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  Songbook - The Lyrics and Music...

  Steven Heighton

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  From the award-winning, multi-genre author and musician Steven Heighton, Songbook brings together Heighton’s lyrics and music for the first time in a single volume, including his final songs, which have never been heard or seen until now. When Steven Heighton died suddenly of cancer in 2022, he was in the middle of an intensely creative period of songwriting. He released his first album of original material, The Devil’s Share, in 2021 and was preparing to record his second album. Known first as a poet, Heighton had always held that “music and poetry are two words for the same thing.”
  		 
  As in his songwriting, in Songbook, Heighton moves fluidly between genres and subjects, from political songs like “The Butcher’s Bill,” about the carelessness of nations sending their youth to war, to reimagining the myth of Orpheus (“I'll hold my breath the whole way down / And find your soul in the undertown”), to blues tunes like “Last Living Woman Alive,” and a tribute to the late John Prine, the “Buddha of Song.” With chords accompanying the lyrics, readers and musicians have the ability to bring the songs to life with their own interpretations. The music in Songbook was the final work of Heighton’s life, and it is not only a gift to have his lyrics and chords but an invitation from Heighton himself, challenging his readers to answer the call and keep singing along.

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  Are You Thinking What I'm...

  Kenneth Radley

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  Kenneth Radley's Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking? A patchwork journey through my life... so far - is a richly layered, deeply personal memoir told in an engaging patchwork style - weaving together reflections from across six decades of an expansive life. 
  From his early life we are taken through some rapid development in the 1960s. Then the tectonic socio-cultural shifts throughout the 1970s. And later appearing in more than 30 feature films, performing as B1 in the highly successful and culturally iconic Bananas in Pyjamas, to selling wine, cab driving, fronting a hard-hitting rock band in the Melbourne pub scene, teaching, building houses, playing and umpiring Australian football and navigating family life within the creative industries - Radley crafts a collection of vivid vignettes that balance wit, philosophical inquiry, and grounded realism. 
  Readers interested in Australian cultural history, performance, and television and film will find rare, behind-the-scenes gems throughout. Anecdotes involving the Bananas years, working on set from an actor's perspective, creative struggles, the joy and passion in his work. The reader is treated to some fascinating encounters with industry characters that offer unique insights and deep reflections. 
  The regular moments of humour feel lived-in rather than performed, full of well-timed understatement and irony. 
  This work offers so much more than a timeline of events; it becomes a meditation on memory, cultural change, identity, work, and the intersections between art, family life and self-discovery. 
  It is a fascinating, authentic and heartfelt piece reflecting the complexity, fun and humour of a man that is truly thankful for his life and filled with genuine love and appreciation of those close to him. 
  it is quite a journey... so far.

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  Spellbound - My Life as a...

  Phil Hanley

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  This program is read by the author, comedian and severe dyslexic Phil Hanley, who reveals his unlikely path to success in a story that is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.When Phil Hanley was in first grade, he realized something that would forever set him apart from his peers: he couldn’t read. His teachers were ill-equipped to assist him, and he slipped through the school’s cracks, year by year falling further and further behind his friends. Finally, he was diagnosed with dyslexia, a learning disability that would shape the rest of his life.Unable to pursue college or a traditional job, Phil was thrust into a life defined by unconventional twists, including a stint as a runway model in Europe. Eventually, he found himself on a stage with a microphone, a spotlight, and five minutes of jokes. Unlike so many previous pursuits, stand-up felt right to Phil, and he soon discovered that the more he worked at it, the more he got out of it—a realization that, he compellingly argues, saved his life. Spellbound is a story of humor and also of struggle and heartbreak, of constantly living in a world that sees things differently than you do, and of triumph over adversity.Hanley tells us that dyslexia can be a huge challenge, but it doesn’t spell certain condemnation (and neither can he). Just the opposite: dyslexia has been more than a blessing in his life—it’s been his North Star.A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

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  In This Altered Body - A...

