Biography
The Shipwreck Hunter by David L. Mearns
David Mearns has found some of the world’s most fascinating and elusive shipwrecks. His deep-water searches have solved the 66-year mystery of HMAS Sydney, discovered the final resting place of the mighty battlecruiser HMS Hood and revealed the Australian Hospital Ship Centaur in the narrow underwater canyon that served as its grave. His painstaking historical detective work has led to the shallow reefs of a remote island that hid the crumbling wooden skeletons of Vasco de Gama’s 16th century fleet. This is the compelling story of Mearns’ life and work on the seas, focusing on some of his most intriguing discoveries. ($33, PB)
Miracles Do Happen by Fela & Felix Rosenbloom ($28, PB)
In 1933, a 10 year-old Jewish girl, Fela Perelman, befriended a new family that had moved into her street in Lodz, Poland. There were 3 children in the Rozenblum family—Rose, Felix & Maria. 5 years later, Fela & Felix became sweethearts. When war broke out the Jews of Lodz found themselves under German occupation & were soon forced into a ghetto. Fela eventually survived the ghetto, forced labour in Germany, and then the last 17 months of Auschwitz’s existence and the death march out of it. Meanwhile Felix fled eastward, to Soviet-controlled Polish territory where he spent the war doing forced labour in the Soviet Union. After the war, miraculously, Fela and Felix found each other, and this is their story.
Every Lie I’ve Ever Told by Rosie Waterland
‘I was doing brilliantly, and I had written the memoir to prove it. I even had online haters. I had conquered life at 30 and nothing was ever going to go wrong again!’ It was all going so well for Rosie Waterland. Until it wasn’t. Until, shockingly, something awful happened and Rosie went into agonising free fall. Until late one evening she found herself in a hospital emergency bed, trembling and hooked to a drip. Over the course of that long, painful night, she kept thinking about how ironic it was, that right in the middle of writing a book about lies, she’d ended up telling the most significant lie of all. A raw, beautiful, sad, shocking—and very, very funny—memoir of all the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves. ($30, PB)
True Crime
Mafia Life: Love, Death and Money at the Heart of Organised Crime by Federico Varese
Today, mafias operate across the globe, with hundreds of thousands of members and billions of pounds in revenue. From Hong Kong to New York, these vast organisations spread their tentacles into politics, finance and everyday life. But what is it like to belong to the Mafia? How do you join? What does it do to your loved ones? How do you make it to the top? And what happens if you break the rules? Criminologist Federico Varese draws on a lifetime’s research to give us access to some of the world’s most secretive societies. Mixing reportage with case studies and historical insights, this is the story of mafia as it really is: filled with boredom and drama, death and disaster, ambition and betrayal. ($30, PB)
City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, & the First Police Chief of Paris by Holly Tucker ($38.95, HB)
In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to the city of Paris after the brutal deaths of 2 magistrates. Reynie tackles the dirty & terrifying streets only to discover a tightly knit network of witches, poisoners & priests whose reach extends all the way to Versailles. As the chief investigates a growing number of deaths at court, he learns that no one is safe from their deadly love potions & ‘inheritance stews’. Based on court transcripts & Reynie’s compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker’s riveting true crime narrative follows the police chief into the dark labyrinths of crime-ridden Paris, the glorious halls of royal palaces, secret courtrooms & torture chambers in a tale of deception & murder that reads like fiction.
The Contractor by Mark Abernethy ($30, PB)
Meet Mike. He runs a building site, drives a ute, likes a beer, loves his nail-gun. But Mike is hiding in plain sight. When the Pentagon call him in as ‘Big Unit’, he’s another kind of contractor—one as handy with a Colt M4 as he is with a Skilsaw, a man as accustomed to danger, death & pain as he is to a hammer & nails. In six action-packed true stories we follow a man who left foreign intelligence for a life ‘on the tools’—but the good guys need a James Bond in Blundstones. They need The Contractor. Tradie. Spy. Big Unit. Follow him as he goes undercover to save a family trapped by an ISIS-run drug cartel in the seedy back streets of Northern Pakistan to terrorist-besieged Paris to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Australia’s most wanted murderer.
