Non-fiction
Sue Liu
Accidental Aid Worker
(2nd edition)
The memoir of a courageous woman on a quest to find love and places to belong.
Sue Liu stumbled into voluntary aid work in the wake of the 2004 tsunami, during the civil war conflict in Sri Lanka. She teamed up with a tour guide, a Catholic priest and a community of refugees and began a ten-year obsession with helping people in need, using her generosity to help orphaned children in Cambodia.
This is a moving account of one woman’s drive to survive and support others, while masking battles of her own. Along the way, she embarks on a harrowing journey through mid-life crisis, disconnection and chronic depression. She is forced to face inescapable truths about herself in order to become the woman she really wants to be.
Sue shares her most vulnerable moments alongside quirky tales involving priests, nuns, a rabbi, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, a tuktuk accident, refugees, orphaned children, surgeries, fishing for marlin and, at times, spontaneous singing and dancing with children.
Noula Diamantopoulos
You Are. That Is. Creative
This book takes you on a journey that unfolds your innate creative process.
Noula Diamantopoulos combines stories from her psychotherapy/coaching and art teaching practice and introduces you to ‘your interior map’: a process which helps you to uncover the way you do things and the way you make things – whether you are making art or making a decision. In five short steps, you will come to know things about yourself that really matter when it comes to better understanding your innate creative process.
There are three sections in this book, in one of which she writes on topics of creativity and self-development and encourages you to be curious and inquisitive. Her Quest technique, a dialogue of questions only, is another tool that she shares. Quest is about suspending the answer and discovering the power of a well-developed question. The book includes art and writing exercises to wake up your imagination, and reflections to take your journey deeper within.
Jacqueline Dinan
Racing the Boys
A riveting tale to be enjoyed by followers of horse racing, history and female pioneers.
A fictional interpretation of the true journey of Hedwick 'Granny' McDonald, an ordinary woman with an extraordinary passion for training thoroughbreds in her own spirited way, during an era when racing was almost totally male dominated.
By 1924, Granny was a leading showjumper and the first woman in New Zealand to be granted a professional training licence. Over the following decade and a half, she became one of the Dominion's leading trainers of thoroughbreds: sprinters, stayers and jumpers. Her career reached its climax with Catalogue, a little-known eight-year-old gelding, winning the 1938 Melbourne Cup.
However, Granny would not become a household name in Australia or New Zealand as the Victoria Racing Club refused to credit her with training the equal-oldest horse to win the prestigious two-mile handicap.
Buy the book here.
Helen Hutcheon
Away With Words
An entertaining read for all ages, from those who will ‘remember when’
to younger people curious about ‘the good old days.’
Australian journalist Helen Hutcheon has always had a way with words and words have taken her away on incredible journeys during a 60-year career with P&O Cruises, Woman’s Day, the Australian Women’s Weekly, Vogue Living and Travelweek.
Travel from the fabulous ‘tent city’ near the ruins of Persepolis where the 2,500th anniversary of the founding of the Persian Empire was celebrated, to Saigon during the Vietnam war when Woman’s Day played Santa to thousands of orphaned and refugee children, to ‘brown bagging’ in North Carolina and a bloodied ending in a search for the best curry in Fiji.
Helen takes the reader across the globe as they are introduced to icons like the Shah of Iran, Princess Grace of Monaco and Audrey Hepburn, encountering people and places now gone forever.
Away with Words evokes a long-gone era of journalism when writers bashed out stories on clapped-out typewriters using carbon paper to keep copies, and photographers brought their film back from the other side of the world to process it in the office dark room. Many of the people and places in this book are gone forever.
Buy the book here.
Christina Kennedy
Horse Island
Breaking the rules on growing native Australian plants.
Horse Island, the private retreat of Christina and Trevor Kennedy, sits tucked away in an estuary of Tuross Lake on the South Coast of NSW. To the west, softened by distance, are the mountains of the Great Dividing Range. To the east is the sea. But what is most surprising in this place of great natural beauty is the remarkable garden created by Christina, featuring only Australian indigenous plants.
This great garden reveals itself gradually − as did Christina’s own passion in its creation. Gardens and gardening had always been around Christina, but were not in the foreground until she was faced with the mess and devastation of the landscape when she began her first building project on the island. A timely suggestion from a friend directed her towards native plants. Christina’s own desire to complement and enhance the existing natural beauty then took shape, forming the basis of her thinking and of all her designs.
To visit the island is to engage with Christina’s passion, her knowledge and enthusiasm for Australian plants, and to hear her stories about all she has discovered including her mistakes and learning curves, during the long process of creating the garden.
Horse Island, the book, reflects Christina’s own desire to share the true magic of an extraordinary place. We walk beside her as she guides us around the island encouraging us to think differently about native plants and how they are used in a domestic situation.
Buy the book here.
Lorraine Wood
Love & Addiction
The compelling story of a devastating family legacy.
A woman can be a mother, wife, friend, a force in business, a spiritual guide and a person who found peace and redemption in recovery.
Every month, Lorraine Wood tells the story of her devastating family legacy of addiction in the hopes that it will inspire people to start, and stay, on their own difficult path to addiction recovery. Love & Addiction is her heart-wrenching memoir that records her story.
At 50 years of age, Lorraine finally understood the true generational damage of addiction. When one person is addicted, an entire family suffers and needs their own rehabilitation and support to truly recover and heal.
