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

Leisel Jones is regarded as one of the greatest breaststrokers ever. At just 15 she won two silver medals at the Sydney Olympics and went on to win gold at Athens and Beijing. For the first time, Leisel candidly describes being thrust into the limelight so young and reveals the constant pressure she was under. Despite the highs of stardom, she suffered severe depression. Body Lengths is the inspiring story of an Australian sportsperson told with humour, optimism and style.

In the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe, two people meet fleetingly in a chance encounter. Josefine Lobnik is a Yugoslav underground resistance fighter, Bruce Murray a New Zealand soldier and prisoner of war. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever. This is an extraordinary true account of two ordinary people living through the unimaginable hardship of Hitler's barbaric regime.

Thirty years after creating one of the most memorable moments in sporting history, Indigenous AFL legend Nicky Winmar tells his story in a moving and compelling memoir.

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?

Scottish-born Robert Wales sailed into Sydney Harbour during WWII, but in 1953 he was choking in the city, and doctors prescribed fresh country air. With no experience and only knowledge he'd picked up from a few books, he uproots his family and sets out to establish a sheep farm in the bush. When they arrive on a lonely hill in northern New South Wales, they have no electricity, no running water, no telephone and no choice but to make this their home.

When Olivia Molly Rogers was crowned Miss Universe Australia, she knew exactly what she wanted to shine a light on: her struggles with disordered eating and anxiety. While many of her Instagram followers are eager for her fashion, art and insanely cute dog content, the heart of Olivia's audience is there for her refreshingly honest voice on body positivity and mental health.

The day Abram and his mother arrived at Auschwitz death camp, they both knew it would be her last. In their final moment together, Abram's mum urged her nineteen-year-old son to 'Do everything humanly possible to survive, and tell people what happened here.' Then she was taken to a gas chamber and murdered. Abram had already endured and survived so much until that moment but with his strength of hope, sometimes reduced to a flicker, he survived.

On a balmy Townsville night in 1944, young serviceman Warwick Meale is found beaten to death under a bridge. The army and police do not, or will not, conduct a proper investigation and history forgets the killer - until now. Nearly 80 years on, Warwick's descendant Jonathan Butler dusts off the case and chases the leads that were there all along. The Boy in the Dress exhumes secrets of life on the home front during World War II, where tensions between soldiers boiled over, new expressions of sexuality flourished and the threat of invasion catapulted the status quo into disarray.

The Power of Two is a universal and timeless story of hope, possibility and living life outside the lines, co-written by media powerhouses and best friends Lisa Messenger and Sarah Megginson, and their uplifting, life-affirming surrogacy story. Lisa and Sarah will delve further into their profound journey—one that transcends pain and heartache to shine a light on what becomes possible when we embrace vulnerability and the power of community.

As the owner of a successful events company, throwing away huge volumes of leftover food at the end of the day came with the territory. But when Ronni Kahn hit midlife, she found herself no longer able to turn a blind eye to her food waste problem. Hand delivering the untouched food to homeless shelters around Sydney became her renegade solution. Little did she know that fixing her small problem at work would lead her to unlock a hidden purpose at the very core of her inner life.

Only in the past decade have the consequences of repeated head knocks become better known, and the science is still rapidly catching up. With the discovery of CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, in the brains of deceased football players, it is now known that the onset of a form of dementia, caused by repeated concussions, can strike people as young as those in their thirties and forties. This is what has happened to Michael Lipman, a former rugby international who came out in public in 2018 as having had a diagnosis of early-onset dementia and probable CTE.

What happens when, aged 30, you realise you're transgender? This was the question that confronted Yves Rees, a historian whose life was upended by gender transition in 2018. Then known as a woman called Anne, Yves was forced to grapple with the sudden realisation that they were not, in fact, female at all. But when you've lived a lie for so long, how do you discover who you really are? And how do you re-learn to live in the world as a different gender? All About Yves tells their moving journey of re-becoming.

How could I write about the importance of truth and not tell the whole truth myself? After 20 years spent searching for her biological parents, 52-year-old Susan Hull unexpectedly meets the great love of her life - a gold miner named Wayne Francis. He is a gentle giant of a man, who promises Susan the world. Two years later, they throw in their jobs, marry and sell everything they own, embarking on an incredible adventure, to start a new life in the romantic city of Granada, where they learn Spanish and enjoy too much tapas.

The shocking true story of a serial killer in 1930s Melbourne. November, 1930. One sunny Saturday afternoon, 12-year-old Mena Griffiths was playing in the park when she was lured away by an unknown man. Hours later, her strangled body was found, mouth gagged and hands crossed over her chest, in an abandoned house. Only months later, another girl was murdered, the similarities between the cases undeniable. Crime in Melbourne had taken a shocking new turn: this was the work of a serial killer, a homicidal maniac.

Samantha Wills started her self-titled jewellery company on the kitchen table of her share house in the eastern suburbs of Sydney when she was just 21 years old. While her rise to the global stage looked meteoric to many, Samantha has said 'It took me 12 years to become an overnight success.' Following Samantha's journey, from being named a breakout star by The New York Times to barely being able to breathe on a hotel room floor, Of Gold and Dust is so much more than a business memoir.

Anna's always had too many feelings. Or not enough feelings—she's never been quite sure. Debilitating panic. Extraordinary melancholy. Paranoia. Ambivalence. Fear. Despair. From anxious child to terrified parent, mental illness has been a constant. But between therapists' rooms and emergency departments, there's been a feeling even harder to explain … optimism. In this sharp-eyed and illuminating memoir, award-winning writer Anna Spargo-Ryan pieces together the relationships between time, mental illness, and our brain as the keeper of our stories.

Wind back the clock on any Australian or New Zealand woman in her thirties or forties today and you'd probably find a Triangl bikini tucked away in her swimwear drawer. The uniquely neoprene, colour-blocked bikinis were the summer accessory season after season. Yet as customers snapped selfies at the beach, one woman was holed up in a smog-filled Hong Kong apartment, living on canned soup, battling twenty-hour days and debilitating depression, trying to make it all happen.

Long before Ruhi fell pregnant, she knew she was never going to be the 'good Indian daughter' her parents demanded. But when the discovery that she is having a girl sends her into a slump of disappointment, it becomes clear she's getting weighed down by emotional baggage that needs to be unpacked, quickly. So Ruhi sets herself a mission to deal with the potholes in her past before her baby is born.

On Valentine’s Day, after a night of red wine and pasta and planning for their future, Natasha Sholl and her partner, Rob, went to bed. A few hours later, at the age of 27, his heart stopped. Found, Wanting tells the story of Natasha’s attempt to rebuild her life in the wake of Rob’s sudden death, stumbling through the grief landscape and colliding with the cultural assumptions about the ‘right way’ to grieve. It is a memoir about falling in love in the aftermath of loss and what it means to build a life in the space that death leaves.

She I Dare Not Name is a compelling collection of fiercely intelligent, deeply intimate, lyrical reflections on the life of a woman who stands on the threshold between two millennia. Both manifesto and confession, this moving memoir explores the meaning and purpose Donna Ward discovered in a life lived entirely without a partner and children. The book describes what it is like to live on the edge of a world built in the shape of couples and families.