Showing results by publisher "Wavesound from W. F. Howes Ltd" in Women

Deborah Conway pulls back the curtain on the fevered world of a 1980's post punk band, the spectacular rise and fall and rise of one of the more obstreperous women working inside Australia's music industry, a woman who has straddled the high arts and the low without losing her footing or her mind and whose fierce independence has seen her produce her best work.

Dumped by her husband of twenty-five years, Jo Peck—smart, successful, and sixty—is totally floored. There's the complete bombshell of the news, the cliché of a younger woman—a much younger woman—there's the disappointment of cancelled retirement travel plans, and there's the foundation-rocking loss of her sense of identity—if she's no longer Rex's wife, who the hell is she?

If you haven't seen a Discovery Channel gold-hunting show, you might picture a gold prospector as a relic of the Wild West: a TNT-toting bearded old man wildly swinging a pick on the hunt for nuggets, guided by old maps, superstition, legends and instinct. It's still predominantly a man's world, and still often fanatical, but these days the golden dream attracts people from all walks of life—and 25-year-old Tyler Mahoney (Australian star of the Discovery Channel's Gold Rush series) is leading the way.

Hannah Diviney has always known that her experience of the world was fundamentally different from those around her. While her friends went to soccer and dance and little athletics, Hannah was going to physio and doctors' appointments. While her friends got jobs, fell in love and went clubbing, Hannah surrounded herself with the fantastical worlds she found in books. But books where people like her were nowhere to be found. Refusing to accept the narratives, or lack thereof, that she'd been given, Hannah was determined to forge her own path in a world that wasn't designed for her.

Wendy Harmer has had an extraordinary life. From being born with a severe facial deformity, to performing as a stand-up comedian, a national television host and then going on to be the highest paid woman in the cut-throat world of Sydney FM radio ... her tale of overcoming adversity is told with her trademark frankness and celebrated wit.

At 24, life was good for Georgie Dent. After graduating with top marks she landed her dream job at a prestigious Sydney law firm and moved in with a boyfriend she adored. She had the world at her feet and no right to break. But she did. Badly. Within a year Georgie was unemployed, back living with her parents and suffering such crippling anxiety that she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Breaking Badly is the story of a nervous breakdown in slow motion, a life that fell apart and what it took to put it back together again.

A must-listen for new mums or anyone who has ever compared their own life to an Instagram post, this uplifting and hilarious memoir will make you stop to smell the roses and appreciate what you've got.

From Lucia Osborne-Crowley comes a necessary, elegant and empathetic work exploring the intricacies of abuse, trauma and shame. Through the voices of women, trans and non-binary people around the world and her own deeply moving testimony, Lucia speaks of vulnerability and acceptance and the reclaiming of ourselves in a world that repeatedly asks us to carry the weight of the shame of the atrocities committed against us.

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.

Known and loved by her many New Zealand and Australian fans as a down-to-earth broadcaster, radio host and social media sensation, Bree Tomasel is an irrepressible force of nature. But behind the banter and success, is a young woman who has battled anxiety and survived a harrowing attack on her as a young child. Funny, candid, raw—this is Bree Tomasel as you've never seen her.

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.

It was no surprise that Angela Williams went to jail. A traumatic, violent upbringing saw to that. But after serving a short sentence for theft as a teenager, she worked hard to break the cycle. Thirteen years later Angela was studying, teaching, providing a stable home for her son, and finally feeling like she'd got her life together. Then she got hit by a postie bike. Police realised that Angela still had 10 months to go on the prison sentence she'd thought was in her distant past. However, Angela was a different prisoner the second time around.

Jessica Knight grew up on a dairy farm in rural Victoria, her crib next door to where all the cows were milked. It's a loving Mormon household, a god-fearing home. While they don't have very much, it's their values and good humor that allows them to laugh at what scares them. All young Jessica wants is to be good and make her parents and her Heavenly Father happy. She cleans the house and helps out with her siblings; all the while being subjected to intensive medical tests and major surgeries. Doctors consider her a puzzle and a medical mystery.

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!

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.

This is the truly remarkable life story of the notorious Ethel Livesey, a serial fraudster and confidence trickster who became a media sensation after she ran out on her society wedding in 1945 and later was arrested for obtaining goods by false pretences. With a prologue by Ethel Livesey's granddaughter, this extraordinary tale of Australia's greatest fraudster is told for the first time in rich and fascinating detail.

This is a memoir of an unconventional childhood that explores what it means to be an only child. This audiobook is for all children who have ever felt like the fulcrum of a seesaw, the focus of all eyes and expectations, torn between love and fear, obedience and rebellion, duty and the longing to escape. Only is revelatory, lyrical and life affirming, for anyone who has felt the burden of trying to be a good daughter.

People always asked her if she was ever afraid, living out in the desert alone with all those rough and scruffy men. But Minnie Berrington was not the faint-hearted type, and never had been. Being tough came naturally to her, growing up with three brothers and a family that went from riches to ruins. Only a slip of a girl, Minnie could match any man in stamina, perseverance and strength. She arrived in Coober Pedy when camels still brought in essential supplies, and water was so scarce that no-one washed. Together with the other miners, she braved the heat, the flies and the dust.

Paris. The beauty. The grime. The colors and thoughts and songs and sounds and children and dogs. The taste of strawberries, the sky, first métro, last métro, the bells, the dreams. The city of light, it seems, has its own plans for Jayne. Drawn there in an entirely unforeseen way, she finds herself in a vibrant and dizzying neighborhood, living in a former monastery, studying at a famous theatre school, falling in love with a Frenchman too beautiful to be real. She will forget her past and disappear into the culture if it kills her. And one strange night, it nearly does.

As the first Muslim woman in any Australian parliament, the 100th woman in the senate and the only engineer in the senate, Mehreen has a unique and crucial perspective on our country and how things are changing for the better or worse. This is the story of a Brown, migrant Muslim woman breaking into a white man's world and striving to change it without being changed. It is an honest, no-holds-barred account of what happens when reality meets perception and when you shatter long-held stereotypes and confront a system steeped in privileged hierarchies, racism and sexism.