Cultural & Regional

Helene Hadsell was "the woman who won every contest prize she desired". In Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game, she shares her winning secrets in the vibrant, warm, and folksy manner that was uniquely her....

A true story of a man who took it upon himself to live alone on a deserted island in the South Pacific....

'Indian-Australian' is not a one-size-fits-all descriptor. Given the depth and richness of diversity of the Indian subcontinent, it is fitting that its diaspora is similarly varied. Growing Up Indian in Australia reflects and celebrates this vibrant diversity.

The iconic Australian exploration story - brought to life by Peter FitzSimons, Australia's storyteller....

This inspirational New York Times best seller chronicles the lifelong friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy and how both of their lives were changed by what began as one small gesture of kindness....

The Worlds I See is the moving memoir of a scientist coming of age as an immigrant in America who finds her calling at the forefront of the AI revolution.

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage....

The definitive biography of a legendary athlete. The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his body totally in sync with the ball - hitting nothing but net....

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Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou's path to living well and living a life with meaning....

Stan Grant is talking to his country in a new way. In his most poetic and inspiring work yet, the Wiradjuri writer offers us a means of moving beyond the binaries and embracing a path to peace and forgiveness rooted in the Wiradjuri spiritual practice of Yindyamarra–deep silence and respect.

From growing up in difficult circumstances and getting cut from his high-school basketball team to his larger-than-life basketball career, Shaq lays it all out in Shaq Uncut....

In 1899, Deneys Reitz, then aged seventeen, enlisted in the Boer army to fight the British. He had learnt to ride, shoot and swim almost as soon as he could walk. When he fought as a member several Boer commandos, he made full use of these skills and the endurance he acquired during the war.

The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the 19th century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era....

Booker T. Washington fought his way out of slavery to become an educator, statesman, political shaper and proponent of the "do it yourself" idea....

It'd been a long time since I claimed some solitude in this blessed landscape; since I've done without life's little props. Here I have no friend, no dog, no radio, no clock, no phone, no roof, no body pollutants....

Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste....

In 1978, the bloody conflict in Northern Ireland, known as The Troubles, had reached a boiling point.

This is the dramatic story of what happened to an innocent three-year-old child on October 7, 2023, and one family member’s great efforts to rescue her from Hamas terrorists.

William McInnes, one of Australia's best-loved entertainers and authors, takes a look at the Aussie obsession with sports and pop culture....

In the tradition of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and Alice Taylor’s To School Through the Fields, Tom Phelan’s We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It is a heartfelt and masterfully written memoir of growing up in Ireland in the 1940s....

Deeply moving, A Gypsy in Auschwitz is the incredible story of how a young Sinti boy miraculously survived the unimaginable darkness of the Holocaust....

At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970....

In "Amish Renegade: The Anthropology of an Amish Girl Turned CEO," journey into the extraordinary life of a woman who defied the confines of tradition and forged her own path to success.

Attempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative audiobook....

Growing up Amish and leaving the fold, Emma Gingerich left her Amish community in Eagleville, Missouri, at the age of 18. Her memoir Runaway Amish Girl: The Great Escape captivates even the timid listener. Listen to learn more....

My aim is to shed light on the transformative power of God's redemption through my own journey. While many understand the principles of redemption academically, confusion often arises when life's challenges confront believers. For those who've relinquished dreams to shame, I invite you into my journey—from earliest memories to ministry failure and eventual restoration, in hopes of offering solace and understanding to those who have lost their way. Let my experiences illuminate the path to understanding and embracing the transformative grace of God in every pitfall and setback life presents.

Cairo, 1963: four years before her lone novel is finally published, the writer Enayat al-Zayyat takes her own life at age twenty-seven. For the next three decades, it's as if Enayat never existed at all. Years later, when celebrated Egyptian poet Iman Mersal stumbles upon Enayat's long-forgotten Love and Silence in a Cairo book stall, she embarks on a journey of reflection and rediscovery that leads her ever closer to the world and work of Enayat al-Zayyat.

Like much of North Korea, Songmi Han lived in desperate poverty. As a child, she and her family endured extreme hardship, with many meals consisting of little more than grass. Domestic abuse, grueling physical labor, emotional abuse, and hunger were constant in her life. School was out of the question, and she and her mother stole food to survive. Greenlight to Freedom: A North Korean Daughter’s Search for Her Mother and Herself, written by Songmi Han and Casey Lartigue Jr., recounts Songmi’s childhood and escape from North Korea in a perilous and gripping narrative.

