Peter Lavarack
HAVE you ever wondered what the life of a sportsman was like more than 100 years ago on Buderim, what sports they played and did Buderim teams ever win any matches?

You’re not alone, Dr Peter Lavarack, who is more commonly known as Bill, has spent the past six months of his life researching and compiling 100 years of sporting history on Buderim. Starting at the humble beginnings of 1862 Bill delved into the rich history of the two main sports played by the Buderim community, cricket and tennis.

“Now that I am retired I was looking for something to do with my time,” Bill said. “I was up at the Pioneer cottage one day and saw just a single page of Buderim sporting history and thought I could do better than that. And now there is a 52 page book about everything that happened in the world of sport between 1862 and 1962.”

The history of Buderim is rich in character and the sporting world began to grow after the first 50 years to 16 popular events from 1912 to 1962.

Nelson deMille
In his dazzling #1 bestseller, Plum Island, Nelson DeMille introduced readers to NYPD Homicide Detective John Corey, who we first meet sitting on the back porch of his uncle’s waterfront estate on Long Island, convalescing from wounds incurred in the line of duty. A visit from the local Chief of Police results in the legendary Detective Corey becoming involved in the investigation of the murders of a married couple who were scientists at the top-secret biological research facility on Plum Island.

Fast forward through six more bestselling John Corey novels and The Maze opens with Corey on the same porch, but now in forced retirement from his last job as a Federal Agent with the Diplomatic Surveillance Group. Corey is restless and looking for action, so when his former lover, Detective Beth Penrose, appears with a job offer, Corey has to once again make some decisions about his career—and about reuniting with Beth Penrose.

Inspired by, and based on the actual and still unsolved Gilgo Beach murders, The Maze takes the reader on a dangerous hunt for an apparent serial killer who has murdered nine—and maybe more—prostitutes and hidden their bodies in the thick undergrowth on a lonely stretch of beach.

As Corey digs deeper into this case, which has made national news, he comes to suspect that the failure of the local police to solve this sensational case may not be a result of their inexperience and incompetence—it may be something else. Something more sinister.

Danielle Steel
Iris Cooper has been singing ever since she can remember, hitting the high notes like no one else. When she is twelve, her father convinces the owner of a bar in Lake City, Texas, to let her perform, and she stuns the audience. In the ensuing years, never staying anywhere for long, father and daughter move from one dusty town to the next, her passion for music growing every time she takes the mike in another roadhouse.

But it is not an easy life for Iris with her father in charge and using her income to pay for gambling, women, and booze. When she starts to tour at age eighteen, she takes on a real manager. Yet he exploits her too, and the singers and musicians she tours with are really the only family she has. It is they who give Iris the courage to finally fly free, leave the tour, and follow her dreams.

After years of enduring the hardships of the road, exploitation, and abuse, to do what she loves, her big chance comes as her talent soars. But at the top at last, Iris still has to fight every step of the way. In The High Notes, Danielle Steel delivers an inspiring story about finding the strength to stand up for yourself and your dreams, no matter what it takes.

Wilbur Smith
A brand-new Ancient Egyptian epic from the master of adventure, Wilbur Smith. Global bestselling author of River God and The New Kingdom, Wilbur Smith, returns with the next epic book in his brand-new Ancient Egyptian series.

AN UNSTOPPABLE ENEMY. A CIVILISATION IN RUINS. A QUEST FOR SALVATION.

For over fifty years Egypt has known nothing but war and devastation at the hands of the Hyksos, a bloodthirsty barbarian people from the distant east who continue to advance, crushing armies in their wake. Times are desperate, but throughout the conflict, a brave resistance fights on under the great Taita, a slave who has risen far beyond his ranks.

Piay, entrusted into Taita’s care by his parents at the age of just five, has been trained to become a great spy, unmatched by any other. Determined to prove his worth, he embarks on a dangerous mission to the lands in the north – to Mycenae and through the heart of Hyksos land and across the great sea – to find allies to help defend Egypt. As the situation becomes increasingly precarious, and the fate of the kingdom is hanging in the balance, can Piay succeed in his quest or will this mean the end of the glory that is Egypt once and for all?

Fiona McIntosh
Orphan Fleur Appleby is adopted by a loving undertaker and his wife and she quickly develops a special gift for helping bereaved families. Her ambition to be the first female mortician in the country is fuelled by her plan to bring more women into the male dominated funeral industry.

Raised in the outback of South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, Tom Catchlove is faced with a life-changing tragedy as a young boy. He works hard but dreams big, striving for a future as a wool classer.

A chance encounter between the two children will change the course of their lives.

