It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob, who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed-toy collector. There was his father, a distant alcoholic, who ran through a gamut of wives, yachts and failed dreams. And there was Richard himself, a confused teenager, vulnerable to strange men, trying to find a family he could belong to. As he eventually accepted, the only way to make sense of the present was to go back to the past - but beware of what you might find there. Truth can leave wounds - even if they are only flesh wounds.Part poignant family memoir, part rollicking venture into a 1970s Australia, this is a book for anyone who's wondered if their family is the oddest one on the planet. The answer: 'No'. There is always something stranger out there.'Sad, funny, revealing, optimistic and hopeful.' Jeanette Winterson

    The other big event of that year was the outbreak of the Second World War, but for the moment, that did not affect me.' In the first instalment of Clive James's memoirs, we meet the young Clive, dressed in short trousers, and wrestling with the demands of school, various relatives and the occasional snake, in the suburbs of post-war Sydney.

    But they passed and passed and still the doorway remained empty of his deep voice, calling out her name. Blending the intimacy of memoir with an artist's vision, Toyo is the story of a remarkable woman, a vivid picture of Japan before and after war, and an unpredictable tale of courage and change in today's Australia. Born into the traditional world of pre-war Osaka, Toyo must always protect the secret of her parents' true relationship. Her father lives in China with his wife; her unmarried mother runs a caf . Toyo and her mother are beautiful and polite, keeping themselves in society's good graces. Then comes the rain of American bombs. Toyo's life is uprooted again and again. With each sharp change and painful loss, she becomes more herself and more aware of where she has come from. She finds family and belief, but still clings to her parents' secret. In Toyo, Lily Chan has pieced together the unconventional shape of her grandmother's story. Vibrant and ultimately heart-rending, Toyo is the chronicle of an extraordinary life, infused with a granddaughter's love.

    When I was twenty-seven years old, my dream came true. I'll never forget that night at the Sydney 2000 Games – as I crossed the finish line, it was as if the whole of Australia was cheering for me. Sometimes I still wonder how it happened. When I was growing up, I felt no different to anyone else. I loved having fun with my brothers, sleeping over at nanna's and going horse riding with my dad. But I especially loved to run. With the help of my family, coaches and teachers, I became the best female 400-metre runner in the world. I hope you enjoy my story, and that it inspires you to chase after your dreams too!

    But long before Cold Chisel and 'Barnesy', long before the tall tales of success and excess, there was the true story of James Dixon Swan - a working class boy whose family made the journey from Scotland to Australia in search of a better life.Working Class Boy is a powerful reflection on a traumatic and violent childhood, which fuelled the excess and recklessness that would define, but almost destroy, the rock'n'roll legend. This is the story of how James Swan became Jimmy Barnes. It is a memoir burning with the frustration and frenetic energy of teenage sex, drugs, violence and ambition for more than what you have.Raw, gritty, compassionate, surprising and darkly funny, Jimmy Barnes's childhood memoir is at once the story of migrant dreams fulfilled and dashed. After arriving in Australia in the summer of 1962, things went from bad to worse for the Swan family - Dot, Jim and their six kids. The scramble to manage in the tough northern suburbs of Adelaide in the 60s would take its toll on the Swans as dwindling money, too much alcohol and fraying tempers gave way to violence and despair. This is the story of a family's collapse, but also of a young boy's dream to escape the misery of the suburbs with a once-in-a-lifetime chance to join a rock'n'roll band and get out of town for good.

    Luminous. A book about being human.She I Dare Not Name is a compelling collection of fiercely intelligent, deeply intimate, lyrical reflections on the life of a woman who stands on the threshold between two millennia. Both manifesto and confession, this moving memoir explores the meaning and purpose Donna Ward discovered in a life lived entirely without a partner and children.The book describes what it is like to live on the edge of a world built in the shape of couples and families. Rippling through these pages is the way a spinster - or a bachelor, or any of us for that matter - contends with the prejudice and stigma of being different.With courage and astounding honesty Donna uncovers the challenge of living with more solitude than anticipated and what it is like to walk the road through midlife and beyond alone. And she reveals how she found home and discovered herself within it.Funny, sharp, wise and wry, She I Dare Not Name shows how reading saved this spinster's life, and how friends and writing and walking brought a contentment and sense of achievement she never thought possible.'With a devastatingly clear-eyed honesty, the word Ward dares to name is "spinster", and this meditative collection of essays spin their own spell, making a deep dive into the world of female solitude in all its guises. She lays it out like a calm tarot reading: feminism, courage, silence, loneliness, grief, recovery and the power of the generative idea, as well as all the labels that come with carving out your own path of self-definition and self-determination.' - Cate Kennedy, author of The World Beneath

    It never apologises. Sometimes it is a shadow, ever present, without regard for the sun. Sometimes it is a well of dark water with no bottom, or a levitation device to the stars.Madness, a memoir is an insight into what it's like to live with psychosis over a period of ten years, in which bouts of acute illness are interspersed with periods of sanity. The world is beautiful and terrifying and sometimes magical. The sanctity of life is at times precious and at times precarious and always fragile. It's a story of learning to manage illness with courage and creativity, of achieving balance and living well. It is for everyone now living within the world of madness, for everyone touched by this world, and for everyone seeking to further his or her understanding of it, whether you think of madness as a biological illness of the brain or an understandable part of the continuum of the human condition.

