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

The Silence Between Us is a raw and original double memoir tracing a mother and daughter as they try to understand and rebuild their relationship after the daughter's suicide attempt. Because Oceane had just turned 18 when she attempts to end her life, the hospital has to respect her request: to not notify her parents. But despite the distance between them, Cécile knows something is wrong with her fiercely independent daughter. As Cécile steps in to care for Oceane, the two reckon with things left unsaid and begin to rebuild a relationship that is both fragile and beautiful.

Rob Mills knows all about putting on a show. Since rising to fame on Australian Idol in 2003, Rob Mills has built a prolific career across television, film, stage and musicals, performing celebrated roles in shows such as Wicked, Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease, Neighbours and Dancing with the Stars. But he also knows that there's often much more going on behind the scenes than what meets the eye. Following the untimely deaths of two friends, Rob Mills began questioning who he is as a person and a man.

At sixteen years old, Lily Arthur was caught between the women's liberation movement of the ‘swinging sixties and the draconian ideology that young women should be punished for deviating from society's 'moral codes'. For the 'crime' of being pregnant, Lily was forcibly taken from the man she planned to marry and incarcerated in the notorious Holy Cross Home for ‘wayward' girls in Wooloowin, Brisbane as a ‘prisoner' of the state. Lily spent her entire pregnancy performing unpaid labour its infamous Magdalene Laundry.

At just seventeen, Jason Gibney enlisted in the Australian Defence Force, full of vigour and a thirst for adventure. Over the next decade, he served in Iraq, Afghanistan’s deadly Chora Valley, and during the heartbreaking fall of Kabul in 2021. His missions included fierce firefights with the Taliban and a devastating role as an interpreter during the chaotic civilian evacuations. His final role in the evacuation of Kabul was to drag screaming, visa-denied Afghans to their fate, men he could understand, whose death sentences he could hear in their own words.

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.

In the wake of a bizarre, shocking accident in Paris, Jayne finds herself back in the city in a strange limbo. Ignoring the past, she tries to move forward. There is theatre. Love. New friendships. A new neighborhood. But the accident haunts her, forcing her to confront herself and the experience in ways she could never have predicted. A tale of survival and the untold joys of life's curveballs, My Sweet Guillotine captures love and trauma with profound insight. Confronting, funny, strange and real, this is a book about life, death and reinvention, rendered in exquisite prose.

Jill Stark was living the dream. And then it all fell apart. It forced her to ask if she’d been sold a lie. From the ashes of Jill’s epic breakdown and through her own battles with mental-health issues comes this raw, funny, and uplifting exploration of our age of anxiety. Why, she asks, in a western world with more opportunity, choice, and wealth than ever before, are so many of us depressed, anxious, and medicated? When we’ve never had more ways to connect, why do we feel so profoundly disconnected?

Seven Bones is the story of one of the more bizarre murder investigations in Australia’s history. Two wives die in suspicious circumstances: co-incidence or, as husband Thomas Keir describes it, ‘bad luck’? Three years after Thomas Keir alleged his first wife, Jean, deserted him and her young son for another man, his second wife, Rosalina, Jean’s cousin, lay scorched and strangled on her bed. Arriving on the scene, Detective Peter Seymour realised he was either dealing with the world’s unluckiest husband or a serial wife killer.

I’m Not Mad (Anymore) sheds light on the mental struggles women go through silently, from post-natal depression and anxiety to menopause and all the muck in between.

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?

Zak Grieve grew up in an outback town, at the crossroads between right and wrong, white and black, punishment and forgiving. Convicted of a brutal killing despite even the judge saying he wasn't there when it happened, he spent years writing letters describing his hopes and dreams, his role in what happened, and how when the real world came down on him with a ton of punishment, he wasn't ready. This is a book about growing up, about dying and about writing. In the end, it is only Zak's imagination, given life in the novels he also writes inside prison, that hold the key to his survival.

A late-night visit to his Shanghai laneway house by China’s notorious secret police triggered a diplomatic storm which abruptly ended Michael Smith’s stint as one of Australia’s last foreign correspondents in China. After five days under consular protection, Smith was evacuated from a very different China to the country he first visited 25 years earlier.

Australia's most prolific serial sexual killers met in prison. They were a complete contrast: Christopher Worrell, the charismatic psychopathic youngster; and James Miller, the older and socially awkward loner. For Miller, it was love at first sight. They developed an ominous sexual bond–proving that opposites can attract–and then kill. Once free, the inseparable tag team slayed as many people as notorious Australian serial killer Ivan Milat. Whereas Milat took a year to murder seven victims, the duo achieved the same in seven short weeks … the last four killed in only six days.

Christine thought a year in South Korea would hit the pause button on her messy life. Her dad's death had left her anxious and depressed, and her career in musical theatre had reached a new low of shopping-centre kids' shows. When she found herself pulled over by the side of the road, dressed as a dinosaur and sobbing uncontrollably, it was clear something had to change. A role with an experimental theatre company based in Seoul seemed the perfect way to put off dealing with her problems, at least for a year. But she soon found there's no running away from yourself.

This is a difficult piece to write. It cuts closer to the bone than most of what I have written; closer to my bones, through my blood and flesh to the bones of truth and country; there is truth here, not disguised but in the open, and that truth hurts. Colonisation in Australia is not over. Colonisation is a process, not an event - and the after-effects will continue while there are still people to remember it.

Since the publication of her prize-winning memoir, Craft for a Dry Lake, writer and artist Kim Mahood has been returning to the Tanami desert country in far north-western Australia where, as a child, she lived with her family on a remote cattle station. The land is timeless, but much has changed: the station has been handed back to its traditional owners, the mining companies have arrived and Aboriginal art has flourished.

It’s the most shocking scandal ever to reach the inner sanctum of power in the Holy See. The Vatican’s treasurer, Cardinal George Pell, was ordered to face trial in his native Australia after being charged with multiple counts of child sexual abuse. Investigative journalist Lucie Morris-Marr, who was the first reporter in the world to reveal the allegations against the cleric, attended each day of the subsequent legal case. She lifts the lid on the proceedings, which for so long were in lock down due to a controversial media black-out.

Justin Yerbury made a promise to his mother while she was dying of motor neurone disease (MND) that he would do everything he could to find a cure. MND had already taken several members of Justin's family, and he learned that they carried a rare genetic form of the disease that gave them a fifty-fifty chance of inheritance. Desperate to help his loved ones, Justin went to university to study science, eventually becoming a professor of molecular biology at the University of Wollongong and one of the world's leading experts on MND.

What does a young footballer do to cut loose? At night, some play what they think of as pranks or games: night games with women. Sometimes these involve consensual sex, sometimes not, and often the lines are blurred. In Night Games, Anna Krien follows the rape trial of an Australian Rules footballer. She also takes a balanced and fearless look at the dark side of footy culture - the world of Sam Newman, Ricky Nixon, Matty Johns and the Croa Sharks.

Heidi is unapologetically authentic, her memoir is filled with honesty, humour and home-truths. She will show you how she dealt with her inner mean girls that told her she wasn't skinny enough, good enough or simply that other people mattered more than she did. She will inspire you to STOP worrying what other people think and take your power back!