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Inspired Recovery is a compilation of true stories from people who have achieved their life goals while managing bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or depression.

Julie Edwards has suffered from mental illness her entire life. The eldest of four children born into a destitute family in outback Australia in 1948, Julie was diagnosed with 'manic depression' at age eighteen.

Her experiences include severe symptoms of depression, mania and psychosis; numerous treatments including medication and electroconvulsive therapy; violent physical and emotional abuse through dysfunctional relationships; bereavement and loss, including the tragic death of two husbands; substance abuse; serious physical health issues; attempted suicide; complete breakdown and the development of additional psychiatric disorders.

Medical treatment and pharmacology play a major role in the recovery process - but so does the human spirit. Now aged sixty, Edwards describes her life as 'filled with joy'! Though a 'cure' for schizoaffective disorder is not yet known, she has developed a successful strategy to achieve recovery and live a rich, full life. It is her story that has inspired her daughter, Sonya Melbourne, to gather and share these beautiful, true accounts as a message of hope for those who suffer from serious mental illnesses, and those who care about them.

James Gong is training for his black belt in taekwondo. One night a camera crew turns up at training for an episode of My Life.

James is sparring a white belt who gets carried away and hammers James' foot. Sparks fly in James' brain and he gasps – all caught on national TV. James responds with a jumping spinning sidekick which obliterates his opponent.

 

This is the beginning of James' woes at the club, for he has disgraced Mr Cho, the head instructor.

 

Hollywood Productions just loves James' jumping , spinning sidekick. They decide to star him in their small budget flick, Big Action in Little Town. Unbeknown to James, Hollywood Productions is a scam company that basically produces B grade ‘loser’ movies to offset huge tax bills.

 

Meanwhile James, who lusts after his sister Caitlin’s best friend, Amber, thinks his sudden film career will curry favour. Not so. If anything, Amber shuns him even more.

 

Determined to win the love of his life, James tries to learn how to skate, because he knows that Amber fancies a local skater named Spiros. He only succeeds in showing himself up, but James is pathetically immune to the irony and subtleties of life. He figures that all is well with the world and that he’s making vast progress.

 

To Hollywood Productions’ great horror the flick is so bad that it’s good. People have queued at the premiere and national TV stations have got wind of the huge success of this little budget movie. Big Action in Little Town is going to be a blockbuster!

Ming Lee - The Chinese Dragon - is the unbeaten, undisputed queen of virtual martial arts. Until she meets James Gong, fresh from his starring role in Ham Solo: Revenge of the Fist.
Can their combined skill, grace and teamwork defeat everything the virtso world throws at them?
Do they take down the mobsters?
The bully?
And just where does 'the gymnast' fit into all of this?

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

For 50 years, until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Soviet Union ran a campaign of repression, imprisonment, political trials and terror against its 3 million Jews. In Australia, political leaders and the Jewish community contributed significantly to the international protest movement which eventually triumphed over Moscow's tyranny and led to the modern Exodus of Soviet Jews to Israel and other countries.

Lipski and Rutland make this largely unknown Australian story come alive with a combination of passion, personal experience and ground-breaking research.

"The struggle for the freedom of Soviet Jewry was one of the most powerful displays of strength and solidarity by the world Jewish community... even those intimately familiar with the struggle will be surprised to discover in Let My People Go how the Australian Jewish community and its leaders were among the campaign's initiators, and how they saw it through to its successful conclusion. This is a unique testament to how a small group can play a big role in history." - Natan Sharansky, Chairman Jewish Agency for Israel, Prisoner of Zion (1977-86)

'An exceptional book about extraordinary people living in extraordinary times. My only regret on completing it is that I have not met any of them personally.' Christopher Bantick

A biography of Lonek Lew, the author's father, told through the lives of over twenty people he was friendly or associated with, a number of whom were historical figures.

Using his father's clear and detailed accounts of his life in pre-war Poland, the Holocaust and his colourful life in Melbourne, as well as personal meetings and memories, the author assembles portraits of extraordinary people living through extraordinary events.

'If there's doubt, I can't help but worry. It's life or death. It's not as simple as the flick of a coin.'

Stephanie dreams of being accepted into art school but questions her talent. She has a major crush on the hottest boy in school and is desperate for him to notice her. But when Steph's mother unexpectedly becomes ill, Steph meets Richard and feels an instant attraction, but he is damaged and finds it difficult to share the events surrounding his brother's death.

Steph struggles to work through the complexities of life, love and death. She becomes increasingly obsessed with helping her mother before it's too late. When things spin out of control, she thinks she's going crazy...

"... an effective page-turner that personalises and dramatises the important social issue of organ donation, in a very readable, resonant style." - Stephen Measday, author

"... focuses on the important issues of organ donation and transplantation without overloading it with too much information." - Julie Edwards, Transplant Australia

"Overall, an excellent way to introduce a difficult subject in a sensitive way." - Dr Robert Brooks

Love, regardless—the second collection from Melbourne-based Barbara Kamler—is an enthralling gallery of poetic portraits celebrating love that endures. It features a unique mode of storytelling, whereby interviews with fourteen couples are poetically crafted into rhythmic, syllabic verse. For each couple, each poem explores the intimacy of first connecting and the various complications negotiated along the way – crushing pressures of sexual or racial norms, the challenge of chronic illness or disparate histories, and demands of extended family, geographic distance or migration. Yet these are sanguine stories that transcend the trials of the everyday, making real the possibility of mutual love and joy over a lifetime.

