Book picks similar to
CLOWN SECRET by Ira Seidenstein


theatre-script
acrobatics
australia
israel

Bound to Sarah


Craig Brennan - 2011
    This story is brutal and shockingly unpredictable. In the year 1823, at the height of the British Empire and the colonization of Australia, Pat Roche sits on board a convict ship, sentenced for the term of his natural life to the New Colonies. All hope of ever seeing his wife and child again appeared to be lost. The ship is a fraught with tension under such a strict military guard; with one hundred and fifty criminals confined to a small space, it can only mean trouble. By the time the ship arrives at Van Dieman’s Land, there will be fighting, flogging, rape, murder and mutiny. Pat Roche will find himself involved in it all. Sarah Roche has now been shunned by the local community and is struggling to fend for herself and her little boy. There is a terrible turn of events and she is soon to follow in her husband’s footsteps. So too will a desperate voyage begin for her on board the female convict ship, otherwise known as ‘Floating Brothels’. She arrives in Hobart a broken woman, only regaining her strength after a fleeting moment with her husband. Pat is being taken away to a place of unbearable torment; the notorious Sarah Island settlement, where escape is punishable by death. Many colourful characters weave their way through the pages, creating a plot intertwined with deceit, retribution, murder, tragedy and enduring love, resulting in a heart wrenching climax.For Pat Roche, when there is nothing more worth living for, a chance to escape and find his family is worth dying for.

Cold Fear


Suzanne Brandyn - 2013
    When she regains consciousness, her daughter is missing.As the police widen their futile search, Macy struggles to pick up the pieces of an unimaginable life. Urged to take a break she heads to an isolated cabin with a girlfriend to recuperate so she can continue searching, only to face her worse nightmare - times ten.Trapped by a man she believed dead, he demands she play a game. She runs, he hunts. There is no place to hide...

The Siege of Tel Aviv


Hesh Kestin - 2019
    This book was previously withdrawn from its original publisher and is now being released in an author's edition. Same book, new publisher. Stephen King calls Hesh Kestin’s The Siege of Tel Aviv “scarier than anything Stephen King ever wrote.” Iran leads five armies in a brutal victory over Israel, which ceases to exist. Within hours, its leaders are rounded up and murdered, the IDF is routed, and the country's six million Jews concentrated in Tel Aviv, which becomes a starving ghetto. While the US and the West sit by, Israel's enemies prepare to kill off the entire population. On the eve of genocide, Tel Aviv makes one last attempt to save itself, as an Israeli businessman, a gangster, and a cross-dressing fighter pilot put together a daring plan to counterattack. Will it succeed? The Siege of Tel Aviv is as as bizarrely funny as it is fast-paced. In the words of Stephen King: “An irrepressible sense of humor runs through it. It’s not satire I’m talking about―it’s stuff like the cross-dressing pilot (my favorite character) and any number of deliciously absurd situations (the pink jets). It’s the inevitable result of an eye that sees the funny side, even in horror. So few writers have that. This novel will cause talk and controversy. Most of all, it will be read.”

The Waiting Room


Leah Kaminsky - 2015
    Tortured by memories of Bergen-Belsen, her mother leaves Dina to inherit her decades of trauma. Dina desperately anchors herself in family—a cherished young son, a world-weary husband, and a daughter on the way—and her work as a doctor, but she is struggling to cope, burdened by both the very real anxieties of her daily life and also the shadows of her parents’ ghosts, who follow her wherever she goes. A witty, sensitive narrator, she fights to stay grounded in the here-and-now, even as the challenges of motherhood and medicine threaten to overwhelm her. In taut, compelling prose, The Waiting Room weaves between Dina’s exterior and interior lives, straddling the present and the past—and building towards a profoundly dramatic climax that will remind readers of the fragility of human life even as it reassures them of the inescapable power of love and family.

Legacy


Tim Cahill - 2015
    Born in Sydney to a Samoan mother and Londoner father, Timothy Cahill grew up in the sprawling western suburbs, where cricket and rugby league ruled. It was a long way from his father's beloved West Ham and the English game that transfixed a young Tim with his own unlikely dreams of one day playing professionally.Growing up in the 1980s, life for Tim was about family, football and more football - training, playing and watching it with his brothers. Beginning as the youngest and smallest boy on the field, Tim steadily worked his way through the local club sides with an on-field toughness and intelligence that made the unlikely a possibility.By the time he was a teenager, Tim's parents boldly applied for a bank loan to fund his travels to England. It was an act of faith repaid with a successful trial for Millwall, the storied London club. After 249 appearances and 56 goals and cult-hero status among the fans, he signed for Everton, where he would enjoy a highly successful Premiership and stellar international career - leaving the legacy of becoming one of the most admired and respected Australian sportsmen of all time.With his trademark honesty and candour, Tim reflects on what it takes to make it to the top - the sacrifices, the physical cost, the mental stamina, the uncompromising self-belief, but also the loyalty, the integrity and the generosity. An autobiography that is more than a record of the goals and the games, Tim Cahill's story is a universal reminder of the importance of making your moment count.

Ten Doors Down: the story of an extraordinary adoption reunion


Robert Tickner - 2020
    Born in 1951, he had a happy childhood — raised by his loving adoptive parents, Bert and Gwen Tickner, in the small seaside town of Forster, New South Wales. He grew up to be a cheerful and confident young man with a fierce sense of social justice, and the desire and stamina to make political change. Serving in the Hawke and Keating governments, he held the portfolio of minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. Among other achievements while in government, he was responsible for initiating the reconciliation process with Indigenous Australians, and he was instrumental in instigating the national inquiry into the stolen generations.During his time on the front bench, Robert’s son was born, and it was his deep sense of connection to this child that moved him at last to turn his attention to the question of his own birth. Although he had some sense of the potentially life-changing course that lay ahead of him, he could not have anticipated learning of the exceptional nature of the woman who had brought him into the world, the deep scars that his forced adoption had left on her, and the astonishing series of coincidences that had already linked their lives. And this was only the first half of a story that was to lead to a reunion with his birth father and siblings.This deeply moving memoir is a testament to the significance of all forms of family in shaping us — and to the potential for love to heal great harm.

