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Nadia Owusu
Aftershocks
$30.00
Visit product page →An exceptional memoir about race, family and belonging for a moment when identity and division dominate our global politics
I have lived in disaster and disaster has lived in me. Our shared languages are thunder and reverberation.
When Nadia Owusu was two years old her mother abandoned her and her baby sister and fled from Tanzania back to the US. When she was thirteen her beloved Ghanaian father died of cancer. She and her sister were left alone, with a stepmother they didn't like, adrift.
Nadia Owusu is a woman of many languages, homelands and identities. She grew up in Rome, Dar-es-Salaam, Addis Ababa, Kumasi, Kampala and London. And for every new place there was a new language, a new identity and a new home. At times she has felt stateless, motherless and identity-less. At others, she has had multiple identities at war within her. It's no wonder she started to feel fault lines in her sense of self. It's no wonder that those fault lines eventually ruptured.
Aftershocks is the account of how she hauled herself out of the wreckage. It is the intimate story behind the news of immigration and division dominating contemporary politics. Nadia Owusu's astonishingly moving and incredibly timely memoir is a nuanced portrait of globalisation from the inside in a fractured world in crisis.
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General Sir Peter Cosgrove
You Shouldn't Have Joined
$50.00
The warm, fascinating memoir of one of Australia's most popular and prominent public figuresVisit product page →
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.
About the Author
Peter Cosgrove was born in Sydney in 1947. The son of a soldier, he attended Waverley College in Sydney and graduated in 1968 from the Royal Military College, Duntroon. Early in his military career, he fought in Vietnam, commanding a rifle platoon. He was awarded the Military Cross in 1971 for his performance and leadership during an assault on enemy positions.
In 1972, he served as Aide de Camp to Governor-General Sir Paul Hasluck. He returned to regimental life as second in command of a Company, rising to Adjutant then Company Commander in the Army's 5th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (5 RAR), then 5/7 RAR in Holsworthy, Sydney. Subsequent appointments included a period as a tactics instructor at the Army's Infantry Centre in Singleton, New South Wales; a year's study at the United States Marine Corps Staff College in Quantico, USA; extended periods of duty in the United Kingdom and India; and command of 1 RAR. He was appointed a Member in the Military Division of the Order of Australia (AM) for his service in command in 1983-84.
Peter Cosgrove came to national attention in 1999 when, as Commander of the International Task Force East Timor (INTERFET), he was responsible for overseeing that country's transition to independence. For his leadership in this role he was promoted to Companion in the Military Division of the Order of Australia (AC). Promoted to Lieutenant General, he was appointed Chief of Army in 2000. After further promotion to General, he served as Chief of the Defence Force from 2002 to 2005. He retired from the Australian Defence Force in 2005. Subsequently, he accepted positions on several boards, including QANTAS, Cardno and the Australian Rugby Union. He was appointed by the Queensland Government to lead the taskforce rebuilding communities in the Innisfail region following the devastation caused by Cyclone Larry in 2006. From 2007 to 2012, he chaired the Council of the Australian War Memorial, and served as Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University from 2010 until early 2014.
On 25 March 2014, General Cosgrove became a Knight in the Order of Australia when he was sworn in as Governor-General (2014-2019). -
James Blunt
How To A Complete and Utter Blunt
$25.00
'Opinions are like arseholes - everybody has one'Visit product page →
James Blunt, 6 December 2014
Once upon a time, James Blunt's most enduring legacy was a three-minute, thirty-second pop song about a girl he saw on the underground, and a nation's worth of abuse. But with the invention of Twitter, James found his real voice, and with it, the chance to reply with a simple 'up yours'. Now the King of Twitter has ascended to the heady heights of occasionally 'winning the internet'.
Selected and introduced by James himself, this is a year in the life of the world's most reluctant social media sensation. Now learn for yourself how to be a complete and utter Blunt . . . -
Charlie Gilmour
Featherhood
$35.00
This is a story about birds and fathers.Visit product page →
About the young magpie that fell from its nest in a Bermondsey junkyard into Charlie Gilmour's life - and swiftly changed it. Demanding worms around the clock, riffling through his wallet, sharing his baths and roosting in his hair...
About the jackdaw kept at a Cornish stately home by Heathcote Williams, anarchist, poet, magician, stealer of Christmas, and Charlie's biological father who vanished from his life in the dead of night.
It is a story about repetition across generations and birds that run in the blood; about a terror of repeating the sins of the father and a desire to build a nest of one's own.
It is a story about change - from wild to tame; from sanity to madness; from life to death to birth; from freedom to captivity and back again, via an insane asylum, a prison and a magpie's nest.
