There weren’t many. And too often there was a negative narrative around Indigenous lives, and Aboriginal women especially. Now an award-winning actor, she decided to change things herself. Combining her love of romantic comedies with her love of Darwin, the Tiwi Islands and the Top End, Miranda wrote, produced and starred in the box office hit Top End Wedding.In this engaging and thought-provoking memoir, Miranda shares the path she took to create a moving film about reconnection to family and culture. And, like all good storytellers, she holds a mirror up to the society we live in to show the prejudice that too often surfaces.MIRANDA TAPSELL was born in Darwin and her people are the Larrakia. She grew up in Kakadu National Park and began performing at the age of seven. At 16, she won the Bell Shakespeare Company regional performance scholarship. She has her own podcast on BuzzFeed, Pretty for an Aboriginal, with Nakkiah Lui, which rocks the traditional perceptions of Indigenous Australia and challenges rigid mindsets of what women of colour can and cannot do. Top End Girl is her literary debut.

    Like Helen Garner, she has a steady, careful eye, and uses it to bring back news of glorious, rackety life.’Susan JohnsonMe: ‘Are you going to be a good boy this year?’Boomer: ‘Uh huh. I have no interest in toilet humour.’Me: ‘You don’t?’Boomer: ‘No. No interest at all. I mean, I think “it’s funny”when, in The Bad Book, Terence takes off all his clothes.And when Horrid Henry shows his undies. But I wouldthink to myself, “That is something I should not do”.’Between juggling work, joint custody and the ordinary demands of motherhood, Jo tries to work out why her son Leo (aka Boomer) is finding it hard to fit in. His wit wins him friends, but the rituals of friendship—like learning to compromise—are proving challenging. Is it because he’s an only child? Could he be gifted?When Leo is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, Jo fears what it means—and sees herself, and her family, through new eyes. Trapped in a cycle of doubt and discovery, she wonders how you can stay true to who you are and fit in. What the hell is ‘normal’ anyway?This is the bittersweet story of a twenty-first-century family, and why being different isn’t a disability—it just takes some getting used to.

    Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong; and her best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. They bonded as they roamed the concrete landscape of Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, the destination of hundreds of thousands of Black folks who fled the ravages of the Jim Crow South. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in the 1970s, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. It has offered them a promise that they will have more opportunities, rights, and freedoms than any generation of Black Americans in history. But the girls have much more immediate concerns: hiding under the dining room table and eavesdropping on grown folks’ business; collecting secret treasures; and daydreaming about their futures. And then fate intervenes, sending them careening in wildly different directions. There’s heartbreak, loss, displacement, and even murder. Three Girls from Bronzeville is a memoir that chronicles Dawn’s attempt to find answers. It’s a celebration of sisterhood, a testimony to the unique struggles of Black women, and a tour-de-force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity, and how those forces shape our lives and our capacity for resilience and redemption.

    Every word and gesture made headlines and garnered controversy. Her serious gifts as an actor were sometimes eclipsed by her notoriety—and by the way the camera fell helplessly in love with her.Beyond the headlines—and the too-familiar stories of heartbreak and desolation—was a woman far more curious, searching, witty, and hopeful than the one the world got to know. Now, for the first time, readers can meet the private Marilyn and understand her in a way we never have before. Fragments is an unprecedented collection of written artifacts—notes to herself, letters, even poems—in Marilyn's own handwriting, never before published, along with rarely seen intimate photos.Jotted in notebooks, typed on paper, or written on hotel letterhead, these texts reveal a woman who loved deeply and strove to perfect her craft. They show a Marilyn Monroe unsparing in her analysis of her own life, but also playful, funny, and impossibly charming. The easy grace and deceptive lightness that made her performances indelible emerge on the page, as does the simmering tragedy that made her last appearances so affecting.

    This year, Angela surprises herself—she tells the truth....The Gillespies are far from the perfect family that Angela has made them out to be. Her husband is coping badly with retirement. Her thirty-two-year-old twins are having career meltdowns. Her third daughter, badly in debt, can’t stop crying. And her ten-year-old son spends more time talking to his imaginary friend than to real ones.Without Angela, the family would fall apart. But when a bump on the head leaves Angela with temporary amnesia, the Gillespies pull together—and pull themselves together—in wonderfully surprising ways....

