Salvation Creek


Susan Duncan - 2006
    Editor of two top-selling women's magazines, a happy marriage, a jetsetting lifestyle covering stories from New York to Greenland, the world was her oyster. But when her beloved husband and brother die within three days of each other, her glittering life shatters. In shock, she zips on her work face, climbs back into her high heels and soldiers on - until one morning eighteen months later, when she simply can't get out of bed. Heartbreaking, funny and searingly honest, Salvation Creek is the story of a woman who found the courage not only to begin again but to beat the odds in her own battle for survival and find a new life - and love - in a tiny waterside idyll cut off from the outside world.Combining all the sweeping, rollercoaster style of a bestselling novel with the very best - and most inspiring - human interest story, Salvation Creek is a tour-de-force that will stay with the reader long after she has turned the last page.

Power Play: Breaking Through Bias, Barriers & Boys Clubs


Julia Banks - 2021
    Julia doesn't just know what power looks like in a political sense; she made it to the top of her game in the legal and corporate sectors before running for parliament. And at every level, she had to navigate through the barriers and bias that can block, delay or deter women from attaining leadership roles.This incredibly honest book reveals the unvarnished realities of what the path to leadership looks like, and shows why it's so important to have women in decision-making positions. Julia provides practical takeaways to overcoming and dismantling the gender politics that permeate any field: the unequal opportunities, sexism and workplace misconduct, the pressures around looks, age and family responsibilities, the difficulties in speaking out, and the systems that allow double standards to continue. For anyone who is aspiring to a leadership role, Power Play will help you to navigate there. And for anyone who believes that women's voices need to be heard equally, it will inspire you to fight until that is our reality.

Breaking Badly


Georgie Dent - 2019
    After graduating with top marks she had landed her dream job at a prestigious Sydney law firm and moved in with a boyfriend she adored. She had the world at her feet and no right to break. But she did. Badly.Within a year Georgie was unemployed, back living with her parents and suffering such crippling anxiety that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Breaking Badly is the story of a nervous breakdown in slow motion – a life that fell apart and what it took to put it back together again. Brutally honest and warmly engaging, it’s a must-read for anyone who sometimes feels close to the edge.‘Funny, shocking, beautifully written … a fascinating account of one woman’s hand-to-hand combat with her own mind.’ Annabel Crabb‘A magnificent writer … Read this if you have ever suffered from anxiety, from mental illness, from perfectionism or from feeling inadequate.’ Lana Hirschowitz

Muddy People: A Memoir


Sara El Sayed - 2021
    No bikinis, despite the Queensland heat. No boys, unless he's Muslim. And no life insurance, not even when her father gets cancer.Soos is trying to balance her parents' strict decrees with having friendships, crushes and the freedom to develop her own values. With each rule Soos comes up against, she is forced to choose between doing what her parents say is right and following her instincts. When her family falls apart, she comes to see her parents as flawed, their morals based on a muddy logic. But she will also learn that they are her strongest defenders.

The Empathy Exams


Leslie Jamison - 2014
    She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory—from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration—in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.

How to Grow Up: A Memoir


Michelle Tea - 2015
    She writes about passion, about her fraught relationship with money, about adoring Barney’s while shopping at thrift stores, about breakups and the fertile ground between relationships, about roommates and rent, and about being superstitious (“why not, it imbues this harsh world of ours with a bit of magic.”)  At once heartwarming and darkly comic, How to Grow Up proves that the road less traveled may be a difficult one, but if you embrace life’s uncertainty and dust yourself off after every screw up, slowly but surely you just might make it to adulthood.

