Biographies & True Stories

"[Daniel Pauly] is an iconoclastic fisheries scientist ... who is so decidedly global in his life and outlook that he is nearly a man without a country."-NEW YORK TIMES"Daniel Pauly is a friend whose work has inspired me for years."-TED DANSONDaniel...

'Exciting, funny, and occasionally heart-stopping...readers can stay home and dry, but feel like they are on the high seas.' BOOKLISTA man and his chicken sail 45,000 nautical miles in this powerful story of following your dreams no...

From the acclaimed author of In Praise of Paths comes a humorous and modest Walden for modern times.As nature becomes ever more precious, we all want to spend more time appreciating it. But time is often hard to come by. And how do we appreciate nature...

In this engrossing book, a father and son ascend a mountain together, retracing the steps of a boy who went missing there a century earlier - a quest that spawns a tender meditation on nature, family, and the joy of discovery.Six-year-old Hans Torske...

The first-ever biography of Mozhdah Jamalzadah: refugee, pop singer, and champion of women's rights.Many have tried to silence her, but Mozhdah Jamalzadah remains the most powerful female voice of her generation in Afghanistan, boldly speaking out about...

A powerful, intimate look at the life of a beloved folk icon and activist.Folk hero. Songwriter icon. Living legend. Buffy Sainte-Marie is all of these things and more. In this, Sainte-Marie's first and only authorized biography, music critic Andrea...

A definitive biography of an iconic Canadian architect-and a social portraitof the midcentury design world he lived in.Ron Thom came of age in the mid-20th century, just as the modern movement and an impending building boom were about to reshape the...

Forty influential and diverse Canadians with expertise in subjects such as Indigenous rights, climate change, social justice and race, gun control, higher education and poetry reflect on everything Canada is getting right-and what still needs to change...

Disability, death and divorce are part of a string of losses that leave this award-winning musician fundamentally changed as she learns to navigate her grief and find a way forward.Christa Couture lost a piece of herself-in more ways than one. She lost a...

Chasing Africa delicately explores the loss of identity, the gift of health and adventure, and the courage to put oneself first despite guilt, fear, and the pull of family.As a teenager, Lisa couldn't wait to escape suburbia and travel the world. Years...

An inspiring travel adventure memoir that explores a young woman's quest to live life on the front lines, chasing adventure, and confronting the harsh realities of crisis work in Asia and Africa.In 1975, a time of new freedom for women, Ella Harvey lived...

An inspiring true-life survival story set in the remote backcountry of the Canadian Rockies.In August 2017, 32-year-old Jeremy Evans endured multiple ferocious attacks by a protective female grizzly bear while hunting in the Alberta wilderness.Jeremy's...

Experience the quirky missteps, humorous adventures, and professional development of a renowned Canadian photographer in this entertaining memoir.Join Canadian photographer, explorer, Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, father, and writer...

This debut memoir is at once a captivating travelogue and an introspective look at what it takes to navigate the unfamiliar and find your way back home.Meghan J. Ward was 21 years old when she journeyed across the country for a summer job in the Canadian...

Through the pages of Casting Back Peter McMullan takes the reader from his youthful Irish beginnings in the 1940s to his time as a young journalist in Northern Ireland during the mid-1950s, through the 1960s and into today's western Canada and a totally...

Lucky Dog is a hilarious and heartwarming memoir by a renowned veterinary oncologist who tells us what we can learn about health care and ourselves from our most beloved pets.What happens when a veterinary surgical oncologist (laymen's term: cancer...

** Shortlisted, 2023 NSW Premier's History Awards, NSW Community & Regional History Prize ** For lovers of natural history, this is the first book to explore Allan Riverstone McCulloch's scientific genius, artistic talents and his crucial...

** Shortlisted, The Age Book of the Year Award 2023, Non-fiction **** Shortlisted, The Danger Awards 2023, Non-fiction **Nothing in the post-war decades reveals the underbelly of Australian life the way police records do.Small time heists. Failed...

What can a microbial gravesite on a moon teach us? Why is a group of scientists risking their lives to safeguard a seed bank? How does a virus detective story show us why we need to be vigilant about the next disease outbreak?Great science writing has...

'Genuine radicalism provides hope. It provokes through a scandalous insistence that life can be otherwise, that we aren't doomed to economic and environmental decline, and that we can make our future better than our past.'Why did politicians think an...

'I know it's a daring suggestion, but I'll make it anyway.'Charmian Clift was a writer ahead of her time. Lyrical and fearless, her essays seamlessly blended the personal and the political.In 1964, Charmian Clift and her husband George Johnston returned...

** Shortlisted, The Age Book of the Year Award 2023, Non-fiction **The trailblazing McDonagh sisters were the first women in Australia to form their own film production company. Between 1926 and 1933, while they were in their mid-twenties, these sassy...

** Winner, Victoria Premier's Literary Awards 2023, Non-fiction ** I have come to see that I am an argumentative person who is frequently convinced that my angle, my take, on a matter, is the right one. This kind of delusional self-belief is not rewarded...