    A political betrayal. A constitutional crisis. The Palace Letters is the groundbreaking result of one historian’s fight to expose secret letters between the Queen and the then Australian governor general, Sir John Kerr, during the dismissal of prime minister Gough Whitlam in the 1970s. Whitlam was a progressive prime minister whose reforms proved divisive after two decades of conservative leadership in Australia. When he could not get a budget approved, it sparked a political deadlock that culminated in his unexpected and deeply controversial dismissal by Kerr.More than 200 letters between Kerr and the Queen from the period exist in the archive, and historians have long believed that they could reveal the extent to which Buckingham Palace knew about or approved of the dismissal. But until now they have remained hidden in the National Archives of Australia, protected from public scrutiny through their designation as ‘personal’.In the face of this, Professor Jenny Hocking embarked on a 10-year campaign and a four-year legal battle to force the Archives to release the letters. In 2015, she secured a stellar pro bono team that took her case all the way to the High Court of Australia. On 29 May 2020, the court ruled in her favour, requiring the correspondence to be released.Now, Professor Hocking is able to reveal the previously hidden trove of letters. And, drawing on never-before-published material from Kerr’s archives and submissions to the court, Hocking traces the collusion and deception behind the dismissal, and charts the role of High Court judges, the Queen’s private secretary, and the leader of the opposition, Malcolm Fraser, in Kerr’s actions, and any prior involvement of the Queen and Prince Charles in Kerr’s planning.

    An 11-year-old boy witnesses a murder as he spies through the window of a strange house. God, whom he no longer counts as a friend, obviously has a pretty screwed-up sense of humour: just one year before, the boy had looked on helplessly as his twin brother, Tom, suffered a violent death. Now, having been seen by the angry murderer, he is a kid on the run. With only a shady grandfather, a professional standover man and an incongruous local couple as adult mentors, he takes refuge in the dark drains and grimy tunnels beneath the city, transforming himself into a series of superheroes and creating a rather unreliable map to plot out places where he is unlikely to cross paths with the bogeyman.

    It's also a roar against injustice, a rallying cry for sisterhood and a way to free ourselves from ludicrous expectations and imposed perfectionism.Kaz's own 30-year history of interest and experience in advice - from her newspaper etiquette column to best-selling books, including Up the Duff and the Girl Stuff series - and years of archives and research have culminated in a full-colour, exuberant shout of a book with hundreds of wacky and sobering historical photos of objects and instructions.You're Doing It Wrong examines what we're told to do (change shape, shoosh, do all the housework), and what we're not supposed to do (frown, have pockets, lead a country). It covers sex & romance, paid work, fashion & beauty, health advice, housework, and a motherlode of mad parenting instructions - from witchcraft to beauty pageants, with a side of aviatrixes. Put the kettle on and settle in.

    It will change the way you look at life.For a couple of weeks, Matthew Ames didn't feel well. The busy father of four young children knew things were not quite right but suddenly he was in Emergency, with a severe case of toxic shock syndrome – the common bacteria Strep A had entered his bloodstream and his body had gone into shutdown. He was put into an induced coma and the only way he could be kept alive was to have all his limbs amputated.Diane Ames knew exactly what her husband would want and that he would cope – he had always been optimistic and practical. Despite a one per cent chance of survival, she asked the doctors to go ahead with the radical operation. And so began the inspiring story of an ordinary family's courage and determination to make the most of a terrible situation.What happened to Matthew could happen to anyone. But not everyone would accept what life offers and pursue possibilities in the way that he does. Matthew has astounded doctors with his adaptation to a new way of living, so much so that he is about to become a bionic man. And he has never once questioned Diane's decision – it gave him the chance to truly understand how much family matters and to appreciate humanity.

    In writing that is inventive, bold, and generous, Axiomatic introduces an unforgettable voice.

    So when she hears about a job teaching four children on a massive cattle property in North Queensland, she decides to throw caution - and her teaching job - to the winds.When Lucy arrives at Charlotte's Creek Station she finds a family in crisis. To make matters worse, the four children she's been charged with educating are very spirited, not always cooperative, and dismally behind in their schooling.To Lucy, the only person who seems to be keeping Charlotte's Creek afloat is the family's gruff stockman, Ted. With his support and encouragement Lucy throws herself into the day-to-day activities of the station and makes excellent progress with the children.Though Lucy and Ted's feelings for each other grow, Ted can't see any future for them because of his lack of prospects. As the family divisions at Charlotte's Creek prove insurmountable and the property looks set to be put on the market, Lucy faces returning to the city and leaving Ted behind. . .By the betselling author of Redstone Station, this is the story of a strong young woman stepping into the unknown, trying to make things work, and finding love.

