eBook Listing

A book for the general reader rather than lawyers, this often tongue-in-cheek account of Michael Challinger's interactions with the criminals he defends gives a first-hand account of the quirky nature of human beings.

Mostly Guilty deals with the workings of the lowest level of the Australian legal system. It's about the down-to-earth cases that happen daily in Magistrates' Courts. It does so through the experiences and anecdotes of a low-flying criminal barrister. While the cases are from Victoria, the book makes reference to other states and has relevance and interest Australia-wide.

The style is light, punchy and informal, with lots of direct speech and many funny yarns. Some of the book is tongue-in-cheek (and even politically incorrect) but it also makes serious points throughout. It's entertaining as well as informative.

The chapters are short, and generally deal with specific offences (shop theft, for example) or areas of law (bail). Others  recount particular cases in an ironic or colourful way. Most cases are of low to medium criminality so the light-hearted tone is not inappropriate.

Most legal memoirs are by big-shot advocates or retired judges. Mostly Guilty is different, and doesn't take itself too seriously.

 

Michael Challinger still practises as a criminal barrister at the Melbourne Bar. He spent eight years as a lawyer in Papua New Guinea and also practised in London. He's a music lover and keen traveller, having visited more than 120 countries. He lives in Melbourne.

British expatriate writer Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) moved to America prior to the Second World War and lived more than half his life in California, writing for the Hollywood studios. Famous initially for the stories he wrote during the rise of the Nazis, he attracted a second wave of interest in the 1970s with his 'out' autobiography 'Christopher and His Kind' (1976). But much less is known about Isherwood's writing during his forty years as a student of a guru from the Ramakrishna Order.

In Mr Isherwood Changes Trains, Victor Marsh interrogates the assumptions and prejudices that have combined to disparage the sincerity of Isherwood's religious life. Marsh elucidates those features of Vedanta philosophy that enabled Isherwood to integrate the various aspects of his dharma: his vocation as a writer, and a spirituality not predicated on the repudiation of his sexuality. Marsh details the heartfelt search for a 'home-self' that found expression in later works such as 'My Guru and his disciple' and in what is seen as Isherwood's finest novel, 'A single man' (1964).

A real-life murder and legal drama set in the violent world of 1930s Melbourne. It was the crime that shocked Melbourne in 1936. An armed robbery of a teenage government messenger and the brutal murder of his elderly unarmed escort. Three known criminals were accused and tried four times but the prosecution and the police could never positively prove their guilt. The real-life violent Melbourne underworld in the 1930s is portrayed, together with the machinations of some fascinating characters in the legal, political and media worlds.

My Mother's Spice Cupboard is the true story of the author's Sephardi Jewish family's migration from Baghdad to Bombay (now Mumbai) to Sydney. Unlike most other Australian Jews, her parents were born and grew up in Bombay, and her grandparents came from Iraq, Burma and India. Her father's family immigrated to Sydney, her mother's to Los Angeles, both in the 1960s. They married in Sydney and raised their family there, alongside the father's many brothers and sisters and members of their former Bombay community. Despite being Jewish, her upbringing was greatly influenced by the food, language and culture of India, and to a lesser extent, Iraq.

My Mother's Spice Cupboard is the story of what happened to a community which no longer exists, how its members built new lives in a different country, and what it was like to grow up as one of their children. It's also about how much things have changed over four generations in one family. The author's grandparents' arranged marriage produced nine children; both her parents grew up within the confines of Bombay's insular Baghdadi Jewish community whereas she grew up as a first generation Australian in Sydney. Her children's lives are underpinned by the differing Jewish traditions of her family and her husband's family.

The themes underlying the story are those of family and community versus individuality; choice versus obligation; and tradition versus modernity. And underlying the entire narrative is the importance of food and cooking, which goes beyond the mere provision of sustenance to express warmth, love and hospitality.

How did a seven-year-old boy born in a small Polish town get caught up in the dislocation, losses and trauma of the Holocaust, one step ahead of the advancing Nazis, yet

survive? Despite hunger, fear, loneliness and loss, with the help and guidance of others, Zwi Lewin eventually came to Australia which he gratefully embraced.

 

Though a successful businessman and now patriarch of a large family, he has never forgotten his 'sack full of memories', and has spent a lifetime remembering the family members lost to him.

 

Now, without bitterness or sentimentality, he tells his story in this moving memoir, creating a vivid account of the places and people on his journey, the different languages he had to learn and his wonderful subsequent family life in Australia.