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Thirty Days: A Journey to the End of Love by Mark Raphael Baker ($33, PB)
This is the moving memoir of Mark Baker’s wife of 32 years, Kerryn Baker, who died ten months after her diagnosis, aged 55, from stomach cancer. It is also a study in how we construct our own version of the past, after Mark discovers a cache of Kerryn’s letters in the laundry cupboard & has to rethink their relationship. It is a book about memory & its uncertainties, as Mark sifts through photos & home movies, as his wife gets sicker, and his search for clues about their relationship grows more desperate. In her last days, Kerryn reveals her traumatic childhood to Mark for the first time—emerging as the rock of the family—cleareyed about her treatment, focused on finding the path to a peaceful death. Paradoxically, her dying brings the couple back to the intensity of their first love.
The Book of Emma Reyes: A Memoir in Letters
Emma Reyes was an illegitimate child, raised in a windowless room in Bogota with no water or toilet. Abandoned by their mother, she & her sister moved to a convent housing 150 orphan girls, where they washed pots, ironed & mended laundry, scrubbed floors, cleaned bathrooms, and sewed garments & decorative cloths for church. Illiterate & knowing nothing of the outside world, Reyes escaped at age 19, eventually coming to have a career as an artist & to befriend the likes of Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera. Comprised of letters written over the course of thirty years, her memoir describes in vivid, painterly detail the remarkable courage and limitless imagination of a young girl growing up with nothing. ($30, PB)
Now in B Format The Fall of the House of Wilde: Oscar Wilde and His Family by Emer O’Sullivan, $25 The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton, $25 Dashing for the Post: The Letters of Patrick Leigh Fermor, $23 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis by J. D. Vance, $25 In The Darkroom by Susan Faludi, $25 Balcony Over Jerusalem: A Middle East Memoir by John Lyons ($35, PB)
Drawing on a 20-year interest in the Middle East, Australian journalist John Lyons has had extraordinary access—he’s interviewed everyone from Israel’s former Prime Ministers Shimon Peres & Ehud Olmert to key figures from Hezbollah & Hamas. He’s witnessed the brutal Iranian Revolutionary Guard up close & was one of the last foreign journalists in Iran during the violent crackdown against the ‘Green Revolution’. He’s confronted Hamas officials about why they fire rockets into Israel & Israeli soldiers about why they fire tear gas at Palestinian school children. From the sheer excitement of arriving in Jerusalem with his wife & 8 year-old son, to the fall of dictators & his gripping account of what it feels like to be taken by Egyptian soldiers, blindfolded & interrogated, this is a memoir of the Middle East like no other.
Last King of the Cross by John Ibrahim ($35, PB) In the mongrel tongue of the streets, John writes of fleeing war-torn Tripoli with his family & growing up in Sydney’s rough & tumble west—before establishing himself as a tough guy & teen delinquent, then a bouncer, enforcer & nightclub king on the Golden Mile. In a city of shadows, John builds his army & empire—partying like a playboy prince of darkness while staying one step ahead of the cops, the outlaw gangs & hungry triggermen, plotting to take him & his family down. Last King of the Cross is a colourful crime saga like no other and powerful proof that truth is always stranger than fiction. A Führer for a Father by Jim Davidson ($30, PB)
In this singular memoir, historian & biographer Jim Davidson writes about his fraught relationship with his authoritarian & controlling father, whose South African background & time in PNG & Fiji prompted his own post-war mini-empire of dominance. A manipulative & emotionally ferocious man, he rejects his son & creates a second family, shutting Jim out & eventually disinheriting him, but never really leaving him alone. Traversing territory across Australia, South Africa, India & London, this beautifully written book tells of a time of crushing conformity, sharply reminding us that some experiences can never be written out of our personal histories.
Charles Bean: Man, myth, legacy by Peter Stanley
Australia’s official war correspondent during WWI, Charles Bean was also Australia’s first official war historian & the driving force behind the creation of the Australian War Memorial. Bean was also a public servant, institutional leader, author, activist, thinker, doer, philosopher, and polemicist. In this book Australia’s top military historians— including Peter Stanley, Peter Burness, Michael McKernan, Jeffrey Grey, Peter Edwards, David Horner, Peter Rees & Craig Stockings— analyse the man, the myth, and his long-reaching legacy. ($40, PB)