Showing results by publisher "Hachette Australia" in Biographies & Memoirs

Alexandra Collier was a writer living in a light-filled Brooklyn brownstone in New York with the man she loved. But when she woke up to a ravenous hunger to have a baby that her partner didn't share, she had to make a choice between love or a future family. From defying her family's expectations to searching for sperm and navigating pregnancy alone, Ally deftly takes us through the ecstatic, complicated and demanding path to becoming a solo mother by choice.

Truths from an Unreliable Witness is a fiercely honest and wryly funny memoir of melancholy, love, marriage, the loss of love and marriage, homelessness, of hotel rooms strewn with empty mini-bar bottles of vodka, of waking from a two-week coma, of putrid drug dens and using a jungle to confront yourself. It is about hitting rock bottom and then realising you are only halfway down. Ultimately, it's about hanging on to your last straw of sanity and finding laughter in the darkest of times. You may want to sit down for this....

In this empowering guide, Natasha gives an honest account of the blood, sweat and tears that goes into creating a successful business, from registering your company and opening a bank account, all the way to building your team and scaling for growth. Removing the glamour of #hustleculture and the illusion of how easy it might look on social media, Natasha will detail how she bartered jobs and co-founded Monday Swimwear in her living room with her best friend and grew that business (and others) to a multimillion-dollar empire.

At 23, Qin Qin was an unhappy overachiever working for a prestigious law firm. So she quit. She didn't know what else was out there, but she wanted to find out. She changed paths, changed countries, changed her entire view of what the world could be, and who she could be - with some primal screaming and tree-hugging along the way. In the process, she discovered the person she truly was, not who she thought she should be.

From his early life as an up-and coming AFL player to his tours of duty in Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan and his final battle in the dusty Ghawcha village in the Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan - the powerful biography of Cameron Baird, VC, MG, one of Australia's most decorated modern soldiers.

For the first twenty-seven years of his life, Ben McKelvey didn't spend too much time thinking about his brain, nor much about trauma. He was fit, carefree and happy working as a magazine journalist, writing listicles and doing celebrity junket interviews. Then one day, while boxing, he suffered a stroke. In the time it took for a left hook to be thrown, Ben disconnected from language and therefore the world. He wanted nothing more than to go back to normal life and, after a time, it looked like he had. Only normal life no longer felt normal. Ben's brain had changed, and so had he.

Jackie was aware of her psychic gift from a very young age, but her career began in banking, where she developed her business skills and entrepreneurial flair. A series of events in 2004 encouraged her to follow her intuition to her true life's purpose. Jackie believes your thoughts create your reality - and her positive energy and inspiring spiritual guidance have earned her the reputation as one of Australia's most sought-after psychic mediums.

Dami Im was an aspiring singer-songwriter and pianist when she auditioned on The X Factor in 2013. Mentored by Dannii Minogue, she would go on to win. From that time on, her life changed as audiences discovered her incredible voice and her electric stage presence. One of Australia's greatest musical talents, Dami is a long way from the girl born in Seoul who came to Australia on what she thought was a holiday only to find out, when she started school—not speaking a word of English—that she was here to stay.

Overwhelmed with insomnia and an incurable autoimmune disease, Shannon Harvey needed to make a change. But while the award-winning health journalist found plenty of recommendations on diet, sleep and exercise, when she looked for the equivalent of a 30-minute workout for her mental well-being, there was nothing. Also worried for the future mental health of her kids, who were growing up amidst critical levels of stress, anxiety, depression and addiction, Shannon enlisted a team of scientists to put meditation to the test.

Shocking real-life stories of murderous women who used rat poison to rid themselves of husbands and other inconvenient family members. After World War II, Sydney experienced a crime wave that was chillingly calculated. Discontent mixed with despair, greed with callous disregard. Women who had lost their wartime freedoms headed back into the kitchen with sinister intent and the household poison thallium, normally used to kill rats, was repurposed to kill husbands and other inconvenient family members.

