Biographies & memoir 2015

Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll
How one man discovered B. B. King, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley, and how his tiny label, Sun Records of Memphis, revolutionised the world.
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Boys in the Trees: A Memoir
A rhapsodic and beautifully composed memoir from American singer-songwriter legend, Carly Simon.
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The Big Bad Book of Bill Murray: A Critical Appreciation of the World’s Finest Actor
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I Am Sorry To Think I Have Raised A Timid Son
From one of the most ferociously brilliant and distinctive young voices in literary nonfiction: a debut shot through with violence, comedy, and feverish intensity that takes us on an odyssey into an American netherworld, exposing...
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Binge
Tyler Oakley took the internet by storm when he uploaded his first video eight years ago, skyrocketing to fame with his signature blend of quirky comedy, personal material and strong opinions. Since then, the YouTube personality...
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The Forgotten Notebook
The Forgotten Notebook is based on sketches Betty Churcher drew in the great galleries of the world when she raced through them as director of the National Gallery of Australia in the 1990s on her way to arrange the loans of...
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The Lost Landscape
A momentous memoir of childhood and adolescence from one of our finest and most beloved writers, as we've never seen her before.
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Island Home: A Landscape Memoir
Island Home is a thought-provoking meditation on Australia and its landscape: how the land has profoundly shaped the nation, and how it has influenced the life and writing of im Winton.
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Reckoning: A Memoir
If you had met my father you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin.
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Six Square Metres: Reflections from a small garden
Life lessons from the ground up.
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The Long Haul: Lessons from Public Life
Distils a series of practical lessons on leadership and public life from John Brumby's thirty years in politics. It offers insights into the challenges and opportunities Australia currently faces and argues for real political...
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Interestingly Enough… The Life Of Tom Keneally
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Ettore Sottsass and the Poetry of Things
The incredible life story of one of the 20th century's most important designers, who knew everyone from Hemingway to Picasso.
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Modern Love: The Lives of John and Sunday Reed
Much has been written about the lives and art of Heide, but finally the remaining members of the inner circle have entrusted the truth to be told through this intimate biography of John and Sunday Reed. Equal parts romance and...
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Wendy Whiteley and the Secret Garden
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Henry and Banjo
The fascinating lives and turbulent times of Henry Lawson and Andrew 'Banjo' Paterson - the two men who wrote Australia's story.
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Running Like China: A memoir of a life interrupted by madness
A brave, honest, unforgettable memoir about mental illness that breaks the silence and shatters the taboos to give hope to all those struggling to find their way through.
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What My Daughters Taught Me
When the author's wife died of breast cancer in 2003, his three daughters were only eleven, nine and four years old. To stop himself from succumbing to grief, Joseph relied on humour and honesty as they all learned to live again...
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Small Acts of Disappearance
Small Acts of Disappearance is a collection of ten essays that describes the authors affliction with an eating disorder which begins in high school, and escalates into life-threatening anorexia over the next ten years. Fiona...
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Not Just Black and White
Two remarkable women tell an inspirational story about the power of family and pursuing your dreams. Lesley Williams is forced to leave Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement and her family at a young age to work as a domestic servant....
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Boyhoodlum: Memoirs of a devious childhood
You know those childhood memoirs that tell of the innocence of youth, of a gentle past when boys and girls were adorable and agreeable, respectful of their elders, and spoke only when spoken to? This isn't one of those. ...
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The Orpheus Clock: the search for my family’s art treasures stolen by the Nazis
Simon Goodman's grandparents came from German-Jewish banking dynasties and died in concentration camps. Originally he knew little about them - his father never spoke of their history or heritage. But when Goodman received his late...
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Banksia Lady: Celia Rosser, Botanical Artist
This is the story of Celia Rosser, internationally acclaimed Botanical Illustrator, who ultimately dedicated her life to painting the entire genus of Banksia, the only artist to have done such a thing. Her dedication to the task...
