The astonishing story of James Hardy Vaux, writer of Australia's first dictionary and first true-crime memoirIf you wear 'togs', tell a 'yarn', call someone 'sly', or refuse to 'snitch' on a friend then you are talking like a convict.These words, and hundreds of others, once left colonial magistrates baffled and police confused. So comprehensible to us today, the flash language of criminals and convicts had marine officer Watkin Tench complaining about the ...

Are you seeing your mates this arvo because it's been yonks? Do you shout ''ave a go, ya mug' to your football team from the stands? Or tell your mate his team has got Buckley's chance of winning the AFL Grand Final? Do you mutter 'stone the crows' when surprised? Perhaps you've got your wobbly boots on? Aussie English may be the most inventive and creative language in the world. This larrikin lexicography by Kel Richards tells the stories behind almost a thousand Aussie words and phrases....

It's a Thursday evening in 1936. Clive Staples Lewis (known to all his friends as "Jack") is hosting a gathering of that well-known literary group, The Inklings.Among the regulars are his brother Warnie, J. R. R. Tolkien, Neville Coghill, Hugo Dyson and Adam Fox.Two visitors are also attending - Jack's old pupil Tom Morris and an undergraduate named Auberon Willesden. The following morning Willesden is found murdered in his room in Magdalen, though both the...

Dear Jack, I think I'm about to be arrested and charged with murder.' Tom Morris, busy cataloguing the library of Plumwood Hall, is in a fix. Three days before, a member of the family had keeled over at afternoon tea after eating a slice of fruit cake laced with poison. And Tom has been fingered by the weasel-like Inspector Hyde as chief suspect. The young scholar turns to the only person who can help: his old Oxford tutor, C. S. ('Jack') Lewis. As they investigate, mystery piles on myster...

The year is 1935. Clive Staples Lewis (known to his friends as ‘Jack’) and his brother Warren (‘Warnie’) are visiting their young friend Tom Morris at Nesfield Cathedral School. Jack is to be the guest speaker at the school’s speech night.They become eyewitnesses to a murder, an impossible murder.A man is stabbed to death by an unseen assailant, and Tom and Jack see his body fall from the rooftop . . . but the body doesn’t hit the ground until the following day!An e...

It’s the summer of 1933, and Oxford don Clive Staples Lewis, better known to his friends as Jack, is on a walking holiday with his brother Warnie and young friend Tom Morris. When Jack’s wallet is accidentally destroyed, they visit a bank to replenish their funds – and walk straight into the scene of an impossible murder.The victim is in the vault of the bank alone, cut off by brick and steel from the rest of the world. Yet he has been stabbed from behind and the murder weapon has ...

A straight-talking, uplifting and inspiring guide to living a better life and becoming a better human being - through compassion, tolerance, acceptance and love - from one our very best, most authentic and genuine people, the Reverend Bill Crews.He's been named one of Australia's 100 most influential people, yet he's often considered a thorn in the side of his own church. He's a fierce campaigner against poker machine gambling yet it was the proceeds of a horse rac...

Through a precious cache of WWII letters, a story of war is revealed. But also, most movingly, a story of love, resilience and survival, from award-winning and bestselling writer, Peter Rees and Sue Langford..'Profoundly moving ... I don't mind saying I wept at the end, for all the young men lost to war, their widows and children ... a lovely book.' The AustralianDoug Heywood was a teenager when he discovered, in a shoebox hidden in a wardrobe, hun...

A super-practical guide to cleaning up your admin load and freeing up head space.AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS BOOK AWARDS 2022 FINALISTYou have no idea what's for dinner tonight. You need a gift for that party next week. You still haven't consolidated your super. You're out of contract on your phone and paying who knows what. Those cupboards won't declutter themselves. The kids need a plan for the next school holidays. It's time to get the gutters c...

A remarkable memoir by a mother and her autistic daughter who’d long been unable to communicate—until a miraculous breakthrough revealed a young woman with a rich and creative interior life, a poet, who’d been trapped inside for more than two decades.“I have been buried under years of dust and now I have so much to say.”These were the first words twenty-five-year-old Emily Grodin ever wrote. Born with nonverbal autism, Emily’s only means of communi...

‘Just read it.’ Elon MuskThe dramatic inside story of SpaceX ― the world's leading edge rocket company, whose charismatic and controversial founder now advises the White HouseSpaceX has enjoyed a miraculous decade. Less than 20 years after its founding, it boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Half a ...

He's the only one who can stop a massacre ... The unputdownable action thriller from Australia's no.1 true crime writer.Riley Jax, convicted murderer. Once a promising engineer in the army, he lost everything in a single night when he killed a man – an act he cannot remember.It's a devastating gap in an otherwise perfect memory.Now he's facing a new life, one behind bars, where he has to learn a whole different set of rules...