Book picks similar to
Where Spirits Dwell by Karina Machado


non-fiction
horror
audiobook-ok
non-fiction-randoms

Welcome to Your New Life


Anna Goldsworthy - 2013
    It is a dance, a cosmic strip show: a flash of spine, and then a rib cage, clean as a fish. Who is laying these bones down, one by one? Is it me who is making you, or are you making yourself?'When Anna Goldsworthy, pianist and perfectionist, falls pregnant with her first child, her excitement is tempered by the daunting journey ahead. In Welcome to Your New Life, she shares the dizzying wonder and crippling anxiety that come with creating new life. Should she indulge her craving for sausage after sixteen years of not eating meat? Will her birth plan involve Enya or hypnosis, or neither? And just how worried should she be about her baby falling into a composting toilet?This captivating memoir combines warmth and humour to reveal the love that binds families together. Welcome to Your New Life evokes the shock of plunging into a life-changing adventure and the kicking required to return to the surface.'A keen-eyed, funny, tender, wonderful book.' - Chloe Hooper'This book does what great literature should: it tries to get a grip on life - the making of it, the living-and-loving it, the leaving it. Goldsworthy's writing is so beautiful, so laser-acute and funny and moving that you feel you are living more vividly. Welcome to Your New Life seems essential to me now. I laughed and I cried and I absolutely loved it.' - Anna Funder'warm, funny and candid' - Books+PublishingAuthorAnna Goldsworthy is the author of Welcome To Your New Life andPiano Lessons.Anna's writing has appeared in the Monthly, the Age, the Adelaide Review and Best Australian Essays. She has won numerous prizes and scholarships for piano performance. In 2004, she completed a world tour performing in festivals and concert halls in Australia, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Her solo CD, Come With Us, was released in early 2008. In that same year she collaborated with her father, Peter Goldsworthy, on a theatrical adaptation of his book Maestro, which drew inspiration from her early life.

Sherman's Library


Ron Ripley - 2015
    Sherman’s death sparks one of the wildest, weirdest adventures he’s ever had… Upon Mr. Sherman’s death, Charles learns the rich old gentleman gave away all his money, leaving only his Victorian mansion and the huge library in the house. His will clearly stipulates the new owner must keep the library intact. Of course, with Mr. Sherman being dead, how would he know or even care about the library? It isn’t until Charles buys the house and discovers someone has stolen items from the library that he understands the significance of keeping the library intact. Mr. Sherman’s letter to the new owner shares the secret of the library—every item in the library is haunted! But how can Charles ever imagine just how deadly the library keeper’s job is…or the blood bath that will follow if he fails to “protect and serve” according to Mr. Sherman’s will?

Dead Man Walking: The murky world of Michael McGurk and Ron Medich


Kate McClymont - 2019
    Nor that the order would come from a Point Piper millionaire. Kate McClymont is Australia’s best-known investigative journalist. Kate and McGurk received intel that he was going to be ‘hit’. Before the two could meet, McGurk was murdered. Kate and her family also received death threats and were moved to a hotel for a few days.This story involves bumbling criminals, turncoats, snitches, miniature korans, developers, wealthy people brought down, and devastated families. It unpacks the structures of our major cities and asks some big big questions.Multiple Walkley-winner Kate tells it with pace and character and her insider status.

A Walk In His Shoes: One family's struggle. A son's battle with addiction.


Dustin John - 2015
    With a lucrative job, a wife, and a home of his own, he was destined for a life of fortune, prosperity and comfort. That was before heroin. This unique and gripping tale is the first of its kind to tell the story of addiction through the eyes of both father and son. Together, Dustin and Dallas shine a blinding light on the dark life of a junky. As Dustin decides to travel across the western states in search of a safe haven, Dustin wanders within a few footsteps of his own demise. Instead of finding freedom, however, his addiction cascades into corruption, deceit, and evil. As alcohol and drug abuse continues to ravage every community in America, this groundbreaking memoir offers important insight into the inner workings of an active user, as well as the pain of those loved ones who must helplessly stand by as the family structure disintegrates from addiction.

Pucker Factor 10: Memoir of a U.S. Army Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam


James Joyce - 2003
    He flew both Huey "slicks" and Huey "gunships": the former on defense as he flew troops into battle, and the latter on offense as he took the battle to the enemy. Through this book, the author relives his experiences flying and fighting, with special attention given to the pilots' day-to-day lives - such as the prankish smoke bombing of Disneyland, the nickname for a United States Army-sponsored compound for prostitution. Some of the pilots Joyce served with survived the war and went on to have careers with commercial airlines, and many were killed.

On Disruption


Katharine Murphy - 2018
     The internet has shaken the foundations of life: public and private lives are wrought by the 24-hour, seven-day-a-week news cycle that means no one is ever off duty. On Disruption is a report from the coalface of that change: what has happened, will it keep happening, and is there any way out of the chaos?

The Cottage: A True Haunted House Story


Jess Breitling - 2017
    But before long they can’t deny something is very wrong with their new residence, and they find themselves trying to make sense of the unexplainable. After a year of coping with disembodied voices, flying objects, phantom footsteps, and apparitions of red eyes, the family moves away. But things will get even stranger at their new house. The Cottage details the true paranormal experiences of a real family in Southern California. If you enjoy The Cottage, please look for its sequel, The Bungalow.

Money for Something: Sex Work. Drugs. Life. Need.


