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Biography

Large 9781760291143

Walking Free: The Extraordinary True Story by Munjed Al Muderis; Patrick Weaver (As told to)

$23.00 AUD

Available Stock:
0

Category: Biography

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a young surgical resident working in Baghdad when a squad of Military Police marched into the operating theater and ordered the surgical team to mutilate the ears of three busloads of army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed in front of his staff. Munjed's choices were stark--comply and breach the medical oath "do no harm," refuse and face certain death, or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia, where he boarded a filthy, overcrowded refugee boat, bound for Australia. Like his fellow passengers, he hoped for a new life, free from fear and oppression, but for 10 months he was incarcerated in what became known as the worst of the refugee camps, Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia. There he was known only by a number, locked in solitary confinement and repeatedly told to go back to Iraq. On August 26, 2000, Munjed was finally freed. Now, 14 years later, he is one of the world's leading osseointegration surgeons, transforming the lives of amputees with a pioneering technique that allows them to walk again. Walking Free is Munjed's extraordinary account of his journey from the brutality of Saddam Hussein's Iraq to a new life in Australia and a remarkable career at the forefront of medicine. ...Show more

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Large 9780241491515

A Promised Land by Barack Obama

$65.00 AUD

Available Stock:
61

Category: Political

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of th e first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.  ...Show more

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Large 9781922330949

He by Murray Bail

$28.00 AUD

Available Stock:
28

Category: Australian

And in the middle in khaki shorts, dusty knees, is he. Aged twelve he already has a certain earnestness, the solemnity, trying to comprehend what is incomprehensible, 'he wouldn't know what day it is'. An elusive, elliptical, often beautiful thread of recollections and observations, He. is not autobiogr aphy, or even memoir, but an almost anonymous portrait of a figure passing through time and circumstances. It begins with boyhood, in suburban Adelaide after the war. As the narrator remembers the years the focus shifts forward to the recent past and back again, often within the same paragraph, mirroring the randomness of memory. Through these vignettes and fragments we glimpse moments and lives—of parents, teachers, wives, and others; in Bombay of the 1960s, London of the 1970s, Melbourne and Sydney. He. is by Murray Bail, the acclaimed author of such classic novels as Homesickness and Eucalyptus. 'One of the most remarkable of the generation of Australian fiction writers that includes Peter Carey and came to first maturity 25 or so years ago.' The Age 'One of Australia's most original and imaginative writers.' Canberra Times 'Murray Bail ranks as one of three indisputably world-class Australian novelists now practicing.' The New York Times Book Review ...Show more

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Large 9781408705124

To The End Of The World - Travels with Oscar Wilde by Rupert Everett

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
27

Category: General

The extraordinary and outrageous memoir from award-winning writer and actor Rupert Everett. They say that sometimes ghosts don't realise they're dead and wander around screaming because no one is paying them any attention. Well, in show business you may have been dead five years before you finally twig . You howl around the corridors of power while the elect march straight through. Then one day you catch yourself in a mirror and there is nothing looking back. In his highly anticipated third memoir, Rupert Everett tells the story of how he set out to make a film of Oscar Wilde's last days, and how that ten-year quest almost destroyed him. (And everyone else.) Travelling across Europe for the film, he weaves in extraordinary tales from his past, remembering wild times, freak encounters and lost friends. There are celebrities, of course. But we also meet glamorous but doomed Aunt Peta, who introduces Rupert (aged three) to the joys of make-up. In '90s Paris, his great friend Lychee burns bright, and is gone. While in '70s London, a 'weirdly tall, beyond size zero' teenage Rupert is expelled from the Central School of Speech and Drama. Unflinchingly honest and hugely entertaining, To the End of the World offers a unique insight into the 'snakes and ladders' of filmmaking. It is also a soulful and thought-provoking autobiography from one of our best-loved and most talented actors and writers. ...Show more

