In the Middle of Nowhere


Terry Underwood - 1998
    John was itching to get home to his family's cattle station in the Northern Territory. He promised Terry he'd write.After five long years of corresponding, John and Terry married and moved to their new home - a tent and a newly drilled bore in the middle of nowhere. Their love for each other was only matched by their love for this 'last frontier'in the heart of the Territory. Modern-day pioneers, they built their cattle station, Riveren, from scratch and raised and educated a new generation of Underwoods there, on the headwaters of the Victoria River, 600 kilometers south-west of Katherine. Times were tough and there was heartbreak, danger and struggle, but the power of love and the strength of family ties helped them overcome every obstacle.In the Middle of Nowhere is their story. It's a story of beating the odds, told with warmth and a genuine knowledge of the Outback. It's a real story of the Territory, and is as vast, dramatic and inspiring as the land that lies at the heart of this unforgettable book.

Salt Creek


Lucy Treloar - 2015
    Failed entrepreneur Stanton Finch moves his family from Adelaide to the remote Coorong area of Southern Australia, in pursuit of his dream to become a farmer.Housed in a driftwood cabin, they try to make the best of their situation. The children roam the beautiful landscape of Salt Creek; visitors are rare but warmly welcomed; a local Indigenous boy becomes almost part of the family. Yet there are daily hardships, and tensions with the Ngarrindjeri people they have displaced; disaster never seems far away.With Mrs Finch struggling to cope, Hester, their perceptive eldest daughter, willingly takes on more responsibility. But as Hester’s sense of duty grows, so does a yearning to escape Salt Creek and make a new life of her own …Lucy Treloar was born in Malaysia and educated in Melbourne, England, and Sweden. Awards for her writing include the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Salt Creek is her first novel.

12 Edmondstone Street


David Malouf - 1985
    A complex history comes down to us, through household jokes and anecdotes, odd family habits, and irrational superstitions, that forever shapes what we see and the way in which we see it.Beginning with his childhood home, David Malouf moves on to show other landmarks in his life, and the way places and things create our private worlds. Written with humour and uncompromising intelligence, 12 Edmondstone Street is an unforgettable portrait of one man's life.

You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World


Clare Wright - 2018
    Clare Wright’s epic new history tells the story of that victory—and of Australia’s role in the subsequent international struggle—through the eyes of five remarkable players: the redoubtable Vida Goldstein, the flamboyant Nellie Martel, indomitable Dora Montefiore, daring Muriel Matters, and artist Dora Meeson Coates, who painted the controversial Australian banner carried in the British suffragettes’ monster marches of 1908 and 1911.Clare Wright’s Stella Prize-winning 'The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka' retold one of Australia’s foundation stories from a fresh new perspective. With You Daughters of Freedom she brings to life a time when Australian democracy was the envy of the world—and the standard bearer for progress in a shining new century.

Bridge Burning and Other Hobbies


Kitty Flanagan - 2018
    How on earth they make horse nostrils and sawdust so damn tasty is a mystery, but hats off to Huttons. From running with a bad crowd in kindergarten to her junk food modus operandi at kids' parties and enduring a 'Yoga Guantanamo' camp, the fabulous anecdotes from Kitty Flanagan's life will take you on a hilarious trip down memory lane. Kitty's observations about relationships, whether it be travelling around South America with a dud boyfriend, her brief affair with a graveyard digger or sussing out potential new dates are highly amusing. And though not a fan of the 'it's not you, it's me' breakup line, she wasn't quite prepared for an ex-boyfriend reciting a hand-written list of her faults when he dumped her. On the career front, Kitty recalls working in a crayfish-factory where she annoyed her boss so much that one day he locked her in a freezer. And she well and truly burnt her bridges at a stand-up venue in Singapore when she responded to her employer's enquiry about her 'moustache'. Confirming her reputation as one of Australia's top comedians, Kitty Flanagan's Bridge Burning and Other Hobbies is a laugh-out loud, entertaining and endearing yarn.

The Family Law


Benjamin Law - 2010
    It’s impossible not to let oneself go along for the ride and emerge at the book’s end enlightened, touched, thrilling with laughter.’ – Marieke HardyMeet the Law family – eccentric, endearing and hard to resist. Your guide: Benjamin, the third of five children and a born humorist. Join him as he tries to answer some puzzling questions: Why won’t his Chinese dad wear made-in-China underpants? Why was most of his extended family deported in the 1980s? Will his childhood dreams of Home and Away stardom come to nothing? What are his chances of finding love?Hilarious and moving, The Family Law is a linked series of tales from a wonderful new Australian talent.

