Showing results by publisher "Penguin Random House Australia Audio" in Biographies & Memoirs

In Graft, Maggie MacKellar describes a year on a Merino wool farm on the east coast of Tasmania, and all of life - and death - that surrounds her through the cycle of lambing seasons. She gives us the land she knows and loves, the lambs she cares for, the ewes she tries to save, the birds around her, and the dogs and horses she adores.

Tom Nash has spent his adult life mesmerising audiences around the world, either with his thought-provoking philosophies or hypnotic DJ sets. However, before his career had even begun, Tom was given the slimmest chance of survival after contracting a deadly disease at the age of nineteen, resulting in him losing both his arms and legs. When the unthinkable becomes your reality, where do you turn? Why do you turn? Tom not only went on to survive, but to thrive, taking on life with nothing more than a pair of prosthetic hooks and a dark sense of humour.

Roman Quaedvlieg was always destined to make a mark. As a rookie policeman on the mean streets of Fortitude Valley in the dying days of the Moonlight State, his first arrest was Brisbane's most wanted escapee. Three decades later, he found himself navigating through the corridors of power in...

When Sue Smethurst first sat down with her grandmother-in-law and asked how she survived the Holocaust, she was shooed away. By that time Mindla was in a Melbourne Jewish nursing home with other survivors, her body ageing but mind still razor sharp. 'Vhy do you vant to know?' she'd ask. 'My story is nothing special.' As death began approaching, Sue became a little more pushy. She knew Mindla's life had to be recorded, and they were running out of time.

Paul Verhoeven's ex-cop dad, John, spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. One day John offered Paul the chance of a lifetime: he'd spill his guts on tape. What unfolded in Loose Units was a goldmine of true-crime stories, showcasing John's...

'Hip hop and hymns: the two would always go hand in hand for me. My life would always straddle both. The sacred and the profane, all living on the same block, all divine in the end.' Mawunyo Gbogbo is a church-going African Australian girl growing up in the sleepy mining town of Muswellbrook...

In 2000, Rebekah gave birth to twin boys, George and Harry. But as they grew older, their preferences began to show, and by the age of three it was clear Georgie was drawn to anything that was pretty or had a skirt that could swirl. Before long Georgie was insisting that she was a girl and...

'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...

In recent years Greg - a.k.a. 'Space Gandalf' - has taken on cult status among audiences via his appearances alongside Professor Brian Cox in the hit TV series Stargazing Live. Greg's practical explanations of the complexities of space have also earned him respect from astronomers around the world. Is The Moon Upside Down? is an absorbing guided tour of the cosmos as seen through Greg's eyes.

The son of first-generation Tongan immigrants, Hau drew on the legacy of his name (meaning 'King') to become one of the nation's most influential musical artists. But the best stories often come from the humblest beginnings. A promising junior rugby player, Hau decided in his teens to trade in...

It should've been the happiest time of Lee Barnett's life. She was married to a man she loved and trusted, Harris Todd, and she was pregnant with her first child. But things quickly turned from dream to nightmare when Harris demanded a divorce. Rich, powerful and well-connected in their hometown of Charleston, USA, he was able to spin the court proceedings in his favour, leaving Lee emotionally and financially devastated. And then came the final blow: she lost custody of her beautiful daughter, Savanna, who was only 11 months old.

He was a murderer, swindler, bigamist and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. Frederick Deeming was also the most hated man in the world. Claiming to be haunted by the ghost of his dead mother, Deeming had spent years roaming the planet under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the...

One of the top storylines from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics was the brigade of bandits from Australia throwing down at the freestyle park for the inaugural action-sports events—in particular the young gun from Logan City, Queensland, who took the gold medal off the table before his competitors knew what had happened. But there's been nothing easy about Logan's ascent to the top. A testament to dedication and self-discipline, artistry and courage, Logan Martin has set the bar for what it means to be an international extreme sports athlete.

At the peak of his powers, and with the world at his feet after a breakout season in the Australian Football League (AFL), the North Melbourne Kangaroos' Majak Daw was on the verge of finally becoming one of the AFL's bona fide superstars - but it all came crashing down. After secretly battling years of mental health issues, the Sudanese-born phenomenon leapt off the Bolte Bridge in Melbourne in a shock attempt to end his life.

The journals of the Nobel Prize-winning author, beautifully illustrated with his own paintings

Comedian Oliver Twist was four years old when he and his family fled the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda for Malawi, their exile for the next fourteen years. Twist has turned the turmoil he and his family endured into a thrilling adventure of a hero's journey. A natural born storyteller, propelled from the cold alleys of a Malawian refugee camp to the warm spotlight of the Australian stage, he vividly describes what it's like to leave your homeland behind and to have to wait your whole childhood for life to begin.

For forty years David Meagher harboured a secret. Then in mid 2018 a text message from an old school friend forced him to confront his past and finally deal with it. Secrets and Lies is a story about child sexual abuse. The culture that enabled it. How the perpetrator groomed his victims. How it finally came to an end. And how four decades after the crimes were committed his victims embarked on a successful two-year journey to bring the offender to justice. David Meagher delivers an intimate account of the lasting impact of child sexual abuse on survivors.

Chrissie Foster is the mother who brought the rich and powerful Catholic Church to its knees over its global abuse of children, including two of her daughters, Emma and Katie. Like the Boston Globe's Spotlight team, she built an undeniable case in her first book Hell on the Way to Heaven, which helped inspire Australian governments to hold world-leading inquiries.

In 2013 Jaivet Ealom fled Myanmar's brutal regime, where Rohingya like him were being persecuted and killed, and boarded a boat of asylum seekers bound for Australia. Instead of receiving refuge, he was transported to Australia's infamous Manus Regional Processing Centre. Blistering hot days spent in shipping containers on the island melted into weeks, then years until, finally, facing either jail in Papua New Guinea or being returned to almost certain death in Myanmar, he took matters into his own hands.

Larry Blair shot to fame at just 19, coming from nowhere to take out the biggest ever cash prize in surfing. The outsider from Australia backed it up by winning Hawaii's revered Pipeline Masters at the world's deadliest wave, twice. In an instant, he was a household name, transcending sport to...