Golden Boy

**Voted Wisden Cricket Monthly‘s best cricket book ever in 2019**
WINNER, BEST CRICKET BOOK, BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2010
_________________

Golden Boy is a blistering exposé of the tumultuous Lillee/Marsh/Chappells era of Australian cricket, as viewed through the lens of flawed genius Kim Hughes.
_________________

Kim Hughes was one of the most majestic and daring batsmen to play for Australia in the last 40 years. Golden curled and boyishly handsome, his rise and fall as captain and player is unparalleled in cricketing history. He played several innings that count as all-time classics, but it’s his tearful resignation from the captaincy that is remembered.

Insecure but arrogant, abrasive but charming; in Hughes’ character were the seeds of his own destruction. Yet was Hughes’ fall partly due to those around him, men who are themselves legends in Australia’s cricketing history? Lillee, Marsh, the Chappells, all had their agendas, all were unhappy with his selection and performance as captain – evidenced by Dennis Lillee’s tendency to aim bouncers relentlessly at Hughes’ head during net practice.

Hughes’ arrival on the Test scene coincided with the most turbulent time Australian cricket has ever seen – first Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, then the rebel tours to South Africa. Both had dramatic effects on Hughes’ career. As he traces the high points and the low, Christian Ryan sheds new and fascinating light on the cricket – and the cricketers – of the times.

Daughter of the Territory

Daughter of the Territory is the amazing life story of Jacqueline Hammar. Born in Darwin in 1929, Jacqueline’s childhood was spent in a succession of bush towns before she was sent to school in Darwin. With the outbreak of World War Two, she moved to Brisbane to finish her education.

Returning to her beloved Territory, Jacqueline met and married stockman Ken Hammar, and they moved to a vast property in one of the most inaccessible areas of Australia, transporting corrugated iron and cutting down trees to build a crude hut to live in.

With only a kerosene stove, scant possessions and a bed, Jacqueline lived a harsh and isolated existence. Her determination and courage helped her survive many hardships, including having to eat pigweed and sweet potato vines when food was scarce. Meanwhile, she supported Ken as he turned huge tracts of wilderness into a prosperous million-acre cattle station.

Jacqueline’s life story is remarkable, Daughter of the Territory is a testament to a life well lived.

Strayapedia

Patriotically basted in the goon trough of Australian values, this book is as fundamentally Strayan as bowling your final over underarm, not asking awkward questions about what’s in your meat pie, and naming a swimming pool after Harold Holt.

Conveniently omitting all areas not relating to Australia, Strayapedia provides definitive alternative facts about Tony Abbott, AC/DC, Canberra, Kylie Minogue, the Hills hoist, Bob Hawke, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, Ned Kelly, koalas, Akubras and Shane Warne – among many other certified dinky-di topics.

If you want to pass a citizenship test, or win a trivia night hosted by Cory Bernardi, Strayapedia is as valuable as a tiny apartment in Sydney.

What they said about Strayapedia*
*These quotes are as factual as the rest of this book.

‘Sorry, I cannot recall reading it.’ Cardinal George Pell

‘This is a disgusting, defamatory book which unfortunately doesn’t mention me.’ Rebel Wilson

‘I wanted to endorse Strayapedia, but my backbench thought otherwise.’ Malcolm Turnbull

‘Buy this book, unless CBS buys it first.’ Lachlan Murdoch

The House

The best-loved building in Australia nearly didn’t get off the drawing board. When it did, the lives of everyone involved in its construction were utterly changed: some for the better, many for the worse.

Helen Pitt tells the stories of the people behind the magnificent white sails of the Sydney Opera House. From the famous conductor and state premier who conceived the project; to the two architects whose lives were so tragically intertwined; to the workers and engineers; to the people of Sydney, who were alternately beguiled and horrified as the drama unfolded over two decades.

With access to diaries, letters, and classified records, as well as her own interviews with people involved in the project, Helen Pitt reveals the intimate back story of the building that turned Sydney into an international city. It is a tale worthy of Shakespeare himself.

The Women and the Girls

It’s 1977, and bohemian Libby – stay-at-home mother, genius entertainer and gifted cook – is lonely. When she meets Carol, recently emigrated from London with her controlling husband, and Anna, who loves her career but not her marriage, the three women form an unexpected bond.

Their husbands aren’t happy about it, and neither are their daughters.

Set against a backdrop of inner-city grunge and 70s glamour, far-out parties and ABBA songs, The Women and the Girls is a funny, questioning and moving novel about love, friendship, work, family, and freedom.

Book of Life

A no-holds-barred memoir that charts the rise and fall – and rise – of one of Australia’s most iconic music performers.

You think you know Deborah Conway? You think seeing her scowling and striding and smouldering in her music videos over the years means you know who Deborah Conway is? She figures you probably don’t know the half of it.

If you have listened to any of Deborah’s iconic songs and were curious about their origins; if you ever wondered what happened to that chick who covered herself in Nutella and was photographed shovelling cream cakes into her mouth; if you gave a nanosecond’s thought to whose bare arse adorned the giant billboard ads for jeans in the 1980s and how much someone got paid to do that; if you liked Tracy Mann’s vocals in Sweet and Sour but asked yourself, ‘did she really sing them?’; if you thought Running On Empty was a classic before it became a cult phenomenon and need behind-the-scenes gossip, now’s your chance to find out all this and so much more.

Conway pulls back the curtain on the fevered world of 1980s post-punk and the spectacular rise and fall and rise of one of the more obstreperous women in Australia’s music industry, a woman who has straddled the high arts and the low without losing her footing or her mind. A woman who said no to the system and whose fierce independence has seen her produce her best work.

Welcome to the good, the bad and the ugly of an extraordinary life from the vantage point of a music insider (and outsider) with a deep need to tell the truth about it all.

‘An enthralling, unputdownable read.’ Toni Collette

‘A witty, searingly honest testimony of what it really took to become one of Australia’s most beloved storytellers.’ Clare Bowditch

‘Candid and revealing, witty, wise and full of wonder.’ Brian Nankervis

‘I appreciated every honest, emotional, human page.’ Sofie Laguna

‘A wild ride through sex, love, birth, death, business, friendship, creativity and the magic of song. She is as sharp, honest, brave, funny and brazen on the page as she is on stage or at her table, offering nourishment for all comers.’ Ramona Koval

‘Deborah has been surprising me since she was 13. This brave and passionate book has done it yet again.’ Caroline Wilson

From India With Love

Latika Bourke was adopted from India, aged eight months. Growing up in Bathurst, New South Wales she felt a deep connection to her Australian home and her Australian family.

It wasn’t until she heard her name uttered in the hit movie Slumdog Millionaire that Latika recognised she knew nothing of her Indian roots, the world she was born into and what she could have become had she not been brought to Australia as a baby.

As Latika carved out a successful career for herself as an award-winning political journalist, she became more and more curious about her heritage and what it meant to be born in India and raised in Australia. And so began a deeply personal and sometimes confronting journey back to her birthplace to unravel the mysteries of her heritage.

From India with Love is a beautiful story of finding your place in the world and finding peace with the path that led you there.