    In Running to Extremes, she attempts to answer that question and many more about ultramarathon running. In the past few years, Lisa has taken part in some of the most gruelling races on earth. Not content with having run the Badwater Ultramarathon once, she's been back and done it a second time. She's also completed the Gobi March and a race in the Egyptian Sahara. However, none of these could have prepared her for her greatest challenge to date: La Ultra, a 222-kilometre non-stop race over two Himalayan mountain passes. Running to Extremes tells the stories behind these races and provides plenty of advice for runners of all levels and distances. Filled with training tips, gear lists, information on nutrition and supplements, advice on mental preparation and, most importantly, a focus on how to keep yourself healthy while training and racing, it will inspire and motivate runners and non-runners alike.

    Memory invents unbidden.’The 1950s were not grey. In Jonathan Meades’s detailed, petit-point memoir they are luridly polychromatic. They were peopled by embittered grotesques, bogus majors, vicious spinsters, reckless bohos, pompous boors, suicides. Death went dogging everywhere. Salisbury, where he was brought up, had two industries: God and the Cold War, both of which provided a cast of adults for the child to scrutinise – desiccated God-botherers on the one hand, gung-ho chemical warriors on the other. The title is grossly inaccurate. This book is, rather, a portrait of a disappeared provincial England, a time and place unpeeled with gruesome relish.

    Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

    

    A few months later, the local Aboriginal people found the six-foot-five former soldier near death. Believing he was a lost kinsman returned from the dead, they took him in, and for thirty-two years Buckley lived as a Wadawurrung man, learning his adopted tribe's language, skills and methods to survive.The outside world finally caught up with Buckley in 1835, after John Batman, a bounty hunter from Van Diemen's Land, arrived in the area, seeking to acquire and control the perfect pastureland around the bay. What happened next saw the Wadawurrung betrayed and Buckley eventually broken. The theft of Kulin country would end in the birth of a city. The frontier wars had begun.By the bestselling author of The Ship That Never Was, The Ghost and the Bounty Hunter is a fascinating and poignant true story from Australian colonial history.

    But long before he put on the deputy's star, he grew up in Nigeria, where his experiences were equally unforgettable. In THE LAWDOG FILES: AFRICAN ADVENTURES, LawDog chronicles his encounters with everything from bush pilots, 15-foot pythons, pygmy mongooses, brigadier-captains, and Peace Corp hippies to the Nigerian space program. THE LAWDOG FILES: AFRICAN ADVENTURES are every bit as hilarious as the previous volume, as LawDog relates his unforgettable experiences in a laconic, self-deprecating manner that is funny in its own right. Africa wins again, and again, and again, but, so too does the reader in this sobering, but hilarious collection of true tales from the Dark Continent.

    This is incidental as it is about neither of those industries in particular. It is about the magic and wonderment of those days as seen through the eyes of a child – my eyes! It is about the days when imagination was the biggest plaything that we possessed. The days when a plastic football provided a whole summer's play. It is about the scrapes that I found myself in and the things that I observed around me, and how they made me feel. All the stories are true and I personally experienced every one of them. The names of the characters have been changed. The reason being that I have no idea of the whereabouts of many of the characters contained within my stories, so I have no way of asking them for their permission to include them in this book. Some have possibly passed away, and it would be unfair of me to mention them without their blessing. Anyone who knows me will know who they are though.

    With his friend Bevil Hogg, he founded the Trek Bicycle Corporation in 1976 and then went on to establish the company as one of the leading bicycle companies in the world. He was a man who called his son, John, his best friend. Indeed, they did many great things together: ran the Boston Marathon, followed the Tour de France throughout France, and later ran Trek together. In March 2008, he passed away after complications of heart surgery. The Big Guy touched people’s lives in countless ways, and his passing was deeply emotional for many. Now John (current president of Trek Bicycle) has written a powerful tribute to the incredible life his father led and the ways in which he was an inspiring businessman, leader, and person. Taking readers deep into the history of Trek, John shares how his father taught, trained, and instilled in him the confidence and desire to be a leader. A portrait of a great man, the book culminates with John telling his father on his deathbed of their twenty greatest moments together. This is an intimate portrayal of a father-son relationship filled with poignant experiences and lessons on how to get the most out of life. *** My father was an amazing man and he taught me many of life’s lessons. This book takes you through a great relationship between a father and a son. It takes you through the building of Trek Bicycle, and most importantly it tells the story of how my father and how our family dealt with his fight for life, and ultimately how my father and how our family dealt with his death. Death is a destination that we all share and yet there is so little written about it and so many people are unprepared to deal with it. My father amazed me throughout his life, but he saved his best act for last. The way he dealt with his death is a story that should be of some help to any family facing this most difficult time. —from the preface