The Suicide Bride: A mystery of tragedy and family secrets in Edwardian Sydney


Tanya Bretherton - 2019
    He also left behind mysteries that might never be solved. Sociologist Dr Tanya Bretherton traces the brutal story of Ellie, one of many suicide brides in turn-of-the-century Sydney; of her husband, Alicks, and his family; and their three orphaned sons, adrift in the world.From the author of the acclaimed THE SUITCASE BABY - shortlisted for the 2018 Ned Kelly Award, Danger Prize and Waverley Library 'Nib' Award - comes another riveting true-crime case from Australia's dark past. THE SUICIDE BRIDE is a masterful exploration of criminality, insanity, violence and bloody family ties in bleak, post-Victorian Sydney. **Includes an extract from THE SUITCASE BABY**

Rock Monster: My Life with Joe Walsh


Kristin Casey - 2018
    At once envious, glamorous, debauched and disturbing, it’s her long and winding journey from life in the fast lane to sobriety and redemption.Set in the late-eighties and nineties, these are some of Walsh’s darkest years, from spiraling addiction to a stunning comeback with the Eagles’ Hell Freezes Over tour. Loaded with true stories never before heard, Rock Monster is essential reading for classic rock fans and anyone touched by addiction. Kristin Casey pulls no punches, sharing gritty details with self-awareness, humor, and affection. Sharply written, bold and incisive, it’s the worldly-wise tome only an ex-addict, ex-stripper, and ex-rock-chick could give us.In the tradition of women-in-rock survivor tales—by Marianne Faithful, Crystal Zevon, or Mackenzie Phillips—Kristin Casey pulls a veil on the enduring myth of the lifestyle’s glamorous decadence. Rock Monster is a sexy, crazy, cautionary tale of two addicts in love without a single relationship skill.

The Grove of Eagles


Winston Graham - 1963
    Men like John Killigrew, commanding a key position on the Cornish coast, were vital to the survival of the country, and it is through the eyes of his eldest son, Maugan, that the story unfolds. Rich in action, it is also crowded with unforgettable characters, many of them based on actual historical figures. Maugan Killigrew himself emerges, through his loneliness and his love, his physical suffering in a Spanish gaol, as a touchingly honest and believable character who is, above all things, a man of his time.

The Four Horsemen


Ben Sussman - 2010
    They are the harbingers of the Apocalypse. And only one woman stands between them and us.THE FOUR HORSEMEN is a race-against-the-clock thriller starring Andie Sullivan, who must battle a shadowy government force and ruthless terrorist vying for the treasure's unfathomable power before time runs out.

Breath and Bones


Susann Cokal - 2005
    sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand perfectly still without shivering, Famke is the ideal artist’s model.When Albert takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse.Following Mirabilis, her highly acclaimed debut, Susann Cokal blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electrical stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops across the American west.

Mamma's Boarding House


John D. Fitzgerald - 1958
    A scarce Fitzgerald title.

Flashman and the Seawolf


Robert Brightwell - 2012
    This first book covers his adventures with Thomas Cochrane, one of the most extraordinary naval commanders of all time. From the brothels and gambling dens of London, through political intrigues and espionage, the action moves to the Mediterranean and the real life character of Thomas Cochrane. This book covers the start of Cochrane's career including the most astounding single ship action of the Napoleonic war. Thomas Flashman provides a unique insight as danger stalks him like a persistant baillif through a series of adventures that prove history really is stranger than fiction.

Gold Rush


Michael Johnson - 2011
    They're made.'Michael JohnsonFrom a living icon of the Olympic Games – as both an athlete and now as a BBC broadcaster – Gold Rush is a compelling analysis of the fascinating combination of psychological and personal qualities, as well as internal and external factors, that go to create an Olympic champion.This exciting new book is based on Michael Johnson's own experiences as an iconic four-time Olympic champion, and on the knowledge he has gleaned as a top-class coach and motivational speaker. It also features, uniquely, more than a dozen exclusive and insightful interviews with Olympic legends from across several different sports who between them have claimed more than 50 gold medals over the past 30 years.In essence, Johnson has assembled his very own Olympic Hall of Fame in assessing the DNA of true champions.Gold Rush is themed around chapters in which Johnson will discuss each of the key qualities/factors. He expertly feeds in fascinating first-person testimonies from the Olympic legends. In the process he builds up a definitive knowledge bank of expertise and experience from athletes who have been on this fascinating journey, encountered the highs and the lows, but ultimately reached the summit - an Olympic gold medal.Johnson's interviewees include: Usain Bolt, Carl Lewis, Sally Gunnell, Seb Coe, Daley Thompson, Cathy Freeman, Ian Thorpe, Michael Phelps, Rebecca Adlington, Chris Hoy, Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent, Lennox Lewis and Michael Jordan.

Child of the Forest: Based on the Life Story of Charlene Perlmutter Schiff


Jack L. Grossman - 2018
    Alone, starving, freezing at times, and running and hiding for her life, Musia sought refuge in the forest for two years while Holocaust death camps loomed nearby. Child of the Forest is based on the true story and tribulations of Shulamit "Musia" Perlmutter, born in 1929 to Simcha and Fruma Perlmutter, and stands as a memorial to her extraordinary courage.

