Cultural & Regional

Award-winning comedian Zarna Garg turns her astonishing life story into a hilarious memoir, spilling all the chai on her wild ride from escaping an arranged marriage and homelessness in India to carving her own path in America and launching a dazzling second act in midlife.

Food has always been an integral part of Stanley Tucci’s life: from stracciatella soup served in the shadow of the Pantheon, to marinara sauce cooked between scene rehearsals and costume fittings, to home-made pizza eaten with his children before bedtime.

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world's most ruthless and secretive dictatorships....

Helene Hadsell was "the woman who won every contest prize she desired". In Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game, she shares her winning secrets in the vibrant, warm, and folksy manner that was uniquely her....

From growing up in difficult circumstances and getting cut from his high-school basketball team to his larger-than-life basketball career, Shaq lays it all out in Shaq Uncut....

Dogs of all shapes and sizes visit Ruth Shaw's three wee bookshops in Manapōuri in the far south of Aotearoa New Zealand. Local dogs, holiday house dogs, travelling dogs – many have great stories, be they funny, sad, strange, bemusing, quirky or sweet.

A waiter's job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door...is hell. Edward Chisholm's spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you below the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world....

Peter's mother is dying. Born in England, and having spent most of her adult life as a doctor in Zimbabwe, she now lies on a hospital bed in the partitioned living room of his sister's London house, her accent having overnight become posher than the Queen's.

He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform?

Stan Grant is talking to his country in a new way. In his most poetic and inspiring work yet, the Wiradjuri writer offers us a means of moving beyond the binaries and embracing a path to peace and forgiveness rooted in the Wiradjuri spiritual practice of Yindyamarra–deep silence and respect.

In this beautiful and transformative book, 24 Māori academics share their personal journeys, revealing what being Māori has meant for them in their work....

Seventy years after her grandmother helped hide a Jewish family on a Greek island during World War II, a woman sets out to track down their descendants....

All the Beauty in the World is a moving, revelatory portrait of one of the world's great museums and its treasures by someone whose value is often overlooked: the museum guard....

In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned.

When William Kamkwamba was just 14 years old, his family told him that he must leave school and come home to work on the farm - they could no longer afford his fees. This is his story of how he found a way to make a difference....

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage....

The decisions that change your life are often the most impulsive ones....

It is a radical act to tell the story of an Afghan woman. Too often, they are portrayed only as victims, their identities erased by thick veils and blanket reporting. Defiant Dreams will change the narrative. It's the story of an Afghan girl who dared to ask for more....

If you live for people's acceptance, you'll die from their rejection. Two-time Grammy-winning rap artist, Lecrae, learned this lesson through more than his share of adversity....

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Charles Dickens: A Life....

From stolen childhood to remarkable leader, this is the inspirational true story of one of Australia's stolen aboriginal generation....

The country certainly boasts a reputation around the world for fast food and faster living – everything is louder, brighter, bigger, if not always better – yet for all the cartoonish depictions of its culture, Felicity was convinced that in reality, most Americans are just like the rest of us…

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe....

In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace....

The books that make up the life and times of Maya Angelou are some of the best, most beautiful and haunting pieces of autobiography written....

Five years ago, Lonnae O’Neal grabbed some seeds for her backyard garden, including seeds for Bibb lettuce. She had no idea how deeply she’d wind up digging, or how far she would travel. Lonnae’s fourth great-grandmother, Keziah, was enslaved by the Kentucky Bibb family, including John Bigger Bibb, who developed the Bibb lettuce strain, which remains a culinary darling more than 150 years later.

Una historia mundial de la costura, el bordado y las personas que han utilizado aguja e hilo para hacer oír su voz. En la Argentina de los años 1970, las madres marchaban con pañuelos en la cabeza bordados con los nombres de sus hijos "desaparecidos".

In 2000, a Chinese woman gave birth to twins in a bamboo grove, trying to avoid detection by the government because she already had two daughters. Two years later, an American couple travelled to Shaoyang to adopt a Chinese toddler they thought had been abandoned. Their understanding had been that China's brutal one-child policy was leading to hundreds of abandoned girls, desperate for the care of adopted parents.

Born in 1958, the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, Geoff Dyer grew up in a world shaped by memories of shortages and the Second World War. But far from being a story of hardship overcome, Homework is a celebration of opportunities afforded by the post-war settlement. Recalling an eroded but strangely resilient England, Homework traces roots that extend into the deep foundations of class society.

The country certainly boasts an outsized reputation around the world for fast food and faster living – everything is louder, brighter, bigger, if not always better – yet for all the cartoonish depictions of its culture on the big and small screen, Felicity was convinced that in reality, most Americans are just like the rest of us… despite a troubling national tendency to eat doughnuts for breakfast. Her mission; to take a closer look at the iconic American dishes that have conquered the world...

We think of the Raj as controlling only India and Pakistan, and its breakup happening in August 1947. In reality, a quarter of the world’s population was ruled by the Viceroy from New Delhi, in a single market/rupee-currency zone that spread from the Red Sea to the borders of Thailand – an empire within an empire that included Burma, parts of Yemen, and most of the Gulf states like Dubai. The breakup of this single ‘Indian Empire’ created almost all of the conflicts which plague Asia today.

In Fantasies of Nina Simone, Jordan Alexander Stein examines the space between our collective and individual fantasies about Simone the performer, civil rights activist, and icon, and her own fantasies about herself. Stein outlines how Simone gave voice to personal fantasies through releasing dozens of covers of her white male contemporaries.

An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature.

1980s Albania. The world's most isolated country and "the first atheistic state." Captain Dosti knows that by secretly listening to a Christian radio station he could put his life and the life of his whole family at risk. And yet, he cannot resist. This inspiring story of Berti's journey from Captain Dosti to Pastor Dosti gives us a glimpse of the explosive growth of the early Albanian church after nearly half a decade of repressive atheism and the untiring efforts of Trans World Radio to broadcast the Christian message across closed borders to Albanians.

The Roma is a profoundly personal portrait of a people and their on-going journey, shedding new light on their history and what it means to be Romani in Europe today. It is a history that is not widely known and understood, and that invisibility has created a space where fear and hostility continue to thrive.