Australian Memoir

For the first twenty-seven years of his life, Ben McKelvey didn't spend too much time thinking about his brain, nor much about trauma. He was fit, carefree and happy working as a magazine journalist, writing listicles and doing celebrity junket interviews. Then one day, while boxing, he suffered a stroke. In the time it took for a left hook to be thrown, Ben disconnected from language and therefore the world. He wanted nothing more than to go back to normal life and, after a time, it looked like he had. Only normal life no longer felt normal. Ben's brain had changed, and so had he.

Young, petite, boyish and full of charm, Alice was the only woman in Australia to successfully pull off an almost impossible feat: without family or husband to back her financially, she built a garage to her own specifications and established the country's only motor service run entirely by women.

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.

Larry Blair shot to fame at just 19, coming from nowhere to take out the biggest ever cash prize in surfing. The outsider from Australia backed it up by winning Hawaii's revered Pipeline Masters at the world's deadliest wave, twice. In an instant, he was a household name, transcending sport to become an actor, model and personality. But Larry was harbouring a deadly family secret. His dad, 'Baldy' Blair, was a bank robber; his mum, Patricia, was a beautiful jewel thief who regularly hosted all-star gatherings of underworld personalities.

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.

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.

In these 65 original stories, we hear of the explosive introduction of World Series Cricket in 1977, which turned a genteel endeavour into a high-octane contest, and the clash of the titans as Packer and Murdoch squared off over the Super League war. We see Rugby Union become a battleground for race and the Olympics an arena for sublime acts of courage and achievement.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Cheryl flies sick patients from rural areas to emergency medical treatment in cities; Sue is often the only one between life and death for her patients in the Kimberley; Ricky trades city comforts to connect with kids through sport in remote communities while Eileen overcomes great challenges to protect remote land for generations to come - these are some of the characters who embody the spirit of the Outback.Inspiring, stirring and touching by turn, these people draw on enormous personal reserves to preserve Outback values for the future of all Australians.

The dragonfly sees in 360 degree perspective, and that’s what Tracey Lee Holmes has always done in her sports journalism. Over four decades, she has taken us beyond the scores and stats to the real stories of sport – the stories of human beings in exultation and defeat, and the bigger stories of money, power, and all too often, discrimination.

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 a small, desperately poor village in north-east China, a young peasant boy sits at his rickety old school desk, more interested in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and the grand words it contains. But that day, some strange men come to his school - Madame Mao's cultural delegates. They are looking for young peasants to mould into faithful guards of Chairman Mao's great vision for China. This is the true story of how that one moment in time, by the thinnest thread of a chance, changed the course of a small boy's life in ways that are beyond description.

When paramedic Tim Booth finds himself rushing a patient's dead cat to a (human) hospital's Emergency Department for resuscitation, he finds himself wondering where it all went wrong. From bedroom mishaps and hypochondriacs to suspicious rashes and freak cattle incidents, the doctors, nurses and paramedics of our hospital EDs have seen everything. Every day, Tim and his colleagues battle burnout, an overburdened healthcare system and compassion fatigue, powered only by caffeine, dark humour and a heartfelt drive to save lives.

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?

For more than thirty years, Mark Dapin has been hanging out with crooks, and both types of cop – from Chopper Read and John Killick to Roger Rogerson and Gary Jubelin. In The First Murderer I Ever Met, he sorts the tall stories from the truth about true crime and tells us what some of Australia’s most famous felons are really like. Underbelly meets Louis Theroux.