Bannon: Trump's Rebel in the White House


Keith Koffler - 2017
    Born to working-class Democrats in Virginia, Bannon has barrelled through the Navy, Harvard, Wall Street, and Hollywood; he is fluent in esoteric philosophies and political theories; and he has diagnosed the problem with today's America---the rot that has eaten away at working Americans' hopes, opportunities, and freedoms---and developed a winning strategy for taking America back.With inside information on Bannon's current White House projects and his relationships with other figures in the Trump orbit---and with President Trump himself---Bannon: Trump's Rebel in the White House is not only a three-dimensional guide to one of the most fascinating figures of modern American history; it's also a guide to understanding the Trump administration's plans for our future.

What Days are For - A Memoir


Robert Dessaix - 2014
    One Sunday night in Sydney, Robert Dessaix collapses in a gutter in Darlinghurst, and is helped to his hotel by a kind young man wearing a T-shirt that says F**K YOU. What follows are weeks in hospital, tubes and cannulae puncturing his body, as he recovers from the heart attack threatening daily to kill him. While lying in the hospital bed, Robert chances upon Philip Larkin's poem 'Days'. What, he muses, have his days been for? What and who has he loved - and why? This is vintage Robert Dessaix. His often surprisingly funny recollections range over topics as eclectic as intimacy, travel, spirituality, enchantment, language and childhood, all woven through with a heightened sense of mortality

Dane Swan: My Story


Dane Swan - 2016
    Taken by Collingwood at pick 58 in the 2001 ‘super draft’, no one saw a future Brownlow medallist but the scruffy kid knew how to get the ball. Right from the start he made two things clear: he didn’t like training and his mates and social life came first. Swan made front page news in 2003, and faced the sack after playing only three senior games. The infamous Collingwood Rat Pack took him under their wing, he thrived under Mick Malthouse’s coaching, and grew into a talented and nerveless big-occasion player with an incredible mix of power and speed. Off the field, his tattoos, deadpan delivery, transgressions and blunt refusal to become an AFL robot meant he was often used as clickbait.Despite mastering the art of appearing not to care about anything, in Dane Swan: My Story, Swan – for the first time – reveals the pride that drove him to succeed, his loyalty to family, mates and the club that gave him many last chances, and how he worked hard, his way. He takes us inside the highs of the premiership, and through the tumultuous years of the transition from Malthouse to Nathan Buckley. Footy might be only a game, but it’s one hell of a ride with Dane Swan.There’s no one like him at all in this day and age.Nick MaxwellOne of the greatest players in the history of this club. He marched to the beat of his own drum, always, off the ground more so than on it, but I always liked the fact that he was an individual. And whatever he was doing, it worked.Eddie McGuireThe bigger the game, the more turned on he was, and that became evident at the peak of his career because he played his best footy on the biggest stages.Nathan BuckleyWhat made Swanny so good? It was talent, hard work and mental toughness to be that consistent.Ben JohnsonIt was quite extraordinary the way that he just got on with it. He loved winning, he loved the challenge and underneath it, he is a very proud person.Mick MalthouseAbout the author: Dane Swan played 258 games for Collingwood Football Club. He achieved the ultimate team success as a premiership player, and his haul of individual awards is impressive: a Brownlow Medal, three Copeland Trophies, five All Australians, an AFLCA Most Valuable Player award, a Jim Stynes Medal, a couple of Anzac Medals, as well as a swag of top-three finishes in many awards. His unbelievably consistent output meant he averaged 26.85 disposals across 15 seasons, second only to Greg ‘Diesel’ Williams. Swan’s career came to an untimely end in round 1 of 2016. He is acknowledged as one of the best modern midfielders and a one-of-a-kind champion of the competition.

Drugs, Guns & Lies: My life as an undercover cop


Keith Banks - 2020
    This is what it's really like to be an undercover police officer.'Banks has told his story in a raw and honest autobiography. It is the best true crime book published in Australia in a decade.' - John Silvester, Crime Reporter for The Age Undercover was like guerrilla warfare; to understand your enemy, you had to walk amongst them, to become them. The trick was to keep an eye on that important line between who you were and who you were pretending to be.This is the true story of Keith Banks, one of Queensland's most decorated police officers, and his journey into the world of drugs as an undercover operative in the 1980s. In an era of corruption, often alone and with no backup, he and other undercover cops quickly learned to blend into the drug scene, smoking dope and drinking with targets, buying drugs and then having dealers arrested. Very quickly, the lines between his identity as a police officer and the life he pretended to be part of became blurred. This is a raw and confronting story of undercover cops who all became casualties of that era, some more than others, when not everyone with a badge could be trusted.

