Australian Memoir

Michael Fomenko is familiar with adversity. But when he gets shut out of the Commonwealth Games for financial and political reasons at the ripe age of 20, he questions everything. Setting a new course for himself, he dreams of a feat that will require unimaginable determination. With no companions or guides, he will paddle a dugout canoe over 1,000 nautical kilometers from Cairns, Australia, to Dutch, New Guinea.

In the late 1970s, criminal mastermind John Milligan and his associates conspired to import heroin into Far North Queensland via a remote mountaintop airdrop. In a story that is stranger than fiction, it took them three trips through dense jungle to locate the heroin, but they only recovered one of the two packages. When narcotics Agent John Shobbrook took on the investigation of this audacious crime, codenamed 'Operation Jungle', his career was on the rise within the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.

From the small town in regional Australia where she was told that 'girls can't play the drums' to New York City and back again, Brodie has spent her life searching screens, books, music and magazines for bodies like hers, girls who loved each other, and women who didn't follow the silent instructions to shrink or hide that they've received since literal birth. This is the story of life as a young woman through the lenses of feminism and pop culture. Brodie's story will make you reevaluate the power of pop culture in our lives - and maybe you will laugh and cry along the way.

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.

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.

On Friday, September 12, 2014, William Tyrrell—a playful three-year-old boy dressed in a fire-engine red Spider-Man suit—disappears from a quiet street in broad daylight. It's assumed he's lost in the nearby bushland, but despite an intensive search, he's not found, and police start to suspect he's been abducted. No trace of William—not a shoe, not a hair—has ever been found, but now is not the time to surrender. How can a little boy just vanish? We have to find him.

In the winter of 1900, Wiradjuri man Jimmy Governor and his brother Joe murdered nine people across New South Wales, in a rampage that caused panic in the colony on the cusp of nationhood. Triggered, it seems, by a racist incident, they killed men, women and children, evading a vast manhunt until they were eventually captured. Joe was shot in the open; Jimmy survived to be put on trial. Thus the last man to be outlawed in the colony was hanged in the new nation, meeting his end in Darlinghurst Gaol as the Federation decorations were taken down.

Master storyteller Bill 'Swampy' Marsh has travelled the length and breadth of the country to gather their tales of adventure and misadventure, drama and mayhem, and larrikinism and laughter, to create this memorable collection of real-life stories about those on the front-line in the heart of Australia.

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works-journalism, books, plays and novels-devoted to Anne's story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years-and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

A proud Gunai/Kurnai woman, Veronica Gorrie grew up dauntless, full of cheek and a fierce sense of justice. After watching her friends and family suffer under a deeply compromised law-enforcement system, Gorrie signed up for training to become one of a rare few Aboriginal police officers in Australia. In her 10 years in the force, she witnessed appalling institutional racism and sexism and fought past those things to provide courageous and compassionate service to civilians in need, many Aboriginal themselves.

Discover the riveting tale of youthful idealism, adventure, and survival with "Rosebud Farm: The Journey of Young Idealists" by Louella Bryant, skillfully narrated by Butch Bryant. This gripping audiobook takes you back to 1970, where a group of young American ex-pats from wealthy families abandons their conventional lives to establish an ideal society at Rosebud Farm in Far North Queensland. Join Charlie Dean, a headstrong resident of the farm, as he decides to leave the comforts of his new home to explore Southeast Asia.

Criminality, some say, is part of Australia's national identity, and in Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags Jim Haynes profiles 15 larger-than-life Aussie rogues. These stories uncover the truth and expose the myths about characters ranging from the most despicable examples of humanity, to those whose courage has to be admired and whose so-called 'crimes' were unjustly punished. Told with Haynes's inimitable combination of history and humour, Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags is packed with murders, mystery and miscreants.

At just 15-years-old, Geena had no choice but to leave home. Without an education or any real options, she found herself being lured into the sex industry by the promise of big money and the validation of strangers. She turned to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of day to day life as a call girl and to overcome the emotional scars of her past. But even in her darkest hours, Geena refused to accept her circumstances and never stopped striving for freedom and a better life. Eventually, she found the strength to turn things around and set herself on a path to a brighter future.

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.

Australian voice-over artist Lofty Fulton knows what it's like to have the odds stacked against him: Born with achondroplasia, which is a form of dwarfism, his grandmother thought he should be locked away from the world. At school, he suffered years of relentless bullying, believing the lie he would never be loved or good enough. At 15, Lofty's voice broke, giving him a unique gift that paved the way for his future. Lofty: My Life in Short is a deeply personal memoir.

Lo Carmen weaves her own remarkable story as a critically acclaimed singer/songwriter together with compelling portraits of the women who have influenced her life and career: bold creative visionaries, trailblazers, provocateurs, pioneers, feminists and activists such as Renee Geyer, Chrissy Amphlett, Robyn Archer and Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, exploring the often complex lives of these fascinating women as a way of understanding her own life and choices.

Nick Kaldas is a cop's cop. From investigating war criminals to taking down global drug operations, Kaldas has seen the worst humanity can offer. But he's also seen which human qualities can lead to greatness. This is the compelling true story of an immigrant boy from Egypt who rose from beat cop to become one of the most senior police officers in Australia. During his time in the NSW police force, he was one of Australia's first Arab undercover cops, headed up both the Homicide and Gang Squad units, reformed the Counter Terrorism team and then became the Deputy Police Commissioner.

Kidnapped tells the astounding true story of how this crime was planned and committed, and describes the extraordinary police investigation that was launched to track the criminal down. Mark Tedeschi explores the mind of the intriguing and seriously flawed Stephen Bradley, and also the points of view of the victim, his family - and the police, whose work pioneered the use of many techniques that are now considered commonplace, marking the beginning of modern-day forensic science in Australia.

Hailed as "a fearless exposer of folly, vice and crime" when it first hit the streets in the 1890s, Truth was later condemned by a High Court Judge as "a wretched little paper, reeking of filth, injurious to the health of house servants and young girls". Much later it earned the nickname "The Old Whore of La Trobe Street". Truth was called many things but it was never boring.

I'm strong. I can be tough. I've been broken. I'm opinionated. I'm a people-pleaser. I'm spoilt. I'm needy. I contradict myself. I try to do good. I want to do good. I'm impassioned. I'm observant. Most importantly, I tell the truth. And this is my story.