Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Biographies & Memoirs

As a true fashion insider, Kirstie Clements has seen trends come and go, from the sublime to the ridiculous, but she knows real style when she sees it - like a classic loafer that makes you feel comfortable in your own skin or a beautiful winter coat to take you through more than one season. In Why Did I Buy That?, Kirstie shares personal stories, musings on fashion trends and thoughts on everything from how to successfully edit your wardrobe to how to spend your money more wisely.

In her youth, amidst the throes of a reckless grief, aspiring Australian writer Marele Day is caught up in a shipwreck adventure and forges an unlikely bond with an international fugitive travelling under a pseudonym. For the next 30 years they correspond before reuniting, both older and wiser, in France.

Jingjing Xue was born in China in the 1950s, during one of the worst times in the reign of communist leader Mao Zedong, or Chairman Mao. Mao’s extreme five-year industrialisation plan - the Great Leap Forward - left much of the population starving, destitute and gripped with fear. Jingjing, abandoned to an orphanage as a young boy, was destined to a life of hardship before officials singled him out and enlisted him to train with the Shanghai Acrobatics School.

Through her personal quest for a better way of being, author and respected journalist Christine Jackman seeks out the best ways to regain clarity and peace of mind in a busy and noisy world. For centuries, wise men and women have sought silence to gain insight and creative inspiration. Now the modern world is catching up. Is neuroscience finally proving that the mystics, monks and medicine men were onto something?

Anna-Jane Cheney was a vivacious, popular and talented lawyer with an impeccable middle-class upbringing. The man she loved, Henry Keogh, was a divorced Irish migrant with three children. She died just six weeks before their wedding date, and Keogh was convicted of her murder. Journalist Graham Archer became fascinated by the case. It wasn’t a matter of guilt or innocence but that a man could be sentenced to life without having received a fair trial.

Sam always knew he was starting life on the back foot. When his parents split, Sam, his mother and his brother had to learn to survive in a world not built for single-parent families. Add to that Sam's diagnosis with a form of dwarfism and the odds seemed stacked against them. As surgeons kept breaking and resetting Sam's legs in attempts to keep him walking, disability and poverty collided, and it took all the family's strength not to crumple in the impact. In Broke, lawyer and disability advocate Sam Drummond weaves a poignant, stirring and deeply compassionate tale of life on the fringes.

What if your life were suddenly transformed by anxiety and fear? The fear of being alone, the anxiety compelling you to stay in public places and avoid predictable routines. The horrible uncertainty of not knowing whether you should fear for your life, and maybe even the lives of your children. The dreadful knowledge that, ultimately, you are powerless to escape. Ellis Gunn's world is turned upside down when she realises that she is being followed by a man she doesn't know—and that she can't make him stop.

In her collection of autobiographical essays, fashion magazine editor Justine Cullen takes us on a hilariously candid exploration of her life so far - and all the mistakes she’s made along the way. Semi-Gloss is an intimate, sharp and witty look at growing up and growing older from the kind of woman who looks like she has it all together - the glamorous job, the perfect family, the killer wardrobe. But, chipping away at that shiny, sparkly surface, Justine reveals the beautiful mess that lies beneath.

Just like fox, Heidi has lived on the outer. The ‘official record’ of her life has been her mental health record: primary diagnosis – schizoaffective; comorbidity – major depression, juvenile autism and not her own memories. This is the living, breathing version of Heidi’s mental health file that psych wards, doctors, mental health staff or rehab workers know little about or worse, use as evidence of diagnoses. This is Heidi’s account of what happened, shadowed by the story of a fox who knows he'll never belong.

In July 2016, inner-city resident Judy Ryan found a young man—one of ‘her regulars'—slumped and quiet at her gate. He had overdosed from heroin. Fortunately, that man lived. But Judy had reached breaking point. After four years in a ‘war zone', where children might encounter a body on the streets, enough was enough. Knowing little about what she was getting into, but fired with resolve, Judy launched a grassroots campaign against apathy and prejudice.

