New Biographies & Memoirs
Facing The Torturer
$29.99 – Paperback book / Harper Collins
In 1971, 30-year-old ethnographer François Bizot was captured by the Khmer Rouge and kept prisoner for three months in the Cambodian jungle, accused of being a CIA spy. His captor, Comrade Duch, eventually had him freed.... Buy or find out more →
And Then Life Happens
$29.99 – Paperback book / Allen & Unwin
A moving account about life in two cultures, and Auma Obama's relationship with her brother, Barack.
While her younger brother Barack grew up in the U.S. and Indonesia, Auma Obama's childhood played out at the other end ... Buy or find out more →
All Of It
$29.95 – Paperback book / Harper Collins
Bestselling author Bev Aisbett′s no-nonsense text, combined with her insightful cartoon images, have reassured countless people seeking help for anxiety. Now, she reveals the deep spirit that lies behind these deceptivel... Buy or find out more →
The Lost Woman
$32.95 – Paperback book / Text Publishing
When Sydney Smith was nine, she thought about killing herself because of her mother’s cruelty.
When she reached puberty, her mother sexually assaulted her—a pattern repeated over the years.
By the time Sydney was twe... Buy or find out more →
Baroness: The Search For Nica The Rebellious Rothschild
$32.99 – Paperback book / Little Brown
A Rothschild by birth and a Baroness by marriage, beautiful, spirited Pannonica - known as Nica - seemed to have it all: children, a handsome husband and a trust fund. But in the early 1950s she heard a piece by the jazz... Buy or find out more →
The Grand Tour: Letters And Photographs Form The British Empire Expedition 1922
$39.99 – Hardcover book / Harper Collins
In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the British Empire as part of a trade mission to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition. Leaving their two-year-old daughter behind with Agatha′s si... Buy or find out more →
The House of Hancock: The Rise And Rise Of Gina Rinehart
$34.95 – Paperback book / Heinemann
From an early age Gina Rinehart knew she was heir to one of Australia's largest fortunes. Her father, Lang Hancock, loved her dearly and groomed her to take over the company. Then along came Rose, the Filipina housekeepe... Buy or find out more →
More Lives Than One: A Biography Of Hans Fallada
$24.95 – Paperback book / Penguin
'A major contribution to our understanding of literature and politics in the tumult of interwar Germany' Harold James
Hans Fallada was a drug addict, womanizer, alcoholic, jailbird and thief. Yet he was also one of the m... Buy or find out more →
The People Smuggler: The True Story Of One Man's Journey
$29.95 – Trade paperback / Viking
The True Story of Ali Al Jenabi, the 'Oskar Schlindler of Asia. At once a non-fiction thriller and a moral maze, this is one man's epic story of trying to find a safe place in the world.
When Ali Al Jenabi flees Saddam H... Buy or find out more →
Wilkie Collins
$27.95 – Hardcover book / Chatto & Windus
Ackroyd at his best -- a gripping short life of the extraordinary Wilkie Collins, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White.
Short and oddly built, with a head too big for his body, extremely short-sighted, unable t... Buy or find out more →
Crossing The Borders Of Time: A True Story Of War Exile And Alove Reclaimed
$32.95 – Trade paperback / Scribe Publications
France, 1941. Janine, a Jewish teenager, and Roland, her Catholic boyfriend, are passionately in love, and believe that nothing can come between them. But World War II intervenes, and Janine is forced to flee the Nazis w... Buy or find out more →
True North: The Story Of Mary And Elizabeth Durack
$32.95$29.95 – Trade paperback / Text Publishing
Growing up in suburban Perth in the 1920s, the two Durack girls were fascinated by tales of the pioneering past of their father and grandfather overlanding from Queensland in the 1880s and setting up four vast cattle sta... Buy or find out more →
Every Beat Of My Heart: An ABC Journalist's Journey From Death by Cardiac Arrest To Complete Recovery
$29.99 – Paperback book / Abc Books
One ordinary weekday evening, Jeff Waters had just gone to bed in his Melbourne home when pain began in his left arm and chest. He mentioned it casually to his wife, a GP, but dismissed her evident alarm - after all, he ... Buy or find out more →
Am I Black Enough For You?
