Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark by Julia Baird

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

A beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness - the 'light within' that Julia Baird calls 'phosphorescence' - which will sustain us even through the darkest times. Over the last decade, we have become bet ter at knowing what brings us contentment, well-being and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy, that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others offer our best chance at achieving happiness. But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them?And more than that, when our world goes dark, when we're overwhelmed by illness or heartbreak, loss or pain, how do we survive, stay alive or even bloom? In the muck and grit of a daily existence full of disappointments and a disturbing lack of control over many of the things that matter most - finite relationships, fragile health, fraying economies, a planet in peril - how do we find, nurture and carry our own inner, living light - a light to ward off the darkness? Absorbing, achingly beautiful, inspiring and deeply moving, Julia Baird has written exactly the book we need for these times. ...Show more

Gulpilil (HB) by Derek Rielly

$28.50 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir | Reading Level: 3 Biography

It's been almost fifty years since a teenage David Gulpilil illuminated screens worldwide with his breakout role in Walkabout. It was the first time we'd seen an Aboriginal cast in a significant role and only four years after Holt's referendum to alter the constitution and give Aboriginal people citizen ship and, subsequently, the right to vote. Gulpilil quickly became the face of the Indigenous world to white Australian audiences. Charisma. Good looks. A competent, strong, mysterious man starring in films ranging from Rabbit-Proof Fence to Crocodile Dundee.But what has marked Gulpilil, despite his fame and popularity, is the feeling that he's been forever stuck between two worlds: a Yolngu man, a hunter, a tracker, who grew up in the bush in Arnhem Land outside any white influence; and a movie star flitting from sets to festivals. Able to exist in both worlds, but never truly home. From the author of the bestselling Wednesdays with Bob, Derek Reilly attempts to encapsulate the most beguiling and unconventional of Australian entertainers, observing Gulpilil's own attempt to find a place in the world. With interviews from icons and friends - such as Jack Thompson, Paul Hogan, Craig Ruddy, George Gittoes, Gary Sweet and Damon Gameau - this unriddles a famous enigma at last. ...Show more

Untethered: A Memoir by Hayley Katzen

$31.50 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

When urban academic Hayley Katzen moves to a remote Australian cattle property to live with her farmer girlfriend, she hopes, at last, to find home.   But this is no happy-ever-after tree change. Lecture halls, law reform and the arts are replaced with castrating calves, shovelling manure, fire-fig hting and anti-gas blockades. In a place that attracts people who live by their own rules, Hayley must confront her limitations and preconceptions to forge her own identity.   Set in the unpredictable beauty of the Australian landscape, and told with Hayley Katzen's compelling candour and rigour, Untethered charts one migrant's search for home. Part love story and part off-the-grid adventure, Untethered is a powerful reminder that home can be found in many forms - in love, in family and friends, in ideologies and political movements, in landscapes and communities, and ultimately, in ourselves.   ...Show more

Sea Rogue by Williams,Michael

$25.00 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you. Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed on 9 November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, Eddie fa ced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on the Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country. Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life. He now believes he is the 'happiest man on earth'. Published as Eddie turns 100, this is a powerful, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful memoir of how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.         ...Show more

A Bigger Picture (Malcolm Turnbull, HB) by Malcolm Turnbull

$49.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

When Malcolm Turnbull took over the nation’s top job there was a sense of excitement in Australia. Sky-high opinion polls followed as the political outsider with a successful business, legal and media career took charge. The infighting that had dogged politics for the best part of a decade looked to be over. But a right-wing insurgency brutally cut down Turnbull’s time in office after three years, leaving many Australians asking, ‘Why?’ Exceptionally candid and compelling, A Bigger Picture is the definitive narrative of Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership. He describes how he legalised same-sex marriage, established Snowy Hydro 2.0, stood up to Donald Trump, and many more achievements – remarkable in their pace and significance, and delivered in the teeth of so much opposition. But it’s far more than just politics. Turnbull’s life has been filled with colourful characters and controversies, success and failure. From his early years in Sydney, growing up with a single father, to defending 'Spycatcher' Peter Wright against the UK government; the years representing Kerry Packer, leading the Republican Movement and making millions in business; and finally toppling Tony Abbott to become prime minister of Australia. For the first time he tells it all – in his own words. With revelatory insights on the workings of Canberra and the contentious events of Turnbull’s life, A Bigger Picture explores the strengths and vulnerabilities of one of Australia’s best-known and most dynamic business and political leaders. Lyrically written in highly readable and entertaining prose, this is a genuine page-turner that’s not just for political junkies.     ...Show more