Mia Walsch - 2020
    Look where we are. What else do we have to hide?'When nineteen-year-old Mia is fired from her job at an insurance company, she answers an ad in the newspaper. The ad says: 'Erotic Massage. Good Money. No Sex.'Mia takes to her new job with recklessness, aplomb and good humour. Over the next few years, as she works her way through Sydney's many parlours, she meets exquisite and complex women from every walk of life who choose sex work for myriad reasons. While juggling the demands of her new job, she battles her problematic drug use, and the mental illness that has shaped her life.But rather than needing saving from sex work, it is the work that sometimes helps to save Mia from herself.A raw and honest memoir about surviving, sex work, friendships, drugs and mental illness.

James Herbert: Devil in the Dark


Craig Cabell - 2001
    His books sell in their hundreds of thousands across the world, are often made into films, and have turned him into arguably the most successful writer of the horror genre. Yet despite his worldwide fan base, surprisingly little is known about the man himself. In this work, Craig Cabell has written an in-depth biography of the man with his full cooperation. Herbert has granted the author a number of rare interviews, and the result is a frank and revealing portrait of one of the giants of contemporary popular fiction. In addition to this, Herbert has granted the author full access to his photographic archives and provided unreleased material to publish in this book.

A Haunted Love Story: The Ghosts of the Allen House


Mark Spencer - 2012
    According to local lore, the troubled spirit of society belle Ladell Allen, who had mysteriously committed suicide in the master bedroom in 1948, still roamed the grand historic mansion. Yet, Mark remained skeptical--until he and his family began encountering faceless phantoms, a doppelganger spirit, and other paranormal phenomena. Ensuing ghost investigations offered convincing evidence that six spirits, including Ladell, inhabited their home. But the most shocking event occurred the day Mark followed a strange urge to explore the attic and found, crammed under a floorboard, secret love letters that touchingly depict Ladell Allen's forbidden, heart-searing romance--and shed light on her tragic end.This haunting true ghost story includes several photographs of the Allen House.

All I Know: A memoir of love, loss and life


Mary Coustas - 2013
    Anyone who has followed Mary's career in film and as the popular in-your-face TV and stage character Effie, may be shocked to learn of the trials she was going through at the time. But they won't be surprised by the love she gives out to all, and receives in return, from family and friends.By giving us an intimate view of her experiences—including meeting George, the love of her life, and their journey to parenthood—we also see the universal truth that in life there's loss and, amongst the pain and tragedy of that, there is the power of hope and humour. Mary's story of the deaths of her father, her grandmother and her daughter Stevie is at times heartbreaking but, ultimately, All I Know is an enriching and uplifting celebration of life.

Eggshell Skull


Bri Lee - 2018
    If a single punch kills someone because of their thin skull, that victim's weakness cannot mitigate the seriousness of the crime. But what if it also works the other way? What if a defendant on trial for sexual crimes has to accept his 'victim' as she comes: a strong, determined accuser who knows the legal system, who will not back down until justice is done?Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Queensland District Court as a bright-eyed judge's associate. Two years later she was back as the complainant in her own case. This is the story of Bri's journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge's associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland-where justice can look very different, especially for women. The injustice Bri witnessed, mourned and raged over every day finally forced her to confront her own personal history, one she'd vowed never to tell. And this is how, after years of struggle, she found herself on the other side of the courtroom, telling her story.Bri Lee has written a fierce and eloquent memoir that addresses both her own reckoning with the past as well as with the stories around her, to speak the truth with wit, empathy and unflinching courage. Eggshell Skull is a haunting appraisal of modern Australia from a new and essential voice.

Australian Tragic


Jack Marx - 2009
    Barnum's 'Greatest Show on Earth'; a world-class boxer who lost his battle with alcohol and ended up in an unmarked American grave; Steve Irwin, who was written off as a joke by the media, only to be hailed as a hero on his sudden death; and a man who heroically survived a war to find himself crushed and defeated by events much closer to home.

Hold Your Fire


Chloe Wilson - 2021
    Prize-winning author Chloe Wilson’s stories will pin you to the page.‘Chilling, funny, and razor sharp – a writer in control every step of the way. How I relished this extraordinary and original collection.’ Sofie Laguna, Miles Franklin winner for The Eye of the SheepFirst published in Granta Magazine, the title story takes us into the cold war of a contemporary family: a missile-making mother doubts her husband’s guts and the steel of her son, until a playground incident escalates and brings them into the most surprising of alliances.Needle sharp, effortlessly surprising and beautifully controlled, every story is transfixing. A young couple move into a house in which there’s been a recent murder, and fall under the spell of their peculiar, commanding neighbours. Two sisters are determined to detoxify themselves into perfection. A diver pushes herself and those around her to higher and higher jumps. Interspersed with these transfixing tales are lightning strikes of flash fiction: we glimpse a leopard in the apartment next door; plants grown out of a strange and miraculous soil; the spirit of a girl who’s been thrown down a well. At each turn, Chloe Wilson offers a unique insight, a tear in the veil of our comfortable moral certainties. Hold Your Fire exposes the battles we wage beneath the surface.

When Ghosts Speak: Understanding the World of Earthbound Spirits


Mary Ann Winkowski - 2007
    You feel drained and inexplicably irritable. Your four-year-old is scared to enter her bedroom.Tell these things to Mary Ann Winkowski, and she'll tell you that you have a ghost.A happily married, devout Catholic, suburban mother and full-time paranormal investigator, Mary Ann Winkowski has been able to see earthbound spirits, spirits that are trapped on earth and haven't "crossed over," since she was a little girl. Mary Ann works with these spirits to help them make peace with what keeps them here - whether it be people they can't let go of or homes they love.In When Ghosts Speak, Mary Ann will tell the amazing story of growing up with this gift, and will share tips on how to recognize when you're not alone, and what to do if you are in the presence of a ghost.