$34.95$29.95 – Trade paperback / Bantam Press
I'm Aboriginal. I'm just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be.
What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and pa... Buy or find out more →
Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation
$27.95 – Hardcover book / Faber
Using her own life as a starting point, Rachel looks at the issues that arise for a woman in the years after she has lived the defining experiences of feminity. She writes about marriage, separation, motherhood, work, mo... Buy or find out more →
A Cook's Life
$39.95$34.95 – Hardcover book / Lantern
With her Cook's Companion front and centre in half a million kitchens, Stephanie Alexander is the very definition of a household name. Each day thousands turn to this 'food Bible' for definitive recipes, encouragement an... Buy or find out more →
The Man Without A Face: The The Rise And Crimes Of Vladmir Putin
$29.99 – Trade paperback / Granta
The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a small-minded, low-level KGB operative came to control the world's largest country and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress, making Russia on... Buy or find out more →
An Incredible Race Of People
$39.99$32.95 – Hardcover book / Murdoch Books
In 1988, Queensland politician Bob Katter Jnr was, at short notice, called upon to officiate and entertain the King and Queen of Spain. At dinner the three discussed Australian white settlement and our forebears, prompti... Buy or find out more →
Two Rings: A Story Of Love And War
$27.95 – Trade paperback / Scribe Publications
At the heart of this wrenching memoir of a teenage girl’s wartime survival is something utterly unexpected: a love story that blazes briefly in a dark corner of occupied Poland.
Judged only as a World War II survivor’s... Buy or find out more →
Feeding On Dreams
$27.99 – Paperback book / Melb Univ Press
Hailed by Salman Rushdie as ‘one of the most important voices coming out of Latin America’, the best-selling author and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman delivers a memoir excavating for the first time his profound and... Buy or find out more →
A Youth Not Wasted
$32.99 – Trade paperback / Harper Collins
′People who truly live in the outback listen to it. What they hear, I do not know ... What the country says is beyond words.′
In the early 1950s, Australia was riding on the sheep′s back and no-one doubted the wisdom... Buy or find out more →
A Card From Angela Carter
$21.99 – Hardcover book / Bloomsbury
Angela Carter was one of the most vivid voices of the twentieth century: much studied, copied and adored. When she died at the age of fifty-one, she had published fifteen books of fiction and essays; outrage at her omiss... Buy or find out more →
William Laurence Baillieu: Father Of Australian Industry
$65.00 – Hardcover book / Hardie Grant
Born in Queenscliff in 1859, William Lawrence Baillieu rose from a humble background to become a successful auctioneer during Melbourne’s feverish land boom of the 1880s. He quickly built a large fortune, only to lose it... Buy or find out more →
The Prez: Money, Violence, Women And 'The Code': The Inside Story Of An Outlaw Brotherhood
$32.99 – Paperback book /
′This story is a true account of the birth of outlaw motorcycle clubs in Australia. There was no template for us, it just evolved. It shows our simple creed: loyalty to the club and respect for your brothers.′
David ... Buy or find out more →
The Doors
$32.99 – Hardcover book / Faber
A fan from the moment the Doors' first album arrived, Greil Marcus saw the band many times at the legendary Filmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in 1967. Five years later it was all over.
