Wendy Harmer
Wendy Harmer has had an extraordinary life. From being born with a severe facial deformity, to performing as a stand-up comedian, a national television host and then the highest paid woman in the cut-throat world of Sydney FM radio … Wendy’s tale of overcoming adversity is told with her trademark in-your-face frankness and celebrated wit.

Starting life in rural Victoria, Wendy describes her childhood in remote one-teacher, one-room country schools. As her teacher father moved around the state to take up new postings, Wendy, the ‘funny looking’ kid often in the wrong colour school uniform, developed strategies to find new friends and fit in. When she was ten years old, her mother went missing.

It wasn’t until she was well into her teens that Wendy had the reconstructive facial surgery that had long promised to transform her from a ‘witch’ into a ‘princess’, but fell agonisingly short. Somehow, despite her initial setbacks and emotional turmoil, Wendy showed the strength of character to carve her own way in the world. From political journalism, she took her first tentative steps on Melbourne’s tiny stages in comedy revue, then struck out as a solo performer in stand-up comedy. She would make her mark internationally before coming home to entertain Australians for four decades on stage, in print, television and broadcasting. In Lies My Mirror Told Me Wendy reflects on her life – one of the most unlikely success stories you will ever read.

Will Cockrell
Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they have the mountain pretty well figured out. It’s an extreme landscape where bad weather and incredible altitude can occasionally kill, but more so an overcrowded, trashed-out recreation destination where rich clients pad their egos—and social media feeds—while exploiting local Sherpas.

There’s some truth to these clichés, but they’re a sliver of the story. Unlike any book to date, Everest, Inc. gets to the heart of the mountain through the definitive story of its greatest the Himalayan guiding industry. It all began in the 1980s with a few boot-strapping entrepreneurs who paired raw courage and naked ambition with a new style of expedition planning. Many of them are still living and climbing today, and as a result of their astonishing success, ninety percent of the people now on Everest are clients or employees of guided expeditions.

Studded with quotes from original interviews with more than a hundred western and Sherpa climbers, clients, writers, filmmakers, and even a Hollywood actor, Everest, Inc. foregrounds the voices of the people who have made the mountain what it is today. And while there is plenty of high-altitude drama in unpacking the last forty years of Everest tragedy and triumph, it ultimately transcends stereotypes and tells the uplifting counter-narrative of the army of journeymen and women who have made people’s dreams come true, and of the Nepalis who are pushing the industry into the future.

Tracy Hall
When Who the Hell is Hamish? hit podcast platforms in 2019, Tracy Hall quickly became known as the last victim of one of the world’s most prolific con men, Hamish McLaren. At last, Tracy is sharing the full story of how she overcame financial and emotional betrayal in this fast-paced, witty and empowering true crime memoir.

What happens when your life goes from fact to fiction overnight? Sadly, Tracy Hall learned the answer to that question when she swiped right on ‘Max Tavita’ in early 2016, a Bondi surfer and the chief investment officer of a family office. Initially, Tracy had been drawn to Max’s love of the ocean, running and living a lowkey lifestyle. But after 16 months together, it was his deeply empathetic nature, intelligence and commitment to building a future together that made her trust him with her heart – and her life savings.

What Max’s dating bio didn’t say was that his real name was Hamish McLaren, and that he was a con man in the ranks of people like Elizabeth Holmes, Bernie Madoff and Anna Delvey. Of course, Tracy didn’t know any of this until a fateful day in July 2017, when she watched news footage of the man she loved getting led away in handcuffs in front of his Bondi Beach apartment. Shocked and confused, Tracy never thought something like this could happen to her. After all, she was a whip-smart, successful single mum who prided herself on her intuition. However, Tracy was a vulnerable divorcée and Hamish was a master manipulator. He couldn’t have picked a better target.

In the weeks, months and years following Hamish’s arrest, Tracy learned that the man who held her at night wasn’t just plotting to steal her life savings. He had also spent the last three decades conning victims out of $70 million-plus dollars across the US, Canada, London, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Sydney. In 2019, Hamish’s lies landed him in prison, and his story was exposed in the podcast, Who the Hell is Hamish? And now, Hamish McLaren’s famous last victim is ready to share her story.

