Other books that might interest you

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  Tough Country - Tall tales of...

  Mike Bellamy

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  Tall tales of bushmen, bulldozers and back-country blokes 
    
  'It was the mid-1970s and I was about eight, I thought it was completely normal for your old man to pull out a high-powered deer-hunting rifle and fire it through the kitchen door from the breakfast table...' 
  In the 1970s and 80s, Barry Bellamy was a fair old bushman, traversing the back-country from Hawke's Bay to the far north in a blue ex-airforce Land Rover. His son Mike would join him as he took up work, wherever he could get it. Tough Country is Mike's story, about a bygone era of bushmen, scrub-cutters, hunters and shepherds. Later, Mike forged his own life working on the land, and his stories of the characters of the 1980s and 90s, from tradies to digger-drivers, are as hilarious as they are quintessentially Kiwi.  
  HarperCollins Australia 2022

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  A Lickpenny Lover - From their...

  O Henry

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  William Sydney Porter was born on 11th September 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. At age 3 his mother died from tuberculosis. From an early age it was clear Porter had a large appetite for reading as he absorbed the world around him. 
  He first attended at a school run by his aunt before enrolling at the Lindsey Street High School and then worked at his uncle’s drugstore and gained a pharmacists’ license in 1881.  
  A persistent cough took him to Texas in the hope that a change of climate would help his symptoms. He took on various types of work, initially from ranch hand and cook and then as varied as pharmacist, draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He also began to write, though for now, purely as a hobby. 
  He was a member of several singing and dramatic groups when he met 17 year old Athol Estes, daughter of a wealthy Austin family. Despite her mother’s objection owing to Athol’s tuberculosis, they began courting and in July 1887, they eloped and soon married. 
  Athol, impressed by his writing, encouraged him to get them published. A job as a draftsman at the Texas General Land Office paid a healthy $100 dollars per month and life was good. 
  But then life turned cruel. His son died a few hours after birth although a daughter, Margaret, came the following year.  His job had to be vacated but another was found at the First National Bank of Austin. The bank operated informally and Porter was careless in keeping the books. He lost that job but began writing for the humourous weekly The Rolling Stone and the Houston Post. Some time later the federal Bank auditors went through his former accounts and he was arrested on charges of embezzlement. 
  Porter fled the day before his trial to Honduras. Holed up for several months he began to write.  Athol had become too ill to travel to meet him and learning that her health was deteriorating he surrendered to the court in February 1897.  Bail was obtained so that he could stay with Athol during her final days.  
  Porter was sentenced to five years at the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. His pharmacy qualifications got him the job of night druggist.  His sentence also gave him time to write and publish fourteen short stories. In December 1899 in McClure’s Magazine he published a short story as O Henry.  
  He was released two years early in July 1901, and reunited with Margaret, now 11, in Pittsburgh.  He now began his most prolific period of writing; a short story per week for the New York World, while also publishing works in other magazines.  Eventually over 600 of his short stories were published. 
  Porter was a heavy drinker and in 1908 his health, which had deteriorated for several years, took a dramatic turn for the worse, as did his writing.  
  O Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver complicated by diabetes and an enlarged heart on 5th June 1910.

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  Cousin Mary - From their pens to...

  Mary Russell Mitford

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  The bookshelves of British literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors.  From these Isles their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure.  Among them is Mary Russell Mitford.

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  The Magical Life of Marshall...

  John Moehring

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  This unique biography details the life of magician Marshall Brodien, most remembered for his long-running career as television's Wizzo the Wizard on WGN-TV's Bozo's Circus. His inspirational story begins in the late 1940s, when Brodien was a young magician in his first job as a Chicago magic shop demonstrator, then recounts his steady rise to show-business success, including appearances on the legendary Mike Douglas Show, and as a nightclub hypnotist in Chicago's posh Cairo Supper Club. The work concludes with an examination of Brodien's career as one of the most successful marketers of magic sets in the U.S.  
  This audiobook will appeal to anyone who appreciates a story about overwhelming determination and hard work. Brodien didn't take lemons and make lemonade. He took lemons and made lemonade stands. Whether you love gritty biographies or are a business person needing a new hero, The Magical Life of Marshall Brodien will take you where you need to go.

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  Rory Land - The Up-and-Down...

  Timothy M. Gay

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  Timothy M. Gay writes that four-time major champion Rory McIlroy is "golf's ageless Opie Taylor," a superstar whose charm transcends national boundaries and enlivens the game. His swing is so powerful that Tiger Woods is teaching his own son to mimic Rory's action. 
   
   
   
  But a charismatic persona and a pretty swing don't translate into winning championships. Rory has failed to win another major and fallen short of achieving the career Grand Slam. 
   
   
   
  He's become a lightning rod, getting into a smackdown at the '23 Ryder Cup and, after his betrayal by PGA Tour brass, causing confusion by going from an impassioned opponent of a deal with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf to an outspoken proponent. 
   
   
   
  McIlroy is from Northern Ireland, a geopolitical anomaly where religion and patriotism have been used as bloody cudgels. Both sides of his family were battered by the North's sectarian Troubles. 
   
   
   
  Rory is a man essentially without a country, which might explain why he's become so obsessed with the Ryder Cup. Gay argues that McIlroy has invented his own fiefdom, which the author has dubbed "RORY LAND." 
   
   
   
  Rory Land tells the saga of a compassionate superstar living in a world where "money has no conscience."

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  F*ck You God - One Man's...

  Phil Williams

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  What could lead a little fellow to set a putt-putt course on fire or host a keg party at his parents’ house during high school (when his father was a prominent pastor in town) or defy all odds and become perhaps a combination of the smallest and slowest starting wide receiver in major college football history? And how did that youngster eventually become an NFL agent by accident, meeting his future wife on a steamy asphalt parking lot with a “Hey, what’s your name?” yelled across that same parking lot by way of introduction and then having his heart radically transformed by the birth of his first child, Hannah, before raising three more children? And how could this same man possibly handle the news that his beloved daughter was dying? And more so, once she died, would it ever be possible for him to find healing?  
  Join Phil Williams on his journey as he weaves humorous, heartwarming, and intriguing stories from birth until fatherhood, and then walk with him on the most painful path a parent could ever navigate, all of which leads him to what he would call the only journey worth taking: the journey to discover what this life is really all about and who we really are.  
  If you like stories that leave you smiling and crying and laughing and anticipating the next one, dig in. But, no matter how much you might anticipate the next story, nothing will prepare you for the climax of this deeply emotional tale of a man and his daughter and the deeper search for meaning and truth.

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