Fifty Years a Feminist by Sue Kedgley

$39.99 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

A pioneering New Zealand feminist reflects on fifty years of feminism

What You Made of It: A Memoir 1987-2020 by CK Stead

$50.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

The third and final volume of C. K. Stead’s memoirs, from leaving the University of Auckland to write full-time until today. ‘These are my encounters and engagements with the world of books and writers, and of teaching and writing about them,’ C. K. Stead writes in this third and final volume of his mem oirs. Having left the university to write full-time at the end of volume two, Stead throws himself into his work. In novels like Sister Hollywood and My Name Was Judas, criticism in the London Review of Books and the Financial Times, poetry and memoir, Stead establishes his international reputation as novelist, poet and critic. It is also a period when Stead’s fearless lucidity on matters literary and political embroil him in argument – from The Bone People to the meaning of the Treaty to the controversy over a London writer’s flat. What was it like to be Allen Curnow’s designated ‘Critic across the Crescent’; or alternatively to be labelled ‘the Tonya Harding of NZ Lit’? How did poems emerge from time and place, sometimes as naturally as ‘leaves to a tree’, sometimes effortfully? And how did novels about individual men and women retell stories of war (World War II, Yugoslavia, Iraq) and peace? Covering Stead’s travels from Los Angeles to Liguria, Croatia and Crete to Caracas and Colombia, as New Zealand poet laureate and Kohi swimmer, What You Made of It takes us deep inside the mind and experience of one of our major writers – and all in Stead’s famously lucid ‘story-telling’ prose. ...Show more

One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown

$28.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

WINNER OF THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2020 A Spectator Book of the Year From the award-winning author of Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret comes a fascinating, hilarious, kaleidoscopic biography of the Fab Four. John Updike compared them to 'the sun coming out on an Easter morning'. Bob D ylan introduced them to drugs. The Duchess of Windsor adored them. Noel Coward despised them. JRR Tolkien snubbed them. The Rolling Stones copied them. Loenard Bernstein admired them. Muhammad Ali called them 'little sissies'. Successive Prime Ministers sucked up to them. No one has remained unaffected by the music of The Beatles. As Queen Elizabeth II observed on her golden wedding anniversary, 'Think what we would have missed if we had never heard The Beatles.' One Two Three Four traces the chance fusion of the four key elements that made up The Beatles: fire (John), water (Paul), air (George) and earth (Ringo). It also tells the bizarre and often unfortunate tales of the disparate and colourful people within their orbit, among them Fred Lennon, Yoko Ono, the Maharishi, Aunt Mimi, Helen Shapiro, the con artist Magic Alex, Phil Spector, their psychedelic dentist John Riley and their failed nemesis, Det Sgt Norman Pilcher. A kaleidoscopic mixture of history, etymology, diaries, autobiography, fan letters, essays, parallel lives, party lists, charts, interviews, announcements and stories, One Two Three Four joyfully echoes the frenetic hurly-burly of an era. ...Show more

Beyond by Stephen Walker

$38.43 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to go into space. This book, published on the sixtieth anniversary of that epic flight, tells the astonishing story of how it happened, why it happened – and what happened next. “Whoever controls space controls the world.” Lyndon B. Johnson 19 58 Gagarin's flight was a world-changing moment in history, a staggering technological triumph which would forever change the way we look at, and think about, our own planet. It took him exactly 108 minutes to orbit the globe, travelling at 17,000 mph – ten times faster than a rifle bullet – effortlessly crossing countries, continents and oceans before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere, ejecting from his capsule and parachuting into a potato field a few hundred kilometres south of Moscow.From the windows of his tiny spaceship, Gagarin witnessed our world as nobody had before, racing across a sphere in the limitless blackness of space; a sphere of great beauty, vivid with colour and yet terrifyingly fragile, with only its razor-thin blue atmosphere enabling life to exist at all. Gagarin saw all this, recording his impressions on a reel-to-reel tape recorder as he flew, his exhilaration and awe still palpable in those recordings today. It is one of the great paradoxes of this story that Gagarin was only able to witness all this beauty of our planet by riding a missile designed specifically to destroy it. For his triumph was not only technological. It happened at one of the most dangerous moments in history, when two nuclear superpowers confronted each other across a political divide, splitting the world along ideological fault lines and threatening at any moment to annihilate it.Beyond tells a thrilling story whilst unpacking secrets and deaths hidden for decades: the hushed KGB input, the enormous risks taken; how exactly the Russians outfoxed the USA, and the wonder of this monumental human achievement. It also sets the space race in its political context: as a crucial, public battle between the world's two superpowers, both fighting for Cold War victory, international power, and dominance on the extra-terrestrial plane. ...Show more

