Aurum Aurum i(A77948 works by) (Organisation) assertion
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Works By

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1 2 y separately published work icon The Ship Thieves Sian Rees , London : Aurum , 2006 Z1319483 2006 single work biography

'As dusk came down on the evening of 13 January 1834, James Porter and nine other convicts, transported at His Majesty's Pleasure to Van Diemen's Land, captured the newly launched barque the Frederick from their British masters.

'James Porter had spent the majority of his days since transportation planning how he would escape. Though he had mastered the art of fleeing his captors, he had not ever managed to stay free for long. He hoped he and his fellow ship thieves would fare better on this occasion.

'Rather than aim for a new life on the harsh islands of Bass Strait or the isolated coasts of New Zealand, the men decided to make their way to Valdivia, on the coast of Chile. Six thousand miles away on the other side of the Pacific, surely they could evade the British and assume new identities as shipwrecked mariners?

'But the might of the British Empire was not to take the piracy and escape of ten convicts lightly and after surviving the perilous journey (an amazing feat of seamanship) and starting to make a new life in a small town on the edge of the South American continent, James Porter's freedom was cruelly snatched away.

'Taken back to Britain under chains, Porter shuffled aboard a waiting prison hulk and was again transported to Australia. Eventually, after further attempts to escape, he ended up on Norfolk Island, a place more inhospitable and brutal than any place he had been before. On the island many a convict's spirit was broken but the tenacious attitude of James Porter survived.' (Publication summary)
2 10 y separately published work icon Out of the Sky She Came : The Life of P. L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins Valerie Lawson , Rydalmere : Hodder Headline Australia , 1999 Z492204 1999 single work biography
2 8 y separately published work icon A Better Woman A Better Woman : A Memoir; A Better Woman : The Writing Life, Motherhood and the Body Susan Johnson , Milsons Point : Random House , 1999 Z436389 1999 single work autobiography '"If I had known...what giving birth was to cost me, would I have dared to fall pregnant?Yes, yes. A thousand times, yes."Accalaimed novelist Susan Johnson found, at age thirty-five, that her arms began to feel "empty." Soon her desire to have a baby became overwhelming. She had no inkling then what motherhood would cost her -- or give her. But as she went on to experience pregnancy and birth, and their impact on her marriage, her health, and her heart, she recorded it all in a black-and-red notebook. Here, Susan Johnson takes that raw, potentially wrenching material and creates an inspirational work of autobiography.In a hauntingly lovely account, Johnson portrays a woman transformed by motherhood, and a writer forever changed by a widening chasm of experience. Simple acts such as getting her newborn to breastfeed prove unexpectedly difficult. The husband she adores becomes a sparring partner, their newly purchased home a disaster, her time to write nonexistent. Then, just when she believes she may be getting her life together, she becomes pregnant again.Soon ecstasy jostles against bewilderment, rage, and despair when she develops a rare complication of childbirth. Facing major surgery, Susan calls herself "a one-woman catastrophe, a small ruined country." She is also going to bed at night planning what she will write in the morning, burning to get words on paper.The mesmerizing narrative she created is "A Better Woman," a chronicle of love and courage, by turns poetic and searingly graphic. It should be required reading for every woman hungry to give birth -- and every mother yearning to have her deepest feeling heard.' (Publication summary)
1 1 y separately published work icon Mystery Spinner Gideon Haigh , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 1999 12824685 1999 single work biography

'‘So you want to know something about this funny old bowling of mine. Well, there’s nothing to it. It’s really very simple—in fact, at times, I do not know much about it myself.’

'In 1950, aged in his mid-thirties, ‘tall, shy, shambling’ Jack Iverson burst forth from obscurity in suburban Melbourne, ‘bowled like no man before’ and became a national sensation, then faded from view almost as swiftly. He died in obscurity, in tragic circumstances. In the enthralling Mystery Spinner, first published in 1999, one of the world’s best cricket writers goes in search of an enigma: an ordinary man in whom lurked the extraordinary.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Text Classics)
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