Collection: Adult Non Fiction - Biography

In 1921, Françoise Frenkel--a Jewish woman from Poland--fulfils a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin's first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich...

A love story to climbing all the way down a book's rope, free diving to its bottom, and then resurfacing at its close, ready to breathe a different kind of air. Nanako Hanada's life is in crisis. Recently separated from her husband, living in youth hostels and internet cafes, her work is going no...

From heartbreak to triumph: how our national basketball team went from misfits to superstars. The Boomers' Olympic triumph in Tokyo was possibly the most celebrated bronze medal in Australian sporting history. But the path to this moment is littered with heartache, setback and adversity. The long...

Whether negotiating the mind-games of border security services or performing ablutions in a London bathroom, Mohammad Chowdhury's life travelling the world brings daily challenges. Border Crossings is a thrilling ride from the city of minarets to the heights of picture-perfect skyscrapers. A jour...

In this evocative work of what the author in his Afterword calls 'autofiction' or 'a kind of novelised memoir', Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland. He was in frantic flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, thro...

The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice and vicious cruelty - all have been associated with their name. But the story of this remarkable family is far more than a tale of sensational depravities, it also marks a decisive stage in European...

Andrew Gimson, whose previous book Boris is the essential read on Johnson's earlier career, returns with a penetrating and entertaining new account of Boris Johnson's turbulent time as prime minister, from the highs of a landslide election victory to the lows of his car-crash resignation. In Bori...

The compelling, inspiring, (often comic) coming-of-age story of Trevor Noah, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. One of the comedy world's brightest new voices, Trevor Noah is a light-footed but sharp-minded observer of the absurdities of politic...

Blind since birth, Ron regards himself as fortunate to have been born at a time when ever improving technology has enabled him to live a rich and full life, and to become a professor of law at one of Australia's most prestigious universities. Ron McCallum has been blind from birth. When he was a ...