  Charlene Pell

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  2025 IBPA Book Award, Silver Winner for the disabled communities category. 
  2025 Feathered Quill Book Award Winner for the Inspirational category. 
  2024 IAN Book of the Year Award, Grand Prize Non-Fiction Books of the Year, Second Place. 
  Charlene Pell wears her scars like badges of honor—she has never hidden them. 
  Thirty years ago, on a sunny afternoon, Charlene was on a private flight to Cat Island, Bahamas, when the unthinkable happened: the plane, piloted by her fiancé, experienced a mechanical problem and crashed in a fiery inferno. When Charlene awoke, she discovered that 64 percent of her body had been burned, and her fiancé had died. 
  In This Altered Body is the compelling story of Charlene’s physical and emotional odyssey to reclaim her life and identity after surviving a tragedy that left her facially disfigured and grieving. As Charlene begins the long, painful process of recovery, she fears she will never be loved again, because her outward beauty has been destroyed and our society, obsessed with flawless skin and superficial beauty, stigmatizes disfigurement. But through dogged determination, Charlene overcomes difficult obstacles both physical and emotional—and learns from the experiences of other burn survivors to never write off her dreams and to be open to possibilities . . . including love. Brimming with insight from a life of perseverance, In This Altered Body is a piercing memoir about tragic loss and the resilience of the human spirit.

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  Frogman Stories - Life and...

  Rick Kaiser

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  A compelling look at US Navy SEALs through a true-to-life lens focused on the triumphs and challenges of the elite warriors of the Special Forces community. Master Chief (SEAL) Rick Kaiser (Ret.) captures over forty-five years of events in and around the SEAL Teams. It is not a blood-and-guts portrayal of battlefield victories and losses, but an authentic view of how things are done in the Teams. The SEALs truly are silent professionals and the most memorable stories often don't feature combat but are the moments that shape these exceptional warriors. 
   
   
   
  A Silver Star recipient for his leadership during the battle of Mogadishu—"Black Hawk Down"—and a prominent member of both SEAL Team TWO and SEAL Team Six, Rick has been recognized throughout his career for his courage, commitment, and fortitude. Continuing to serve the SEALs as chief operating officer of the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum, Rick is the perfect person to tell the Navy SEAL story the way it really is, sharing the life and leadership lessons he learned along the way.

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  Désirée's Baby - From their pens...

  Kate Chopin

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  Katherine O'Flaherty was born on the 8th February 1850 in St Louis, Missouri to parents of French and Irish descent. 
  At age 5, she was sent to the Sacred Heart Academy and, apart from a 2 year period at home when her father died, remained there until graduating in 1868.  Whilst there she began writing and became an avid reader of almost anything that crossed her path.   
  Kate married Oscar Chopin in 1870 and the couple moved to New Orleans, and later to the rural setting of Cloutierville, Louisiana to raise their 6 children.  
  In 1882 her husband died leaving her in a deep trench of debt.  Despite her best efforts to turn the businesses around they were sold, and she moved the family back to St Louis and the financial help of her mother.  Sadly, her mother died within the year.  Kate, now struggling with depression, pushed herself to write and gained a local reputation as a writer of short stories that captured the local color and vibrancy of her surroundings.  
  By the early 1890’s her short stories were published nationally.  With this widespread audience also came negative reviews, controversy, and cries of immorality as themes such as interracial relationships, the rights of women and other burning issues of the day were written about. 
  Despite the criticism, which unnerved her, she continued to write though in the main her works, around 100 short stories and two novels, were not attributed with any literary worth. 
  Kate Chopin died from a brain haemorrhage in St Louis Missouri on the 22nd of August 1904.  She was 54. 
  For much of the 20th Century her work was forgotten and out of print.  It was only in early 1970’s, with the rise of feminism and the call for a more just society that she was given the status her works had long described and shone a literary light at.  She is now safely revered as one of America’s great authors.

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