Mercenary Mum is the true story of a young single mother who went from working at her local Woolworths store to serving as a soldier in the Australian Army's elite Close Personal Protection Unit. She then left the army to become a high-risk security contractor, where she was responsible for protecting high-threat targets from assassination and opportune attack in Iraq. Neryl reveals what it's like to be a woman in a private army trying to survive in a prejudiced man's world, exposed to alcohol-fuelled parties, drugs and sexual abuse. Neryl's professional and personal resolve is pushed to its... View More...
Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy's brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, an Australian republican channelling the spirit of Eureka? Peter FitzSimons, bestselling chronicler of many of the great defining moments and people of this nation's history, is the perfect person to tell this most iconic of all Australian stories. From Kelly's early d... View More...
"Rex" is the blockbuster autobiography of one of Australia's best-loved and most colourful personalities - Rex Hunt. His book is Rex to the core - funny, earthy, refreshingly direct and, above all, deeply inspirational. "Rex" tells the story of a kid who struggled at school, but who found the drive and motivation to carve out a hugely successful career as an Aussie Rules player and then as a major media figure. Along the way Rex talks about his years in the police force, his national service, the dramatic legal case against his former manager after the disappearance of millions of dollars of R... View More...
***each copy signed by the author on front end paper 'Best Wishes, Sandy Thorne'*** Feel like a trip down memory lane? Need a laugh? If you've ever pinched fruit, pelted rocks on people's roofs, talked about hairs in grade seven or been expelled from school, this hilarious memoir will be your cup of tea. If you didn't do any of those things but wanted to, this book is also for you. Growing up wild and free in the golden era of the 1950s and '60s in rural Queensland, Sandy Thorne was constantly in more strife than Flash Gordon. Her bum frequently glowed as crimson as a baboon's after t... View More...
The Queen of the Never Never as never seen before! In the 1890s, when a woman's role was seen as marrying well and raising a family, Daisy Bates reinvented herself from humble governess to heiress-traveller and 'woman of science'. She would become one of the best-known and most controversial ethnologists in history, and one of the fi rst people to put Aboriginal culture on the map. Born into tough circumstances, Daisy's prospects were dim; her father an alcoholic bootmaker, her mother dying of consumption when Daisy was only four years old. Through sheer strength of will, young Daisy overcame ... View More...
The dust, the flies, the dingoes are the only company, sometimes for weeks, the occasional crackle of a voice over a wireless radio from far-flung places - this was the world of Val Oldfield for 10 years when living on Australia's infamous Birdsville Track. ... Val Oldfield was flung into this world as a naïve newly-wed from an Adelaide seaside suburb in post-war boom years of Australia. No beating about the bush traces her life from childhoold years, when she wriggled her little toes in the sand at Semaphore Beach, to her teenage years as a modern young in 1950's miss about town, to the alie... View More...
The Life and Times of Baron Nikolai Nicolaevich Miklouho-Maclay. From an evocative tale of a feisty science-driven man who lived among the indigenous people of New Guinea, to his suffering from beriberi and malaria, sending him to Australia and a fanfare from the scientific community, Yvonne Webb presents hismultiple passions, achievements and disappointments. A biological research station was built for him in Sydney. A German colleague doublecrossed him. He was instrumental in the British, German and Australian presence in New Guinea. He married aNSW Premier's daughter. Archival material shed... View More...