Leather Soul: A Half-Back Flanker's Rhythm and Blues


Bob Murphy - 2018
    All of the laughs, the scraps, the yarns and the characters: they all left a mark on me. And I wouldn’t change any of it."Bob Murphy has never been a typical footballer.Music buff, Age columnist and Winnebago driver, he is as comfortable in a Fitzroy café or the front bar of a grungy pub as he is in the locker room.In this unique memoir, Murphy takes the reader inside his seventeen-year career, including his three years as captain of the Western Bulldogs, exploring the people, places and events that shaped him. From playing backyard cricket in 1980s Warragul to Community Cup with Paul Kelly in the 2000s, and from the joy of marrying his high school crush to the agony of a season-ending ACL rupture: the man described as the spirit of the Bulldogs has soul, and it’s made of leather.How did the country kid with a gypsy’s heart become an All-Australian captain? What’s it like to have your club reach the AFL Grand Final for the first time in sixty-two years, and have to cheer from the sidelines? How does it feel to realise you can no longer do the things that made you great?The great Australian football bard Martin Flanagan has long insisted Bob Murphy has a book in him like no footballer has written. Leather Soul proves him right.

The Truth Hurts


Andrew Boe - 2020
    

The House: The dramatic story of the Sydney Opera House and the people who made it


Helen Pitt - 2018
    When it did, the lives of everyone involved in its construction were utterly changed: some for the better, many for the worse.Helen Pitt tells the stories of the people behind the magnificent white sails of the Sydney Opera House. From the famous conductor and state premier who conceived the project; to the two architects whose lives were so tragically intertwined; to the workers and engineers; to the people of Sydney, who were alternately beguiled and horrified as the drama unfolded over two decades.With access to diaries, letters, and classified records, as well as her own interviews with people involved in the project, Helen Pitt reveals the intimate back story of the building that turned Sydney into an international city. It is a tale worthy of Shakespeare himself.'A drama-filled page turner' - Ita Buttrose AO OBE'Helen Pitt tells us so much about the building of the Sydney Opera House we've never heard before' - Bob Carr, former Premier of NSW'Australia in the seventies: mullets, platform shoes and, miraculously, the Opera House. At least we got one of them right. A great read.' - Amanda Keller, WSFM breakfast presenter

Locust Summer


David Allan-Petale - 2021
    Rowan’s brother Albert, the natural heir to the farm, has died and Rowan’s dad’s health is failing. Although he longs to, there is no way that Rowan can refuse his mother’s request as she prepares the farm for sale.This is the story of the final harvest – the story of a young man in a place he doesn’t want to be, being given one last chance to make peace before the past, and those he has loved, disappear.

Horrie The War Dog: The Story of Australia's Most Famous Dog


Roland Perry - 2013
    Moody adopted him and called him Horrie. More than a mascot, Horrie repeatedly saved the lives of the thousand-strong contingent.The little dog' warning ritual of sitting, barking, then dashing for the trenches had the gunners running for cover before they even heard the enemy aircraft.Horrie accompanied Moody through the battle zones of the Middle East and beyond. As Japanese forces spread across Asia, Moody and his mates joined the fight, smuggling Horrie onto a troop ship for the harrowing back to Australia. Once the war was over, Moody brought Horrie out of hiding to raise money for the Red Cross and the brave little dog'a story became widely known. When quarantine officers pounced, demanding the dog be put down, there was a public outcry. How could a cruel bureaucracy heartlessly kill this little four-legged hero? Was Horrie condemned to die or Moody devise a scheme to save him?

47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video That Rocked the 2012 Election


David Corn - 2012
    In 47 Percent, Corn recounts how the 47 percent video fit into the ongoing narrative of the 2012 election and greatly changed the course of the campaign. This instant, on-the-news book also features an astute review of the first debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate as they head into the final stretch of this historical election.

חוכמת הבייגלה


Ilan Heitner - 1998
    At 30, he sees no point in getting a job, finding a wife or stopping the endless round of parties. Golan had always considered life to be about marrying well and attaining money, but after a blind date with his best friend's quirky sister, he begins to question such beliefs. Golan then begins a personal journey that has him challenge everything he has ever believed, about himself, about love and about the nature of life in contemporary Israel.

The Lost Boy: Tales of a Child Soldier


Ayik Chut Deng - 2020
    One of them, Ayik, was once a ten-year-old boy soldier training in the junior forces of the SPLA and like many of the young boys hating it. He regularly ran away, sometimes to refugee camps, but was found, dragged back and brutally punished by then fourteen-year-old Anyang, the man now sitting opposite him.After a tumultuous life in Africa, Ayik brings that trauma with him to Australia and at various times gets in trouble with the law over violence, alcohol and drugs. He is misdiagnosed as schizophrenic and is wrongly medicated for years. One day at a Brisbane church he looks across and sees his childhood torturer and is filled with hate. They do not interact then, but on their next encounter, a few years later, Ayik speaks with Anyang and says if they were still in Africa he would kill him.Thankfully a number of forces (including the law and parenthood and a better psychiatrist) eventually set Ayik on the straight and narrow. He is studying, working as an actor and volunteering at his local PCYC.An incredibly honest book showing that recovering from torture and war is a process of lifelong learning, choices and challenges.

Killing Fairfax: Packer, Murdoch and the Ultimate Revenge


Pamela Williams - 2013