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We are all on a journey. In life we are given a humble start and travel then individually. 'Journey of a Lifetime, Volume One' recounts the bumpy beginnings of my own journey, that of an ordinary citizen: World War II, refuge, childhood in after-war-Germany, exploring first: Europe, Asia Minor, North-Africa, where I met other people in their own environment and learnt also from them.

Everything finds a place in a "Journey of a lifetime": controversy, challenges, education, efforts, hobbies, work, travels, romance, disappointments and successes.

Courage with a positive outlook overcomes many hurdles in this autobiography.

'Journey of a Lifetime, Volume Two' is the second chapter in the author's life, offering reflections of his life with a family of eight. The reader is taken across four continents until Martin and his family finally settle contentedly in Australia.

A baby is born in Warsaw in 1939. Stalin has signed a pact of nonaggression with Hitler, marking the beginnings of the Second World War. As the city is attacked, Ola, a young nurse, escapes with her husband-to-be and their newborn baby to a small town in Soviet territory just across the border. Two years later, when the German forces attack the Soviets, she is separated from her partner and again has to flee. With immense courage and resourcefulness, Ola keeps herself alive, along with her baby Halina and the twenty injured soldiers she has to care for.

For years following the deaths of her parents, Halina Rubin avoided looking inside two dusty boxes filled with letters, papers, photographs and notebooks. Finally, spurred on by her young daughter Annette, Halina unpacked these boxes and began discovering the details of her family's traumatic history. Through reading old papers and travelling to those long-forgotten places, Journeys with my Mother was born - a remarkably intimate memoir that would otherwise have been lost forever.

'Rubin, a writer of distinguished gifts, recreates the past with incredible immediacy and vividness.' - Lee Kofman

'Not merely an enthralling tale but told very, very beautifully.' - Jack Wodak

Joy Nason was born into an English working class family during World War Two and raised in the fundamentalist Christian cult of the Exclusive Brethren. Growing up in this strict and demanding world, her family migrated to Australia in the 1950s. In her early 20s, Joy made the courageous decision to flee her family, knowing that she would be cut off from that moment on. Slowly but surely Joy made her way in the world, with kind employers who encouraged her to gain skills, and friends who helped her with socialising, travel and a new-found enjoyment of life. Through many jobs and disappointing liaisons, to finally becoming a mother of a baby boy, Joy picks herself up after each failure and faces the world with determination and a positive attitude. Joy finally entered the world of education - denied her by her sect - and attained teaching degrees, through which she became Senior Head Teacher at New South Wales TAFE.

With 'Joy and Sorrow', Joy made the decision to go public with her life and experiences, partly to give inspiration to others trapped in similar situations, but also to add to the body of evidence exposing the hypocrisy of the Exclusive Brethren. This secretive sect, now re-branded the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, will stop at nothing to maintain their Charitable status - and keep their tax-free millions.

Everyone knows Mrs Danvers as a byword for menace in Hitchcock's Rebecca and as a poster girl for lesbians in the movies. But only dedicated fans know her brilliant creator.

 

This book tells Judith Anderson's life story for the first time. It recovers her career as one of the great stars of stage and television and an important character actress in film. Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1897, brought up by a determined single mother, she parlayed her rich, velvety voice and ability to give reality to strong emotional roles into stardom on Broadway in the 1920s. Not a conventional beauty, she was alluring, with her beautiful body, perfect dress sense, and striking, volatile personality. After playing glamorous roles, she was recognised as a Leading Lady of the American Stage under the direction of Guthrie McClintic in Hamlet and co-starring with Laurence Olivier and Maurice Evans in Macbeth. Her reputation as a great actress was confirmed by her landmark performance in 1947 in the ancient Greek Medea, adapted for her by her friend, poet Robinson Jeffers. In a long career, she appeared in Medea again in 1982 at the age of 85, playing the Nurse to fellow-Australian Zoe Caldwell's Medea.

 

Ambitious and driven, Anderson toured extensively, made numerous highly praised appearances on television, and, after her unforgettable role as Mrs Danvers, was a sought-after character actress in film, playing her last role as Vulcan High Priestess in Star Trek III at the age of 87. She won many awards and was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1960 and Companion of the Order of Australia just before her death in 1992. She had a stormy private life and two short marriages, which, she remarked, were 'much too long.'

Everyone knows Mrs Danvers as a byword for menace in Hitchcock's Rebecca and as a poster girl for lesbians in the movies. But only dedicated fans know her brilliant creator.