You've Got to Be Kidding: A shed load of wine & a farm full of goats


Todd Alexander - 2021
    Well 60,000 hours since Todd and Jeff's tree change, they should have nailed country life, right? Sure, they've made great wine, built stunning villas and even learnt how to look after rescued farm animals - but how does anyone plan for the fury of Mother Nature?Bushfires, drought, sick animals, failed crops, snakes, broken machinery, insurmountable debts, the unstoppable breeding of peafowl ...Just when they think they're on top of things, they find another hurdle in their way. Despite fierce determination, a willingness to evolve and irrepressible humour, these boys find themselves down for the count. But they aren't ready to throw in the towel just yet ... are they?PRAISE FOR Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga'Never before have I felt the responsibility for someone's tree change ... Todd and Jeff's ups and downs made me laugh out loud, and verjuice schmerjuice says it all' Maggie Beer'This joyously honest account will make you laugh till it hurts, and you'll shed more than a few tears . . . it's The Birdcage meets A Country Practice' Bradley Trevor Greive AM, internationally bestselling author of The Blue Day Book and Penguin Bloom'Every man, woman and child on earth has toyed with this fantasy. Todd and Jeff are living the dream. And have not murdered each other . . . yet' Stephan Elliott, writer and director of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'This book has it all - humour, heart, wine and crazy animals . . . A rollicking read for anyone looking to shake things up a little in their lives' Rachael Johns, internationally bestselling author'If you're looking for a book that will make you chuckle, while challenging you and making you think differently about your life and your goals, then look no further - this is the book for you' Better ReadingLONGLISTINGS2020 Indie Non-fiction Book Award2020 Booksellers' Choice Adult Non-Fiction Book of the Year

See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence


Jess Hill - 2019
    Many women are repeat callers: on average, they will go back to an abusive partner eight times before leaving for good.‘You must get so frustrated when you think a woman’s ready to leave and then she decides to go back,’ I say.‘No,’ replies one phone counsellor, pointedly. ‘I’m frustrated that even though he promised to stop, he chose to abuse her again.’Women are abused or killed by their partners at astonishing rates: in Australia, almost 17 per cent of women over the age of fifteen – one in six – have been abused by an intimate partner.In this confronting and deeply researched account, journalist Jess Hill uncovers the ways in which abusers exert control in the darkest – and most intimate – ways imaginable. She asks: What do we know about perpetrators? Why is it so hard to leave? What does successful intervention look like?What emerges is not only a searing investigation of the violence so many women experience, but a dissection of how that violence can be enabled and reinforced by the judicial system we trust to protect us.Combining exhaustive research with riveting storytelling, See What You Made Me Do dismantles the flawed logic of victim-blaming and challenges everything you thought you knew about domestic and family violence.

Bossypants


Tina Fey - 2011
    She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.She has seen both these dreams come true.At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

Wednesdays with Bob


Bob Hawke - 2017
    Hawke - Australia's 23rd and oldest living prime minister - has welcomed Derek Rielly into his home to share fine cigars and irreverent conversation. On a sun-soaked balcony, the maverick young writer and the charismatic old master talk life, death, love, sex, religion, politics, sport ... and everything in between.On other days, to paint his subject's enigma from the outside, Rielly interviews Hawke's Liberal MP rival John Howard, Labor allies Gareth Evans and Kim Beazley, wife and lover Blanche d'Alpuget, live-in stepson Louis Pratt, and friends - diplomat Richard Woolcott, economist Ross Garnaut, advertising guru John Singleton, and longtime mate Col Cunningham.The result is an extraordinary portrait of a beloved Australian - a strange, funny, uniquely personal study of Bob Hawke ruminating on his (and our) past, present and future.

Flying the Nest


Rachael Johns - 2020
    Heartbroken, Ash suddenly finds herself living a double life - one week with her children, the next cohabiting with her happily single sister-in-law. Her friends think the modern custody solution is an exciting opportunity for her to spread her wings, but all Ash wants is her family back together.An offer to renovate a seaside cottage seems like the perfect distraction for Ash while waiting for Adrian to come to his senses. She's determined to fix her marriage as well as the cottage, but life gets even more complicated when she meets local fisherman Dan Emerson.Soon, each home-stay becomes more dysfunctional, while for the other week Ash enjoys the peaceful life of the beachside community. The more time Ash spends in Ragged Point, the more she questions what she really wants. Is a sea-change the fresh start she needs to move on?When tragedy calls Ash back to the city, she's torn between the needs of her family and her future. Can her family life fit in with a permanent move to the beach or could Ash's new-found independence attract Adrian back to the nest?