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War Letters of General Monash
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Older and Bolder: Life After 60
For the first time in history, women can expect to live well from their sixties for another three decades. In Older and Bolder, Renata Singer contrasts the stories of the pioneers of active, productive old age against the...
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Everything is Teeth
An intimate and unique visual memoir by the multi-prizewinning Evie Wyld.
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Gnarr: How I Became Mayor of a Large City in Iceland and Changed the World
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Unabrow: Misadventures of a Late Bloomer
Una LaMarche has written a hilarious take on coming of age by doling out all the advice she wishes her own mother had given her about everything, from how to take care of her unibrow to how to avoid the most common faux pas in the...
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The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir
A personal memoir about downsizing and the author's experience building her own home and living the minimalist lifestyle --
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Vera: My Story
My revenge on Hitler is a lifetime in which delight has reached me from a hundred sources, and been welcomed.' - Vera Wasowski. A story of courage, unconventionality and lust for life. Vera Wasowski was just seven years old when...
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Kadian Journal
In July 2012, the author's fourteen-year-old son Kadian was killed in a bicycle accident. Beginning on the day of Kadian's death, and continuing to the one-year anniversary, and beyond, this book is a record of his grief, a moving...
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Letters to my Grandchildren
In this inspiring series of letters to his grandchildren, David Suzuki offers grandfatherly advice mixed with stories from his own remarkable life and explores what makes life meaningful. He challenges his grandchildren - and us -...
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After the Blast: An Australian officer in Iraq and Afghanistan
A very Australian story of heroism and healing. In 2004 Garth Callender, a junior cavalry officer, was deployed to Iraq. He quickly found his feet leading convoys of armoured vehicles through the streets of Baghdad and into the...
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Old Man’s Story: The Last Thoughts of Kakadu Elder Bill Neidjie
Right then,' he said with a sigh, and then turned to me with a grin. 'I tell you story, eh!' Then he said something which really floored me: 'I been waiting for you. You been waiting for me.' And so began Bill Neidjie's...
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The Seven Good Years
From the man the New Yorker declared 'a genius', here is a ridiculously enjoyable, tragicomic collection of essays about raising a son and losing a father
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We Are Here
Told through the bright and unflinching eyes of Cat Thao, a daughter born in a refugee camp, We Are Here is a memoir that begins in 1975 with her family's gripping exodus by foot out of post-war Vietnam - a dangerous journey,...
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Here Comes the Sun
Jeremy Oxley was diagnosed with schizophrenia aged 22, at the height of his fame as singer of the popular band Sunnyboys. Terrified and in denial, he tried to hide his diagnosis from family, band mates and friends, who attributed...
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The Iceberg: A Memoir
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Beautifully written and full of unflinching truth, The Iceberg is a memoir which will leave an indelible mark on all who read it.
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My Story
I was prime minister for three years and three days.Three years and three days of resilience.Three years and three days of changing the nation.Three years and three days for you to judge.' On Wednesday 23 June 2010, with the...
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My Life in Ruins
Part memoir, part potted history of civilisation, My Life in Ruins is the account of a life lived in uncovering the past. Adam Ford is an archaeologist. Not only has he been on expeditions to unlock the mysteries of the past in...
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Naked at Lunch: Adventures of a Reluctant Nudist
Folk have been naked in public for centuries. But being a nudist is more complicated than simply stripping off. In Naked at Lunch, Mark Haskell Smith uncovers nudism's fascinating history - and gets involved, baring all himself....
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Sidney Nolan: A Life
Digging through the myths around Australia's most famous artist, many of which he created himself as a masterful self - promoter, this book is the biography that Sidney Nolan deserves. In an authoritative, insightful and often...
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Cobain: Montage of Heck
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Breakthrough: how one teen innovator is changing the world
Jack Andraka was just 15 when he invented an early detection test for three types of cancer. In 2012, working with the team at the John Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Jack created a test that can detect pancreatic,...