And ultimately, it is the story of a love affair between a man and a magpie. -
Ruth Coker Burks
All The Young Men
$35.00
Erin Brockovich meets Dallas Buyers Club, All The Young Men is a gripping and triumphant tale of human compassion, telling the true story of a young single mother who finds herself driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis, and who risks everything to give victims back their humanity.Visit product page →
'If I have one message with this book it's that we all have to care for one another. Today, not just in 1986. Life is about caring for each other, and I learned more about life from the dying than I ever learned from the living. It's in an elephant ride, it's in those wildflowers dancing on their way to the shared grave of two men in love, and it's in caring for that young man who just needed information without judgement.'
In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth Coker Burks visits a friend in hospital when she notices that the door to one of the patient's rooms is painted red. The nurses are reluctant to enter, drawing straws to decide who will tend to the sick person inside. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life.
And in doing so, Ruth's own life changes forever.
As word spreads in the community that she is the only person willing to help the young men afflicted by the growing AIDS crisis, Ruth goes from being an ordinary young mother to an accidental activist. Forging deep friendships with the men she helps, Ruth works to find them housing and jobs, and then funeral homes willing to take their bodies - often in the middle of the night. She prepares and delivers meals to 'her guys,' supplementing her own income with discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets. She defies local pastors and the medical community to store rare medications for her most urgent patients, and teaches sex education to drag queens after hours at secret bars. Emboldened by the weight of their collective pain, she fervently advocates for their safety and visibility, ultimately advising Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis, and in doing so becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of society.
Ruth kept her story a secret for years, fearful of repercussions within her deeply conservative community. But at a time when it's more important than ever to stand up for those who can't, Ruth has found the courage to have her voice - and the voices of those who were stigmatised, rejected and abandoned - heard.
About the Author
Ruth Coker Burks was a young single mum in Hot Springs, Arkansas who cared for people with AIDS when no one else would in the 1980s and 1990s. With no medical background, Ruth single-handedly created a network of care, and saw to the final resting places of roughly a thousand men abandoned by families and neglected by medical professionals. For 30 years, Ruth has been an advocate for the LGBTQ community. She currently resides in Northwest Arkansas. -
Rose Sgueglia
The Real Coco Chanel
$60.00
Coco Chanel lived her own life as a romantic heroine.Visit product page →
Fuelled by 19th century literature, she built a life which was partly myth and, partly, factual.
She was the fashion designer everyone admired. The business woman whose fortune was impossible to track. She was also a performer, lover of many high profile intellectuals and, as believed by many, a Nazi spy.
Her life was, extraordinarily, affected by history (the Nazi movement and World War II), symbolism and literature.
This biography explores her life from her troubled and poor past to the opening of her first hat shop, passions and secrets; the biography also draws parallelisms between myths and facts and how, and if ever, they match at all.
The biography also features chapters on the Chanel Maison and the creation of her iconic trademark as well as her little black dress' and Chanel No 5'.
Finally, the biography ends with a reflection on how the myth of Coco Chanel is represented today in pop culture. -
Liz Flavell
Biographic : Bowie
$20.00
The Biographic series presents an entirely new way of looking at the lives of the world's greatest thinkers and creatives. It takes the 50 defining facts, dates, thoughts, habits and achievements of each subject, and uses infographics to convey all of them in vivid snapshots. Each Biographic title is designed to be as entertaining as it is informative. Timelines not only pinpoint significant dates, but set them in the context and culture of their times. Dynamic maps locate biographical events alongside other points of interest. Character traits are illuminated by visual comparisons. Many people know that David Bowie (1947 2016) was an iconic singer, songwriter and actor, whose lyrics, performances and ever-changing persona were at the heart of pop culture for over five decades. What, perhaps, they don't know is that he smoked 80 cigarettes a day, acted in 27 films, sold over 140 million albums and once shared a Berlin apartment with Iggy Pop. Biographic: Bowie presents an instant impression of his life, work and fame, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the artist behind the music.Visit product page → -
Michael Parkinson
Like Father, Like Son
$35.00
A look at the life and times of the man Sir Michael most looked up to.Visit product page →
It started in the shadow of the pithead in a South Yorkshire mining village and ended up in tears before an audience of millions. Michael Parkinson's relationship with his late father John William was, and remains, a family love story overflowing with tenderness and tall tales of sporting valour, usually involving Yorkshire cricket or Barnsley FC.
However, it was the overwhelming grief which poured out of Michael when Piers Morgan pressed him about John William in a television interview - four decades after the death of the father he encapsulated as 'Yorkshireman, miner, humourist and fast bowler' - that convinced one of the outstanding broadcasters and journalists of our time to delve deeper into the dynamics of their lives together.
Co-written with his son Mike, this affectionate and revealing memoir explores the influences which shaped John William, Michael and succeeding generations of Parkinsons. The journey leads them from the depths of a Yorkshire coal mine, via the chapel, pub and picture-house, to a spot behind the bowler's arm at Lord's and the sands at Scarborough.
While Like Father, Like Son conveys a powerful sense of time and place, it is wit, insight and, above all, enduring love which shine through its pages.
