Random House Australia: 1821 books

'When the Hawks devoted the first choice in the 2001 NAB AFL National Draft to Luke Hodge, they got not just a great player but a great leader, too.' Leigh Matthews Known as 'The General' for his exceptional leadership on and off the field, Luke Hodge is the four-time Premiership player and...

'There's no one I trust more with my club's yarn than Martin Flanagan' - Bob Murphy The Western Bulldogs' 2016 premiership came from nowhere - they were the club with no luck, no stars, no right to win, no culture of success. They were the rank underdogs and they swept to victory on an unprecedented...

Lots of boys dream of playing footy for an AFL team but only a few will make it. In 2007, in their final year of junior football, five boys joined the 1200 who nominated for the draft. They were put through their paces: gruelling physical trials and psychological tests, on top of Year 12 exams...

Brad Johnson grew up in Melbourne's western suburbs, never dreaming he'd one day become captain of the Western Bulldogs and the club's games record holder. He's the Doggies' pin-up boy - a true working-class man - known as the 'smiling assassin'. But beware of the dog. Behind that broad smile lies...

Covering more than a century of rugby union football, IT'S NOT JUST A BLOODY GAME! brings together hundreds of the best and most colourful stories about the sport, from the days of early club rugby to the hotly contested international battles of today, including the regional competitions and the World...

The rare feat of winning back-to-back flags in 2013 and 2014 cemented coach Alastair Clarkson's men as a truly great team and Hawthorn FC as a great club. At the end of the 2004 season Hawthorn was an unholy mess, with no coach, no chief executive and no captain. Enter Clarkson, who established a...

From the bustling streets of 1920s London to the idyllic English countryside, this is a breathtaking story of passion and determination from a phenomenal Australian storyteller. When a humble soldier, known only as Jones, wakes in a military hospital he has no recollection of his past. Jones's few...

Sometimes the slow road can be the fastest way to sort things out Relationship-challenged, with the r�sum� of a vagrant, Tom Trumble is at one of life's crossroads. So he takes up an offer to go on a seriously long walk - the ancient Christian pilgrimage of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela,...

At thirteen, Jim McNeil quit school for good. At fourteen, he started an affair with a brothel madam and was introduced to Melbourne's underworld. Despite his love of reading and philosophy, McNeil relished his life among thugs, thieves and whores, becoming one of the city's most violent criminals. In...

Welcome to my library. Dog-eared paperbacks falling to pieces. Second-hand books from the stores and barrows of four continents. Modern first editions, some inscribed ... In My Reading Life, a personal investigation into the nature of democracy, dictatorship, decency and the hardwired human...

Comedian and writer Lily Bragge knows what it is to be a user and a taker, a liar, cheat and thief. It wasn't until she had lost everything - custody of her son, her friends, her career, her possessions and , almost, her sanity - that she was able to gain some kind of understanding of herself and...

February 1942. The Japanese invasion of Timor has begun and attempts to evacuate a group of 29 Australian airmen, charged with keeping an airfield operational until the last moment, are thwarted. Under the leadership of Bryan Rofe, a 24-year-old meteorological officer, the airmen make for remote jungle...

'Fly is an absorbing read thanks to the amazing and previously untold stories Veitch collected from aging pilots, navigators and gunners.' HERALD SUN All over the world during World War II, thousands of young men who had never so much as been near an aeroplane left offices, farms and classrooms...

This extraordinary first-hand account of Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop's experiences as senior medical officer in the infamous prisoner-of-war camps in Java and on the Burma-Thailand Railway, is not only an account of great historical significance but also a testament to the ability of the human spirit...