"From his humble beginnings on The Mike Walsh Show as the 'snake boy of St Ives', Craig Bennett really has seen, done and reported on it all. In this delightfully honest book he takes us through his early days of fawning over the classic stars of Australian TV; from working as a cadet reporter at News Limited to his bubbly and breathless entertainment reporting on Studio 10. Bennett shows us life behind the scenes through the eyes of a gossip reporter, sparing no details! His heartwarming and witty commentary his adventures and the people he meets along the way will have you shrieking with laughter and clutching your pearls in disbelief. Bars and bed-hopping; beauties and beasts. People that have shaped Australian television and international celebrities. This book delves beyond what the public sees and opens up the lives of those who have shaped our TV, radio and movie experience. It shares the explosive truth behind the scandals we love to love, and dishes the dirt on those we love to hate! This is a candid, uplifting and at sometimes outrageous memoir from a man who has seen how the rich, powerful and influential live - and survived to talk about it! Behind-the-scenes insight in to the Australian media scene. Intergenerational appeal - Covers 4 decades of Australian TV and radio. A unique perspective from a media veteran. Part biography, part confession, it touches not only on this recognisable face's life but also of the myriad celebrities around him." --Publisher's website.

A down-and-out musician chops off his hair to become a server at the top of the Hollywood food chain, discovering a cloistered world of money, fame, bad behavior and intrigue. Waiter to the Rich and Shameless is not just a peek into the secretive inner workings of a legendary five-star restaurant; it is not just a celebrity tell-all or a scathing corporate analysis. It is a top-tier waiter's personal coming-of-age story, an intimate look into the complicated challenges of serving in the country's most elite, Hollywood-centric dining room while fighting to maintain a sense of self and purpose.

In I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends former Bachelor “villain” and season 16 winner Courtney Robertson shares her story of love and heartbreak, and the reality of appearing on reality TV. For the first time ever, a former Bachelor contestant takes us along on her journey to find love and reveals that “happily ever after” isn't always what it seems.

"As the psalms are a microcosm of the Old Testament, so the Expositions of the Psalms can be seen as a microcosm of Augustinian thought. In the Book of Psalms are to be found the history of the people of Israel, the theology and spirituality of the Old Covenant, and a treasury of human experience expressed in prayer and poetry. So too does the work of expounding the psalms recapitulate and focus the experiences of Augustine's personal life, his theological reflections and his pastoral concerns as Bishop of Hippo."--Publisher's website.

A James Beard Award-winning writer captures life under the Red socialist banner in this wildly inventive, tragicomic memoir of feasts, famines, and three generations “Delicious . . . A banquet of anecdote that brings history to life with intimacy, candor, and glorious color.”—NPR’s All Things Considered Born in 1963, in an era of bread shortages, Anya grew up in a communal Moscow apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen. She sang odes to Lenin, black-marketeered Juicy Fruit gum at school, watched her father brew moonshine, and, like most Soviet citizens, longed for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, naively joyous, and melancholy—and ultimately intolerable to her anti-Soviet mother, Larisa. When Anya was ten, she and Larisa fled the political repression of Brezhnev-era Russia, arriving in Philadelphia with no winter coats and no right of return. Now Anya occupies two parallel food universes: one where she writes about four-star restaurants, the other where a taste of humble kolbasa transports her back to her scarlet-blazed socialist past. To bring that past to life, Anya and her mother decide to eat and cook their way through every decade of the Soviet experience. Through these meals, and through the tales of three generations of her family, Anya tells the intimate yet epic story of life in the USSR. Wildly inventive and slyly witty, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking is that rare book that stirs our souls and our senses. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Christian Science Monitor, Publishers Weekly

"Oscar Garden was a pioneering pilot who embodied the daredevil spirit of the golden age of aviation when he successfully flew from London to Sydney in 1930 with only 39 hours of previous flying experience. This largely forgotten feat forms the centrepiece of Mary Garden's powerful biography, which situates Oscar's public exploits in his unhappy private life, and her own troubled memories of a distant father."--backcover.