Showing results by publisher "Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd" in Biographies & Memoirs

Step into the surreal world of a Tokyo hostess club and gain an exclusive underground pass through the eyes of author Chelsea Haywood as she explores a way of life unique to the Japanese, experiencing $600 dinners, kabuki theatre, Harajuku shopping sprees and first-class trips to 'anywhere you want to go'.

Set between Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, Gay Bar takes us on a time-traveling, transatlantic bar hop through pulsing nightclubs, after-work dives, hardcore leather bars, gay cafes and saunas, asking what these places meant to their original clientele, what they meant to the author as a younger man and what they mean now.

From the hills of South Lebanon to the monsoon jungles of Southern Asia, Ray Goggins has operated in a life-and-death world. In the suffocating humidity of Liberia, the mountains of Afghanistan and the snow-covered Balkans, Goggins has seen the best and worst qualities in himself and others. From conflict zones to terrorist attacks and hostage rescues, Ray has learned the greatest life lessons: how to control fear, how to react calmly and positively and how to create a strong baseline from which to take action.

Very early one morning, Samantha Barlow, mother of two young children, was brutally attacked with a brick on her way to work as a policewoman in Kings Cross. She was left for dead in a park. She could have been any young woman - the attack was completely random. Samantha's husband, Laurence, an inspector used to managing huge police operations, was thrown into the role of caregiver. She went through 22 months of rehab for both physical and head-trauma injuries, and triumphantly returned to work. The couple speak candidly of Samantha's journey over the last four years, and the personal price they've paid to be in the police force.

The remarkable untold WWII story of the US airman who was shot down over Nazi-occupied France and evaded Gestapo pursuers for more than six months. Arthur Meyerowitz was on his second air mission over France when he was shot down in 1943. He was one of only two men on the B-24 Liberator known as Harmful Lil' Armful who escaped death or immediate capture on the ground. After fleeing the wreck, Meyerowitz knocked on the door of an isolated farmhouse....

It first it looked like a swag, said the grader driver who found the body just off the road outside the outback town of Katherine. Police identify the dead man as Ray Nicefero, who'd recently appeared in court for aggravated assault and breaching a domestic violence order. Three days later, the constabulary rounds up three young local suspects: Christopher Malyschko, 24, Darren 'Spider' Halfpenny, 22, and 19-year-old Zak Grieve, who happens to be Indigenous.

Mark Kurzem was living at Oxford when his father, Alex, showed up with a secret to tell. During World War II, young Alex was made to promise never to reveal his true identity. The Jewish boy became part of the Nazi machine that killed his own people. Alex kept this secret from even his wife and children. But his torment increased and he became determined to uncover his Jewish roots. Shunned by a Holocaust organization, he went to his son Mark for help in regaining his identity.

Steve Austin isn't your average dog trainer. In this feel-good, yarn-laden memoir he shares amazing stories from a career of rescuing and training shelter dogs to become a crack force of K9s, culminating in his work for the Young Diggers program, which pairs specially trained dogs with returned Diggers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and more, with astonishing results.

Leaving the small village of Fossa in Italy in 1939 to meet a father he barely remembered in a place that was far from everything he knew, 15-year-old Annibale Boccabella arrived in Australia determined to make a go of it. It was a time when everything was changing, and anything seemed possible. Life was tough, but you could still chase your dreams.

More than 70 years later, in 2011, Zoe Boccabella and her family hurriedly try to save the treasured belongings of Annibale and his wife, Francesca.

In this tell-all audiobook, discover how the justice system works and why, at times, the innocent are convicted and the guilty set free. Bill Hosking looks back at his career as a criminal barrister in a candid account of his time at the bar. He tells the true story behind some of his most famous cases, including the Hilton bombings, 'Toecutter' Jimmy Driscoll's attempt to avoid prison time and the Anita Cobby trial.

The story of two American teens recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and their pursuit by a Mexican-American detective who realises the War on Drugs is unwinnable. What's it like to be an employee of a global drug-trafficking organisation? And how does a 15 year old American boy go from star quarterback to trained assassin, surging up the cartel corporate ladder?

When Ryan Campbell was six he fell in love with aeroplanes. It was a passion that was to dominate his childhood and it was no surprise when at 15 Ryan became the youngest pilot in Australia. Inspired by his father and grandfather who were also aviators, Ryan sought a challenge and, like adventurers before him, he found one that spoke to him more than the rest. He wanted to fly around the world, solo, in a single-engine aircraft.

In 1980, Tom Keneally walked into a store in Beverly Hills owned by Polish Jew Leopold Pfefferberg Page to buy a new briefcase. For the next few years, Tom's life was taken over by this charismatic and driven man, known as Poldek, and the story he wanted shared.

The first full-length biography of George Ingle Finch - maverick Australian mountaineer, scientist, concert pianist and father of actor Peter Finch. George Ingle Finch, mountaineer, soldier, scientist, rebellious spirit, boy from the bush, was in his day one of the most famous men in the world. In 1922 he stood at the highest point on Everest, a feat not bettered for 30 years. He invented the predecessor to the puffer jacket and pioneered the use of oxygen in climbing.

At just 15, Tana Douglas ran away to the circus that was rock 'n' roll in the 1970s, taking a job with a young and upcoming band called AC/DC. While still a teenager, she headed to the UK and later the US to work for a who's who of bands and artists. Life on the road was exhilarating, hard work, occasionally surreal but never dull, particularly when you're the only woman in the road crew and the #MeToo movement is still 40 years away.

'I’m a Wathaurong man. I’m an artist who draws on life in this big red and yellow and black country.' Stan 'Yarra' Yarramunua: artist, musician, actor, social worker, businessman. From growing up in poverty in Swan Hill - and sometimes on the road, with his itinerant father - Yarra had a tumultuous and often rough childhood. He learnt early how to lift a wallet or two and grew into a ratbag who looked set to follow in his father’s footsteps: fall into one too many skirmishes with the law; have one too many drinks, sliding down the path to alcoholism.

Let Richard Fidler draw you deeper into the human experience with the fourth volume of Conversations with Richard Fidler. Conversations with Richard Fidler draws you deeper into the life story of someone you may or may not have heard about - someone who has seen and done amazing things. This audiobook features six interviews from the programme.

Once there was a wilderness: Australia's frontier, a dangerous and unforgiving place where outlaws ruled the roads and killers were hailed as heroes. It was here, in 1838, that one man's uncompromising sense of justice changed history and shocked the world. Denny Day was a vicar's son from Ireland. A member of the Anglo-Irish ruling class, as a young man Day joined the British army before resigning to seek his fortune in New South Wales. There he accepted the most challenging role in the young colony: keeping the peace on the frontier.

This is the life story of Father Bob Maguire - a rare behind-the-scenes look at the much-loved 'people's priest'. The enigmatic champion of the down-and-out was shaped by a lonely childhood in poor circumstances, an early priesthood that collided with the upheaval of Vatican II and working with the army during the Vietnam War. This is a lively portrait of the man behind the resilient social activist and popular media performer who refuses to be defeated by enforced retirement from the parish over which he presided for nearly 40 years.

When a team of soccer players from the Wild Boars Academy Football Club - a scrappy club of undocumented migrants and outcasts - became stranded behind rising water in a labyrinthine Thai cave system, they set in train a drama that would captivate the world. Nine days later, still trapped in the dark without food, and with only water leaking through the walls to drink, their survival seemed unlikely. Yet against the odds a team of determined divers traversed floodwaters and narrow cave-ways to locate the boys - alive and hopeful.