The Erratics by Vicki Laveau-Harvie

$23.00 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

Stella Prize 2019 Dark, sharp, blackly funny and powerful, this is memoir, wielded as weapon. Telling the story of a splintered family, a mother who is unlike any other, and her daughters who have no choice but to come to the rescue, The Erratics has the tightly compressed energy of an explosive device. This is quite simply an outstanding piece of writing. We've been disowned and disinherited: there's not changing it, I say. When something bad happens to them, we'll know soon enough and we'll deal with it together. I don't realise it at the time, but when I say that, I imply I care. I imply there may be something to be salvaged. I misspeak. But I'm flying out anyway. Blood calls to blood; what can I tell you. This is a memoir about a dysfunctional family, about a mother and her daughters. But make no mistake. This is like no mother-daughter relationship you know. When Vicki Laveau-Harvie's elderly mother is hospitalised unexpectedly, Vicki and her sister travel to their parents' isolated ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, Vicki and her sister are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. For years, Vicki's mother has camouflaged her manic delusions and savage unpredictability, and over the decades she has managed to shut herself and her husband away from the outside world, systematically starving him and making him a virtual prisoner in his own home. Vicki and her sister have a lot to do, in very little time, to save their father. And at every step they have to contend with their mother, whose favourite phrase during their childhood was: 'I'll get you and you won't even know I'm doing it.' A ferocious, sharp, darkly funny and wholly compelling memoir of families, the pain they can inflict and the legacy they leave, The Erratics has the tightly coiled, compressed energy of an explosive device - it will take your breath away. Winner of the Finch Memoir Prize in 2018, and Winner of the Stella Awards in 2019. ...Show more

Man's Search For Meaning: The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust by Viktor E. Frankl

$19.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in Auschwitz coped (or didn't) with the experience. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. The sort of person the concentration camp prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of camp influences alone. Frankl came to believe man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. This outstanding work offers us all a way to transcend suffering and find significance in the art of living. ...Show more

The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory by Corey White

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir | Reading Level: 3 Biography

Praise for Corey White's stand-up- 'Captivating' Tom Gleeson 'It's a spiritually enriching show. Whitey has safer hands than Gilchrist circa 2003 ... Strap in for this one, it's a harrowing little number that leaves you in a good mood, quite a feat.' Herald Sun 'Corey White runs the full gamut of human existence in a well planned, carefully executed show with a consistent voice and thoughtful jokes that, at times, had me crying with laughter.' Crikey 'A ferocious talent. Pay attention.' The Age 'Wonderful ... It's a rare stand-up show that you emerge from feeling like a better person, and that you want other people to see so that they can be better people too. I can't give any higher praise than that.' The Guardian 'He seems like an everyman you could happily have a beer with ... A winner straight out of the gate, a show with depth and insight.' Courier-Mail ...Show more

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

$19.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir | Reading Level: good

'Educated is a remarkable memoir of a young woman raised in a survivalist family in Idaho who strives for education while still showing great understanding and love for the world she leaves behind.' - BARACK OBAMA ________________________ Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. She spent her summers bottling peaches and her winters rotating emergency supplies, hoping that when the World of Men failed, her family would continue on, unaffected. She hadn't been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she'd never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn't believe in doctors or hospitals. According to the state and federal government, she didn't exist. As she grew older, her father became more radical, and her brother, more violent. At sixteen Tara decided to educate herself. Her struggle for knowledge would take her far from her Idaho mountains, over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd travelled too far. If there was still a way home. EDUCATED is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes with the severing of the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, from her singular experience Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it. ________________________ · Shortlisted for the 2018 BAMB Readers' Awards · Recommended as a summer read by Antony Beevor, India Knight, Blake Morrison and Nina Stibbe 'A memoir to stand alongside classics by the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Lorna Sage ... a compelling and ultimately joyous account of self-determination' - Sunday Times ...Show more

Colourful Life by Sharon Bech

$25.00 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family (HB) by Mitch Albom

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

Bestselling author Mitch Albom returns to nonfiction for the first time in more than a decade in this poignant memoir that celebrates Chika, a young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the forty-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika's arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, "No one in Haiti can help you with." Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika's boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost. Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed--a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made. ...Show more

Ten Feet Tall and Not Quite Bulletproof by Cameron Hardiman

$32.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

Cameron Hardiman lived a life most young boys could only dream of. Every morning he put on a navy blue police flight suit, grabbed his flight helmet, and prepared to work on the police helicopter. He could be called to anything during a shift, to search for a missing child, to pull an injured driver fro m a wrecked car, or a dangerous sea rescue. He saw his fair share of trauma and dealt with it like most coppers would: he quickly put each dangerous job out of his mind as soon as it was over. But one particular rescue job in Bass Strait brought about a reckoning - and Cameron was never the same again. This is the brilliantly told, white-knuckle story of one cop learning every lesson the hard way - and coming to find out that being not quite bulletproof doesn't mean that you're not a good cop. ...Show more

