This is a true story. . . It is a terrible story; but it is also a story of hope and of beauty. Written by Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend tells the story of young Peter Pendragon and his lover Louise Laleham, and their adventures traveling through Europe in a cocaine and heroin haze. The bohemian couples binges produce visions and poetic prophecies, but when their supply inevitably runs dry they find themselves faced with the reality of their drug addiction. Through the guidance of King Lamus, a master adept, they use the application of practical Magick to free themselves from addicti... View More...
Andrew grew up in the 1970s with his funny, loving but deeply unstable mother. Life with her was totally chaotic. She left him alone in motel rooms at night and took him with her when she went house burgling. But Andrew's mother wasn't bad, she was just lost herself and one thing she did was always tell him she loved him. Gradually, though, the bad times got worse. One day Andrew, aged seven, found his mother in the bathroom in the middle of a breakdown, the walls covered in her pleas for help all written in the blood from the cuts she'd inflicted on herself. He was taken into care and put wit... View More...
The laugh-out-loud, reach-for-your-hanky story of one of Australia's best-loved comedians. Anh Do nearly didn't make it to Australia. His entire family came close to losing their lives on the sea as they escaped from war-torn Vietnam in an overcrowded boat. But nothing - not murderous pirates, nor the imminent threat of death by hunger, disease or dehydration as they drifted for days - could quench their desire to make a better life in the country they had dreamed about. Life in Australia was hard, an endless succession of back-breaking work, crowded rooms, ruthless landlords and make-do eve... View More...
The story of an urban-based high achieving Aboriginal woman working to break down stereotypes and build bridges between black and white Australia. I'm Aboriginal. I'm just not the Aboriginal person a lot of people want or expect me to be. What does it mean to be Aboriginal? Why is Australia so obsessed with notions of identity? Anita Heiss, successful author and passionate campaigner for Aboriginal literacy, was born a member of the Wiradjuri nation of central New South Wales, but was raised in the suburbs of Sydney and educated at the local Catholic school. She is Aboriginal - howeve... View More...
Arthur William Upfield is well known as the creator of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) who features in 29 crime detection novels, most set in the Australian outback. He also wrote more than 220 short stories and articles, based on his experiences in the bush between 1911 and 1931. Up and Down the Real Australia is the second published collection of Upfield's short works. Kees de Hoog has selected 45 autobiographical articles, ranging from humorous outback anecdotes to personal experiences at Gallipoli and the Somme during the First World War. Kees has added The Murchison Mu... View More...
Arthur William Upfield is well known as the creator of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) who features in 29 crime detection novels, most set in the Australian outback. He also wrote more than 220 short stories and articles, based on his experiences in the bush between 1911 and 1931. Up and Down the Real Australia is the second published collection of Upfield's short works. Kees de Hoog has selected 45 autobiographical articles, ranging from humorous outback anecdotes to personal experiences at Gallipoli and the Somme during the First World War. Kees has added The Murchison Mu... View More...
Arthur William Upfield is well known as the creator of Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte (Bony) who features in 29 crime detection novels, most set in the Australian outback. It is not well known that he also wrote about 250 short stories and articles, drawing on his experiences in the bush between 1911 and 1931. Up and Down the Real Australia is the second published collection of Upfield's short works. Kees de Hoog has selected 45 autobiographical articles, ranging from humorous outback anecdotes to personal experiences at Gallipoli and the Somme during the First World War. Kees ha... View More...
He was 42 and one of Australia's most successful criminal barristers. She was 14, a runaway with nowhere to go. She later learnt the barrister had paid her grandmother. She had been sold... So begins Barbara Biggs' inside account of the dark side of the permissive seventies. The episode is to haunt her for years. But it is only one part of an extraordinary family story told with black humour and unflinching honesty. At 13 she runs away from home for wayward girls. At 16 she admits herself to a psychiatric hospital. At 18 she escapes Cambodia as it falls to the Khmer Rouge. At 19 she is a pro... View More...
Nat Buchanan was the first European to cross the Barkly Tablelands from east to west and first to take a large herd of breeding cattle from Queensland to the Top End of the Northern Territory. Buchanan created a droving record when he supervised 20,000 head over this route. Critique: If he was an American they would build a Hall of Fame in his honour, but Australians haven't heard of him. At last, a fitting tribute to one of the truly great Australians. Ted Egan View More...