About the Author
Born in Yorkshire, Michael Parkinson left school at sixteen with the ambition to play and to write about cricket. He has since become one of the most successful journalists of his generation. He wrote a sports column for The Sunday Times and has also written for the Telegraph. He is also a legendary TV and radio presenter - his long-running chat show Parkinson was popular for many years. -
Tove Jansson
Sculptor's Daughter
$25.00
Tove Jansson's first book for adults drew on her childhood memories to capture afresh the enchantments and fears of growing up in Helsinki in the nineteen tens and twenties. Described as both a memoir and 'a book of superb stories' by Ali Smith, her startlingly evocative prose offers a glimpse of the mysteries of winter ice, the bonhomie of balalaika parties, and the vastness of Christmas viewed from beneath the tree. This deluxe hardback, with rare images from the Jansson family archive, makes a perfect gift.Visit product page → -
Annabel Langbein
Bella
$45.00
Bursting with tender and funny anecdotes and gorgeous recipes, Bella is Annabel Langbein's must-read memoir.Visit product page →
For the first time, Annabel Langbein, New Zealand's most popular cookbook author, writes about her remarkable life and how food has shaped it, highlighting some of the recipes that have resonated most strongly with her over the years.
From her childhood fascination with cooking to a teenage flirtation as a Maoist hippie, to possum trapping and living off the land as a hunter and forager, to travelling and starting her own croissant business in Brazil, Annabel's life has always been centred on food and nature. Out of this came an obsession with creating cookbooks, introducing a generation of cooks to her simple recipes for delicious, stylish meals.
Annabel has lived a huge and varied life, and she writes vividly about her many adventures. From throughout this rich life in food she has chosen 60 key recipes, created with her signature style and flair that make cooking easy for everyone, sharing them in this beautifully photographed book.
About the Author
Annabel Langbein has published more than 30 cookbooks, including the phenomenal bestseller, Annabel Langbein: The Free Range Cook, published in 2010 and which has sold more than 160,000 copies.
She currently writes a hugely popular column and recipes for Canvas magazine in the Weekend Herald every Saturday.
Annabel and her husband Ted live in Wanaka, in a property they have developed over many years, with extensive gardens and orchards. -
Fiona O'Loughlin
Truths From an Unreliable Witness
$30.00
A fiercely honest and wryly funny memoir from one of Australia's most loved comedians shows us that no matter how far down you get, there is always a way back.Visit product page →
Fiona O'Loughlin was raised in the generation of children who were to be seen, but not heard ... unless there were guests in the house. Then she'd watch everyone, telling stories, making each other laugh. This was where she discovered the rhythm of stories and the lubrication that alcohol leant the telling. Years later, as a mum of five, Fiona would become one of Australia's most-loved comedians, performing gigs in New York, Montreal, Singapore, London, Toronto and Edinburgh. Fiona looked like she was living her dream - but she was hiding a secret in open sight, using alcoholism as material for her comedy and using comedy as an excuse for her alcoholism.
Truths from an Unreliable Witness is a fiercely honest and wryly funny memoir of melancholy, love, marriage, the loss of love and marriage, homelessness, of hotel rooms strewn with empty mini-bar bottles of vodka, of waking from a two-week coma, of putrid drug dens and using a jungle to confront yourself. It is about hitting rock bottom and then realising you are only halfway down. Ultimately, it's about hanging on to your last straw of sanity and finding laughter in the darkest of times. You may want to sit down for this... -
Mark Skaife
Mark Skaife
$45.00
When it comes to masters of motorsport, Mark Skaife is without peer. The stats ordain him the most brilliant touring car racer in Australian motorsport history: his six Bathurst victories and five touring car championships place him in the rarefied company of Peter Brock.Visit product page →
For more than three decades, across the Holden Racing Team’s golden era, Skaife was the chosen one. Imposing, sometimes polarising and always revered, his legend is immeasurable and he remains a pillar of Australian motorsport today as a media ambassador and presenter.
This unique and intimate illustrated autobiography recounts the thrills, heartbreaks and epic feats of an unparalleled racing career, on the track and behind the scenes. Featuring photos from his personal collection, a narrative as exciting as a Bathurst bend, and fascinating insights from those who know him best, Mark Skaife is the definitive account of the man behind the helmet.
About the Author
Mark Skaife graduated from karts to racing cars in 1984 when he was just 17, and it was already clear that motorsport had a unique new talent. Mark went on to dominate Australian touring car racing for the next 30 years as an asset to the Holden Racing Team, winning five touring car championships, six Bathursts, and even surpassing Peter Brock’s record of 37 championship round victories.
Since officially retiring from racing in 2008, Mark has continued to devote himself to the sport – both behind the scenes and as a presenter. His decades of service were recognised with induction to the Australian Motor Sport Hall of Fame in 2017. Mark lives with his wife Toni in Melbourne.
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