‘For some, especially those who’ve been born in the twenty-first century, the accounts of my early years may seem like the reports from a planet in a different galaxy. If so, I cannot altogether blame them. There are times when I feel just the same.
‘But I hope, as they read about my inter-planetary travel, and as perhaps some of my friends and Nosson’s join them for the journey, they’ll be able to share the adventure. For that is what life with Nosson was: a marvellous and thrilling adventure … I know what a blessing it is to have friends and family. Life has been good to me. I try to do whatever I can the best way I know how.’

Nechama Werdiger has had a long and fascinating life. Growing up under the Soviet Union’s harsh antisemitism, she endured the war years as a child in Uzbekistan where thousands of Jews sought refuge from the Holocaust. She and her family managed to escape to Poland and France before arriving in 1949 in Australia. Through hard work, a strong sense of family and unswerving faith, she and her husband Nossom built a successful new life in Melbourne. Generous, wise, kind and caring, Nechama will inspire you with her life story.

Neddy Smith's life story, smuggled out of Long Bay prison, created a sensation on publication. He wrote that:

- Detective Sergeant Roger Rogerson and other NSW police gave him a rare 'green light' to rob, bash, deal drugs, whatever... without fear of arrest.

- He robbed payrolls, dealt heroin and took full advantage

- He was the star witness at ICAC hearings into police corruption that changed policing in NSW

And he wrote it like he was telling it in a pub - immediate, compelling, straight from the shoulder.

This is the book that inspired the TV drama, Blue Murder

Attractive Nell Tritton was determined to embrace a life of adventure after her elder siblings died in the 1919 flu pandemic. She became Brisbane’s first female journalist and won prizes for rally driving before moving to Paris, met struggling writers and fell in love with a penniless Tsarist officer.

 

Warned by her wealthy father to avoid fortune hunters, Nell married after a whirlwind courtship. She wrote Tales from the Left Bank but her publisher demanded sexual privileges so she sold individual chapters as short stories. Her spy novel set against the infamous ‘Lockhart plot’ to kill Lenin in September 1918 was banned under the Official Secrets Act.

 

When divorced, Nell worked in Paris for the former Russian Prime Minister, Alexander Kerensky who edited an anti-Communist anti-Hitler newspaper. Her rally driving skills saved her husband from Stalin’s assassins in a harrowing car chase through the narrow streets of Montparnasse. As the Germans invaded Paris, Kerensky was on Hitler’s death list and they joined a long queue of cars heading south. German planes bombed cars and machine-gunned their drivers so they sheltered in a ditch with only polluted water to drink. Eventually they reached the coast and were rescued by a British warship.

 

The American government financed their passage to New York, where Kerensky became an advisor on Russian affairs and they were treated like royalty by exiled Russians. Nell suffered kidney damage as a result of drinking polluted water. They returned to Brisbane for the last months of Nell’s life when her family home became a centre of international intrigue.

This book follows Australian musician Kim Salmon, from bands The Scientists, Surrealists and Beasts of Bourbon, from childhood in Perth through his many bands, albums, tours, family upheavals, triumphs and disappointments and examines the characters of the music business he collaborates with along the way.

This is the story of Noel who lost Maris, his beloved wife of 42 years, to suicide following years of struggling with depression.

 

The abrupt ending of a life by suicide can be the most catastrophic of events for those left behind. Survivors experience intense pain and massive guilt. Grief banishes survivors to a place so removed from the normal hurly-burly of everyday life that they feel close to madness. Somehow they have to claw their way back.

 

Noel accepted there was no way around his anguish and met suffering head on. His pain allowed him to discover the richness within him and to grow in wisdom which he hopes might be of benefit to others.

 

Maris' death did not shut her out of Noel's life. She remains a very real presence. This is a love story with a difference.

 

'An involving account of the devastation, guilt and pain commonly experienced by people bereaved by suicide. It is a moving love story and a tale of resilience, offering reassurance and a sense of hope to others similarly bereaved.' - Barbara Hocking, OAM Executive Director, SANE Australia

 

'Noel Braun gives us the honour of travelling his suicide grief journey after the loss of his beloved wife Maris. He lets us walk with him and understand the devastation that suicide brings and his road of learning to find hope again.' - Michelle Linn-Gust, PhD., President-Elect, American Association of Suicidology

 

'Noel takes us into his innermost thoughts, feelings and emotions as he describes, with incredible love and candour, 'losing' his Maris. Noel's story is immensely powerful and the depth and duration of his grief is testament to his enduring love for Maris.' - Kate Friis, Counsellor and Psychotherapist

A memoir is only a slice of a life. This 'questory' (quest + history) covers more than the beloved cake-eating hippo. 'Not Just a Piece of Cake' is a candid memoir of the realistic process of the process of creativity, via anecdotes. 'Anecdultery' is a Hazel original term for story.

Hazel Edwards takes the reader behind the books. She shares the humour of a diverse work style and family life behind the beloved characters like the cake-eating hippo. Hippocampus is where memories are kept.

