Sorted on book title (not in series order)
In this moving, funny and sometimes chilling book, leading Australians open their ASIO files and read what the state's security apparatus said about them. Writers from across the political spectrum including Mark Aarons, Phillip Adams, Nadia Wheatley, Michael Kirby, Peter Cundall, Gary...Read more
Every now and then, when the planets align in just the right way, a book comes along that changes everything. An author sweats and toils to birth a tome with such colossal cultural impact, it has the power to retune the entire world to a whole new frequency. This is absolutely not one of...Read more
He was a legend of Australian rock, the front man who lived as hard and as wildly as he performed . . . this is his story.
Often compared to David Bowie and Mick Jagger, Doc Neeson was hailed as a 'messianic rock god'.
He was thumping, pumping, sweaty...Read more
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a...Read more
‘I was saying things in songs that female singers didn’t really say back then. I wasn’t submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was...Read more
Honest and engaging, this memoir reveals the remarkable rise through police ranks of Australia's first female chief commissioner. A police officer for more than 35 years, Christine Nixon shares the pressures of a life in the public eye and coping with difficult aspects of the job, such as...Read more
'When we got off the ship in Southampton in that allegedly mild January of 1962 I had nothing to declare at customs except goose-pimples under my white nylon drip-dry shirt.'
In the first volume of "Unreliable Memoirs," we said farewell to our hero as he set sail from Sydney...Read more
The astonishing story of James Hardy Vaux, writer of Australia's first dictionary and first true-crime memoir
If you wear 'togs', tell a 'yarn', call someone 'sly', or refuse to 'snitch' on a friend then you are talking like a convict.
These words...Read more
The long-awaited memoir by one of the most important political leaders of our time
For 16 years, Angela Merkel bore the governmental responsibility for Germany, leading the country through numerous crises and shaping German and international politics and society...Read more
Thirteen years ago, Moab is my Washpot, Stephen Fry's autobiography of his early years, was published to rave reviews and was a huge bestseller. In those thirteen years since, Stephen Fry has moved into a completely new stratosphere, both as a public figure, and a private man. Now...Read more
Drivers caught in the act when they believe they are unobserved at the traffic lights, collectible toys from the cereal packets of yore, awkward dinner party conversations and the messy universe of the young are all in safe hands here. The snapshots of every day life provide glorious...Read more
From bogan to boned and beyond - a full-frontal 'femoir' by one of Australia's best-loved journalists
Tracey Spicer was always the good girl. Inspired by Jana Wendt, this bogan from the Brisbane backwaters waded through the 'cruel and shallow money trench' of television to land a...Read more
A unique life story from a true survivor, read by the author.
Born in the tough East End of Glasgow and married into one of the city's most notorious criminal families, Janey Godley's young life was far from ordinary. From the grim and far-from-swinging '60s,...Read more
Every now and then along comes a book which just restores your faith in life. Anh Do's THE HAPPIEST REFUGEE is one such book. Mind you, it will make you feel good, it will make you cry in a few places, it will really make you think about what it is to be a "refugee" and how we treat / react...Read more
Anh Do nearly didn't make it to Australia. His entire family came close to losing their lives on the sea as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. But nothing - not murderous pirates, nor the imminent threat of death by hunger, disease or dehydration as they drifted for...Read more
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s inside account of the crises, choices, and challenges she faced during her four years as America’s 67th Secretary of State, and how those experiences drive her view of the future.
“All of us face hard choices in our lives,” Hillary Rodham Clinton writes...Read more
In his book, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions. His journey...Read more
Underworld executioner Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read was released from Pentridge Prison in November, 1991, vowing never to return. He became a bizarre celebrity as his autobiography "Chopper From the Inside" became a bestseller. Six months later he was back in jail writing his second volume...Read more
After tragedy, how do we find hope? A memoir about what it takes to get through the very worst of times from Rosie Batty - a woman who has experienced tragedy, who had lost all hope, yet now is intent on finding it again.
On a warm summer's evening in February 2014, eleven-year-...Read more
If you’re a man of a certain age you’ll know there comes a point in life when getting a sports car and over-analysing your contribution to society sounds like a really good idea.
With a good job in sales and marketing and a nice house in Manchester that he shared with his wife...Read more
This extraordinary book has its genesis in a series of concerts first staged in 2004. Over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, one hundred of his songs from the previous three decades. In between songs he told stories about them, and from those little tales grew How to...Read more
In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As...Read more
I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday.
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education....Read more
Poet Laureate of Punk, fashion icon, TV and radio presenter, social and cultural commentator.
At 5' 11' (8 stone, 32 inch chest, 27 inch waist), in trademark suit jacket, skin-tight drainpipes and dark glasses, with jet-black back-combed hair and mouth full of gold teeth, John...Read more
Published to coincide with Leonard Cohen's exclusive show at London’s The O2 on Friday 21 June 2013. This book contains exclusive material and interviews making it THE biography to buy on Leonard Cohen - singer-songwriter, musician, poet, and novelist.
The genius behind such...Read more
Immediate Action is a no-holds-barred account of an extraordinary life, from the day Andy McNab was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital to the day he went to fight in the Gulf War.
As a delinquent youth he kicked against society. As a young soldier he...Read more
Jack Charles has worn many hats throughout his life: actor, cat burglar, musician, heroin addict, activist, even Senior Victorian Australian of the Year. But the title he’s most proud to claim is that of Aboriginal Elder.
Stolen from his mother and placed into institutional care...Read more
In 1974, the homeless Miss Shepherd moved her broken down van into Alan Bennett's garden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. And Bennett, despite inviting her in the first place, was a reluctant landlord. And yet she lived there for fifteen...Read more
Career criminal John Killick was involved in the most audacious prison break in Australian history when he escaped from Sydney’s Silverwater prison after his partner in crime Lucy Dudko commandeered a scenic helicopter flight at gunpoint.
Australia’s ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ spent 45...Read more
This is the astounding true story of one of the last female special operations agents in France to get out alive after its liberation in WWII.
Born in 1921, Pippa Latour became a covert special operations agent who parachuted into a field in Nazi-occupied Normandy. Trained by the...Read more