A Hole in My Genes by Jodie Fleming

$27.95 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Dr Jodie Fleming, a clinical and health psychologist who previously specialised in the field of psycho-oncology - the human side of cancer - receives the terrifying news that she has two primary breast cancers. This becomes a frightening opportunity to practise what she preaches. The doctor becomes the patient. Having dedicated her career to helping others with cancer, and also caring for her husband with testicular cancer eight years prior, Jodie understands the role of caregiver on both a personal and professional level. The role of patient, however is another matter. Especially when the diagnosis comes exactly one month after the end of her marriage. What ensues is the epitome of complicated grief and a foray into the world of cancer from the other side of the desk. Jodie relocates interstate to her parents' home in country Victoria for a healthy dose of family dysfunction. Genetic testing and a prophylactic hysterectomy add salt to the open wound of infertility before viciously rubbing it in. Forced to draw upon the psychological strategies she'd previously taught her clients, Jodie begins her true education. A Hole in My Genes is Jodie's journey from that terrifying diagnosis to a cancer free future. ...Show more

Stories of Hope: Finding Inspiration in Everyday Lives by Heather Morris

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Heather Morris, author of the internationally bestselling novels The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey, grew up on a farm in rural New Zealand. On her way back across the paddocks from school, Heather would visit her great-grandfather and listen to his experiences of war - stories he told only Heather. From a young age Heather discovered that people would tell her their stories if she stopped and listened. In Stories of Hope, Heather Morris will explore the art of listening - a skill she employed when she met Lale Sokolov, the Tattooist of Auschwitz. It was her ability to listen that led him to entrust her with his story. Stories of Hope will examine Heather's extraordinary journey, in the form of a series of beautifully rendered tales of the people she has met, the remarkable stories they have shared with her, and the lessons they hold for us all.   ...Show more

Walk Like a Cow: A Memoir by Brendan Ryan

$25.00 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Australian poet Brendan Ryan speaks about his life in this memoir of "the child, the youth and the young man finding his footing amidst the mysteries of cows and the ruthless cycles of the farm, the dry-eyed melancholy of the milking-shed and the mercy of the weather. Here also are the puzzles of existe nce contained in parents and siblings, in small things and small talk, and the revelations of the school bus and the school. This is a classic memoir: Brendan Ryan's words come at us directly, and often with startling intensity, from indelible experience. And we feel his need to return." (Don Watson, 2020) ...Show more

My Year of Living Vulnerably by Rick Morton

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, bestselling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the cou rse of twelve months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably. It's a book about love. What love is, how we see it, what forms it takes, how we practice it in our lives, what it means to us, and how we really, really can't live without it, even if, like Rick for many years, we think we can.   ...Show more

You Shouldn't Have Joined... by Peter Cosgrove

$44.99 AUD

$49.99 (10% off)

Category: Biography & Memoir

General Sir Peter Cosgrove AK AC (Mil) CVO MC (Retd) is one of Australia's most significant public figures. As a soldier he saw action in Vietnam, winning the Military Cross, and rose to the very top of his profession, becoming Chief of the Defence Force. Soon after his retirement from the Army, he was invited to take charge of the huge relief and rebuilding operation in Queensland after the devastation of Cyclone Larry. In 2014, Cosgrove became Australia's Governor-General. As Governor-General he travelled far and wide, supporting Australians in times of crisis, sadness, joy or celebration, representing us on the world stage with humour, intelligence and a force of personal magnetism that was felt by everyone from prime ministers to presidents. When he retired in July 2019, it was as one of the most beloved and respected governors-general in Australia's history. Cosgrove embodies the traits we truly value: warmth, humanity, toughness and loyalty. His humour and empathy shone through the pomp and ceremony, and his time as Governor-General will be remembered as much for his laughter as for the usual dignities of the office. You Shouldn't Have Joined ... (an expression much used during his days as a soldier) is the story of Cosgrove's extraordinarily full and eventful life. It is also the story of those who have shared it with him, in particular his wife Lynne. His memoir allows us an incredible insight into the role and world of Australia's Governor-General. He was there as two prime ministers were toppled by their own party. He was there through disasters both natural and man-made, such as the destruction of MH17. He was there for world leaders, and for ordinary Australians. You Shouldn't Have Joined ... is a true reflection of the man himself, filled with intelligence, forthrightness, compassion and a brilliant eye for a telling anecdote. ...Show more

Untwisted: The Story of My Life by Paul Jennings

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Honest, insightful, funny - a brilliant memoir about writing and teaching and life from one of Australia's most loved children's authors. Sometimes, rather than making you laugh or cry out in surprise, a story will instead leave you wondering about human fragility. In the telling of his own tale, childr en's author and screenwriter Paul Jennings demonstrates how seemingly small events can combine into a compelling drama. As if assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, he puts together fragments, memories and anecdotes to reveal the portrait of a complex and weathered soul.Untwisted is revealing, moving and very funny.   ...Show more

The Believer: Encounters with Love, Death and Faith by Sarah Krasnostein

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

This book is about ghosts and gods and flying saucers and certainty in the absence of knowledge. From award-winning author Sarah Krasnostein comes an exploration of the power of belief. Weaving together the stories of six extraordinary ordinary people, The Believer looks at the stories we tell ourselve s to deal with the distance between the world as it is, and the world as we’d like it to be. How they can stunt us – or save us. Some of the people you will meet believe in things most people don’t. Ghosts. UFOs. Heaven and the Devil. The literal creation of the universe in six days. Others believe in things most people would like to. Dying with autonomy. Facing one’s own transgressions with an open heart. In this intensely personal and gorgeously written new book Krasnostein talks with her characteristic compassion and empathy to these believers – and finds out what happens when their beliefs crash into her own. ...Show more