Anna Downes
Anna Downes’s extraordinary next thriller follows a woman desperate to discover what happened to her sister on a solo road trip through the Australian outback. Katy Sweeney is determined to find her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, free-spirited Phoebe vanished without a trace on Western Australia’s remote and achingly beautiful Coral Coast. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up.

Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy starts to retrace her steps, searching for the clues that the police have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and what danger did they pose? Was she as happy as her sun-bleached, lens-flared photos seem to suggest?

Then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, a young woman on the run from her own dark past—and very recent present. And as Katy realizes that Beth might be her best and only chance of finding the truth, the two women form an uneasy alliance to venture forth into increasingly wild territory to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this breathtaking but maybe deadly place, and how her fate connects them all.

Anna Downes takes us on a twist-filled journey into the dark side of solo female travel, in this gripping novel that explores what drives us to keep searching for those we have lost, the family bonds that can make or break us, and the deception of memory.

John Connolly
From the international and instant New York Times bestselling author John Connolly, the beloved and brilliant Charlie Parker series returns with a heart-wrenching crime only one man can solve. In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone—ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk—has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty.

But most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife’s guilt, a group of fascists arming for war, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old, twisted house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built.

A house, and what dwells beneath.

Amor Towles
The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages.

In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age.

Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next.

Karen Swan
Young Flora MacQueen has always dreamed of more than a hard life on the small Scottish island of St Kilda. And when she catches the eye of visiting adventurer and wealthy businessman James Callaghan her future seems brighter.

Only, as the islanders prepare to leave their homes for the final time, Flora finds her dreams shattered. With her beauty her only currency she must step forward in ways that would have been unthinkable back home in order to support her family. Soon Flora is the toast of glamorous Paris. Fame and fortune are hers for the taking but she knows only too well by now that rich men make empty promises.

But then a secret comes to light that will change everything . . .

The Lost Lover is Book Three in Karen Swan’s bestselling Wild Isle Series.

Wilbur Smith
South Africa, 1820

When Ann Waite discovers a battered longboat washed ashore in Algoa Bay, she is stunned to find two a badly scarred sailor and a little boy. As the man walks away into the morning mist alone, refusing to take the child – Harry – with him, Ann is left with no choice but to raise the boy as her own.

After two years of disaster and hardship in the African interior, desperation drives Ann and Harry back into the path of the mysterious shipwrecked man. Ralph Courtney has recently escaped from Robben Island and is determined to seek his fortune in Nativity Bay, the hidden harbour that his father told him about when he was a boy.

But it isn’t long before Ralph, Ann and their fellow settlers learn that Nativity Bay now lies on the borders of a mighty kingdom, where the warrior king Shaka rules. With no means of making their way back to Algoa Bay, Ralph is forced into a bargain with the Zulu king which will lead him to confront the past that he has been running from for his entire life.

Erica James
The Langfords are a perfectly happy family. Louisa and Kip, happily married for nearly forty years, have raised their children and are now just settling into a new phase of life where they’ll have more time for themselves. Everything seems perfect. But then, one Boxing Day after a lovely family Christmas, Kip tells Louisa that their marriage is over. It’s not something Louisa saw coming.

And what he tells her next is even more he’s fallen in love with their son’s ex-girlfriend, Zoe, the woman who broke Angus’ heart. So just like that, Louisa’s marriage is over… and her new life can begin. A gorgeous, gossipy family drama of a couple navigating a divorce, a woman on a journey of self-discovery, and an older man getting his just deserts.

Keri Kitay
Dementia Diaries discusses a disease that is both personal and social for more than five million patients and their families and friends in the United States today. Now that there are medical strategies for preventing and/or curing strokes, heart attacks, even cancer, many more people are going to live into the dementia years in the near future.

Although many dementia horror stories circulate in conversation and in the media, they are not the whole story. Creative approaches to loving a dementia patient can make for a valuable learning experience for family and caregivers.
In The Long Goodbye, Margaret Miles describes her commitment to making–rather than passively suffering–her spouse’s dementia experience. Family and friends who accompany patients find embedded in the experience moments of great beauty, hilariously funny incidents, new companions, and life insights.