New English Memoires

The story of one man’s experience of a major stroke and his attempts to recover from it ….. but, enough of that - this is also an account of a dog’s experience of life with unpredictable, irrational human beings and his attempts to deal with all of that.

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.

A marriage with an imperfect love story goes tragically wrong one summer in a small college town in Virginia, and the husband is left picking up the pieces of pain and regret. How did it end in suicide instead of divorce? What he discovers six months later is both heartbreaking and astonishing.

The hilarious tale of the UK Independence Party's journey from rags to riches and back again from a front-line activist. Paul Oakley had five minutes of fame at a Young Conservative conference when he ripped up a copy of the Maastricht Treaty at the end of his speech attacking John Major's European policy. He stood for the Tories in the 2005 general election but failed to lie convincingly enough to be added to the A-list of candidates when David Cameron became party leader. So in 2011 he renounced his Tory membership in a fit of pique and joined UKIP.

Navigating the Spanish Lake examines Spain's long presence in the Pacific Ocean (1521-1898) in the context of its global empire. Building on a growing body of literature on the Atlantic world and indigenous peoples in the Pacific, this pioneering book investigates the historiographical "Spanish Lake" as an artifact that unites the Pacific Rim (the Americas and Asia) and Basin (Oceania) with the Iberian Atlantic.

From award-winning New York Times reporter Sam Roberts, the story of the world’s most exceptional city, told through 31 little-known yet pivotal inhabitants who helped define it. In Sam Roberts’s pulsating history of the world’s most exceptional metropolis, greet the city anew through thirty-one unique New Yorkers you’ve probably never heard of—just in time for the city’s 400th birthday.

Once there was a wilderness: Australia's frontier, a dangerous and unforgiving place where outlaws ruled the roads and killers were hailed as heroes. It was here, in 1838, that one man's uncompromising sense of justice changed history and shocked the world. Denny Day was a vicar's son from Ireland. A member of the Anglo-Irish ruling class, as a young man Day joined the British army before resigning to seek his fortune in New South Wales. There he accepted the most challenging role in the young colony: keeping the peace on the frontier.

From Curio Bay to Golden Bay, in Down South writer Bruce Ansley sets off on a vast expedition across the South Island, Te Waipounamu, visiting the places and people who hold clues to the south's famous character. Not so very long ago, the South Island had most of New Zealand's people and just about all of the money. Gold miners found fortunes in the hills and rivers, sheep barons straddled mountains, valleys and plains. Wealthy southerners ruled the government. Where now lies the South Island's golden fleece? And what is its future?

David Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer living with his Upper West Side family in the age of JFK and Sputnik, goes hazy when it comes to the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his meticulous father and the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother.

How would you feel if your own mother stole your child? What would you do? Could you ever forgive her? Reflection is a powerful tool. From Luton, England to Adelaide, Australia, I've covered a lot of distance, geographically and emotionally. I'm no one special. My life is an ordinary one that became extraordinary. Everyone has their story to tell. This is mine.

A personal and intimate memoir spanning 70 years in three parts, describing my childhood in the UK and New Zealand, my 35 years as a New Zealand diplomat, and the hundreds of amazing individuals I met on the way, from farming folk to kings, queens, and presidents.

In this startling and original work, best-selling author Charles Higham (Howard Hughes: The Secret Life) addresses one of the greatest historical mysteries: Did John Wilkes Booth act alone on the night of Good Friday, 1865, or was he part of a wide conspiracy? Drawing from letters, diaries, previously unstudied records of official hearings, railway timetables, and obscure shipping manifests, Higham weaves a spellbinding account of intrigue.

Sex workers in 19th-century Melbourne were judged morally corrupt by the respectable world around them. But theirs was a thriving trade, with links to the police and political leaders of the day, and the leading brothels were usually managed by women. While today a popular bar and a city lane are famously named after Madame Brussels, the identities of the other ‘flash madams’, the ‘dressed girls’ who worked for them and the hundreds of women who solicited on the streets of the Little Lon district of Melbourne are not remembered.

'We can give you a start. You will need a six foot by four foot piece of canvas and blanket. If you stay for three months we will refund your fare. You will need to fly TAA out of Cloncurry and advise me your date of arrival.' And so began the adventures and misadventures of young Roland Breckwoldt. It was 1960. He was not yet sixteen, and the unworldly Roland was leaving his home on the semi-agricultural fringes of Sydney to work as a stockman on the vast cattle stations of the Gulf Country of North Queensland.

Picture a man, he’s tall, not excessively so, yet as wide as he is high. This man is a spitting and growling street brawler; a tank full of ready-to-blow, muscle-fuelled aggression. Imagine, if you will, the comic-book style Bulldog of Great British stamp. Well, there you have him! The prototypical face taken from the terraces of an ’80s football fan’s rolled-up newspaper cosh; a poster-boy of malevolence left over from Thatcher’s post-punk Britain.

In the 1990s, Steve Farrell cofounded and led two high-growth technology companies based in Silicon Valley that were featured in the INC500 and spanned the United States and Europe. A New Universal Dream is the inspiring story of Steve's journey from the pursuit of wealth and traditional ideas of success toward a more fulfilling life of caring and service to others and to humanity. It's also the story of the potential each of us has for profound change.

Taking the lessons Machiavelli recorded in his political masterpiece The Prince, Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's Chief of Staff, shows how they can still apply today. Illustrating each of Machiavelli's maxims with a description of events that occurred during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister, Powell provides a gripping account of life inside Number 10 and draws lessons from those experiences for anyone today who has access to the levers of power.

The first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency are justly famous, viewed as a period of political action without equal in American history. Yet as historian David B. Woolner reveals, the end of FDR's presidency might very well surpass it in drama and consequence. Drawing on new evidence, Woolner shows how FDR used every ounce of his diminishing energy to pursue the things that mattered most to him: the establishment of the United Nations, the reinvigoration of the New Deal, the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and more.

These and other true stories of courage and ingenuity remind us how the Australian character was forged - through encounters with the bush, desert and outback. The vision that appeared in the shooter’s lamplight was a shock - a man soaking wet, with torn clothing, covered in cuts, bruises and blood. ‘I’ve found that missing aeroplane,’ O’Reilly gasped, ‘and there are two men still alive.’ The men and women you’ll meet in this fascinating audiobook come in all shapes and sizes, from convicts and engineers to cattleduffers and anthropologists.

Sal Maggio dropped out of college, and joined the NJ Army National Guard. Then he entered the New Jersey State Police Academy, graduated, and started his police career in central New Jersey as a general road trooper. After numerous transfers (none for disciplinary reasons), Maggio spent 19 years on the "road" as a trooper and road sergeant. He recalls many incidents encountered, while working the highways and policing the towns and townships that do not have a local police department.