Forty years after the sing... Buy or find out more →
Playground Duty: A Teaching Life
$34.99 – Paperback book / New South Books
In the baking heat of February 1973, wearing a purple nylon bodyshirt and an expression of confidence that belied his nerves, Ned Manning faced down a classroom full of kids in Tenterfield in remote NSW. It was the start... Buy or find out more →
Fishing The River Of Time
$29.95 – Paperback book / Text Publishing
At age eighty, Tony Taylor journeys from Sydney to British Columbia to fish the Cowichan River with his eight-year-old grandson, Ned. This trip is an opportunity for Tony to return to a landscape that has had a profound ... Buy or find out more →
Aiming For The Skies
$49.99 – Hardcover book / Miegunyah Press
Fay Marles made history when she became the first woman Chancellor of the University of Melbourne in February 2001, but firsts were not unusual for her: she had already served as Victoria's first Equal Opportunity Commis... Buy or find out more →
As I Was Saying
$27.95 – Trade paperback / Vintage
As I Was Saying is a swirling conversation with the reader on everything from travel to dogs and cats, from sport and swearing to the pleasures of idleness. Punctuated at regular intervals by talks Dessaix has given on a... Buy or find out more →
Behind The Beautiful Forevers: Life Death And Hope In A Mumbai Undercity
$27.95 – Trade paperback / Scribe Publications
'A stunning achievement — a monumental work of humane and painstaking observation.' Anna Funder, author of ALL THAT I AM
'Without question the best book yet written on contemporary India. Also, the best work of narrati... Buy or find out more →
Cairo: My City, Our Revolution
$27.99 – Trade paperback / Bloomsbury
'Over the past few months I have delivered lectures, presentations and interviews on the Egyptian Revolution. I have had overflowing houses everywhere, been stopped by old ladies in the street and had my hand shaken by n... Buy or find out more →
The Testimony
$24.95 – Paperback book / Hardie Grant
‘These short stories are autobiographical but I am not their main subject. Some pay homage to remarkable people I have known and loved. Some describe unusual places and events and are a kind of testimony.’
But, contr... Buy or find out more →
Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life
$49.95 – Hardcover book / Yale Univ Pr
For some historians and biographers, Maximilien Robespierre (1758–94) was a great revolutionary martyr who succeeded in leading the French Republic to safety in the face of overwhelming military odds. For many others, he... Buy or find out more →
The Rules Of Inheritance
$29.95 – Paperback book / Text Publishing
Claire Bidwell Smith, a fourteen-year-old only child, learns that both her parents have cancer. The fear of becoming a family of one compels her to make a series of fraught choices, set against the glittering backdrop of... Buy or find out more →
Once Upon A Secret
$32.95 – Trade paperback / Hutchinson
In 1963, Mimi Beardsley was a naive young American girl, very much a product of her class and time - she had attended the same exclusive girls' school as Jackie Bouvier, now installed in the White House as the president'... Buy or find out more →
Full Service: My Adventures In Hollywood And The Secret Sex Lives Of The Stars
$29.99 – Trade paperback / Grove Press
“Scotty Bowers’s memoir is a jaw-dropping firsthand account of closeted life in Hollywood during the ’40s and ’50s. The wholesome image of the postwar American family was acted, written, directed, and designed by people ... Buy or find out more →
Rin Tin Tin: The Life And Legend Of The World's Most Famous Dog
$29.99 – Trade paperback / Atlantic Books
He believed the dog was immortal...' So begins the sweeping story of Rin Tin Tin: the story of a canine superstar and of American popular culture, spanning nearly a century and many human lives, told in the inimitable st... Buy or find out more →
Partners And Crime: The True Stories Of Eight Women And Life With Their Notorious Partners
$29.99 – Trade paperback / Allen & Unwin
For some, it is true love. For others, it's the excitement, wealth and glamour. A fascinating exploration of the women who love the baddest of the bad boys - from Chopper Read to George Freeman and Robert Trimbole.
What ... Buy or find out more →
Reaching One Thousand: A Story Of Love Motherhood And Autism
$29.95 – Paperback book / Black Inc
“This is the best kind of memoir – there is a beautiful calm clarity that drew me in, and held me until the end.” – Georgia Blain
When Ben is a baby, Rachel puts his behavioural quirks down to eccentricity. He li... Buy or find out more →
Leaving Alexandria
$32.95 – Paperback book / Text Publishing
At fourteen, Richard Holloway left his working-class home north of Glasgow and travelled hundreds of miles to an English monastery to be trained for the priesthood. By twenty-five, he had been ordained and was working in... Buy or find out more →
When Gods Collide: An Unbeliever's Pilgrimage Along India's Coromandel Coast
$24.95 – Paperback book / Hardie Grant
‘For ten years I’d been picturing the mob marching across the field to Manoharpur with flaming torches, then standing, shouting, around the jeep, rocking it, and then as I focused on the back window and saw three indisti... Buy or find out more →
Gay Life Stories
$39.95 – Hardcover book / Thames And Hudson
This book gives a voice to more than 80 people from every major continent and from all walks of life. It includes poets and philosophers, rulers and spies, activists and artists. Alongside such celebrated figures as Mich... Buy or find out more →
Love Brought Me Back: A Journey Of Loss And Gain
$22.99 – Hardcover book / Simon & Schuster
IN THIS LUMINOUS MEMOIR, LEGENDARY SINGER AND ACTRESS NATALIE COLE TELLS A REMARKABLE STORY OF LIFE-THREATENING ILLNESS AND RECOVERY, AND THE STORY OF A DEATH THAT BROUGHT NEW LIFE.