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The Book of Joan
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A Double Shot of Happiness: Tim Sharp’s Extraordinary Journey from Being Diagnosed with Autism to Becoming an Internationally Renowned Artist
When Judy Sharp took her three-year-old son Tim to a paediatric specialist she was told that his autism was so severe he would never be able to communicate with her, talk or learn to live in a normal household. The advice at the...
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Maverick Mountaineer
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Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather
Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather is the long-awaited biography of one of Australia's most beloved authors.
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Gittins: A Life Among Budgets, Bulldust and Bastardry
For forty years Ross Gittins has had a ringside seat as the Australian economy has gone through radical change. He's covered forty budgets and sixteen elections, he's watched thirteen treasurers and eight prime ministers wrestle...
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Lost Relations: Fortunes of my Family in Australia’s Golden Age
Historian Graeme Davison was never interested in family history. But when he discovered in his grandfather's notebook an account of the family's arrival in Melbourne in 1850 on the infamous ship Culloden, his interest was piqued.
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Not My Father’s Son: A Family Memoir
Presents the story of authors journey of discovery, both a memoir of his childhood in Scotland, and an investigation into his family history which would change him forever.
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More Fool Me
Stephen Fry invites readers to take a glimpse at his life story in the unputdownable More Fool Me.
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Settling Day: A Memoir
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H is for Hawk: A BBC2 Between the Covers pick
As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the...
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Memoirs of an Anzac: A first-hand account by an AIF officer in the First World War
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Airmail: Women of Letters
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Mannix
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Ransacking Paris
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Hello, Beautiful!: Scenes from a Life
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Awakening: Four Lives in Art
Ibsen's A Doll's House opened in Melbourne on 14 September 1889. The slam of the door as Nora left her husband echoed in the minds of thousands of young Australian women. This book is about four of these women, each of whom became...
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First Things First: Selected Letters of Kate Llewellyn 1977-2004
Here for the first time are selected letters from the private correspondence of one of Australia's most loved authors, Kate Llewellyn (The Waterlily, A Fig at the Gate). Written with her distinctive ardour and enthusiasm, skipping...
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Leila’s Secret
In fundamentalist Iran, new life sometimes means certain death. When Leila comes to see Doctor Karimi, both are in danger. Born in a slum to a Muslim father and a Jewish mother, Kooshyar Karimi has transformed himself into a...
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The Abyssinian Contortionist: Hope, friendship and other circus acts
Following his acclaimed memoir Our Father Who Wasn't There, David brings us his 'not-me' book, travelling to Addis Ababa where he discovers ways of living so different to his own and confronts his Western fantasies...
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Passing Clouds: A winemaker’s journey
Electrician, Graeme Leith joined Melbourne's theatre collective at Carton's famously innovative Pram Factory Theatre and said 'let there be light'. And there was; Graham Blundell, Jack Hibberd, Max Gillies and many others produced...
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The Country Wife
In the tradition of Strength to Strength comes an unforgettable memoir of heartbreak and triumph. When she is five, Anne Gorman's family disintegrates. After thirteen pregnancies and the death of two children, her devout Catholic...
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Becoming Westerly: The transformation of surfing champion Peter Drouyn into Westerly Windina
'Peter was always looking for a princess, he wanted to find his princess. Unfortunately, the princess was me. I'm the princess that Peter always wanted but never met.' Westerly Windina'Westerly's affection for Peter comes in many...
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Before I Sleep: My Life Fighting Crime and Corruption
In the early 1970s, Queensland was a haven for crooks from both sides of the law. It was into this hothouse that Ray Whitrod was controversially appointed as police commissioner in 1970. Just six years later he resigned from the...
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Bradman’s War
Published to coincide with the 2013 Ashes Test series between England and Australia, this is the extraordinary story of how the 1948 Invincibles turned the cricket pitch into a battlefield.
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Under a Bilari Tree I Born
This is Alice's insightful and inspiring story - the story of a life that is remarkable and yet typical of Australia's strong country women.
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