    So begins Yusef Salaam telling his story. No one's life is the sum of the worst things that happened to them, and during Yusef Salaam's seven years of wrongful incarceration as one of the Central Park Five, he grew from child to man, and gained a spiritual perspective on life. Yusef learned that we're all "born on purpose, with a purpose." Despite having confronted the racist heart of America while being "run over by the spiked wheels of injustice," Yusef channeled his energy and pain into something positive, not just for himself but for other marginalized people and communities.Better Not Bitter is the first time that one of the now Exonerated Five is telling his individual story, in his own words. Yusef writes his narrative: growing up Black in central Harlem in the '80s, being raised by a strong, fierce mother and grandmother, his years of incarceration, his reentry, and exoneration. Yusef connects these stories to lessons and principles he learned that gave him the power to survive through the worst of life's experiences. He inspires readers to accept their own path, to understand their own sense of purpose. With his intimate personal insights, Yusef unpacks the systems built and designed for profit and the oppression of Black and Brown people. He inspires readers to channel their fury into action, and through the spiritual, to turn that anger and trauma into a constructive force that lives alongside accountability and mobilizes change.This memoir is an inspiring story that grew out of one of the gravest miscarriages of justice, one that not only speaks to a moment in time or the rage-filled present, but reflects a 400-year history of a nation's inability to be held accountable for its sins. Yusef Salaam's message is vital for our times, a motivating resource for enacting change. Better, Not Bitter has the power to soothe, inspire and transform. It is a galvanizing call to action.

    hard to describe without superlatives... in a hundred years the book will still be a classic.' MeanjinDescription of book‘... far better than any novel; an incomparable record of a greart family and of a series of great actions.’ The BulletinWhen Patrick Durack left Western Ireland for Australia in 1853, he was to found a pioneering dynasty and build a cattle empire across the great stretches of Australia.With a profound sense of family history, his grand-daughter, Mary Durack reconstructed the Durack saga - a story of intrepid men and ground-breaking adventure.This sweeping tale of Australia and Australians remains a classic nearly fifty years on.

    Among them were the Mongols of the thirteenth century – a small tribe, which, under the charismatic leadership of Genghis Khan, created the largest contiguous land empire in history. Inspired by the extraordinary life nomads lead, Tim Cope embarked on a journey that hadn't been successfully completed since those times: to travel on horseback across the entire length of the Eurasian steppe, from Karakorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia, through Kazakhstan, Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine to the Danube River in Hungary.From horse-riding novice to spending months in the saddle, he learnt to fend off wolves and would-be horse-thieves, and grapple with the haunting extremes of the steppe as he crossed sub-zero plateaux, the scorching deserts of Kazakhstan and the high-mountain passes of the Carpathians. As he travelled he formed a close bond with his horses and especially his dog Tigon, and encountered essential hospitality – the linchpin of human survival on the steppe – from those he met along the way.Cope bears witness to how the traditional ways hang in the balance in the post-Soviet world – an era that has brought new-found freedom, but also the perils of corruption and alcoholism, and left a world bereft of both the Communist system upon which it once relied, and the traditional knowledge of the nomadic forefathers.A journey of adventure, endurance and eventual triumph, On the Trail of Genghis Khan is at once a celebration of and an elegy for an ancient way of life.

    Love, politics and other things you shouldn't talk about at dinnerCharlotte Gibson is a lawyer with a brilliant career ahead of her. As her father Ray says, she could be the next female Indigenous Waleed Aly. But she has other ideas. First of all, it's Christmas. Second of all, she's in love.The thing is, her fiance, Francis Smith, is not what her family expected - he's unemployed, he's an experimental composer ... and he's white! Bringing him and his conservative parents to meet her family on their ancestral land is a bold move. Will he stand up to the scrutiny? Or will this romance descend into farce?Love is never just black and white. It's complicated by class, politics, ambition, and too much wine over dinner. But for Charlotte and Francis, it's mostly complicated by family. Secrets are revealed, prejudices outed and old rivalries get sorted through. What can't be solved through diplomacy can surely be solved by a good old-fashioned dance-off. They're just that kind of family.