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Large temp img

English Pastoral: An Inheritance by James Rebanks

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
22

Category: General

The author of the beloved No.1 bestseller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm 'A beautifully-written story of a family, a home and a changing landscape.' - Nigel Slater 'Just about perfect.' - Wendell Berry James Rebanks was taught by his grandfather to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock, and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, that landscape had profoundly changed. The men and women had vanished from the fields; the old stone barns had crumbled; the skies had emptied of birds and their wind-blown song. English Pastoral is the story of an inheritance: one that affects us all. It tells of how rural landscapes around the world were brought close to collapse, and how the age-old rhythms of work, weather, community and wild things were lost. But this elegy from the northern fells is also a song of hope: of how, guided by the past, one farmer began to salvage a tiny corner of England that was now his, doing his best to restore the life that had vanished and to leave a legacy for the future. This is a book about what it means to have love and pride in a place, and how, against the odds, it may still be possible to build a new pastoral: not a utopia, but somewhere decent for us all.   ...Show more

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Large 9781922310897

Promises to Keep by Joe Biden

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
20

Category: Political

President-elect Joe Biden tells the story of his extraordinary life and career prior to his emergence as Barack Obama's beloved, influential vice president. 'I remain captivated by the possibilities of politics and public service. In fact, I believe that my chosen profession is a noble calling.' - Joe B iden Joe Biden has both witnessed and participated in a momentous epoch of American history. In Promises to Keep, he reveals what these experiences taught him about himself, his colleagues, and the institutions of government. With his customary honesty and wit, Biden movingly and eloquently recounts growing up in a staunchly Catholic multigenerational household in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware; overcoming personal tragedy, life-threatening illness, and career setbacks; his relationships with presidents, world leaders, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle; and his leadership of powerful Senate committees. Through these and other recollections, Biden shows us how the guiding principles he learned early in life - to work to make people's lives better; to honour family and faith; to value persistence, candour, and honesty - are the foundation on which he has based his life's work as husband, father, and public servant. Promises to Keep is an intimate series of reflections from a politician who surmounted numerous challenges to become one of America's most effective leaders and who refuses to be cynical about politics. It is also a stirring testament to the promise of the United States. ...Show more

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Large 9781460759110

My Year of Living Vulnerably by Rick Morton

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
19

Category: Australian

In early 2019, Rick Morton, author of acclaimed, bestselling memoir One Hundred Years of Dirt, was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder - which, as he says, is just a fancy way of saying that one of the people who should have loved him the most during childhood didn't. So, over the cou rse of twelve months, he went on a journey to rediscover love. To get better. Not cured, not fixed. Just, better. This is a book about his journey to betterness, his year of living vulnerably. It's a book about love. What love is, how we see it, what forms it takes, how we practice it in our lives, what it means to us, and how we really, really can't live without it, even if, like Rick for many years, we think we can.   ...Show more

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Large 9781761042348

Old Seems to Be Other People by Lily Brett

$25.00 AUD

Available Stock:
18

Category: General

'People assume that if you are female and over seventy you are oblivious to men's good looks. No one would blink if a 99-year-old man wearing an oxygen mask mentioned a good-looking woman...' Most of us would like to live to an old age, but few of us actually want to be old. In this disarming and gentl y self-deprecating collection of vignettes about ageing, Lily Brett gives us snapshots of her everyday life in New York. After waving enthusiastically to a tall, grey-haired woman she has mistaken for her husband and avoiding a large dog that turns out to be a fire hydrant, Lily has to concede that her ophthalmologist is right- she does need cataract surgery. While at a cafe with her husband she's transfixed by a speed-dating dinner in progress at the other end of the cafe. She moves closer and watches. The event manager tells her they also have speed-dating dinners for seniors. In the crowded Apple store, in Soho, two young Apple assistants decide it will take both of them to help her. Sparkling with wit and wisdom, Old Seems to be Other People, Lily Brett's unique take on getting older, is simultaneously hilarious, serious and utterly irresistible. ...Show more

