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

A Mouthful of Petals by Wendy Scarfe and Allan Scarfe

$29.95 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Kitty Flanagan's 488 Rules for Life by Kitty Flanagan

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

RICHARD GLOVER: ''You won’t agree with all her rules – I, for one, am a great believer in the word “pash” – but there is a good laugh, and a lively argument, to be had on every page.'' 488 Rules for Life is Kitty Flanagan's way of making the world a more pleasant place to l ive. Applying truth and wit to modern problems. An antidote to stupidity. 488 Rules for Life is not a self-help book, because it's not you who needs help, it's other people. Whether they're walking and texting, asphyxiating you on public transport with their noxious perfume cloud, or leaving one useless square of toilet paper on the roll, a lot of people just don't know the rules. But thanks to Kitty Flanagan's comprehensive guide to modern behaviour, our world will soon be a much better place. A place where people don't ruin the fruit salad by putting banana in it … where your co-workers respect your olfactory system and don't reheat their fish curry in the office microwave ... where middle aged men don't have ponytails … What started as a joke on Kitty Flanagan's popular segment on ABC TV's The Weekly, is now a quintessential reference book with the power to change society. (Or, at least, make it a bit less irritating.) What people (okay, Kitty Flanagan) are saying about this book: 'You're welcome everyone. Thank god for me.' 'I'd rather be sad and lonely, but right.' 'There's not actually 488 rules in here but it sure feels like it'. ...Show more

Banjo by Grantlee Kieza

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

The remarkable life of Australia's greatest storyteller   A.B. 'Banjo' Paterson is rightly recognised as Australia's greatest storyteller and most celebrated poet, the boy from the bush who became the voice of a generation. He gave the nation its unofficial national anthem 'Waltzing Matilda' and treasured ballads such as 'The Man from Snowy River' and 'Clancy of the Overflow', vivid creations that helped to define Australia's national identity. But there is more, much more to Banjo's story, and in this landmark biography, award-winning writer Grantlee Kieza chronicles a rich and varied life, one that straddled two centuries and saw Australia transform from a far-flung colony to a fully fledged nation. Born in the bush, as a boy Banjo rode his pony to a one-room school along a trail frequented by outlaw Ben Hall. As a young man he befriended Breaker Morant, and covered the second Boer War as a reporter. He fudged his age to enlist during World War I, ultimately driving an ambulance before commanding a horse training unit during that conflict. Newspaper editor, columnist, foreign correspondent and ABC broadcaster, he knew countless luminaries of his time, including Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, Field Marshal Haig and Henry Lawson. The tennis ace, notorious ladies' man, brilliant jockey and celebrated polo player was an eye-witness to countless key moments in Australian history, and saw Carbine and Phar Lap race. Extensively researched and written with Kieza's trademark verve, Banjo is a lively and captivating portrait of this truly great Australian. ...Show more

Cure It or Shoot It: A Naive Young Vet's Induction into Country Life by Doug Fenwick

$27.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

We Can't Say We Didn't Know by Sophie McNeill

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Dispatches from an age of impunity by the ABCTV award-winning investigative reporter and former foreign correspondent For more than 15 years, award-winning journalist Sophie McNeill has reported on some of the most war-ravaged and oppressive places on earth, including Syria, Gaza, Yemen, West Bank and I raq. In We Can't Say We Didn't Know, Sophie tells the human stories of devastation and hope behind the headlines - of children, families and refugees, of valiant doctors, steadfast dissidents and Saudi women seeking asylum. These innocent civilians bear the brunt of the lawlessness of the current age of impunity, where war crimes go unpunished and human rights are abused. Many risk everything they know to stand up for what they believe in and to be on the right side of history, and their courage is extraordinary and inspiring, McNeill also examines what happens when evidence and facts become subjective and debatable, and how and why disinformation, impunity and hypocrisy now reign supreme. We can't say we didn't know - the question now is, what are you going to do about it? ...Show more

Your Own Kind of Girl by Clare Bowditch

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

ARIA Award-winning singer and actress Clare Bowditch confronts her inner critic in this no-holds-barred memoir. This is the story I promised myself, aged twenty-one, that I would one day be brave enough - and well enough - to write. Clare Bowditch has always had a knack for telling stories. Through her music and performing, this beloved Australian artist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. But what of the stories she used to tell herself? That 'real life' only begins once you're thin or beautiful, that good things only happen to other people.YOUR OWN KIND OF GIRL reveals a childhood punctuated by grief, anxiety and compulsion, and tells how these forces shaped Clare's life for better and for worse. This is a heartbreaking, wise and at times playful memoir. Clare's own story told raw and as it happened. A reminder that even on the darkest of nights, victory is closer than it seems.With startling candour, Clare lays bare her truth in the hope that doing so will inspire anyone who's ever done battle with their inner critic. This is the work of a woman who has found her true power - and wants to pass it on. Happiness, we discover, is only possible when we take charge of the stories we tell ourselves. ...Show more

