Book picks similar to
A Kinder Sea by Felicity Plunkett
poetry
australian-author
australian
non-fiction
Inside: The autobiography
Chris Judd - 2015
He's one of the game's out-and-out champions, having captained two of the greatest clubs in the league - the West Coast Eagles and Carlton - and taken the Eagles to premiership victory in 2006. He's won the Brownlow Medal twice, been a dual Leigh Matthews Trophy winner - awarded to the AFL's Most Valuable Player as voted by the players - and selected as an All Australian six times.His autobiography is a unique journey into the game, describing with extraordinary candour what it's like to climb to the highest levels, to achieve the ultimate goal of your sport, and to experience the full measure of heartache and failure that inevitably accompanies more than a decade of playing at the elite level. Few sportsmen have shared such intimacy and insight into their world, and the result is a book that's worthy of Chris Judd the player - intelligent, surprising, and head and shoulders above the competition.
The Curlew's Eye
Karen Manton - 2021
A shack perched halfway up a hill in an other-world of bizarre shadow plants and dark sentinel trees . . . Every road had been leading here, to this place.'Greta's partner Joel grew up with five brothers and a sister in a feisty household on an isolated NT property. But he doesn't talk about those days-not the deaths of his sister and mother, nor the origin of the scars that snake around his body.Now, many years later, he returns with Greta and their three young boys to prepare the place for sale. The boys are quick to settle in, and Joel seems preoccupied with work, but Greta has a growing sense of unease, struggling in the build-up's oppressive heat and living in the shadow of the old, burned-out family home. She knows she's a stranger in this uncanny place, with its eerie and alluring landscape, hostile neighbour, and a toxic dam whose clear waters belie its poison. And then there's the mysterious girl living rough whom Greta tries to befriend.Determined to make sense of it all, Greta is drawn into Joel's unspoken past and confronted by her own. Before long the curlew's haunting cry will call her to face the secrets she and Joel can no longer outrun.
The Rules of Backyard Cricket
Jock Serong - 2016
The endless glow of summer, the bottomless fury of contest. All the love and hatred in two small bodies poured into the rules of a made-up game.Darren has two big talents: cricket and trouble. No surprise that he becomes an Australian sporting star of the bad-boy variety—one of those men who’s always got away with things and just keeps getting.Until the day we meet him, middle aged, in the boot of a car. Gagged, cable-tied, a bullet in his knee. Everything pointing towards a shallow grave.
The Agonist
Shastra Deo - 2017
With its wildness and originality, The Agonist is an exhilarating collection. Exploring the languages of anatomy, etymology and incantation, these poems spark conversations about fracture and repair, energy, love and danger.
John Eales
Peter FitzSimons - 2001
This biography traces his life from a classic Australian childhood in the suburbs of Brisbane to the glory of captaining the World Cup winning Wallabies.
Call Waiting
Dianne Blacklock - 2003
Her dreams of a fulfilling life after art college didn't include cleaning up after bored school children and being a doormat for her yuppie boyfriend. What she really wants is to be more like her friend Meg - at least she has turned her art training into a lucrative job in computer design, not to mention having a doting husband and a gorgeous baby son to complete the package.But when Ally's grandfather and sole relative dies, she returns to the Southern Highland home of her childhood where she must confront painful issues from her past that her safe life in the city has allowed her to ignore. Meanwhile, Meg is not as happy as Ally imagines. Dissatisfied with her picture-perfect life, a restless Meg longs to inject more passion and spontaneity into her days - but at what cost to her family's happiness?
Charlotte's Creek
Therese Creed - 2014
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.
The Palace Letters: The Queen, the governor-general, and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam
Jenny Hocking - 2020
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.