Collaborating with illustrators, performers, co-authors and even family, Hazel shares 'the process of the process of writing' and why storytelling matters culturally, and personally.

A teenage boy, an only child, is forced to leave his German homeland and loving family. For the first time in his life he finds himself utterly alone and ill-prepared for what lies ahead. Armed only with a small suitcase, a ten-shilling note and his mother's advice echoing in his ears - 'Learn to speak English as quickly as you can' - he is gradually forced to face the shocking prospect of losing his home and family forever.

This is the true story of Lutz Eichbaum's admirable achievement in navigating his way through World War II, one of the most treacherous and cruel periods in world history. He witnessed the drama and injustice of four traumatic historical events: the violence of Kristallnacht, the mercy rescue of the Kindertransport program, the horrific voyage on the Dunera and subsequent years of deplorable and isolated internment in Australia. He found hope, friendship and solace in the impressively organised internment camp community as they continually appealed for justice and finally earned the right to recreate themselves in a strange country.

Lutz Eichbaum [Ernie Everett] is one of the youngest of the renowned 'Dunera Boys'. While interned in Australia, the internees set up and administered their own township with Hay currency (which is now a valuable collectors' item) and an unofficial "university". When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the prisoners were reclassified as "friendly aliens" and released by the Australian Government. Hundreds were recruited into the Australian Army and about a thousand stayed when offered residency at the end of the war. Almost all the rest made their way back to Britain, many of them joining the armed forces there. Others were recruited as interpreters or into the intelligence services.

Nothing remains of Hay camp except a road called Dunera Way and a memorial stone which reads: This plaque marks the 50th anniversary of the arrival from England of 1,984 refugees from Nazi oppression, mistakenly shipped out on HMT 'Dunera' and interned in Camps 7 & 8 on this site from 7.9.1940 to 20.5.1941. Many joined the AMF on their release from internment and made Australia their homeland and greatly contributed to its development. Donated by the Shire of Hay - September 1990.

It is the late 1960s. Rebellion and "doing your own thing" is in. But while the majority of Australians flock to the beaches, one young man heads inland to find his patch of dirt and follow his dream.

 

On the banks of Moonan Brook, surrounded by inhospitable and barely accessible bushland, a local on his horse stumbles across this twenty-three-year old with his inappropriate vehicle, a dog named Doggo, and a girlfriend sitting under a tree reading a book. He listens as the pale young city-slicker with a mannered accent tells him he wants to go bush.

 

What drives him over the next fifty years to build and maintain a bush hut in challenging terrain will captivate the imagination as the dreamt-of patch materialises, a hut is built and grows, and the forest "tamed".

 

Henry Lawson or Henry Thoreau?

 

Along the way we catch glimpses of his fellow travellers who come and go over the years, each contributing in their own way to the fulfilment of one man's unwavering vision.  Romances form and fade, friendships will span generations and continents. And through it all threads the forest: its plants, its creatures, its quiet power.

 

Until finally, time dictates a letting go .…

Twenty-five years after Gabrielle Gouch left her native land, Transylvania, communism collapsed and the author returned to Romania from Australia to visit her half-brother Tom who told her stories about his life under communism. Though the story is factual, the author uses her strong eye for detail and the techniques of fiction to create this engaging and thought-provoking account about ordinary people in turbulent times. These sad and funny tales are interleaved with the story of the rest of the family from which Tom became estranged.

This memoir portrays the exodus of Jewish families from Romania and their arrival in the Promised Land, a dream come true for some but a shock for others. It explores issues of identity, disability, emigration and family relationships against a background of the major political events of the time from a perspective that challenges some accepted views.

There was only one Phar Lap: There is only one 'Oppy' - Courier Mail, 1932.

 

Hubert 'Oppy' Opperman was a sporting icon, a cycling phenomenon whose epic feats of endurance captivated the world. For over two decades, he dominated almost every race he entered and shattered record after record in Australia and Great Britain. In 1928, he led the first Australasian team to ever contest the Tour de France.

 

But Oppy was more than just a champion. During the Great Depression, a time of painful economic and social change, he became a transcendent symbol of Australian fortitude. He became a household name, a legend - as popular as the cricketer Don Bradman and the racehorse Phar Lap.

 

As well as vividly retelling his sporting triumphs, this book is the first to consider the legacy of Opperman's post-cycling career. It explores the emotional pain of his private life, the controversies that dogged his seventeen-year political career including his term as Minister for Immigration in the Menzies Government, and the far-reaching changes he helped bring to Australian immigration policy.

 

This meticulously researched biography gives readers a thrilling insight into the brutal world of professional cycling and an intimate portrait of an extraordinary Australian.