Any Ordinary Day: Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens after the Worst Day of Your Life by Leigh Sales

$24.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories - and a terrifying brush with her own mortality - sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-cha nging event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next? In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who've faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she's learned about coping with life's unexpected blows. Warm, candid and empathetic, this bookis about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don't know we have. ...Show more

This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay

$18.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

'Painfully funny. The pain and the funniness somehow add up to something entirely good, entirely noble and entirely loveable.' - Stephen Fry Sunday Times Humour Book of the Year Winner of the Books Are My Bag Non-Fiction Book of the Year Winner of Blackwell's Debut Book of the Year Winner of iBooks' Boo k of the Year Welcome to the life of a junior doctor: 97-hour weeks, life and death decisions, a constant tsunami of bodily fluids, and the hospital parking meter earns more than you. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know - and more than a few things you didn't - about life on and off the hospital ward. This audiobook contains an exclusive interview with Adam Kay by comedian and author Mark Watson, an afterword and updated bonus diary entries. ...Show more

Ian McKellen: The Biography by Gary O'Connor

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Few actors achieve in their lifetime what Sir Ian McKellen has. A repertoire of vast commercial success coupled with critically acclaimed and authoritative Shakespearian roles. A man whose gargantuan personality and varied achievements inspire both admiration and affection. McKellen has been feted and a dmired in every country across the globe, and has been knighted by, and received the Companionship of Honour from Queen Elizabeth II. He is an icon of, and ardent campaigner in, the cause for LGBT rights. Many of us know of McKellen through his depiction of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. Garry O'Connor's definitive biography reveals the man behind McKellen the actor. The inside story of the person himself: a constantly developing drama and a work in progress. Yet Garry O'Connor pulls no punches: some of his revelations may be controversial to his fans, even explosive, given McKellen's constant ability to shock and surprise. The author has himself directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and directed McKellen in some of his very first roles. This is an unflinching, yet deeply intimate and affectionate, biography that, like McKellen himself, will stand the test of time as a rounded and complete portrait of one of the most unusual geniuses of our times. ...Show more

Tea and Scotch with Bradman (HB) by Roland Perry

$39.99 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Discovering the man behind the legend In 1995, journalist and author Roland Perry wrote to Sir Donald Bradman requesting an interview for a biography he was planning of the great cricketer. Surprisingly, the Don agreed. It was the start of a conversation that continued for years, during which the real B radman shone, not only as a great sportsman but musician, brilliant thinker and humourist with a fondness for tea and a Scotch or two. In Tea and Scotch with Bradman, Perry paints an intimate and revealing portrait of the man many regard as the greatest Australian cricketer of all time. ...Show more

Life I Never Thought I Would Have, The by Jeff Sly (Prepared for Publication by)

$40.00 AUD

Category: Biography & Memoir

Peter Learmonth was an ordinary boy whose life was shaped by a series of extraordinary events.He was chronically burned as a seven year old on Boxing Day, 1939.That could, and probably should, have ended his life.What followed was a number of chance encounters and exceptional happenings that not only al lowed him to survive, but led him towards an extraordinary life.He was among fewer than a handful of child patients in Victoria¿s largest military hospital during World War II. He shared a room with VC recipient Ted Kenna. He was a noted patient of Australia¿s undisputed pioneer of plastic and reconstructive surgery. And he ran at school alongside dual-Olympian John Landy.In the middle of it all his father fought a battle with surgeons to rebuild Peter¿s arms, rather than amputate. It was one of many battles Peter and his family fought and won during his remarkable recovery.He went on to work as a jackeroo, and then had to fight again to enter his desired profession as a stock agent.What followed was a spectacular career during which he became one of the most respected operators in western Victoria.Peter Learmonth¿s story is that of a fighter. It¿s the tale of a man who was told multiple times, ¿You can¿t do that,¿ and went ahead and did it anyway.At 84 he sat down with veteran journalist Jeff Sly to reflect on a truly remarkable life. ...Show more