In mid-2016, Monica left Sydney, unsure of her place in Australia. As a Chinese Australian city slicker, she couldn't have felt more distant from powerful mythologies like the Digger, the Drover's Wife and Clancy of the Overflow. And more importantly, Monica wondered, how could she ever feel she truly belonged to a land that has been the spiritual domain of Indigenous Australians for over 60,000 years?

At the age of 20, after a traumatic sexual assault trial, Kathryn Heyman ran away from her life and became a deckhand on a fishing trawler in the Timor Sea. Coming from a family of poverty and violence, she had no real role models, no example of how to create or live a decent life, how to have hope or expectations. But she was a reader. She understood story, and the power of words to name the world. This was to become her salvation.

Blind from birth, Graeme Innes was blessed with a family who refused to view his blindness as a handicap, instilling in him a belief in his own abilities; blessed with a determination to persevere. After a long and successful career as a lawyer, company director and Human Rights Commissioner, Graeme has written his story. Finding a Way shares his memories of love and support, challenges, failures and overcoming the discrimination so many people with disabilities face.

Meet Sunshine. That's her stage name. Follow her downstairs into the shadowy underworld of the so-called gentlemen's clubs, where men hide in dark corners and pay gorgeous women like Sunshine to take their clothes off. Follow her to the private rooms where the lap dances happen, the hustle plays out and the real money flows. Sit with her in the back room with the other dancers, her friends and colleagues, who laugh and cry and rake in the dollars and party as though a zombie apocalypse is on the horizon.

When Helen's partner of 15 years announced without warning that she 'needed to grow', and left in the Toyota, Helen remained in her pyjamas, ordering barbecue chicken, and crying on her cat. After disclosing her foulest thoughts on an XXX app, quitting her job, and receiving bad advice from her discount shrink, she cried again; this time on her beauty therapist, who dared her to go on 100 dates inside a year. Razor took that dare. Naked, funny, and frankly embarrassing – this is the Helen 100.

Part memoir and part positive body image manifesto, this is an insider's perspective on the industry and how the images the world gets to see are only part of the story. The modelling and advertising industries persistently tell women they're fat, ugly and abnormal if they conform to anything other than a western ideal of beauty. In 2002 Chelsea Bonner founded BELLA, a modelling agency focused on healthy body size and dedicated to changing our dangerously narrow perception of 'beautiful'.

George Miller made his first film, Mad Max, in 1976 after hiring unknown Mel Gibson and editing it in his kitchen. It would become the most profitable film ever made. Miller and Max is the story of two heroes. One, a globally recognised dystopian warrior. The second, the artist who created him. Written with the cooperation of a role call of cast, crew, family and associates, author Luke Buckmaster gets behind the scenes of both the set and the man: revealing the Max in Miller.

When Covid lockdowns hit Melbourne, metropolitan midlife couple Kate and Chris decide to make a sea change and move to a small coastal town to ease financial pressures and live out the beach lifestyle many of us dream of. But they didn't give much thought to just how different it would be. With late night drinking sessions in Melbourne's coolest suburbs replaced by the disconcerting peace of a summer destination largely quiet for the rest of the year, they're suddenly rattling around in their beautiful new home without kids, friends or a real community.

When Mariam married her childhood sweetheart in a fairytale Sydney wedding, her father, Kamalle, dreamed of a beautiful future for his family. When the young couple and their baby daughter went on an overseas holiday, he couldn’t have been happier. But a dark secret was lurking on the horizon. They would not be coming home.

I imagined lounging on a veranda overlooking folds of hills striped with vines. I'd be clothed in linen and surrounded by friends. On the table would be tumblers of wine we'd picked in last year's harvest. Then we arrived at Cockatoo Hill and discovered a dump. When Deirdre and her husband Roger decide to turn a sheep paddock into a vineyard, they were following the centuries old tradition of family wine making.