ICE

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

Travel Light, Move Fast by Alexandra Fuller

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

From bestselling author Alexandra Fuller, the utterly original story of her father, Tim Fuller, and a deeply felt tribute to a life well lived Six months before he died in Budapest, Tim Fuller turned to his daughter: "Let me tell you the secret to life right now, in case I suddenly give up the ghost." Then he lit his pipe and stroked his dog Harry's head. Harry put his paw on Dad's lap and they sat there, the two of them, one man and his dog, keepers to the secret of life. "Well?" she said. "Nothing comes to mind, quite honestly, Bobo," he said, with some surprise. "Now that I think about it, maybe there isn't a secret to life. It's just what it is, right under your nose. What do you think, Harry?" Harry gave Dad a look of utter agreement. He was a very superior dog. "Well, there you have it," Dad said.   After her father's sudden death, Alexandra Fuller realizes that if she is going to weather his loss, she will need to become the parts of him she misses most. So begins Travel Light, Move Fast, the unforgettable story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled black sheep who moved to Africa to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia. A man who preferred chaos to predictability, to revel in promise rather than wallow in regret, and who was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting lost, he taught his daughters to live as if everything needed to happen all together, all at once--or not at all. Now, in the wake of his death, Fuller internalizes his lessons with clear eyes and celebrates a man who swallowed life whole.   A master of time and memory, Fuller moves seamlessly between the days and months following her father's death, as she and her mother return to his farm with his ashes and contend with his overwhelming absence, and her childhood spent running after him in southern and central Africa. Writing with reverent irreverence of the rollicking grand misadventures of her mother and father, bursting with pandemonium and tragedy, Fuller takes their insatiable appetite for life to heart. Here, in Fuller's Africa, is a story of joy, resilience, and vitality, from one of our finest writers. ...Show more

Jack Charles: Born-again Blakfella by Jack Charles

$34.99 AUD

Category: Biography | Reading Level: 3 Biography

Stolen from his mother and placed into institutional care when he was only a few months old, Uncle Jack was raised under the government's White Australia Policy. The loneliness and isolation he experienced during those years had a devastating impact on him that endured long after he reconnected with his Aboriginal roots and discovered his stolen identity. Even today he feels like an outsider; a loner; a fringe dweller. In this honest and no-holds-barred memoir, Uncle Jack reveals the 'ups and downs of this crazy, drugged up, locked up, fucked up, and at times unbelievable, life'. From his sideline as a cat burglar, battles with drug addiction and stints in prison, to gracing the nation's stages and screens as he dazzled audiences with his big personality and acting prowess, he takes us through the most formative moments of his life. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Jack Charles- A Born-again Blakfella is a candid and uplifting memoir from one of Australia's finest and most beloved actors. ...Show more

Spinoza's Overcoat - Travels with Writers and Poets by Subhash Jaireth

$29.99 AUD

Category: Biography and Memoir

'It starts to rain as I step out of my hotel ....' So begins Subhash Jaireth's striking collection of essays on the writers, and their writing, that have enriched his own life. The works of Franz Kafka, Marina Tsvetaeva, Mikhail Bulgakov, Paul Celan, Hiromi Ito, Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza and othe rs ignite in him the urge to travel (both physically and in spirit), almost like a pilgrim, to the places where such writers were born or died or wrote. In each essay a new emotional plane is reached revealing enticing connections. As a novelist, poet, essayist and translator born into a multilingual environment, Jaireth truly understands the power of words across languages and their integral connections to life of the body and the spirit. Drawing on years of research, translation and travel Spinoza's Overcoat - and its illuminations of loss, mortality and the reverie of writing - will linger with readers. 'Eloquent and original, Jaireth's meditations on the lives-of-poets are full of astonishing details, tender connections and the magnificent melancholy of devotion to words. Encompassing matters of translation, love, mortality and homage, this is a rare model of what might be called "literary philosophy" and an utter joy and surprise for anyone interested in the reading and writing life ?' GAIL JONES, author of The Death of Noah Glass ...Show more

In Her Footsteps: Where Trailblazing Women Changed the World

$34.99 AUD

Category: Non Fiction

Discover the lives and locations of trailblazing women who changed the course of history as you journey to the heart of women's activism, history and creativity through the ages. From the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Egypt and Empress Dowager Cixi's summer palace in Beijing, to the homes and meeting s ites of suffragette heroes Sylvia Pankhurst and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the creative workrooms of Frida Kahlo and Virginia Woolf, and the tennis courts where the Williams sisters first learned to play - we showcase female pioneers whose lives and actions continue to inspire today. In Her Footsteps is not only a celebration of incredible women, but a travel guide to the places where they studied, lived, worked, reigned and explored. We'll tell you where to find the secret feminist history of sites around the world. Activists include: Emily Wilding Davison, Epsom Downs, UK Rosa Luxembourg, Berlin, Germany Jane Goodall, Gombe, Tanzania Greta Thunberg, Stockholm, Sweden Manuela Sáenz, Quito, Ecuador Rosa Parks, Alabama, USA Icons include: Michelle Obama, Chicago, USA Catherine the Great, Moscow, Russia Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Jamaica Catherine de' Medici, Chenonceaux, France Empress Dowager Cixi, Beijing, China Artists include: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Utopia, Australia Jane Austen, Chatsworth, UK Zaha Hadid, Baku, Azerbaijan Nadine Gordimer, Johannesburg, South Africa Patti Smith, New York City, USA Trailblazers include: Jacinda Arden, Wellington, New Zealand Marie Curie, Warsaw, Poland Cornelia Sorabji, Pune, India Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner, Everest, Nepal Beryl Markham, Rift Valley, Kenya ...Show more