In 2009 Natalie Cole was on dialysis, ... Buy or find out more →
Worth Fighting For: Love, Loss and Moving Forward
$29.99 – Paperback book / Simon & Schuster
LISA NIEMI and PATRICK SWAYZE were married for thirty-four years. They first met as teenagers at his mother’s dance studio—he was older and just a bit cocky; she was the beautiful waif who refused to worship the ground h... Buy or find out more →
How I Got My Wiggle Back
$35.00 – Paperback book /
Part memoir, part fitness and health manual, How I Got My Wiggle Back chronicles the life of internationally acclaimed children's entertainer Anthony Field, and details his remarkable victory in a 25-year battle with ill... Buy or find out more →
Under The Baobab Tree
$29.99 – Paperback book /
Jane Chidgey is a fiercely independent, happily single city-dweller when she meets Peter Phillip, a director of the mining company where she worked as a PA.
Seemingly overnight, this never-married woman of a certain age ... Buy or find out more →
Tolstoy
$24.99 – Paperback book / Profile
Tolstoy'sWar and Peace andAnna Karenina are considered two of the greatest novels ever written. Here is a fresh perspective on his extraordinary life and times
In November 1910, Count Lev Tolstoy died at a remote Russian... Buy or find out more →
Boogie Man
$29.95 – Paperback book / Text Publishing
‘You the funkiest man alive.’ Miles Davis’ accolade was the perfect expression of John Lee Hooker’s apotheosis as blues superstar: recording with the likes of Van Morrison, Keith Richards and Carlos Santana; making TV co... Buy or find out more →
The Horror Of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski
$39.99 – Hard back / Orion
The compelling love story of two extraordinary individuals - Nancy Mitford and Free French commander Gaston Palewski - living in extraordinary times.
THE HORROR OF LOVE is a story about two people - Nancy Mitford and the... Buy or find out more →
Memoirs Of An Addicted Brain: A Neuroscientist Examines His Former Life on Drugs
$29.95 – Trade paperback / Scribe Publications
A gripping, triumphant memoir about the power of addiction and its effect on the brain
Marc Lewis knows addiction: that desperate ambition to get high accompanied him around the world for many years. In the 1960s, Lewis ... Buy or find out more →
Enigma: The Long Awaited Biography
$32.95 – Paperback book / New Holland Pub
Flamboyant business entrepreneur and innovator, celebrity and medico, Dr Geoffrey Edelsten reveals all in this long-awaited biography. It covers his life from a musical entrepreneur with Festival Records, Glenn Shorrock ... Buy or find out more →
Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad And Life Was A Catch 22
$24.95 – Paperback book / Vintage
A fascinating, moving and witty memoir by Joseph Heller's daughter, about life with her famous father
‘You’re Joseph Heller’s daughter? How terrific!’
But was there a catch?
Like his most famous work, Joseph Hell... Buy or find out more →
Waltzing At The Doomsday Ball: The Best of Joe Bageant
$32.95 – Paperback book / Scribe Publications
'Essentially, it comes down to the fact that a very large portion of Americans are crazier than shithouse rats and are being led by a gang of pathological misfits, most of whom are preachers and politicians.'
In 2004, at... Buy or find out more →
Fierce Focus: Greg Chappell
$45.00 – Hard back / Hardie Grant
Greg Chappell was the outstanding Australian batsman of his generation. Though he had an appetite for big scores, it was his calm brow and courtly manner that bowlers found just as disheartening. When he followed his bro... Buy or find out more →
Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
$45.00 – Hardcover book / Hachette
An extraordinary book which gives a unique insight into the life and thinking of the man who has single-handedly transformed the world.