QF32


Richard de Crespigny - 2012
    Shortly after leaving Changi Airport, an explosion shattered Engine 2 of Qantas flight QF32 – an Airbus A380, the largest and most advanced passenger plane ever built. Hundreds of pieces of shrapnel ripped through the wing and fuselage, creating chaos as vital flight systems and back-ups were destroyed or degraded.In other hands, the plane might have been lost with all 469 people on board, but a supremely experienced flight crew, led by Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, managed to land the crippled aircraft and safely disembark the passengers after hours of nerve-racking effort.Tracing Richard's life and career up until that fateful flight, QF32 shows exactly what goes into the making of a top-level airline pilot, and the extraordinary skills and training needed to keep us safe in the air. Fascinating in its detail and vividly compelling in its narrative, QF32 is the riveting, blow-by-blow story of just what happens when things go badly wrong in the air, told by the captain himself.

Murder in Mississippi


John Safran - 2013
    A year later, he heard that the man had been murdered – and what was more, the killer was black.At first the murder seemed a twist on the old Deep South race crimes. But then more news rolled in. Maybe it was a dispute over money, or most intriguingly, over sex. Could the infamous racist actually have been secretly gay, with a thing for black men? Did Safran have the last footage of him alive? Could this be the story of a lifetime? Seizing his Truman Capote moment, he jumped on a plane to cover the trial.Over six months, Safran got deeper and deeper into the South, becoming entwined in the lives of those connected with the murder – white separatists, black campaigners, lawyers, investigators, neighbours, even the killer himself. And the more he talked with them, the less simple the crime, and the world, seemed.Murder in Mississippi is a brilliantly innovative true-crime story. Taking us places only he can, Safran paints an engrossing, revealing portrait of a dead man, his murderer, the place they lived and the process of trying to find out the truth about anything.

Hamilton: The Revolution


Lin-Manuel Miranda - 2015
    Fusing hip-hop, pop, R&B, and the best traditions of theater, this once-in-a-generation show broadens the sound of Broadway, reveals the storytelling power of rap, and claims our country's origins for a diverse new generation.Hamilton: The Revolution gives readers an unprecedented view of both revolutions, from the only two writers able to provide it. Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, a cultural critic and theater artist who was involved in the project from its earliest stages--"since before this was even a show," according to Miranda--trace its development from an improbable perfor­mance at the White House to its landmark opening night on Broadway six years later. In addition, Miranda has written more than 200 funny, revealing footnotes for his award-winning libretto, the full text of which is published here.Their account features photos by the renowned Frank Ockenfels and veteran Broadway photographer Joan Marcus; exclusive looks at notebooks and emails; interviews with Questlove, Stephen Sond­heim, leading political commentators, and more than 40 people involved with the production; and multiple appearances by Presi­dent Obama himself. The book does more than tell the surprising story of how a Broadway musical became a national phenomenon: It demonstrates that America has always been renewed by the brash upstarts and brilliant outsiders, the men and women who don't throw away their shot.

Diary of a Foreign Minister


Bob Carr - 2014
    And they all unfold against the gripping, uncertain domestic backdrop of Labor Party infighting, plummeting polls and a leadership change from Gillard back to Rudd.

Well Hello: Meanderings from the world of Chat 10 Looks 3


Annabel Crabb - 2021
    From books to TV, music to cooking, friendship to films, there’s little cultural terrain Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales haven’t traversed in their oddly named but nonetheless wildly popular podcast Chat 10 Looks 3.Now, in their first book together, the pair takes a stroll through some of the issues of our time, offering advice for would-be writers, thoughts on developing a rich reading life, tips for navigating the perilous world of social media, and the secrets of a great friendship, all with the digressions that listeners of their podcast have come to love. Here Crabb and Sales discuss kindness, success and failure, and not taking yourself – or others – too seriously, with a liberal sprinkling of fairy wrens, granny pants, show tunes, creative insults, diabolical mum bags and CLANGS.Whether you’re a devoted listener of Chat 10 Looks 3, curious as to what all the fuss is about, or simply looking to cry-laugh on public transport, WELL HELLO is the book for you.