Little Weirds


Jenny Slate - 2019
    Inside you will find:× The smell of honeysuckle× Heartbreak× A French-kissing rabbit× A haunted house× Death× A vagina singing sad old songs× Young geraniums in an ancient castle× Birth× A dog who appears in dreams as a spiritual guide× Divorce× Electromagnetic energy fields× Emotional horniness× The ghost of a sea captain× And moreI hope you enjoy these little weirds.Love,Jenny Slate

Finding My Place: From Cairo to Canberra - The Irresistible Story of an Irrepressible Woman


Anne Aly - 2018
    She was also most probably the first parliamentarian to have seen Zoolander 23 times.'What am I doing here?' she asked herself as she was sworn in with her hand on her English translation of the Quran.It's a question the former professor has raised more than once since she arrived in Australia aged two bearing the name Azza Mahmoud Fawzi Hosseini Ali el Serougi. The answer is a fascinating and moving story of a Muslim girl growing up in suburban Australia in the seventies, a girl who danced the divide between the expectations and values of their parents' culture and that of their adopted land, and whose yardstick for 'a normal' Australian family was The Brady Bunch.Told with warmth, humour and insight, Finding My Place is an irresistible story by an irrepressible Australian woman who has truly found where she belongs, and who continues to make her mark internationally and in public life.

How to Make Gravy


Paul Kelly - 2010
    Over four nights Paul Kelly performed, in alphabetical order, one hundred of his songs from the previous three decades. In between songs he told stories about them, and from those little tales grew How to Make Gravy, a memoir like no other. Each of its hundred chapters, also in alphabetical order by song title, consists of lyrics followed by a story, the nature of the latter taking its cue from the former. Some pieces are confessional, some tell Kelly's personal and family history, some take you on a road tour with the band, some form an idiosyncratic history of popular music, some are like small essays, some stand as a kind of how-to of the songwriter's art – from the point of inspiration to writing, honing, collaborating, performing, recording and reworking.Paul Kelly is a born storyteller. Give him two verses with a chorus or 550 pages, but he won't waste a word. How to Make Gravy is a long volume that's as tight as a three-piece band. There isn't a topic this man can't turn his pen to – contemporary music and the people who play it, football, cricket, literature, opera, social issues, love, loss, poetry, the land and the history of Australia … there are even quizzes. The writing is insightful, funny, honest, compassionate, intelligent, playful, erudite, warm, thought-provoking. Paul Kelly is a star with zero pretensions, an everyman who is also a renaissance man. He thinks and loves and travels and reads widely, and his musical memoir is destined to become a classic – it doesn't have a bum note on it.

What Happened


Hillary Rodham Clinton - 2017
    Now I’m letting my guard down.” —Hillary Rodham Clinton, from the introduction of What HappenedFor the first time, Hillary Rodham Clinton reveals what she was thinking and feeling during one of the most controversial and unpredictable presidential elections in history. Now free from the constraints of running, Hillary takes you inside the intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules. This is her most personal memoir yet. In these pages, she describes what it was like to run against Donald Trump, the mistakes she made, how she has coped with a shocking and devastating loss, and how she found the strength to pick herself back up afterward. With humor and candor, she tells readers what it took to get back on her feet—the rituals, relationships, and reading that got her through, and what the experience has taught her about life. She speaks about the challenges of being a strong woman in the public eye, the criticism over her voice, age, and appearance, and the double standard confronting women in politics. She lays out how the 2016 election was marked by an unprecedented assault on our democracy by a foreign adversary. By analyzing the evidence and connecting the dots, Hillary shows just how dangerous the forces are that shaped the outcome, and why Americans need to understand them to protect our values and our democracy in the future. The election of 2016 was unprecedented and historic. What Happened is the story of that campaign and its aftermath—both a deeply intimate account and a cautionary tale for the nation.