Written from hours of interviews with Steve Jobs himself, family, friends, colleague... Buy or find out more →
Blue Nights
$27.99 – Trade paperback /
Several days before Christmas 2003, Joan Didion's only daughter, Quintana, fell seriously ill. In 2010, Didion marked the sixth anniversary of her daughter's death. BLUE NIGHTS is a shatteringly honest examination of Joa... Buy or find out more →
A Private Life
$35.00 – Hardcover book / Allen & Unwin
A collection of reminiscences that reaveal the private Michael Kirby. Speaking in his own voice, he opens up as never before in a beautifully written, reflective and generous memoir - one that Michael Kirby's many admire... Buy or find out more →
Martin Amis: The Biography
$34.99 – Hardcover book / Constable & Robinson
The first biography of one of contemporary British literature's most gifted and controversial authors. Martin Amis's life could itself provide the formula for an enthralling work of fiction. Son of one of the most popula... Buy or find out more →
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
$29.95 – Hardcover book / Jonathan Cape
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson’s first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published. It tells the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents. The girl is supposed to grow up and be a missionary. Instead she... Buy or find out more →
Not Drowning, Reading
$24.95 – Paperback book / Freemantle Press
For the national year of reading, here is a book that, in Phillip Adams’s words, brings ‘a new perspective’ to the art of reading.
As a child, Relph had a reading disability; now he is a psychoanalyst and professio... Buy or find out more →
Memoirs Of A Young Bastard: The Diaries Of Tim Burstall
$59.99 – Hardcover book / Melb Univ Press
Tim Burstall was a key figure in Australian postwar cinema. As a director, writer and producer, he was instrumental in revitalising Australia's dying film industry and launching the careers of many well-known actors. But... Buy or find out more →
There Stands My House
$24.95 – Paperback book / Scribe Publications
The first English-language translation of the memoirs of Hans Keilson, one of Europe’s most masterful and remarkable writers
In this unique work, which was composed in the 1990s and only recently rediscovered, Keilson ... Buy or find out more →
The Temptress: The Scandalous Life Of Alice Countess De Janze
$22.99 – Paperback book / Simon & Schuster
In Kenya's 'Happy Valley' no one paid too much attention to the privileged colonial set as they farmed their estates, partied until dawn and indulged in extra-marital affairs. Not until Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was s... Buy or find out more →
Gang Of One
$32.99 – Paperback book / Hodder Headline
GANG OF ONE is an explosive prison memoir with the gritty realism of Midnight Express and the emotional force of The Shawshank Redemption.
Imagine you're a 35 year old, white, British, middle-class business man sentenced... Buy or find out more →
Distrust That Particular Flavor
$29.95 – Trade paperback / Viking
'The future's already here: it's just not evenly distributed'
William Gibson was writing fiction when he predicted the internet. And as his stories bled into reality so he became one of the first to report on the real-wo... Buy or find out more →
The Double Life Of Herman Rockefeller
$29.95 – Trade paperback / Michael Joseph
In January 2010 a law-abiding, church-going father of two from Melbourne's leafy eastern suburbs didn't come home after a business trip and his burnt remains were found in a northern suburb – the wrong side of town – a w... Buy or find out more →
Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power
$32.99 – Paperback book / Allen & Unwin
When Rupert Murdoch called, Prime Ministers and Presidents picked up the phone. David McKnight exposes Murdoch's unflinching use of his media empire to further his political agenda over decades. This is the story behind ... Buy or find out more →
Hemingway's Boat
$49.95 – Hard back / Random House
'A man who let who let his own insides get eaten out by the diseases of fame had dreamed new books on this boat. He’d taught his sons to reel in something that feels like Moby Dick on this boat. He’d accidentally shot hi... Buy or find out more →
Sammy, I Love You
$24.99 – Hard back / Allen & Unwin
An inspirational true story of devotion, courage and determination in the face of great tragedy - a story that will touch your heart.
As seen on ABC TV's Australian Story
Sally Nielsen is a wedding planner, whose own wed... Buy or find out more →