Collection: Adult Non Fiction - Biographies & True Stories

Born in Sri Lanka during the Second World War, Ondaatje was sent as a child to school in London, and later moved to Canada. While he has lived here since, these poems reflect the life of a writer, traveller and watcher of the world - describing himself as a "mongrel," someone born out of diverse ...

Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore in 2016, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, with no design yet heeding sign...

Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work, this book is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, cultural habits, language, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising and news headlines. Annie Ernaux...

Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind he...

Part memoir, part 'missive-from-the-middle', Yes Please is a hilarious collection of stories, thoughts, ideas, haikus and words-to-live-by drawn from the life and mind of acclaimed actress, writer and comedian Amy Poehler.

Just months after his liberation from Auschwitz, renowned psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl delivered a series of talks revealing the foundations of his life-affirming philosophy. The psychologist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience and his convi...

Long before they were ARIA Hall of Fame inductees, Yothu Yindi were a bunch of Yolngu (Aboriginal) and balanda (non-Indigenous) mates in far-north Australia jamming together for fun. Soon they were creating some of the coolest new music in the country, splicing traditional sounds with electric, a...

Set against Manhattan's elite prep school scene, a highly unsettling blend of true crime and memoir that offers an intimate and thought-provoking portrait of privileged girlhood.

“”You don’t know how much a person is going to change – one minute they can be as nice as pie, the next a complete and utter angry bastard you wish you could slap back into reality. But, it’s the nice of pie person you soon remember. And the one you realise has no control over his/her actions.” T...

Sonny Bill Williams (SBW) is a once in a hundred-year athlete with immense sporting talent in Rugby League, Rugby Union and Boxing. Sonny Bill has built an incredible career and sporting reputation across the globe. His athleticism has taken him from inner-city Auckland, where he grew up, to the ...