 

This book tells Judith Anderson's life story for the first time. It recovers her career as one of the great stars of stage and television and an important character actress in film. Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1897, brought up by a determined single mother, she parlayed her rich, velvety voice and ability to give reality to strong emotional roles into stardom on Broadway in the 1920s. Not a conventional beauty, she was alluring, with her beautiful body, perfect dress sense, and striking, volatile personality. After playing glamorous roles, she was recognised as a Leading Lady of the American Stage under the direction of Guthrie McClintic in Hamlet and co-starring with Laurence Olivier and Maurice Evans in Macbeth. Her reputation as a great actress was confirmed by her landmark performance in 1947 in the ancient Greek Medea, adapted for her by her friend, poet Robinson Jeffers. In a long career, she appeared in Medea again in 1982 at the age of 85, playing the Nurse to fellow-Australian Zoe Caldwell's Medea.

 

Ambitious and driven, Anderson toured extensively, made numerous highly praised appearances on television, and, after her unforgettable role as Mrs Danvers, was a sought-after character actress in film, playing her last role as Vulcan High Priestess in Star Trek III at the age of 87. She won many awards and was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1960 and Companion of the Order of Australia just before her death in 1992. She had a stormy private life and two short marriages, which, she remarked, were 'much too long.'

Kayla Ng is a good girl who wants to please her parents and her grandparents and relatives.

But she is also born in the year of the dragon. Her Chinese sign predicts she has fire within. When she is sent to study in Australia, from her homeland of Malaysia, she works hard to fulfil everyone’s expectation of her becoming a doctor.

 

She makes two lifelong friends: Eva and Russell, and her story highlights the difficulties, loneliness and often hilarious world of being an international student in Australia. While striving to graduate as a doctor, a tragic death destroys her world. Kayla realises she must choose: will she live the life expected of her, the life her family want for her, or will she live the life she dares to dream, and in doing so, risk losing all she has?

The life of Phonse Tobin was anything but ordinary. Born in 1905, he followed on behind soldiers as they marched to the wharves to depart for WW1. He earned pocket money by trapping rats and collecting the South Melbourne Council's rat bounty, and almost 'haunted' the Collins Street movie and live theatres.

 

After leaving school in 1919 he worked as a storeman, salesman, soldier and fireman. In 1934 Phonse and his brothers Leo, Tom and Kevin started what has become Australia's most successful family-owned funeral service company.

 

A natural entertainer, Phonse possessed a fine singing voice and produced many amateur theatrical productions in the 1930s. He was a good all-round sportsman and a successful professional footrunner. He was a long-serving member of the North Melbourne Football Club committee and was the club’s president from 1955 to 1957. He was a life member of both the NMFC and the VFL (now AFL).

 

Phonse married Vera Crough in 1935. They had four children and their direct descendants number 38.

 

Phonse was one of those rare characters who could meet, communicate and be at ease with people of all classes and walks of life - from prize fighters to prime ministers, from 'mug' punters to wealthy publicans or bookmakers, from Knights of the Southern Cross to knights of the realm, from everyday parish priests to 'princes' of the church, and from grave diggers to governors.

 

Like everyone else, he had his failings. But these failings – such as they were – were more than offset by his strength of character, generous spirit, creative flair, kindness to people in need, and his love for and undying support of his family.

How I went from failure to massive success and how you can too...
International author, speaker, coach and entrepreneur Jacine Greenwood shares how she went from failure to the fastest growing beauty brand in Asia-Pacific. She shares the exact steps and processes she used to grow a multi-million dollar business in multiple countries. These insights, tips and tricks will help you grow your brand or business with these simple and powerful strategies.
You'll learn:
- How to increase your revenue by 400% without working longer hours
- The golden rules for hypnotic writing that seduces your customer every time
- How to be a unicorn in a crowded market
- The secret to inspiring staunch loyalty and referrals from your customers
- Trade secrets of developing a cult product that creates raving fans
- How to create visually stunning images that are magnetically attractive
- Breakthrough systems that show you how to dominate your market

If you want success, then read this book now!

Two Melbourne TV journalists are on a well-earned holiday, travelling New Zealand in a motorhome. Will they survive a monster storm and a killer on the loose?

 

Kim Prescott survived a killer's bullet in Melbourne but can't shake the PTSD. For Jo Trescowthick the trip is a chance to confront family demons. The third in the Melbourne Spotlight series finds Kim and Jo on a road trip from Auckland on the north island to the tourist mecca of Queenstown in the deep south; Rotorua mud pools, Kaikoura whale watching, the stunning Marlborough Sounds. They won't make it.

