Australia Politics

The Afterlife Confessional follows Bill's journey for answers as he looks through the dizzying kaleidoscope of his clients' lives - the widower who escaped an aged-care trap to take her husband's ashes on the road trip of a lifetime; the man who spent his life paying it forward to try to make up for one shameful act; the closet dominatrix who quietly confronts her husband's infidelity by comforting those truly in need; the devoted couple who insist on going hand-in-hand into the afterlife.

In this collection of deeply insightful and powerful essays, Chelsea Watego examines the ongoing and daily racism faced by First Nations peoples in so-called Australia. Rather than offer yet another account of ‘the Aboriginal problem’, she theorises a strategy for living in a society that has only ever imagined Indigenous peoples as destined to die out. Drawing on her own experiences and observations of the operations of the colony, she exposes the lies that settlers tell about Indigenous people.

In today's ruthless world of organised crime, the best criminals aren't foolish enough to steal money out of banks. They wear tailored suits, carry briefcases, and discreetly slip money into banks. Bigwigs, oligarchs and crime syndicates running drugs, trafficking guns and people, arming terrorists and subverting government controls are desperate to put a legitimate face on their wealth. Washing dirty money, moving it around the globe, making it look legitimate is where the action is for both criminals and the authorities chasing them.

The Power of Suffering is psychologist David Roland’s personal investigation into the nature of human suffering. When our world is turned upside down, what does it do to us, how do we survive it, and, most importantly, how can we grow as a result? David takes the lived experience of eleven incredible people and follows them along each step of their journey from crisis through to acceptance and triumph. Within each story, David draws on his own experience of life-altering trauma and clinical research to offer insights we all can gain from.

For nearly three decades, Dr Colin Manock was in charge of South Australia's forensic pathology services. In cases of unexpected or unexplained death, it was his job to determine when a person took their final breath, and whether they had died naturally - or not. But Manock did not have the necessary training for such a specialist role, and made serious errors in several major cases. The full extent of his wrongdoing, and the exact number of cases impacted by it, remain a mystery more than twenty-five years after he retired.

What is it like to grow up Aboriginal in Australia? This anthology, compiled by award-winning author Anita Heiss, showcases many diverse voices, experiences and stories in order to answer that question. Accounts from well-known authors and high-profile identities sit alongside those from newly discovered writers of all ages. All of the contributors speak from the heart - sometimes calling for empathy, oftentimes challenging stereotypes, always demanding respect.

In the long-awaited return to his bestselling true crime series on life behind bars, James Phelps has finally turned his attention to HM Prison Pentridge—the bluestone behemoth that was home to Victoria's worst criminals for more than a century. Beginning with a gang of guards and a handful of convicts, for more than 145 years Pentridge housed a who's who of Australian criminals and Melbourne's underworld including Ned Kelly and Mark 'Chopper' Read. This is gritty true crime storytelling, on steroids—about what life was really like behind the bluestone walls of Pentridge.

A thriving monarchy had ruled over Hawaii for generations. Taro fields and fish ponds had long sustained native Hawaiians but sugar plantations had been gradually subsuming them. This fractured, vulnerable Hawaii was the country that Queen Lili‘uokalani, or Lili‘u, inherited when she came to power at the end of the nineteenth century.

Many of us don’t know much about mythological stories from these regions, and it is my pleasure and privilege to educate you on the intricate details that lie within them. That’s why I have also provided some fascinating facts and historical background about each of these peoples. Creation myths, legacies, the sacrificing of children, the empires, and their wars are all mentioned and touched on in this book.

Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the 20th century and the uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia.

According to the Australian government’s website, at the time of first contact with Europeans, there were some 500 distinct Indigenous nations, speaking different languages and following their own religious and cultural practices. As with all human societies, that of the Indigenous Australians is abounding in stories. Stories of how the world came to be the way it is, stories of heroism and perfidy, stories about animals and birds, and stories about love and hate all have parts to play in the wide array of myths, legends, and tales created by Indigenous Australians.

In January 1889, Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of 10 children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands had died suddenly and the Crown, convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction, to the horror of many in the legal community. Louisa protested her innocence until the end.

As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories - and a terrifying brush with her own mortality - sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next?

Scott Morrison, Australia's 30th Prime Minister (2018-2022), offers a unique insider's account of a Christian who was open about his faith and operated at the top level of politics for more than a decade. During one of the toughest periods since the second world war, covering drought, wildfires, a global pandemic and recession, he chronicles God's faithfulness throughout, win or lose, public criticism or public success.

Epidemics are mirrors. What has COVID-19 revealed about Australia and about Scott Morrison and his government? In this gripping essay, Katharine Murphy goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the response to the crisis. Drawing on interviews with Morrison, Brendan Murphy, Josh Frydenberg, Sally McManus and other players, she traces how the key health and economic decisions were taken.

Somewhere deep beneath the wild seas of the southern Indian Ocean, perhaps in the eerie underwater canyons of Broken Ridge along the Seventh Arc satellite band, lies the answer to the world's greatest aviation mystery. Why, on the night of 8 March 2014, did Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 suddenly U-turn, zig-zag up the Straits of Malacca, then vanish with 239 souls on board? Was it an elaborate murder-suicide by a rogue pilot? A terrible accident such as onboard fire, rapid decompression or systems failure? A terrorist hijacking gone wrong? Or something else entirely?

For months during 1943 there was no night in Hellfire Pass. By the light of flares, carbide lamps and bamboo fires, men near-naked and skeletal cut a passage through stone to make way for a railway. Among these men were some of the 22,000 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. In camps across Asia and the Pacific, they struggled, died, and survived with a little help from their mates.

From Ethiopia to Sierra Leone, Tanzania to Togo, Dr Andrew Browning has been helping women affected by obstetric fistulas - a debilitating condition resulting from obstructed childbirth - for nearly two decades. Andrew began his African career in the 1990s working with the late Dr Catherine Hamlin and since then has started the Barbara May Foundation, which has built hospitals, trained staff and established programs to heal fistulas and also prevent them from occurring around Africa in the world's most disadvantaged women.

Come with Kaz on a laugh-out-loud frolic through centuries of terrible advice, from 14th-century clergy to the Kardashians (wear a dress made of arsenic, do some day-drinking, have sex with a billionaire biker, worry about your vagina wrinkles). It's also a roar against injustice, a rallying cry for sisterhood and a way to free ourselves from ludicrous expectations and imposed perfectionism.

Between 2013 and 2022, Tony Abbott begat Malcolm Turnbull, who begat Scott Morrison. For nine long years, Australia was governed by a succession of Coalition governments rocked by instability and bloodletting, and consumed with prosecuting climate and culture wars while neglecting policy. By the end, among his detractors—and there were plenty—Morrison was seen as the worst prime minister since Billy McMahon. Morrison failed to accept the mantle of national leadership, or to deal adequately with the challenges of natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.