorothea Mackellar’s classic poem ‘My Country’ by heart, very little has been written about the poet’s extraordinary life. From her childhood and youth in Sydney’s Point Piper, to discovering her love for the Australian landscape on the family farm in Gunnedah, Dorothea engaged with the intellectual elite of Sydney and abroad as she embarked on a decades-long literary career that saw her linked to some of the leading lights of her day.

Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the astonishing untold story of an Australian-born intelligence officer accused by some espionage experts of being the traitor of the century: Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis. The longest serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

When a nine-year-old R.A. Dalkey decided he was going to become an Outback truck driver, the poor Australia-besotted boy had no idea what he was getting into. He’d been born on the wrong continent, for a start. And even if he could make it out of Africa one day, where was an Australian work visa to come from? A sensible adult would have filed that dream away as a juvenile fantasy and gotten on with life. Especially after taking five attempts to get the most basic of car licenses. But R.A. Dalkey never claimed to be a sensible adult, did he?

A powerful, heartfelt, and inspiring memoir from one of Australia's leading human rights advocates, Kon Karapanagiotidis, The Power of Hope tells the story of how Kon overcame his traumatic childhood of racism, bullying, and loneliness to create one of Australia's largest and best-loved human rights organisations, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, which has gone on to transform the lives of thousands of refugees and has helped build a movement.

In the 1970s, gay men and lesbians were openly despised and drag queens scared the public. Yet that was the era when Doris Fish (born Philip Mills in 1952) painted and padded his way to stardom. He was a leader of the generation that prepared the world not just for drag queens on TV but for a society that welcomes and even celebrates queer people. How did we get from there to here? In Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Craig Seligman looks at Doris's short but overstuffed life as a way to provide some answers.

As a cop, I used to sit on one side of the interview room table facing murderers, child abductors and rapists. Now I'm sitting on the other side: disgraced, forced out of the police and judged to be a criminal. I want to show you what the world looks like from here.

History colliding with the now. These are just some of the stories and personalities featured in the Grave Tales series. Grave Tales: Sydney visits cemeteries to feature people who willingly, or unwillingly, were participants in events that made local and national headlines. They may have lived in the same suburbs, streets, and even the same houses as exist now, or unexpectantly came to rest, in Sydney, Australia.

In 1999, Sierra Leone was in the midst of a brutal civil war where mindless violence, vicious amputation and the rape of young enslaved women were the everyday weapons of bloody conflict. It was also where rebel soldiers snatched the young Aminata Conteh-Biger from her father's arms, then held her captive for months. After she was released, the UNHCR recognised that her captors still posed a serious threat to her safety. So, still in her teens, she was put on a plane and flown to Australia to start afresh as a refugee in a land she knew nothing about.

On Australia Day, 26 January 1966, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont were abducted from Colley Reserve, Glenelg, South Australia and never seen again, leading to one of Australia's most extensive police investigations and manhunts. Five decades later, no trace of the children has ever been found. Over the years, several individuals have been put forward and investigated as suspects, resulting in false leads and dead ends and with no real suspect until now: Harry Phipps.

Covering international wars from 1700 – and now updated to include Ukraine and Gaza - Blainey demolishes many widely-held theories of why nations fight, arguing that peace is not the ‘natural’ state of international relations and war is not an aberration. Both are best understood as means of advancing national interests: when one is failing, the other becomes more likely, and therefore we need to understand what causes ‘the mystery of peace’ as urgently as we understand what causes war.

Between 1989 and 2006, there were 5,226 homicides in Australia. Serial homicides account for 1% of this astonishing number of murders that were committed by 13 known offenders.