Bad Boy: The Life And Politics Of Lee Atwater


John Joseph Brady - 1996
    He helped to create a solid Republican south. And he became notorious for turning national politics back into a blood sport, not only using nasty attacks but reveling in his image as the bad boy of Washington. Then, at the age of 39, Atwater was struck by a brain tumor. In thirteen months, cancer ended the most controversial career in modern politics—the charismatic, colorful, and contradictory life of Lee Atwater.Even today Atwater is a fallen leader Republicans love and a rival Democrats love to hate. He was the first political handler as mediagenic as his candidates—certainly the first chairman of the Republican National Committee to record a blues album. His campaigns represent the high-water mark of the GOPs postwar dominance of the presidency, and his techniques set the tone for races across the country. Watching Washington since his death, politicians and pundits still wonder, What if Lee Atwater had lived? Bad Boy reveals how Lee Atwater began his career controlling crowds as jittery class clown, traumatized by the agonizing death of his little brother. In college he discovered the subtle intercourse of policy and public opinion and grew from party animal to party man. Bad Boy details Atwater's political strategies from the grass roots to the national level. Even more ruthless were the behind-the-scenes power games as he crossed paths, and occasionally crossed swords, with nearly every major Republican of the 1980s: Reagan, Bush, Baker, Ailes, Rollins, and many more.In Bad Boy, we also see the faces Atwater tried to spin away. He was a compulsive womanizer, climbing through windows to avoid reporters. He played radical politics but promoted ”big tent” Republicanism. Even his last public moment is controversial. Did Atwater's deathbed words really repudiate entire campaigns, or were they twisted by political enemies and second-hand reporting? Was his repentance sincere or simply one last gasp of press manipulation? Was he responsible for the infamous Willie Horton ads, or was he unfairly blamed by 1988s losers, trying for a moral victory? Is Lee Atwater, a master of spin, now being spun in his grave?In its sudden end, Atwater's remarkable life resembled the rise and fall of a fine political novel. With the probing insights of an expert interviewer and a rare stylistic verve, John Brady tells that whole frantic, fascinating story—the life of the baddest boy in D.C.

Almayer's Folly


Joseph Conrad - 1892
    Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, it tells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of riches for his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of his own greed and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer writes in her Introduction, “Conrad’s writing is lifelong questioning . . . What was ‘Almayer’s Folly’? The pretentious house never lived in? His obsession with gold? His obsessive love for his daughter, whose progenitors, the Malay race, he despised? All three?” Conrad established in Almayer’s Folly the themes of betrayal, isolation, and colonialism that he would explore throughout the rest of his life and work.

Kalimantaan


C.S. Godshalk - 1998
    The world he created eventually took in a territory the size of England, its expansion campaigns paid for in human heads. Here, polite Victorian conventions coexisted tenuously with one of the most violent cultures on earth, often with startling results: pockets of tenderness and extreme brutality appearing where least expected.Into this world flowed a small tribe of adventurers, fugitives, criminals, and saints-- the madly talented and simply mad. And the women followed: wives and would-be wives, spinster nursemaids and heartless schemers, the rigidly virtuous and the virtually desperate. And always, the children, innocents too often the victims of an elemental nature both lush and deadly.Kalimantaan is the story of this world, these people. But the deeper story resides in the realm of the heart. It is about love in absurd conditions, the tenacity of it as well as our ability to miss it repeatedly and with perverse genius.

Forever Different: A Memoir of One Woman's Journey Living with Bipolar Disorder


Christine F. Anderson - 2013
    The denial of her diagnosis and the eventual acceptance of her medication and disease. She takes us from her innocence as a child to her adult criminal lifestyle, which led to a subsequent 70 month federal prison sentence for Securities Fraud. A tale so unbelievable and elements so disturbing, you would swear you were reading fiction.

Youth in Flames: A Teenager's Resistance and Her Fight for Survival in the Warsaw Ghetto


Aliza Vitis-Shomron - 2015
    In September 1939, when the Nazis began their reign of terror in Europe and invaded Poland, Aliza was eleven years old. In her diaries—furtively written on scraps of precious paper that she kept throughout the war—she described the history of her family, struggling to survive in the occupied Warsaw Ghetto. Those diaries and later writings formed the basis for this memoir. Becoming a member of Hashomer Hatzair, the noted youth movement in the Warsaw Ghetto, gave Aliza hope and encouraged her to fight for survival. As a result of an extraordinary series of “miracles,” Aliza managed to survive after being sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She was among those liberated by American troops, and she has continued to tell the story throughout her life. Aliza is among the last of the Warsaw Ghetto survivors. She has been passionately lecturing around the world about the revolt, and she has escorted numerous youth groups on their visits to Poland. This book has been previously translated and published in Hungarian, Polish, and Hebrew.

Dash for Dunkirk


Denis Caron - 2017
     May 1940: Royal Air Force pilot Harry Fitzgerald is one of millions of heroic Allied troops fighting against Nazi Germany. In the pitched heat of battle over the skies of Northern France, Fitzgerald is shot down by an enemy plane and captured. Miraculously, he escapes certain death but must make his way back to the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk to get back home. However, Fitzgerald is in the middle of a warzone. At a chateau turned hospital, he encounters two of his wounded comrades. Too sick to reach Dunkirk by themselves, they helplessly lie in wait as the German army advances. Fitzgerald knows he must save them, and with the assistance of the French nurse Solange, the refugees attempt to reach Dunkirk-before the Nazis can reach them. It’s a life-or-death mission through dangerous territory where nothing is guaranteed. In Dash for Dunkirk, authors Denis Caron and Fran Connor explore a world where loyalty and bravery face off against an unforgiving enemy. Bound together by duty and honor, war heroes push themselves to the limit through refugee-crowded streets, mechanical setbacks and enemy attacks. Will they reach safe harbor, or will the ultimate evil finally prevail? Praise for Dash for Dunkirk > "A wildly entertaining, action packed story not only about the reality of war, but also of loyalty, friendship, and romance. A must read! - Jordan Ebare, Avid Reader & Historical Fiction Enthusiast