A Walk from the Wild Edge by Jake Tyler

$38.94 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

After coming terrifyingly close to suicide, Jake Tyler was determined to take back control of his life from the clutches of depression. With only his running gear and a backpack, he stepped out of his house in Brighton and began a 3,000-mile journey around the UK. In documenting every step of his journ ey, Jake shares the ways in which his mission was enhanced by the kindness of strangers who took him in for the night, or let him talk when the darkness engulfed him. This is both the story of Jake's journey around the country and his journey to better understand himself, ultimately finding peace and acceptance with his mental health. ...Show more

Heartsick: Three Stories About Love and Loss and what Happens in Between by Jessie Stephens

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

When Jessie Stephens went through a difficult breakup, she started to look for books or stories that would reflect her experience and perhaps give her some hope for the future. There were plenty of guide books in the '101 tips to cure a broken heart' vein, but what Jessie wanted were stories. She wanted to read about other people's experiences, to see the universalities, and to feel connected to others who were struggling in a similar way. Now she's written the book she needed to read - a close-up, compelling narrative nonfiction account of many lows and occasional surprising highs of heartbreak. Based on intensive interviews with three main subjects, Jessie has woven together three vastly different - yet breathtakingly similar - stories of heartbreak. Claire has returned from London to the dust and familiarity of her childhood home, Toowoomba, after breaking up with her girlfriend Maggie. Patrick is a lonely uni student, until he teams up with Caitlin on a group project - but does she feel as connected as he does? And Ana is happily married with three children, until the night she falls in love with her best friend. Bruising, beautiful, achingly specific but wholeheartedly universal, Heartsick reminds us that emotional pain can make us as it breaks us, and that storytelling has the ultimate healing power. ...Show more

Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen by Mary Sharratt

$35.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

Sharratt brings one of the most famous and enigmatic women of the Middle Ages to vibrant life in this tour de force, which will captivate the reader from the very first page. Sharon Kay Penman One could not anticipate this majesty and drama . . . "Illuminations "is riveting, following von Bingen throu gh . . . to emerge as one of the significant voices of the 12th century . . . Unforgettable. "January Magazine" One of the most extraordinary women of the Middle Ages, Hildegard von Bingen Benedictine abbess, healer, composer, saint experienced mystic visions from a very young age. Offered by her noble family to the Church at the age of eight, she lived for years in forced silence. But through the study of books and herbs, through music and the kinship of her sisters, Hildegard found her way from a life of submission to a calling that celebrated the divine glories all around us. In this brilliantly researched and insightful novel, Mary Sharratt offers a deeply moving portrait of a woman willing to risk everything for what she believed, a triumphant exploration of the life she might well have lived. Gripping . . . Like Ann Patchett s Bel Canto, ["Illuminations"] is primarily about relationships forged under pressure. "Publishers Weekly" Masterful. "Saint Paul Pioneer Press" " ...Show more

The Invisible Sentence by Verna McFelin

$27.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol - alongside your own? Jenn Shapland's celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America's most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memo ry, obsession, and love. Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers's life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others' narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers's life? her history, her secrets, her legacy? reveal to Shapland about herself? In smart, illuminating prose, Shapland interweaves her own story with McCullers's to create a vital new portrait of one of our nation's greatest literary treasures, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are. ...Show more

My Autobiography of Carson Mccullers by Jenn Shapland

$60.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol - alongside your own? Jenn Shapland's celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploratio n of one of America's most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love. Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers's life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others' narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers's life?her history, her secrets, her legacy?reveal to Shapland about herself? In smart, illuminating prose, Shapland interweaves her own story with McCullers's to create a vital new portrait of one of our nation's greatest literary treasures, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are. ...Show more

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs - A True Story of Bad Breaks and Small Miracles by Heather Lende

$37.00 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir

The Alaskan landscape-so vast, dramatic, and unbelievable-may be the reason the people in Haines, Alaska (population 2,400), so often discuss the meaning of life. Heather Lende thinks it helps make life mean more. Since her bestselling first book, If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, a near-fatal bicy cle accident has given Lende a few more reasons to consider matters both spiritual and temporal. Her idea of spirituality is rooted in community, and here she explores faith and forgiveness, loss and devotion-as well as raising totem poles, canning salmon, and other distinctly Alaskan adventures. Lende's irrepressible spirit, her wry humor, and her commitment to living a life on the edge of the world resonate on every page. Like her own mother's last wish-take good care of the garden and dogs-Lende's writing, so honest and unadorned, deepens our understanding of what links all humanity. ...Show more

Michelle Obama (Little People Big Dreams) by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

$22.18 NZD

Category: Biography / Memoir | Series: Little People, Big Dreams

In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy bestselling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Michelle Obama, the iconic first lady, advocate, lawyer and author.