Set in Nazi Germany, Massaging Himmler tells in verse the remarkable story of a little-known humanitarian, Dr Felix Kersten.

 

Kersten was a Finnish-born therapeutic masseur who found himself at the centre of the Nazi web, treating Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS and the Gestapo) for stomach cramps, which sometimes rendered him unconscious, and which no other practitioner could relieve. Dr Kersten massaged Himmler daily during the war, sometimes in multiple treatments. He took no fee for his services to the Reichsführer, but used his influence to secure the release of tens of thousands of prisoners. Accused of collaboration at the end of the war, he worked tirelessly to clear his name, and received high honours from several European countries.

 

Told in compelling language, from multiple points of view, this is an important addition to Holocaust literature. Dr Kersten's story shows how one man, flawed like the rest of us, was able to make a difference.

 

"...Carson's poems race ahead of the reader, like stampeding horses, the furious pace mirroring the horror of their context. Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, Maus, pushed the boundaries of Holocaust literature, and I believe Massaging Himmler: A Poetic Biography of Dr Felix Kersten, is in that class." - Adele Hulse, Coordinator, Write Your Story program, Makor Publishing, Lamm Jewish Library of Australia.

There was a foundation myth I craved connection to as a child that had a kind of quiet but powerful hold over me. At times I would look beyond those granite hills, seeking the Russia my paternal grandfather had come from, which an instinct told me contained some reality that would help form me. I wondered what the villages, fields and forests would look like…

Rod Myer has had an unusual and interesting life. A member of the celebrated Myer family, he had an adventurous spirit and explored his identity through travelling and research. A farm kid born in Kelly country, he had premonitions and yearnings which led to mustering cattle with Aboriginal people in the Top End. He worked in politics and journalism, and discovered family secrets which led to revelations about his Jewish roots in Eastern Europe, something that altered his life completely.

That past, I believe, stays with us, as life is not a linear progression. It is more a series of spirals drawing on a spiritual world to nourish our progress through our own reality. That reality is built on the past and the present concurrently, and at times I feel the honour of my forebears touching and inspiring me now.

Whatever your view of life - spiritual, ornery, laid-back, reactionary, woke or wacky - you will welcome this debut collection of short stories by Sydney-born, Sydney-bred, peripatetic author, Phillip Derone.

Tales born of experience and imagination.

Share in relationships, intimacies, romantic interludes, self-satisfied contentment; sly sex, sex on the side, sex on the slide.

Consider contentious contemporary issues heavily cloaked in fictional drapes. Recoil from - or cheer on - confronting opinionated mindsets. Despair at poor judgment and inevitable disaster.

Take fantastical trips - into space, into time, into re-imagined Biblical narrative, into childhood, into dreams - or stay grounded in the murky world of internet dating.

Discover another angle to Shakespeare; eavesdrop on brief conversations with other long-dead writers.

Laugh out loud at mayonnaise madness in Majorca; view vignettes of inner Sydney, including Audrey Hepburn's innocent contribution to its social fabric; contemplate the end of humanity, albeit a highly benign one.

Delight in stumbling upon buried treasure of wordplay, cultural allusions and cliches.

And always be prepared for an ending that you had not expected.

So, travel to various destinations, experience novel philosophical itineraries and gain insight into other worlds by way of stories laced with intrigue and tinged with an ever-circling cynicism. You may find yourself examining common assumptions, questioning the mundanity of the quotidian, wondering whether coincidence can be life changing, and enjoying some momentary pleasures.

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.

How does the 2021 Indo-Pacific security arrangement Australia has entered into with the United Kingdom and the United States fit into Australia’s historical approach to its defence and foreign affairs policies? What experiences in the past have shaped Australia’s attitude to defence? Have these policies been influenced or even dictated by the public’s opinions and beliefs or have they been formulated mainly by politicians, diplomats, specialists and commentators and imposed on the populace, albeit gently, or perhaps stealthily?

This book looks closely at the election campaigns of 1943, 1946 and 1949 when the threat of attack and even invasion had been very real and imminent and the security of the country was uppermost in many people’s minds; at how the political leaders and commentators presented their opinions and ideas on future national defence and foreign policy to a public that may or may not have been interested; and at how they argued it out amongst themselves, testing the waters, feeling their way into a new world order.

And so, how much of Australia’s defence and foreign affairs stance is based on its history, its geographical position and the political nature of its neighbours, leading to the conclusion that it will be that way “forever”, and thereby clearly definable?

A half-naked body of a girl is discovered on a driveway. A young man researching the defection to Australia of the Hungarian Olympic team in 1956 is having trouble with his love life. An old man living alone with his cat discovers hidden clues...

Set in Melbourne in the 1950s and the present, this crime novel was inspired by an unsolved murder in Mt Martha in 1953. Historically accurate in the details, it blends social commentary with character development and resolution.

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.