Happy (and Other Ridiculous Aspirations) by Turia Pitt

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

What's the greatest quest of humanity? No, it's not the Knights Templar, or life on Mars, or the perfect pair of jeans. I suspect that the number one thing you're searching for in your life is ... happiness. Why do I suspect that? Because thousands of people have told me. So, I set out on a dragon-free quest to prove if 'happy' is, actually, an attainable goal, and not just a ridiculous aspiration. In this book, with her characteristic humour and gutsy intelligence,* Turia Pitt goes on a quest to answer the question, Is it possible to be happier? What does she discover on her journey? Well, look, that's why we want you to buy the bloody book, but we can tell you that it entails, among other things, practising gratitude, working on kindness, strengthening your relationships and accepting the hard times and down days. Turia unpacks all of the above with easy-to-implement tips and strategies, hilarious insights into her own life and relationships, and introduces us to some of the world's most interesting people along the way. *She made us say that! ...Show more

English Pastoral by James Rebanks

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

The author of the beloved No.1 bestseller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm 'A beautifully-written story of a family, a home and a changing landscape.' - Nigel Slater 'Just about perfect.' - Wendell Berry Ja mes Rebanks was taught by his grandfather to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, that landscape had profoundly changed. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song. English Pastoral is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and how the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. But this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future. This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.   ...Show more

Just Ignore Him by Alan Davies

$31.50 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

The story of a life built on sand. In the rain. In this compelling memoir, comedian and actor Alan Davies recalls his boyhood with vivid insight and devastating humour. Shifting between his 1970s upbringing and his life today, Davies moves poignantly from innocence to experience to the clarity of hindsi ght, always with a keen sense of the absurd. From sibling dynamics, to his voiceless, misunderstood progression through school, sexuality and humiliating 'accidents', Davies inhabits his younger mind with spectacular accuracy, sharply evoking an era when Green Shield Stamps, Bob-a-Job week and Whizzer & Chips loomed large, a bus fare was 2p - and children had little power in the face of adult motivation. Here, there are often exquisitely tender recollections of the mother he lost at six years old, of a bereaved family struggling to find its way, and the kicks and confusion of adolescence. Through even the joyous and innocent memories, the pain of Davies's lifelong grief and profound betrayal is unfiltered, searing and beautifully articulated. Just Ignore Him is not only an autobiography, it is a testament to a survivor's resilience and courage.   ...Show more

The Miracle Typist by Leon Silver

$31.50 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

In the tradition of THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, a heartbreaking true story of love, loss and survival against all odds during the Second World war. Conscripted into the Polish army as Hitler's ground and air forces are bearing down on his country, Jew Tolek Klings vows to return to his wife, Klara, and son, Juliusz. However, when the Luftwaffe's bombs start falling and the Polish cause looks hopelessly lost, Tolek finds himself under fire from his supposed brothers in arms. The Polish army is rife with anti-Semitism and he is relentlessly tormented. As the Germans cross the border, he is faced with a terrible dilemma: flee to protect his family - and risk being shot as a deserter - or ride out the war, hoping rumours of women and children being spared in the concentration camps are true.  What follows is an odyssey that will take Tolek from a Hungarian internment camp, where his ability to type spares him from the frontline, on to Palestine, Beirut, Egypt, Tobruk and Italy. A broken telegram from Klara, ending with the haunting words, 'We trouble', pushes him to the brink.      ...Show more

When the Ship Hits the Fan by Rob Anderson

$28.50 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

Captain Rob Anderson spills the beans on a lifetime of incidents, accidents and shenanigans of every type, in every ocean of the world, during an era when the seas were largely unregulated and more like the Wild West than anything witnessed on land.     Since he first went to sea at 15 Captain Rob has been a magnet for trouble but, somewhat preposterously, as matter, he has more often been the one responsible for keeping each enterprise afloat and picking up the pieces when the ships hit the fan.     Whether it's stashing a headless body in the freezer, losing another body before a sea burial, accidentally sabotaging the annual Roebuck Bay Hotel Race in Broome, nearly losing his scrotum in a Japanese spa, or catapulting a mate off the roof of his truck when racing from the dock for last orders...it was all part of the job for Captain Rob. No wonder, when it eventually came time to 'swallow the anchor' he got as far inland as he practically could! ...Show more

Endurance by Louis Rudd

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

In 2018 Captain Louis Rudd MBE walked into the history books when he finished a solo, unsupported crossing of Antarctica, pulling a 130 kg sledge laden with his supplies for more than 900 miles. Louis' skills had been honed in the SAS, on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but now - in the most hostile environment on earth - they would be tested like never before. Alone on the ice, Louis battled through whiteouts, 50 mph gales and temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius. It would take all his mental strength to survive.In this gripping book Louis reveals how a thirst for adventure saw him join the Royal Marines at sixteen and then pass the SAS selection course at only twenty-two. He describes his first gruelling polar expedition with legendary explorer Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley in 2011 and the leadership challenges he faced a few years later when he led a team of Army Reservists across Antarctica. And he takes us with him step by painful step as he pushes himself to the limit, travelling alone in 2018 on his epic and lonely trek across the continent's treacherous ice fields and mountains. With edge-of-the-seat storytelling, Endurance is an awe-inspiring account of courage and resilience by a remarkable man. ...Show more