Razeen Sally was born to a Sri Lankan Muslim father and a Welsh mother. Just before his teens, a political conflict tore his family apart and he left Sri Lanka, barely going back for thirty years. When he finally returned ‘home’, he spent much of the next decade crisscrossing the island, trying to understand this paradoxical place. Blessed with nature’s bounty and an easy, pleasure-loving people, it was nevertheless scarred by ethnic conflict and the violence of civil war.

This in-depth work by historian Cheryl C. D. Hughes lets listeners inhabit the postwar America where Bishop Fulton Sheen thrived, in order to reveal what made him such a magnetic figure in his own era. It peers into the complex lives of the celebrities and fallen stars who saw in the warm, brilliant bishop a sign of God’s grace, and it offers a study in the inner dynamics of conversion.

Fiona Foley Provocateur provides insights into the life of one of Australia’s most influential urban Aboriginal and activist artists. From her beginnings in Hervey Bay, Queensland, it follows her young adult life in Sydney where she co-founded Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-Operative in 1986, to her rise through the art world and, most recently, into an academic life.

Rory Cellan-Jones knew he was the child of a love affair between two BBC employees. But until his mother, Sylvia, died and he found a file labelled 'For Rory' he had no idea of their beginnings or ending. Or why his peculiarly isolated childhood had so tested the bond between him and Sylvia, who was single-parenting two sons in a one-bedroom fl at while working full time through the Fifties and Sixties. 'For Rory,' his mother had written on the file before she died, 'in the hope that it will help him understand how it really was ...'

In the heart of a small Jamaican community in Kingston, a majestic mango tree stands as a silent witness to generations of whispered secrets and haunting tales. “Whisper in the Wind: The Silent Haunting of the Mango Tree” weaves together a tapestry of stories, blending the mystical with the real. Through the eyes of the author, her siblings, and the elders, listeners are drawn into a world where the line between fiction and reality blurs.

An iconic figure in the world of cricket in the 1970s and 1980s, Mohinder Amarnath started his career as a batsman who was found suspect against short-pitched fast bowling and finished it as one of the finest and bravest players of pace. He is still remembered with awe for hooking fearsome pace attacks on bouncy Caribbean and Australian tracks-without wearing a helmet. Grit, guts and gumption defined Amarnath's rollercoaster career. According to both Sunil Gavaskar and Imran Khan, Amarnath was the best batsman of their era.

This personal memoir is brought to you by Tracie Keolalani, a true local girl tita ē. Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, she takes us on her journey of discovering the truth behind her homeland and her people. As a "brownish" local girl, she weaves in personal experiences of systemic racism, prejudice, and struggle. Honestly and wholeheartedly, she lets us peek into the sorrow, beauty, and humor of her world as she struggles to find her own identity and voice.

Jenny’s dad “Grizz” was as large as his boisterous laugh and hailed as his daughter’s hero. High on acid, the father of four girls turned violent, triggering fear and unspeakable misery that sent the girls running. Jenny’s mom was an authentic 70's hippy who grew up on the streets and in the system. She worked her fingers to the bone to keep her family together, but the odds were against her. The idea of her girls living the same life she had lived, sent her mental health spiraling.

Dreams of a Lost Youth describes the story of the lives of several young passionate students, a playboy; a poet; four students with different ideologies; and a science student, in Tehran, Iran, before and after the revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. It describes how they joined these various groups that opposed the Shah’s dictatorship and how they suffered after the revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini government.

Those Boys on the Hill is a biographical coming-of-age story about three inner-city, African American brothers growing up in a group home in a farming community in Pennsylvania. Elliott Glover uses a mix of humor, sadness, and raw situational honesty to share the harrowing experiences that shaped the men he and his brothers Jacque and Iszel have become.

Following a ski accident that left Clayton immobile for nearly six months, he grappled with severe depression, culminating in a life-changing moment at the Golden Gate Bridge. A voice in his head said, "There has got to be another way," which set him on a transformative journey, eventually leading to meditation. Through this practice, he began to view his past through a new lens, gaining profound insights into his childhood trauma and achieving rare states of consciousness akin to spiritual enlightenment that lasted for several years.

Designer, activist, and educator Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller is legendary for her decades of scholarship and advocacy, and as a touchstone and conscience for the design profession. In HERE: Where the Black Designers Are, Holmes-Miller documents the history of—and answers to—the question she has been asking for decades: “Where are the Black designers?” Holmes-Miller explores this essential question through the lens of her own development as a designer and leader, beginning with her own family and its rich multiethnic history.