From Snow to Ash: Solitude, soul-searching and survival on Australia's toughest hiking trail


Anthony Sharwood - 2020
    

Operation Playboy


Kathryn Bonella - 2017
    Drugs. Danger. Death. This is the adrenaline-pumping, true crime story of the world's most audacious drug runners and the true life police hunt, 'Operation Playboy', to track them down.These drug-running criminals travel the globe: they ski in Europe, surf in Bali, hook up with celebrity models and live in five-star hotels. They are 24/7 party boys with brass balls, steely nerves and reckless ambitions. They pay for their high-risk, hedonistic lifestyle by trafficking cocaine, ecstasy and marijuana on international flights and through the world's biggest airports.But to ride the wave you have to roll the dice. And in this game a bust means prison - or even a firing squad. A Brazilian cop is watching closely, determined to close the net. With a small team, he battles corrupt colleagues and bent judges to learn the secrets of the criminal playboys' gang and bring about their downfall.If you love true crime or organised crime thrillers, drug bust stories, espionage, murder and mayhem, mafia films, international mystery and crime, heists and biographies featuring a real police operation and a real criminal gang, then this is the true crime biography for you . . . a page-turning, white-knuckle thriller - the true story of a mafia-style manhunt codenamed OPERATION PLAYBOY.Perfect for fans of true crime stories and authors like Rusty Young, James Phelps, Chopper Read and Underbelly.| True Crime | Mafia | Organised Crime | Hoaxes & Deceptions | Murder & Mayhem |Available at all etailers and in audiobook.Grab Your Copy NOW . . .PRAISE FOR KATHRYN BONELLA'[A] graphic insight into the hidden world of Bali's top western criminal cocaine bosses . . . With unprecedented access into their lives author Kathryn Bonella charts their rise to incredible wealth and power . . . [and] also follows many to the depths of hell when they are busted.' Tracks on Snowing in Bali'. . . an insightful and sharply observed account of life inside Indonesia's most notorious prison. Bonella casts a cool journalistic eye over some horrific true life events . . .' Sun Herald on Hotel Kerobokan'Bonella's portrayal of the jail . . . will make readers flinch with its graphic descriptions of violence and debauchery taking place under the eyes of bent guards.' South China Morning Post on Hotel Kerobokan

Countryman's Lot: Tales from the Dales


Max Hardcastle - 1991
    One day, they'll sell their cramped city-centre antiques shop and the overflowing upstairs flat and relocate to the beautiful Yorkshire Dales. When a smallholding in a remote Dales village comes on the market, it seems like the answer to their prayers.

The Book of Fame


Lloyd Jones - 2000
    This remarkable, award-winning novel is both a tribute to some of the world's first sporting celebrities and an investigation into the curious workings of fame.Not just a book for lovers of sport, The Book of Fame is essentially a story about friendship and loyalty, and about a group of astonishing young men at the peak of their abilities.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Thicker Than Water


Cal Flyn - 2016
    Cutting paths through the alien harshness of the Australian frontier, McMillan became a pioneer to be forever mythologised in the statues and landmarks that bore his name. He was also Cal Flyn’s great-great-great-uncle. Inspired by this glimmer of an ancestral greatness, Flyn followed in his footsteps to Australia, where her investigations forced her to confront dark and horrifying family secrets. She discovered that McMillan and his peers were responsible for a series of assaults on indigenous peoples so ferocious that the sites would ever after be synonymous with bloodshed: Skull Creek, Boney Point, Slaughterhouse Gully. McMillan too had a new name: the Butcher of Gippsland.Driven to piece together his story and confront her own history, Flyn looks for answers: How could a man lauded for his generosity and integrity commit such terrible acts? How could a man who had witnessed the horror of Highlanders cleared from their lands then massacre and ‘clear’ indigenous people on the other side of the world? How can whole societies come to be overlooked and forgotten? Should today's generation atone for their ancestors' sins? Blending memoir, history and travel, Thicker Than Water evokes the startlingly beautiful wilderness of the Highlands, the desolate bush of Victoria and the reverberations on one from the other. A tale of blood and bloodlines, it is a powerful, personal journey into dark family history, intergenerational grief and the inherited guilt that we all carry with us.

Beyond the Blue Horizon: On the Track of Imperial Airways


Alexander Frater - 1986
    Written with an infectious passion, this is an extraordinarily original and genre-defining piece of travel writing by one of our most highly respected travel correspondents.

Kiwi Tracks


Andrew Stevenson - 1999
    Andrew Stevenson explores the hiker's heaven of New Zealand's famed wilderness areas, and provides an illuminating and gently humorous view of his fellow back-packers.

Travels With Boogie: 500 Mile Walkies and Boogie Up the River in One Volume


Mark Wallington - 1995
    And they did it. Then, undaunted, they took on the treacherous waters of the Thames. Not exactly as Mark had planned, however: this time his companion was to be the delectable Jennifer - but she was held up at the office, and when Boogie was dropped off at the kennels the other dogs complained.Travels with Boogie is a witty and fascinating account of a mismatched couple and of the people they meet and places they visit.

A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea


Don Kulick - 2019
    He arrived knowing that you can’t study a language without understanding the daily lives of the people who speak it: how they talk to their children, how they argue, how they gossip, how they joke. Over the course of thirty years, he returned again and again to document Tayap before it disappeared entirely, and he found himself inexorably drawn into their world, and implicated in their destiny. Kulick wanted to tell the story of Gapuners—one that went beyond the particulars and uses of their language—that took full stock of their vanishing culture. This book takes us inside the village as he came to know it, revealing what it is like to live in a difficult-to-get-to village of two hundred people, carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest. But A Death in the Rainforest is also an illuminating look at the impact of white society on the farthest reaches of the globe—and the story of why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village. An engaging, deeply perceptive, and brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, A Death in the Rainforest takes readers into a world that endures in the face of massive changes, one that is on the verge of disappearing forever.

Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar


D.J. Connell - 2010
    His mother tells him he'll be a star one day. 'Twinkle, twinkle,' she says, giving his hair a ruffle.Not everyone shares Julian's dreams of stardom. Television is too much like hairdressing for his father's tastes. A Tasmanian man wants a son for sporting purposes. 'Boys don't like dolls,' he tells Julian, 'They like Dinky Toys.' Not this boy, thinks Julian, who knows better than to tell the truth.Besides, the family already has a sporting hero, Julian's sister Carmel aka 'The Locomotive'. Julian likes his sister, but knows better than to tangle with her bowling arm. It's the same one she uses for punching.Julian Corkle is a Filthy Liar is the ultimate feel-good novel, a book that will have the reader laughing out loud on the back of a bus as it follows Julian's bumpy journey through adolescence, fibbing his way through school and a series of dead-end jobs, to find his ultimate calling as creator of ‘The Hog.’ It's as if Crocodile Dundee has crashed Muriel's wedding and run off into the desert with Priscilla.

The Road Less Graveled (Kindle Single)


Wendy Laird - 2013
    <br><br>Part Tuscan idyll and part cautionary tale, Wendy Laird’s latest Kindle Single tells the flip-side story of expat existence, what it takes to make it happen, and how a life on a well-mapped trajectory can veer off course in the process. Laird’s beautiful prose and acerbic wit keep the book, if not her own agenda, on the right track.

The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen


Krissy Kneen - 2021
    Stern, domineering, fiercely loving, Lotty Kneen—born Dragitsa—was always tight-lipped about her early life and family history. She rebuffed Krissy’s curiosity and forbade her from taking the trip back to the old country that might have satisfied it.When her grandmother died recently, Krissy finally felt at liberty to explore the questions that had nagged at her for so long. In The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen Krissy sets out with a box containing her grandmother’s ashes, intending to trace the old woman’s early life in Slovenia and Egypt, and perhaps locate some remnants of family. Along the way she uncovers the extraordinary story of the colony of Slovene women who became the nannies of choice for the wealthy Italians of pre-war Alexandria—and identifies as best she can the places where Lotty’s restless, demanding spirit will be at peace.

Camino de Santiago (Village to Village Guide): Camino Frances 2017: St Jean - Santiago - Finisterre


Anna Dintaman - 2013
     Fully updated April 2017, and now available in Kindle format! The Kindle book contains all the features included in the print edition as well as additional planning information. Now you can carry a full guidebook in the palm of your hand via a smart phone, e-reader or tablet! Both formats include: - Full-color detailed to-scale topographical stage maps of each day’s walk with free GPS files online. - The entire 800km Camino Francés and 90km Camino Finisterre. - 135 detailed stage, city and town maps (now easier to read). - Essential practical information on transport, accommodations and services. - Detailed listings of pilgrim hostels (albergues) and private accommodations in each town, including prices, amenities, number of beds, contact information, open seasons, and more. - Regional introductions to the different areas along the Camino including information about traditional foods, flora and fauna, and local culture. - Overviews of dozens of medieval pilgrim sites, with information about the historical context of the pilgrimage. - Expert advice on hiking gear, packing and daily Camino life. Extra planning topics included in the Kindle version: - Camino Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - Alternate itinerary suggestions for those who want a faster or slower pace - A list of places the serve vegetarian and or gluten free meals - Special considerations for women and traveling with children - More details about booking flights, trains and buses - A Spanish phrasebook and mini Basque (Euskara) phrasebook. - A timeline of the history of Spain with emphasis on the Camino history. - A list of recommended reading and films about the Camino de Santiago.

Somewhere South of Tuscany


Diana G. Armstrong - 2011
    After only one brief visit, Diana Armstrong, a cookbook author and food and travel writer, buys an ancient stone house right in the middle of the historic center of a village sandwiched between Tuscany and Umbria. Somewhere South of Tuscany is fun and witty! Of course, with Diana's culinary background, food is never very far from the surface. Diana, her husband and her family are as much concerned with their meals as they are with fixing their house. Restoring a 400 year old house in the backwoods of Italy makes for a fertile breeding ground for disasters, scrapes and a few discoveries too. (Everyone considering buying and renovating a home in Italy should ready her book!) Her culinary adventures in this Umbrian region are never very far from center stage. Diana, ever the passionate cook, provides deliciously simple recipes for all the food she mentions in the book. She gives every American cook the tools to transport themselves and their guests right into this green heart of rural Italy.

A History of South Africa


Frank Welsh - 1998
    Yet prejudice and ignorance about the country are widespread. The evolution of the present-day 'Rainbow Nation' has taken place under conditions of sometimes extreme pressure. Since long before the arrival of the first European settlers in the seventeenth century, the country has been home to a complex and uneasily co-existing blend of races and cultures, and successive waves of immigrants have added to the already volatile mixture. Despite the euphoria which greeted the dismantling of the apartheid system and the election as President of Nelson Mandela in April 1994, South Africa's history, racial mix and recent political upheavals suggest it will not easily free itself from the legacy of its tumultuous past. Newly revised and updated, Frank Welsh's vividly written, even-handed and authoritative history casts new light on many of South Africa's most cherished myths. Like his A History of Hong Kong, it will surely come to be regarded as definitive.