 

Debt-ridden South Island fisherman and ex-con Gordie Tulloch is offered the deal of a lifetime. Is it legal? He doesn't care. All he has to do is survive the storm approaching the Shaky Isles. But Gordie's every move is under scrutiny by a man whose own secrete are about to spill into public view.

 

And then of course Mother Nature has her own agenda. Cyclone Gita is on a serpentine path of destruction through the tropics that will see her smash into New Zealand.

 

The cyclone, the motorhome, the fisherman, and the watcher all face an unexpected rendezvous in Kaikoura.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the British devastated the lands and the tribes of the Australian aborigines through the extensive mining of uranium and through secret nuclear tests. B. Wongar uses these shocking historical events as the starting point for this powerful novel about the destruction of a people and a culture.

Anawari, an aborigine, is comfortably assimilated into the white man's world. Educated in white schools, he lives with a white woman and has a good job at the Tribal Research and Assimilation Center. But one morning he awakens to find tribal identification marks mysteriously cut into his chest. To understand their meaning, he turns to information stored in the Center's computers. There he learns about the original nuclear blast, and also about the whites' intention to exterminate the last of his people: they are hunting down aborigines to use in gruesome genetic experiments.

Anawari's rebellion and escape - a harrowing flight through the desert to ancestral lands - gradually cleanse him of his white man's mentality and restore his 'karan', his tribal soul.

'Karan' is the second book of B. Wongar's highly acclaimed 'nuclear trilogy'. 'Walg' and 'Gabo Djara', the first and third books, are also available, and the trilogy has since been extended with the addition of a prequel 'Manhunt', and two further books, 'Raki' and 'Didjeridu Charmer'.

Bare Bones

Pixie Silvester looks on her psychic powers as a curse. She sees things, senses things - usually dead things - and sometimes she manages to solve crimes. When a child unearths human bones at a summer barbeque, Pixie experiences sensory overload and gets pitch-forked into a macabre case of missing women, some of whom have been buried alive.

Killing Kindness

When Cuddles, a wannabe fashion designer and bakery shop assistant, trips over a dead hit-and-run victim at midnight she unwittingly becomes embroiled in a dangerous scam. She shares iced buns with a crippled drugs dealer known as Al Capone and meets a sexy undercover cop with attitude, but she also has a run in with a couple of nutters who want to kill her as she gets close to solving the murder.

More than 35 years after one of Australia's most baffling and brazen child abductions, journalist John Allin returned to Adelaide to talk with Greg and Christine Gordon.

In this compelling and deeply personal story, Allin tells how a simple but precious gift kept their daughter Kirste's disappearance high in his mind for so many years.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Frank and Milo were introduced in Fly By Night (1999), where they got caught up in crime for the first time - smuggling, murder and assault.

Five years later, on the verge of The Big Time, Frank and Milo were tangled up in murder and kidnapping again in Sacrifice (2004). The first consequence of Milo’s experiences was to out himself and Frank as a couple on national television.

In 2009, Number One Fan explores the full consequences of the events of Sacrifice - anxiety disorders and the derailing of their music career - as well as the new directions Frank and Milo are taking now. Crime still loiters in the wings, however, or a type more often seen in the music industry: a stalker.

So here we are in 2014, and Frank and Milo are still together, still in love, and with new challenges. They’d very much like to not be involved in any more violent crime, thanks. However, crime seems not to be quite done with them.

Rome's Burning is a five-piece band with its roots in the 13th century; a line of musicians gifted with the magic-wielding Minstrel Tongue. For hundreds of years, Rome's Burning and its forebears have used music to protect the world from vampires, trolls, zombies, ghosts, banshees, dragons, water demons and other denizens of the dark.

 

But after one hellish night in the suburbs of Budapest, Rome's Burning defeated a nest of vampires at a terrible cost; their lead singer and the love of his life are dead, Rome's Burning is no more.

 

The survivors retreat as far as they can - to Melbourne, Australia - to deal with their grief, decide on their future, find a new leader and, as tradition demands, a new name. Before any of that happens, however, these minstrel-warriors have to find out why the dead keep rising everywhere they go.

 

Everyone has secrets and some of them might explain what's going on.

 

Perhaps the key is in the hands of Kitty Carrasco, the Melbourne funeral home beautician who doesn't know the secrets of her own past.

 

Kitty and Cadaver is a story of grief, love, vampires, music, magic, secrets and the restless dead.