A Mouthful of Petals by Wendy Scarfe and Allan Scarfe

$29.95 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

A Mouthful of Petals is a nonfiction account of three years working in an Indian village in the early 1960s. Previously published, it became a minor classic among good samaritans, particularly in Britain, and was reviewed by The Times, New Statesman and such like. At the invitation of India's venerated political leader and activist Jayaprakash Narayan, Wendy and Allan Scarfe, two dedicated but far from solemn young Australian teachers, travelled to the remote village of Sokhodeora in Bihar in 1960. They had been asked to take charge of the educational activities of his ashram, but over the three years they lived there, their activities extended far beyond that. This humane and important book recounts their efforts in helping local people counter the misery, poverty and ignorance that afflicted so much of the region. By the time they left, the Scarfes had succeeded in teaching both children and adults much that would help them to lead better and fuller lives. And they left behind, for the young at least, something to hope and work for. This new edition of A Mouthful Of Petals includes an account of Wendy Scarfe's return trip to Sokhodeora during a famine in the late 1960s, and how those who live in Bihar state fare in the early twenty-first century. ...Show more

From Snow to Ash: One Man's 500-Kilometre Trek Through an Iconic Australian Landscape by Anthony Sharwood

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

The incredible, inspiring story of a solo journey through Australia's toughest and most beautiful hiking trail - the Australian Alps Walking Track - for fans of INTO THE WILD by Jon Krakauer or Cheryl Strayed's WILD and anyone who dreams of iconic wilderness walks. At the start of the hellish, fiery Au stralian summer of 2019/20, Walkley Award-winning journalist and suburban dad Anthony Sharwood set off on a journey. Abandoning his post on a busy news website to clear his mind, he solo-trekked the Australian Alps Walking Track, Australia's most gruelling and breathtakingly beautiful mainland hiking trail, which traverses the entirety of the legendary High Country from Gippsland in Victoria to the outskirts of Canberra. The journey started in a blizzard and ended in a blaze. Along the way, this lifelong lover of the mountains came to realise that nothing would ever be the same - either for him or for the imperilled Australian Alps, a landscape as fragile and sensitive to the changing climate as the Great Barrier Reef. ...Show more

Decent People: A memoir of family in Colac, Geelong and Warrnambool by David Jellie

$34.95 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Decent People tells the story of David Jellie’s ancestors from their arrival in Australia up to his parent’s generation. They came from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and Croatia – all arriving between 1835 and 1861. Three of them were sailors who jumped ship, and all gravitated to the Western Di strict of Victoria where they became pioneer farmers. Their families are still rooted there. Some prospered and none failed. These pioneer Australians were not dwelling on the past when they left the shores of their homelands, but were looking to a new future for themselves and their successors. They were touched by the vicissitudes of the time and place of their lives – shipwreck, infant mortality, pandemic, untimely death, human frailty, drought, economic depressions and wars. They were all decent people. In Decent People David Jellie tells their stories with tenderness, intimacy, humour and gratitude. ...Show more

Happiest Refugee: A Memoir by Anh Do

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

The laugh-out-loud, reach-for-your-hanky story of one of Australia's best-loved comedians.

Into the Loneliness: The unholy alliance of Ernestine Hill and Daisy Bates by Eleanor Hogan

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

An original and riveting biography of two of the most singular women Australia has ever seen.Daisy Bates and Ernestine Hill were bestselling writers who told of life in the vast Australian interior. Daisy Bates, dressed in Victorian garb, malnourished and half-blind, camped with Aboriginal people in Wes tern Australia and on the Nullarbor for decades, surrounded by her books, notes and artefacts. A self-taught ethnologist, desperate to be accepted by established male anthropologists, she sought to document the language and customs of the people who visited her camps. In 1935, Ernestine Hill, journalist and author of The Great Australian Loneliness, coaxed Bates to Adelaide to collaborate on a newspaper series. Their collaboration resulted in the 1938 international bestseller, The Passing of the Aborigines. This book informed popular opinion about Aboriginal people for decades, though Bates's failure to acknowledge Hill as her co-author strained their friendship.Traversing great distances in a campervan, Eleanor Hogan reflects on the lives and work of these indefatigable women. From a contemporary perspective, their work seems quaint and sentimental, their outlook and preoccupations dated, paternalistic and even racist. Yet Bates and Hill took a genuine interest in Aboriginal people and their cultures long before they were considered worthy of the Australian mainstream's attention. With sensitivity and insight, Hogan wonders what their legacies as fearless female outliers might be.'I responded to this book with every cell in my body, neuron in my brain and beat of my heart. A stunning achievement of epic storytelling, historical enquiry and elegant analysis. Eleanor Hogan has resurrected Hill and Bates as Australian icons, women as complex, compelling and deeply flawed as the nation itself.' — Clare Wright 'A meticulous unveiling of the enigmatic Daisy Bates and her writing companion Ernestine Hill. Tracking her subjects across the Nullabor, Hogan strips away layer after layer of dissimulation as she unpicks their writing partnership.' — Bill Garner'Into the Loneliness is a fascinating biographical study of two significant and intriguing women who were in many ways ahead of their time, yet reflective of it in their artistic endeavours. Using a sophisticated structure and interconnected narratives, this impressive biography reconceptualises the shifting, complex, relationships between Daisy Bates, Ernestine Hill and Indigenous Australians.' — Jenny Hocking'Into the Loneliness presents a relationship between two remarkable but flawed women, one with profound, ongoing consequences for Indigenous people. It's a book about sexism, about writing, and the nature of friendship. It's a study of white Australian attitudes that persist to this day. And it's an astonishing true story that leaps off the page.' — Jeff Sparrow ...Show more