Australian Memoir

How can you cheat… at drinking wine? It turns out you can. And when you do, a whole world of power, ego and money will unravel. Corked is the scandalous saga in the glamorous, competitive and mysterious world of fine wines.

This Is Not a Game is the extraordinary untold story of the internet’s first conspiracy theory, the legend of Ong’s Hat. Marc Fennell will dive deep into a previously unexplored world of tech hippies, eccentric web subcultures and simmering paranoia, uncovering how this tongue-in-cheek artistic experiment backfired on its creator and went on to influence much of what’s wrong with the internet today.

Spontaneous combustion and exhumation, drug mules and devil worshippers, a gruesome killing beneath the Palmerston North Airport control tower, a mysterious death in a historic homestead, a firsthand dissection of the infamous Mark Lundy case... In The Cause of Death, provincial pathologist Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp lifts the lid on the most unusual stories of death and murder he's encountered during his 30-year career.

A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

James Phelps explores all the questions that we can only barely imagine the answers to about Australia's toughest jails. This is a brutal and honest account of life inside Australia's toughest jails, and all is not as you would expect. Do women rape each other? Do guards really trade 40-cent phone cards for sex? And do you think the most dangerous inmate in Australia is a man? This is the most comprehensive ever account of women's prison life yet.

Always Greener is an exquisite portrait of Kate Grenville's complex, conflicted grandmother, who she feared as a child and only in adulthood came to understand. Born in rural Australia, Dolly Russell becomes a successful businessperson, mother and troubled wife. Then came the depression, bankruptcy and World War I. Yet, in a way, those disasters freed her. They allowed her to use her intelligence and ambition to make a space for herself in a man’s world.

The oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws' reputations are so weighted with legend and myth that the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun.

Darren Hayes was always a storyteller. As a child, in suburban Queensland in the 1970s, he told himself he was going to be a pop star - and he did it. But the reality of his life was much more complicated than the constraints of a three-minute pop song. In Unlovable, for the first time, Darren recounts the events and circumstances that shaped his unique life: from the childhood trauma of growing up with a violent, alcoholic father, his journey with depression, to the dizzying heights of worldwide fame in Savage Garden, and everything in between.

At age 26, Maarten Troost decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to a remote South Pacific island. The idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the earth was irresistibly romantic. But he should have known better.

From the number one best-selling author of The Cause of Death comes an audiobook about the unlikely, extraordinary, obscure and often tragic ways humans meet their demise. A dead body without a trace of trauma; alien parasites; worms of the brain; crocodile attacks and bizarre eating disorders....In The Quick and the Dead, pathologist and self-confessed death-aficionado Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp takes listeners into a world of disease and death as he seeks answers for those who were unlucky, and those still alive to tell the tale.

Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave’s inner life. Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with Seán O’Hagan, it is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity. The book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief, and love. It draws candidly on Cave’s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic, and his dramatic transformation in recent years.

David Spiteri was a founding member and long-time president of one of Australia's first outlaw motorcycle clubs from its inception in the early 1960s through to the early 2000s. He has been uniquely placed to witness the clubs develop from loose affiliations of riders to the well-structured and well-connected groups we see today. In this never-before-told inside story, Spiteri puts himself at risk to reveal everything from the drug trafficking which funds the clubs' operations to the extreme violence that continues to make them infamous.

Always Home, Always Homesick is Hannah Kent's exquisite love letter to a land that has forged a nation of storytellers, her ode to the transcendent power of creativity, and her invitation to us all to join her in the realms of mystery, spirit and wonder.

If you haven't seen a Discovery Channel gold-hunting show, you might picture a gold prospector as a relic of the Wild West: a TNT-toting bearded old man wildly swinging a pick on the hunt for nuggets, guided by old maps, superstition, legends and instinct. It's still predominantly a man's world, and still often fanatical, but these days the golden dream attracts people from all walks of life—and 25-year-old Tyler Mahoney (Australian star of the Discovery Channel's Gold Rush series) is leading the way.

No man or woman has won more Grand Slam singles titles than Novak Djokovic, who took his 24th major at the 2023 US Open. Based on fresh interviews with people close to Djokovic - including his friends and mentors, along with his former coaches and his rivals - this is an in-depth exploration of the psyche of one of the most fascinating and controversial sporting characters ever.

What happened when a young man ditched the office and headed to the outback of Australia for the adventure of a lifetime? In 2002, a young Englishman left London behind to try something new on a working holiday. One year; 2,000 sheep: 4,000 km travelled. Horses and quad bikes; two light aircraft; one Ford station wagon. He uncovered real life far from the hustle and bustle of the beaches and coffee shops of the East coast. There were "Skimpies", surly farmers, tough miners, vets and call-girls. How did he go learning to fly, and getting behind the wheel of a ten-tonne truck? A must-read for...

This is the powerful, untold story of two of the three members of Silverchair, Australia's most awarded musical act. From their beginnings in Ben Gillies' garage, this trio of high school kids from Newcastle, New South Wales, became famous with their smash-hit single 'Tomorrow', setting them on a path to domination of the Australian charts, worldwide touring and fame. So much has been written about Silverchair over the years but very little has been said by the band's members.

Before COVID, both Qantas and its CEO Alan Joyce were flying high, the darlings of customers, staff and investors. After Covid hit, only money mattered—in particular, the company’s share price and extraordinary executive bonuses. Illegally redundant workers, unethical flight credits, abysmal customer service, antique aircraft: these became Qantas’ new brand. How did things go so badly wrong? For the first time, The Chairman’s Lounge tells the full story of how one company banked the nation’s loyalty and then cashed in on it.

In the 1930s, Jill Ker's parents bought a sheep farm on the western plains of New South Wales. In 1944, they lost nearly everything when a drought hit. Forced to leave Coorain, 11-year-old Jill and her mother settled in Sydney where Jill struggled to find a place for herself among Sydney's elite. Her story, both a chronicle of life in the Australian outback and the odyssey of a brilliant woman fighting the constraints of her time, offers a loving view of Australia.