Australian Memoir

How can you cheat… at drinking wine? It turns out you can. And when you do, a whole world of power, ego and money will unravel. Corked is the scandalous saga in the glamorous, competitive and mysterious world of fine wines.

Always Greener is an exquisite portrait of Kate Grenville's complex, conflicted grandmother, who she feared as a child and only in adulthood came to understand. Born in rural Australia, Dolly Russell becomes a successful businessperson, mother and troubled wife. Then came the depression, bankruptcy and World War I. Yet, in a way, those disasters freed her. They allowed her to use her intelligence and ambition to make a space for herself in a man’s world.

This Is Not a Game is the extraordinary untold story of the internet’s first conspiracy theory, the legend of Ong’s Hat. Marc Fennell will dive deep into a previously unexplored world of tech hippies, eccentric web subcultures and simmering paranoia, uncovering how this tongue-in-cheek artistic experiment backfired on its creator and went on to influence much of what’s wrong with the internet today.

A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know.

The oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws' reputations are so weighted with legend and myth that the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun.

The iconic Australian exploration story - brought to life by Peter FitzSimons, Australia's storyteller. 'They have left here today!' he calls to the others. When King puts his hand down above the ashes of the fire, it is to find it still hot. There is even a tiny flame flickering from the end of one log. They must have left just hours ago. Melbourne, 20 August 1860. In an ambitious quest to be the first Europeans to cross the harsh Australian continent, the Victorian Exploring Expedition sets off, with 15,000 well-wishers cheering them on.

Darren Hayes was always a storyteller. As a child, in suburban Queensland in the 1970s, he told himself he was going to be a pop star - and he did it. But the reality of his life was much more complicated than the constraints of a three-minute pop song. In Unlovable, for the first time, Darren recounts the events and circumstances that shaped his unique life: from the childhood trauma of growing up with a violent, alcoholic father, his journey with depression, to the dizzying heights of worldwide fame in Savage Garden, and everything in between.

If you haven't seen a Discovery Channel gold-hunting show, you might picture a gold prospector as a relic of the Wild West: a TNT-toting bearded old man wildly swinging a pick on the hunt for nuggets, guided by old maps, superstition, legends and instinct. It's still predominantly a man's world, and still often fanatical, but these days the golden dream attracts people from all walks of life—and 25-year-old Tyler Mahoney (Australian star of the Discovery Channel's Gold Rush series) is leading the way.

Spontaneous combustion and exhumation, drug mules and devil worshippers, a gruesome killing beneath the Palmerston North Airport control tower, a mysterious death in a historic homestead, a firsthand dissection of the infamous Mark Lundy case... In The Cause of Death, provincial pathologist Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp lifts the lid on the most unusual stories of death and murder he's encountered during his 30-year career.

James Phelps explores all the questions that we can only barely imagine the answers to about Australia's toughest jails. This is a brutal and honest account of life inside Australia's toughest jails, and all is not as you would expect. Do women rape each other? Do guards really trade 40-cent phone cards for sex? And do you think the most dangerous inmate in Australia is a man? This is the most comprehensive ever account of women's prison life yet.

Matilda Boseley's adult ADHD diagnosis was a massive, earth-shattering event. She was given a prescription but had no idea what ADHD meant for her identity, her relationships or her future. Twelve months of confusion later, journalist Matilda embarked on an epic voyage to figure out what's really happening in the stormy seas of the ADHD brain and write the guide she wished she'd had. The Year I Met My Brain is the ultimate travel companion for navigating and enjoying life as an ADHD adult

On May 15, 2010, after 210 days at sea and more than 22,000 nautical miles, 16-year-old Jessica Watson sailed her 33-foot boat triumphantly back to land. She had done it. She was the youngest person to sail solo, unassisted, and nonstop around the world. Jessica spent years preparing for this moment, years focused on achieving her dream. Yet only eight months before, she collided with a 63,000-ton freighter. It seemed to many that she’d failed before she’d even begun, but Jessica brushed herself off, held her head high, and kept going.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

The strange tale of a boy named Flea starts in Rye, NY. It was all very normal. But soon his parents divorced and his mother Patricia remarried a jazz musician. Flea's stepfather frequently invited musicians to his house for jam sessions which sparked Flea's interest in music. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Flea became fascinated with the trumpet, idolising musicians like Miles, Dizzy, and Louis....

Michael and Mary Shelley are Christian fanatics who loathe their fellow Australians - especially their foul language, reckless indulgence in alcohol, and obsession with idiotic ball sports. Lenore and Tom Blaine are working-class Queensland publicans raising a large family in a raucous, loving, rugby-league-obsessed home. There's just one problem. The Blaines are foster parents to three of the Shelleys' children, who were removed from Michael and Mary as infants. And the Shelleys are prepared to do anything to get them back. Anything.

Among members of the outlaw motorcycle clubs, Caesar Campbell is a legend. Former sergeant-at-arms and chief enforcer for the Comancheros, Caesar became the founding member and sergeant-at-arms of the Australian chapter of the Bandidos. He epitomised bikie culture - unbeatable in a fight, brutal in the extreme, fearing no one and nothing, and loyal until death. This is Caesar's story, from his recruitment into the Comancheros, to the savage split within the club that led to the foundation of the Bandidos and the bloody massacre at Milperra that resulted from it.

Many books show how to pursue a dream and successfully make it happen, but few spotlight what to do when you've reached the pinnacle. After fighting so hard and reaching your goals, how do you stay on top?

Before COVID, both Qantas and its CEO Alan Joyce were flying high, the darlings of customers, staff and investors. After Covid hit, only money mattered—in particular, the company’s share price and extraordinary executive bonuses. Illegally redundant workers, unethical flight credits, abysmal customer service, antique aircraft: these became Qantas’ new brand. How did things go so badly wrong? For the first time, The Chairman’s Lounge tells the full story of how one company banked the nation’s loyalty and then cashed in on it.

David Spiteri was a founding member and long-time president of one of Australia's first outlaw motorcycle clubs from its inception in the early 1960s through to the early 2000s. He has been uniquely placed to witness the clubs develop from loose affiliations of riders to the well-structured and well-connected groups we see today. In this never-before-told inside story, Spiteri puts himself at risk to reveal everything from the drug trafficking which funds the clubs' operations to the extreme violence that continues to make them infamous.

Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave’s inner life. Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with Seán O’Hagan, it is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity. The book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief, and love. It draws candidly on Cave’s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic, and his dramatic transformation in recent years.