Christopher Pyne has been many things and called many things throughout his long career in politics. Member for Sturt. Minister for defence. Manager of opposition business. Leader of the House. 'The Fixer'. Any Canberra story he doesn't know isn't worth telling. Now, after 26 years, the ultimate insider is outside the House and ready to burst the Canberra bubble with his trademark sharp wit.

Growing up on the whitewashed Central Coast in the 1980s and attending an elite school as a scholarship student from the wrong side of the tracks, Lebanese-Cypriot Simone Amelia Jordan felt like an outcast among her peers for years. Her lifeline was hip-hop, then in its golden age. From girlhood, Simone recognised the art form's pro-Black consciousness, and the rappers' resonant words inspired her to embrace her own identity and back herself.

March 1942: The world is at war. Too old to fight and with jobs scarce at home, Tom Phelps found work as a carpenter in the goldfields of the New Guinea Highlands. No one expected the Japanese to attack in the Pacific. But they did. Tom and his mates weren't going to hang around and wait to be killed. With escape routes bombed by the Japanese, their only option was to try to reach safety by foot, through some of the most rugged terrain on Earth - the Bulldog Track. Back home in Sydney, Rose Phelps, their son, George, and three daughters, Joy, Shirley and Ann, waited for news of Tom's fate.

As her mother, Mira, nears the end of her life, journalist Rachelle Unreich wants to find out more about how Mira survived four concentration camps, including Auschwitz. There was a mystery to her survival, it seemed - which perhaps had something to do with the strange things that always happened around her. Incredibly, when she gave testimony about the Holocaust decades later, Mira said that it was during this time that she learned about 'the goodness of people'.

Who is Rampaging Roy Slaven? An Australian icon, a raconteur, an athlete of unsurpassable - and some may say improbable - sporting feats. Whether it was riding Rooting King to another Melbourne Cup victory, commentating the Olympics or hobnobbing with the country's upper crust, Rampaging Roy Slaven has lived an extraordinary life.

The crime of sextortion has reached epidemic proportions, fuelled by both sex offenders and organised scammers targeting our most vulnerable online. Children are some of the internet's most prolific and most naive users, and increasing numbers are finding themselves caught in an evil web of networked manipulators. Saving Our Kids highlights the dangers lurking in every child's smartphone, web browser and computer game.

Lisa Millar has spent her whole life showing up, getting things done and making things happen. Despite the risks, despite the fear, despite life getting in the way. As a child growing up in country Queensland, she had dreamed of a big life. Working as a foreign correspondent gave her that. But it also meant confronting the worst of what humanity can bring - the dead children at Sandy Hook, the sorrow of grieving relatives after the Bataclan theatre terrorist attack and the aftermath of Manchester. Three decades as a journalist witnessing grief and unspeakable tragedy had a cost.

In December 1932, as the Depression tightened its grip, the body of a woman was found in Queens Park, Sydney. It was a popular park. There were houses in plain view. Yet this woman had been violently murdered without anyone noticing. Other equally brutal and shocking murders of women in public places were to follow. Australia's first serial killer was at large.

It's the holiday where shopping centres become a sea of dazed shoppers bearing checklists as long as your arm, lunch is a never-ending buffet of prawns and ham and your electricity bill is doubly struck by having to run the fan all day and keep those decorative lights blinking through the night. William McInnes, best-selling author of Fatherhood, Worse Things Happen at Sea and A Man's Got to Have a Hobby, tackles the silly season in a way only he can - telling stories brimming with good humour and nostalgia, to remind us what Christmas is all about: family.

From a childhood in London and Melbourne through to pop stardom in the 1960s, the critical success enjoyed with the release of the highest-selling Australian album of all time, Whispering Jack, and a decades-long touring career, the John Farnham story is, at first glance, one filled with remarkable highlights. It is, however, so much more than that. It is the story of the resilience John found as his stellar career stalled, record companies turned their backs, and he faced financial ruin.