'I am sir [sure] you will act as human bean', wrote one distressed pensioner to Prime Minister Robert Menzies in 1953, pleading for assistance.Robert Menzies received 22,000 letters during his record-breaking 1949-1966 second term as Australian Prime...

A compelling insight into the making of one of Australia's foremost public intellectuals.A classic of Australian literature, The Education of Young Donald Trilogy combines Donald Horne's three autobiographies The Education of Young Donald (1967),...

Age range 10+You don't need to be an adult to break news and change the world. You can start your career as a young reporter right now! Fun, informative and easy to use, Kid Reporter is packed with inspiring stories from young people who've already...

'To eat is to build upon our collective story. We use food to say, again and again, who we are.'Eating with My Mouth Openis food writing like you've never seen before: honest, bold, and exceptionally tasty. Sam van...

How do we find courage when climate change overwhelms us?In this magical, often funny and deeply moving personal story, award-winning science reporter Jonica Newby explores how to navigate the emotional turmoil of climate change.After researching what...

In Australia 38 000 people are reported missing each year and in the US it's over 600 000. In the UK someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. Many of these cases are never resolved.Blending long-form journalism with true crime and...

The untold story of a major Australian artist. Regarded in his day as an important Australian impressionist painter, A.H. Fullwood (18631930) was also the most widely viewed BritishAustralian artist of the Heidelberg era.Fullwood's illustrations...

Shortlisted for the 2020 Ernest Scott Prize for HistoryCaroline Kearney faced a heart-breaking dilemma.Caroline was a 31-year-old mother of six when her husbanddied in Melbourne in 1865. Having no legal rights herself to the sheep stationin Wimmera,...

Shortlisted, National Biography Award 2022Shortlisted, Margery Medal for Biography 2022Shortlisted, Chief Minister's NT Book Awards 2022Shortlisted, Queensland Literary Awards 2021, Nonfiction Book AwardAn original and riveting biography of two of the...

Smell the chlorine, taste the hot chips and feel theburning concrete underfoot as you read these stories of Australian childhoodsat the pool.Swimming is a central part of most Australian childhoods. Weidealise beaches and surf, but for many kids the...

Longlisted for the 2020 Mark & Evette Moran Nib Literary Award A soaring memoir of longing, resilience and delight in the natural world.In this extraordinary and unexpected book, Patti tells the story of her own long-distance walking over hundreds of...

'Ben Stubbs uncovers the sheer delight and surprise of discovering what's in your own backyard.' - Bob Byrne, author of Adelaide Remember When and Australia Remember WhenOutsiders thinkof South Australia as...

'I fellin love with my first misfit at the age of three. He was a disabled man in a wheelchairwho sold newspapers every afternoon outside the Empire Hotel in Annandale.Whenever I glimpsed him in the distance I would break into a run, jump onto hislap,...

Beatrice Davis, 1909-1992, was general editor at Angus and Robertson the main Australian publishing company from 1937 to 1973. There she discovered and published such writers as Thea Astley, Miles Franklin, Patricia Wrightson, Xavier Herbert and Hal...

Australia's official First World War correspondent, Charles Bean, saw more of theAustralian Imperial Force's actions and battleson the Western Front than anyone. Bean'sextensiveprivate wartime diaries, held by the Australian...

Head-aches. Dizziness. Can't sleep. Bad dreams (never have been released). The rice jungle had some compensation to some of us who just don't seem to make a success of our return - ROBERT, A RETURNED POWThis landmark and compelling book follows...

John Birmingham is a master of good writing and funny lines. He has written a thousand stories, some true, some not so much. These are the best ones and they're so good, and so funny, there has been no barrel-scraping involved. Really, this book...

The never-before-told story of World War II escape artist extraordinaire, Johnny Peck. In August 1941, an eighteen-year-old Australian soldier made his first prison break an audacious night-time escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp in Crete...

'I was written out of the family story. This book is my attempt to write myself, and my mother, back into it.' In this singular memoir, historian and biographer Jim Davidson writes about his fraught relationship with his authoritarian and controlling...

Chester Wilmot (19111954) was a renowned Australian war correspondent, broadcaster, journalist and writer. Covering the first triumphant North African battles of Bardia, Tobruk and Derna, the heartbreaking disaster of the Greek Campaign, the epic...

Not Just For This Life is a salute and tribute to Gough Whitlam, commemorating what would have been his 100th birthday. Upon his death in October 2014 there was a national outpouring of grief and affectionate remembrances across the nation. This book...

Matriarch of the criminal underworld ... or the Robin Hood of inner Sydney?The legend of Kate Leigh, Sydney's famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer, has loomed large in TV's Underbelly and every other account of Sydney's criminal history...

For many complaints and conditions, the benefits from surgery are lower, and the risks higher, than you or your surgeon think. In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated...

In this inspiring series of letters to his grandchildren, David Suzuki offers grandfatherly advice mixed with stories from his own remarkable life and explores what makes life meaningful. He challenges his grandchildren - and us - to do everything at...

Being a carer is not unlike being an interpreter. The task is to listen intently, to catch not only the words but the spirit of the message, and then to immediately pass that on. So too the carer, who is required to listen, to catch the spirit of what is...