Lorraine’s purpose in life was born. In 1993 she and her soulmate Bill took the greatest financial risk of all and opened South Pacific Private – a hospital that specialises in addiction treatments. Since Bill’s tragic death, Lorraine continues to run the hospital solo, now known as the only Australian equivalent to the renowned US treatment facility, The Meadows.
Vera Hannam Coleman
Organicise
'Organicise' is a practical decluttering and environmentally conscious guide
to a 7 day detox for your home.
The challenge is to simply walk through our homes and organise our environment organically. In our busy lifestyles, very few of us take the time to stop and take note of the everyday choices we are making in regards to our immediate environment; our homes. Good marketing should not dictate our standards, we need to be our own person, to research brands, products, materials, and understand and appreciate every item that enters our home. Whether it is food, laundry products, clothing or appliances knowledge is power, and wisdom is what we need.
Organicise is a 7-day detox methodology to truly detox our homes and let the fresh air in. Following Vera's five-step process is a simple, easy and effective way to fine-tune our lives to what is important. Organicise offers the reader the opportunity to increase their knowledge in a manageable way, with the result of making informed choices and being equipped to directly impact the health of their home environment.
Peter J. Hack
The Art Deco Department Stores
of Shanghai
The Art Deco Department Stores of Shanghai was published for the author,
and is not available in bookshops.
Shanghai's Nanjing Road is internationally famous for its iconic art deco department stores. These stores are not just about shopping. They are not just about selling modern goods from around the world. They are about entertainment and they are about pleasure.
But if you were to ask who established these stores, there would be very few people who would know the answer. Even fewer would know the names of the Chinese-Australian merchants who were key players. It is no exaggeration to say that the department stores of China and Hong Kong were built on the back of Sydney's Haymarket banana trade.
Aaron Elias Brunsdon
Designer Baby
'Designer Baby' is a heartwarming and inspiring personal story about the strength of family, the universal love of parents, and an uplifting reminder to never lose sight of your dreams.
When Aaron meets Jayson Brunsdon, one of Australia’s leading fashion figures, they both dream of becoming fathers one day – a difficult and risky prospect few same-sex couples at the time dare.
Together they build the Jayson Brunsdon brand from nothing into one of the most eponymous labels in Australia, worn by Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, Naomi Watts and Jennifer Hawkins. Jayson quickly rises to fame, survives cancer, and the label traverses the highs and lows of the fashion industry. They lose everything, and rebuild it all again.
In 2014, a story on 60 Minutes inspires them to take the plunge into parenthood via surrogacy – a controversial act in Australia, but a possibility in Thailand.
What follows is a challenging journey filled with hope, chaos and determination – reaching its peak when halfway through their pregnancy Thailand outlaws surrogacy, and Aaron and Jayson face the shattering prospect that they might not be able to bring their beautiful baby boy home, whilst being relentlessly hounded by the media.
Buy the book here.
Catherine Anderson
The End of All Our Exploring
'The End of All Our Exploring' is an unconventional love story, set against a backdrop of some of the world’s most breathtaking scenery, but it is also a young woman’s lament for all she has lost, a meditation on grief – and a courageous attempt at acceptance and understanding.
Catherine Anderson and Angus McDonald are both restless souls – inveterate travellers, at home everywhere and nowhere. When they first meet, in a small hill town in the Himalayas, she thinks he is rude, mistaking his shyness for arrogance. He thinks she is idealistic and naive, and unlikely to remain past the next monsoon.
After years without contact, Catherine dreams of Angus, and within a few days receives a message from him. Though he is in Melbourne and she in London, Catherine feels a profound certainty that their lives are about to converge...
Heather Irvine
Hello Baby!
So much of modern motherhood is targeted at looking good, even when you feel crap,
and making your baby look good, even when he or she won’t settle or feed or stop crying –
all in the shortest time possible.
Hello Baby! uncovers all the myths of perfection new mums see on social media and provides down-to-earth, no nonsense advice about everything you need to know about your baby’s first year.
With casual style and a hilarious sense of humour, Heather Irvine, a psychologist and mother who works with new mums every day, acts as the friend sitting across from you in a cafe who always understands, constantly reassures, gives you the best practical pointers and shares her muffin with you.
Hello Baby! is packed full of the latest information on issues that affect modern Australian mums, including:
- What a mother needs to know about herself in the first few months
- How to get your baby sleeping soundly
- Essential tips to boost your feel-good factor
- De-stress techniques like meditation and mindfulness
- Managing those really dark days
- Tips for bonding with your baby
- Coping with mother-in-laws and post-baby friendship fluctuations
- Getting the zing back into your relationship
- Returning to work
- Navigating social media as a new mum
Richard Stewart
Hitting Pay Dirt
Since 2005, the resources sector has attracted a significant amount of attention. Mining’s complex marketplace has given the industry a “buy high/sell low” reputation. Until now, there has been no guide to making deals that cover both opportunity and risk management. With over 27 years of experience in valuations and risk, Richard Stewart provides an invaluable analysis of a volatile market.
Hitting Pay Dirt is an essential guide to making better mining deals. This book will provide investors, board members and senior managers with key insights into: strategic issues for the resources industry; the economics of commodity prices; the political, geological, engineering, legal and financial considerations of mine management; building pricing discipline into mining transactions through an understanding of different valuation techniques; and developing transaction plans that can take advantage of cyclical transitions.