Bachar Houli: Faith, Football and Family
Bachar Houli - 2020
He's part of two Richmond Premiership sides, he was an All-Australian in 2019, and with over 200 games to his names he remains a key part of a champion team.Picked at number 42 in the 2006 National Draft by Essendon, Houli played 26 games for the Bombers before moving in 2011 to Tigerland, where rookie coach Damien Hardwick was assenting the team that six years later would achieve the seemingly impossible and claim Richmond's 11th Premiership. Another flag followed two years later, with Houli close to best on ground in both deciders.Yet, it's as the AFL's most prominent Muslim player that Houli is best known - and his strong Muslim values are at the heart of the man he is. Writing for the first time, Houli explores the experiences and beliefs that sparked his trailblazing success as a Muslim footballer, and that established him as a teaching voice within the AFL community for inclusion, understanding, and tolerance.Co-authored with acclaimed broadcaster and writer Waleed Aly, 'Bachar Houli: Faith, Football, and Family' tells the unique story of one of football's most fascinating men.©2020 Bachar Houli, Waleed Aly (P)2020 Penguin Random House Australia
The Silent Country
Di Morrissey - 2009
TV producer, Veronica Anderson, travels to the Northern Territory to retrace the journey of an expedition that had set out fifty years earlier to film the outback, but which mysteriously ended in tragedy.Of the group, led by the eccentric Maxim Topov, few are still alive and they are reluctant to talk about the intriguing events.It is through the help of local NT Park Ranger, Jamie McIntosh, that Veronica begins to piece together the puzzle and discover the answers.These answers break the silence and change her life.
Last King of the Cross
John Ibrahim - 2017
Last King of the Cross
lays bare Australia's most notorious underworld figure.In the mongrel tongue of the streets, John writes of fleeing war-torn Tripoli with his family and growing up in Sydney's rough and tumble west - before establishing himself as a tough guy and teen delinquent, then a bouncer, enforcer and nightclub king on the Golden Mile.Bullets fly, blades flash and bodies fall. In a city of shadows, John builds his army and empire - partying like a playboy prince of darkness while staying one step ahead of the cops, the outlaw gangs and hungry triggermen, plotting to take him and his family down.Crazier than Goodfellas, more compelling than The Godfather,
Last King of the Cross
is a colourful crime saga like no other and powerful proof that truth is always stranger than fiction.
The Love that Remains
Susan Francis - 2020
He is a gentle giant of a man, who promises Susan the world.Two years later they throw in their jobs, marry and sell everything they own, embarking on an incredible adventure, to start a new life in the romantic city of Granada, where they learn Spanish and enjoy too much tapas. In love, and enthralled by the splendour of a European springtime, the pair treasure every moment together.Until a shocking series of events alters everything.Susan Francis' memoir is riveting and remarkably honest and Susan Duncan said it was fearless and raw and an amazing read.
Funkytown
Paul Kennedy - 2021
The community is paralysed by fear, and a state’s police force and national media come to find a killer. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Paul Kennedy is searching for something else entirely. He is focused on finishing school, getting drafted into the AFL and falling in love. So much can change in a year.The rites of passage for many Australian teenage boys – blackout drinking, simmering violence and emotional suppression – take their toll, and the year that starts with so much promise ends with Kennedy expelled, arrested and undrafted. But one teacher sees Kennedy self-destructing, and becomes determined to set him on another path.Told with poignancy and humour, and evoking the brilliant,dusty haze of late Australian summer, Funkytown is a love letter to adolescence, football, family and outer suburbia.
Pieces of Blue
Kerry McGinnis - 2000
Her father, left with four young children to raise, gathers up his family and leaves the city to go doving. For the next fifteen years, the McGinnis clan travels the continent, droving, horse breaking and living off the land. Kerry grows up in the harsh outback, and the animals that inhabit the land are her closest friends.With the memory of her absent mother ever present, Kerry begins her difficult journey into young womanhood.
Occy: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Mark Occhilupo
Mark Occhilupo - 2008
Yet a spiraling descent into drug abuse and depression snuffed his flame out prematurely when he quit the pro tour at just 22. Faltered comebacks, spectacular bursts of free-surfing, and manic breakdowns followed as the surfing world watched a freakish talent self-combust. After years spent immobile and overweight on the couch, Occy eventually emerged from his cocoon, reborn and ready to tackle a whole new generation of surf stars. His celebrated comeback to win the world title in 1999 is a sporting fairytale without equal. In this no-holds barred account, Occy tells the complete, remarkable story of his spectacular rise, terrifying fall, and miraculous rebirth.