At the age of 18, Carla van Raay entered a convent to devote her life to God. By 35 she was earning her living as a prostitute. As a child, Carla van Raay experienced a trauma that changed her forever. Burdened by the weight of this terrible secret, all she wanted to do was survive. Life as a nun promised refuge from the outside world. Carla hoped to find love and understanding within the convent walls. Instead she became enmeshed in a complex system of regulations that drove her to the brink of madness. Finally released from her vows, she escaped back into the 'real' world. A hasty marriage a... View More...
A story of hope and perseverance from the Australian Woman Executive of the Year. "I came into the world, an illegitimate baby in an era of shame, conceived before the advent of the pill or abortion. Maybe it wasn't exactly what one would call a great start in the game of life, but I'm grateful that it made me a player. Since then, life has offered more success and joy than I ever dreamed about. It's there for all of us and I guess that's why I'm now happy to tell my story. But there was a time I wouldn't have told anyone at all." Catherine DeVrye was abandoned as a baby and adopted by loving ... View More...
At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America - from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington state - and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise - a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet. About ... View More...
As a child, Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his mother. The world knew nothing of his living nightmare and he had nothing and no one to turn to. But his dreams kept him alive, dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son. Finally, his horrific plight could no longer be hidden from the outside world and Dave's life radically changed. THE LOST BOY is the harrowing, but ultimately uplifting, true story of a boy's journey through the foster-care system in search of a family to love. The continuation of Dave Pelzer's story is a moving sequel and inspirat... View More...
"From the war torn valleys of Afghanistan to the frozen peaks of the Himalayas, David Wiseman's incredible story is an inspiration to us all." Andy McNab David Wiseman was the first soldier on the scene of one of the most devastating attacks on British soldiers in Afghanistan, witnessing the horrific aftermath of an attack on unsuspecting troops by a rogue element of the Afghan police, which left five men dead and nine wounded, shaking the British forces in Helmand to the core. Only a few weeks later, and haunted by what he had experienced, David was once again fighting shoulder to shoulder wi... View More...
My Mother's Spice Cupboard is the true story of the author's Sephardi Jewish family's migration from Baghdad to Bombay (now Mumbai) to Sydney. Unlike most other Australian Jews, her parents were born and grew up in Bombay, and her grandparents came from Iraq, Burma and India. Her father's family immigrated to Sydney, her mother's to Los Angeles, both in the 1960s. They married in Sydney and raised their family there, alongside the father's many brothers and sisters and members of their former Bombay community. Despite being Jewish, her upbringing was greatly influenced by the food, language an... View More...
It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the m... View More...
My life has been a mad travelling show, meeting some of the strangest and greatest people who've ever lived. I've had my fair share of trouble and I'm lucky to be here. But I've always been a showman and I've done my best to preserve a precious part of an old Australia that's fast disappearing.' Son of a sideshow operator and trapeze artist, fourth-generation showman Fred Brophy grew up on the road, travelling the length and breadth of Australia. He did time in jail as a wild teenager before establishing his own successful boxing tent. It has become a star attraction in the Outback and is no... View More...
Graham Chapman reveals what it was like to be part of the revolutionary and zany Monty Python teamRequired reading for Monty Python fans, this true and false memoir is Graham Chapman's own hilarious account of his life as a Python and as a homosexual. The book equals Joe Orton's famous Diaries in providing an unblushing account of a gay lifestyle linked to entertainment. Full of outrageous fictions and touching truths, in telling surreal and outrageous lies Graham Chapman often uncovers a truth about himself and colleagues. The stories Chapman relates--whether as mountaineer or medical student... View More...
A bind up of Hugh Lunn's two bestselling memoirs, Over the Top With Jim and Head Over Heels. One of the classic childhood memoirs complete with vividly painted characters, teachers, siblings, parents, the people who came to the Lunn family's bun shop and most of all the suspicious Russian kid with the funny name, Dmitri Egeroff (Jim), Hugh Lunn's Over the top With Jim is a laugh out loud account of a bygone Australian era. Successive generations have fallen for Hugh and Jim and their mates, as the strong sales of the book can attest. Now in a bind up with the follow up, Head Over Heels, which ... View More...
Saigon,1967. Fresh-faced 25-year-old Hugh Lunn arrives in Vietnam at the height of the war to cover it for Reuters and quickly meets a fascinating cast of characters: journalists, Vietnamese, military and best of all, Dinh, the Vietnamese reporter and guide who spoke his own brand of English (Dinglish) and whose wisdom and humour become inextricably bound up with the young reporter's view of the war. Before long the author experiences the full horror and tragedy of war, and finds himself questioning not only the US/Australian role in Vietnam, but his own role in a war where images and words co... View More...
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