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Large 9781922330277

One Day I'll Remember This: Diaries 1987-1995 by Helen Garner

$30.00 AUD

Available Stock:
16

Category: Literary

Helen Garner's second volume of diaries charts a tumultuous stage in her life. Beginning in 1987, as she embarks on an affair that she knows will be all-consuming, and ending in 1995 with the publication of The First Stone and the bombshell that followed it, Garner reveals the inner life of a woman in l ove and a great writer at work. With devastating honesty, she grapples with what it means for her sense of self to be so entwined with another--how to survive as an artist in a partnership that is both thrilling and uncompromising. And through it all we see the elevating, and grounding, power of work.   ...Show more

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Large 9781529337761

Churchill and Son by Josh Ireland

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
17

Category: Historical

The intimate, untold story of Winston Churchill's enduring yet volatile bond with his only son, Randolph "Fascinating... well-researched and well-written."--Andrew Roberts  "Beautifully written... A triumph." - Damien Lewis  "Fascinating, acute and touching."--Simon Sebag Montefiore We think we know Winston Churchill: the bulldog grimace, the ever-present cigar, the wit and wisdom that led Great Britain through the Second World War. Yet away from the House of Commons and the Cabinet War Rooms, Churchill was a loving family man who doted on his children, none more so than Randolph, his only boy and Winston's anointed heir to the Churchill legacy. Randolph may have been born in his father's shadow, but his father, who had been neglected by his own parents, was determined to see him go far. For decades, throughout Winston's climb to greatness, father and son were inseparable--dining with Britain's elite, gossiping and swilling Champagne at high society parties, holidaying on the French Riviera, touring Prohibition-era America. Captivated by Winston's power, bravery, and charisma, Randolph worshipped his father, and Winston obsessed over his son's future. But their love was complex and combustible, complicated by money, class, and privilege, shaded with ambition, outsize expectations, resentments, and failures. Deeply researched and magnificently written, Churchill & Son is a revealing and surprising portrait of one of history's most celebrated figures. ...Show more

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Large 9781922330208

The Believer: Encounters with Love, Death and Faith by Sarah Krasnostein

$35.00 AUD

Available Stock:
15

Category: General

This book is about ghosts and gods and flying saucers and certainty in the absence of knowledge. From award-winning author Sarah Krasnostein comes an exploration of the power of belief. Weaving together the stories of six extraordinary ordinary people, The Believer looks at the stories we tell ourselve s to deal with the distance between the world as it is, and the world as we’d like it to be. How they can stunt us – or save us. Some of the people you will meet believe in things most people don’t. Ghosts. UFOs. Heaven and the Devil. The literal creation of the universe in six days. Others believe in things most people would like to. Dying with autonomy. Facing one’s own transgressions with an open heart. In this intensely personal and gorgeously written new book Krasnostein talks with her characteristic compassion and empathy to these believers – and finds out what happens when their beliefs crash into her own. ...Show more

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Large barb

The Barbizon by Paulina Bren

$33.00 AUD

Available Stock:
15

Category: Historical

Built in 1927, New York's Barbizon Hotel was first intended as a home for the 'Modern Woman' seeking a career in the arts. It became the place to stay for ambitious, independent women, who were lured by the promise of fame and good fortune. Sylvia Plath fictionalized her time there in The Bell Jar, and over the years, its 688 tiny pink 'highly feminine boudoirs' also housed Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly (notorious for sneaking in men), Joan Didion, Candice Bergen, Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith, Ali McGraw, Cybil Shepherd, Elaine Stritch, Liza Minnelli, Eudora Welty, The Cosby Show's Phylicia Rashad, and writers Mona Simpson and Ann Beattie, among many others. Mademoiselle boarded its summer interns there - perfectly turned-out young women, who would never be spotted hatless - as did Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School its students - in their white-gloves and kitten heels - and the Ford Modelling Agency its young models. Not everyone who passed through the Barbizon's doors was destined for greatness - for some it was a story of dashed hopes and expectations - but from the Jazz Age New Women of the 1920s, to the Liberated Women of the 1960s, until 1981 when the first men checked in, The Barbizon was a place where women could stand up and be counted. The Barbizon is a colourful, glamorous portrait of the lives of these young women, who came to New York looking for something more. It's a story of pushing the boundaries, of women's emancipation and of the generations of brilliant women who passed through its halls. ...Show more

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