By adulthood Fleur finds herself fighting for the survival of the family’s business, while her widowed father drinks away generations of prosperity and a new, conniving stepmother wants Fleur gone. When Tom emerges from the isolation of the desert to find new work at the port woolstores, his path crosses with Fleur’s again – only to be caught up in a murder investigation, in which they can only trust each other.

At once tragic and triumphant, The Orphans is an unforgettable story about a unique bond between two children that will echo down the years, and teach them both about the real meaning of life, of loss, and of love.

John Grisham
For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia.

Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends, as well as Little League all-stars. But as teenagers, their lives took them in different directions. Keith’s father became a legendary prosecutor, determined to “clean up the Coast.” Hugh’s father became the “Boss” of Biloxi’s criminal underground. Keith went to law school and followed in his father’s footsteps. Hugh preferred the nightlife and worked in his father’s clubs. The two families were headed for a showdown, one that would happen in a courtroom.

Life itself hangs in the balance in The Boys from Biloxi, a sweeping saga rich with history and with a large cast of unforgettable characters.

Tova Friedman
A powerful memoir by one of the youngest ever survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.

Tova Friedman was only four years old when she was sent to a Nazi labor camp at the start of World War II. While friends and family were murdered in front of her eyes, the only weapon that Tova and her parents possessed was the primal instinct to survive at all costs. Fate intervened when, at the age of six, Tova was sent to a gas chamber, but walked out alive, saved by German bureaucracy. Not long afterwards, she cuddled a warm corpse to hide from Nazis rounding up prisoners for the Death March to Germany.

In this heartrending, lyrical account of a young girl’s survival during the Holocaust, Tova Friedman, together with Malcolm Brabant, chronicles the atrocities she witnessed while at Auschwitz, a family secret that sheds light on the unpalatable choices Jews were forced to make to survive, and ultimately, the sources of hope and courage she and her family found to persist against all odds.

Sue Williams
The remarkable story of Professor Fiona Wood AM, world-leading burns specialist and one of Australia’s most innovative and respected surgeons, whose groundbreaking research and technology development has changed the lives of burns patients.

When three bombs tore out the heart of Bali and destroyed so many Australian lives in 2002, burns surgeon Professor Fiona Wood and her team were there to help. A pioneer in the field of burns and reconstructive surgery, Fiona made world headlines with the use of her groundbreaking invention of ‘spray-on skin’ to help minimise her patients’ terrible scarring.

Fiona was later made Australian of the Year, voted Australia’s Most Trusted Person for an unprecedented six years running in the annual Reader’s Digest poll and acclaimed as a ‘National Living Treasure’.

This is the story of her extraordinary life. Against all the odds, Fiona, the daughter of a fifth-generation coalminer in the north of England, became one of Australia’s most innovative, respected and dedicated surgeons and researchers. She talks candidly of the moving valour of her burns patients, and the heartbreak, triumph, tears and controversies that have stalked her stellar career.

Remarkably, she has achieved all of this while raising six children. In Under Her Skin, Sue Williams, a bestselling author and award-winning journalist who has written a number of biographies, presents a searingly honest, no-holds-barred account of all aspects of Fiona Wood’s remarkable life.

Tim Baker
A surfer’s journey learning to live well with cancer. Tim Baker was living the dream. A best-selling and award-winning surf writer with a beautiful family, a lifetime of exotic travel and a home walking distance to quality waves.
That all changed on July 7, 2015, when he was diagnosed, out of the blue, with stage 4, metastatic prostate cancer. So began a descent into the debilitating world of aggressive cancer treatments and a fight for a survival as brutal as any big wave hold down.

Tim writes candidly and with a raw vulnerability about this perilous journey through chemotherapy, hormone therapy, radiation and surgery, and his own determined lifestyle strategies to maintain mind, body and spirit. Happily, surfing provided one of his most powerful forms of therapy, and writing about his experiences has proven deeply cathartic.

In 2020, 1.5 million men were diagnosed with prostate cancer globally and 375,000 lost their lives. In Australia, one in seven men will develop prostate cancer. Yet mainstream oncology concedes its ability to keep men with prostate cancer alive has outstripped its ability to manage the often-devastating side effects of treatment. Men with prostate cancer are living longer but with a steadily declining quality of life.

Patting The Shark documents Tim’s efforts to navigate his way through the maze of conventional and supportive therapies – meditation, diet, exercise, emotional support, counselling. Ultimately, it is a desperate plea for a more integrative approach to cancer care, treating the whole person and not just the cancer, allowing cancer patients a sense of empowerment and agency in charting their path through treatment.

This is a story about facing your mortality, staring down your fears, and working out what really matters in life, when so many elements of your identity are stripped away. It offers hope, comfort and empathy for anyone facing a cancer diagnosis and their loved ones.