Books published by University of Queensland Press

Hannah lives in Zimbabwe during the reign of Robert Mugabe; it's a country of petrol queues and power cuts, food shortages and government corruption. Yet Hannah is lucky. She can afford to go to school, has never had to skip a meal, and lives in a big house with her mum and their Shona housekeeper. Hannah is wealthy, she is healthy, and she is white. But money can't always keep you safe. As the political situation becomes increasingly unstable and tensions within Hannah's family escalate, her sheltered life is threatened. She is forced to question all that she's taken for granted, including where she belongs.

Set to the soundtrack of music that has shaped a generation, Something To Believe In will resonate with anyone whose life has been saved by rock 'n' roll. Born in Melbourne's outer suburbs in the 1970s, Andrew Stafford grew up in a time when music was a way out and a way up. His passion for rock 'n' roll led him to a career as a journalist and music critic, but along the way his battles with family illness, mental health and destructive relationships threatened to take him down. Andrew Stafford delves bravely and deeply into a life that has been shaped and saved by music's beat. From the author of the cult classic Pig City comes a memoir of music, madness, and love.

When Rebecca Lister and Tony Kelly move from Melbourne to Mount Isa to care for Rebecca's elderly mother, Diana, they have no idea what they've signed up for. The isolation, sweltering heat and limited employment opportunities make settling into the mining town a challenge. While Rebecca deals with her mother's declining health and delves into her own past, Tony takes on a new role in native title law.However, caring for Diana – a witty, crossword-loving 92-year-old – proves to be a more enriching experience than either Tony or Rebecca thought possible. As they make deeper connections to the land and community, they find themselves flourishing in a most unexpected place. Growing Pineapples in the Outback explores the highs and lows of caring for an ageing parent, while also celebrating the rewards of a simpler life.

Reg Dodd grew up at Finniss Springs, on striking desert country bordering South Australia's Lake Eyre. For the Arabunna and for many other Aboriginal people, Finniss Springs has been a homeland and a refuge. It has also been a cattle station, an Aboriginal mission, a battlefield, a place of learning, and a living museum. With his long-time friend and filmmaker Malcolm McKinnon, Dodd reflects on his upbringing in a cross-cultural environment that defied social conventions of the time. They also write candidly about the tensions surrounding power, authority, and Indigenous knowledge that have defined the recent decades of this resource-rich area. Talking Sideways is part history, part memoir, and part cultural road-map. Together, Dodd and McKinnon reveal the unique history of this extraordinary place and share their concerns and their hopes for its future.

When Brigadier James Phelan returns from Afghanistan with the body of a young soldier killed under his command, he is traumatised by the tragedy. An encounter with young Sydney tattoo artist Kira leaves him with a permanent tribute to the soldier, but it is a meeting that will change the course of his life. What he isn't expecting is a campaign of retribution from the soldiers who blame him for the ambush and threaten his career. With his marriage also on the brink, his life spirals out of control. Years later, Phelan is surprised when Kira re-enters his life seeking refuge from her own troubles and with a young son in tow. She finds a way to help him make peace with his past, but she is still on the run from her own. The War Artist is a timely and compelling novel about the legacy of war, the power of art and the possibility of redemption.

Finally, convicted murderess Louisa Collins can tell her own story. But will she confess?To lose one husband may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like murder.Louisa Collins was hung in New South Wales in 1889. She was tried four times for the alleged murders of her two husbands. In three of those trials the juries could not agree that she was guilty. At her fourth trial the testimony of Louisa's young daughter, May, contributed to Louisa's conviction. Intimately reimagined from Louisa's perspective, with a story that just might fit the historical facts, this clever and compelling novel visits Louisa in her prison cell as she reflects on her life and the death and loss that have dictated her fate. Will she confess? Or was an innocent woman brutally hanged?

A brilliant short story collection by awarded novelist and former Vogel winner Bernard Cohen.Parked in by furious rich people, mid-divorce, a man misses his lunchtime gambling session. All the girls named Ella form a diagonal across the teacher's new classroom. Diseased cattle burn in fields around the country – it is a cameraman's role to frame the images for TV. A swagman jumps into a billabong, or was he pushed?Bernard Cohen's stories are filled with incisive perspectives, captivating wit and dark, sharp humour.

A wild roller-coaster ride through the ups and downs of motherhood and mental illness. At 26, Nikki found herself knocking on her best friend's door with a suitcase, a jar of coins and two little boys – all she had in the world. Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood is her funny, sad and brutally candid account of her life through poverty, homelessness, child-rearing, friendships, lust, love and loss.Whether she was cleaning the houses of millionaires to put food on the table, falling hard for The Wiggles, drowning in cask wine, living in a tent or dealing with predatory landlords, Nikki refused to go under and tethered her survival to her love for her children, which pulled her through the darkest days. In Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood, the struggles are raw but the laughs are loud and the love is palpable. Being a poor, mad mother has its challenges but Nikki McWatters humanises the face of poverty, while arm-wrestling her mental illness into submission and packing school lunches like a boss. Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood is a powerful, touching and wildly entertaining story of maternal endurance.

During the freezing English winter of 1962, seventeen-year-old Radford is sent to Goodwin Manor, a home for boys who have been ‘found by trouble’.Drawn immediately to the charismatic West, Radford soon discovers that each one of them has something to hide. Life at the Manor offers a refuge of sorts, but unexpected arrivals threaten the world the boys have built. Will their friendship be enough when trouble finds them again?At once both beautiful and brutal, The Everlasting Sunday is a haunting debut novel about growing up, growing wild and what it takes to survive.

When Josepha Dietrich was 21, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Years later, after her mother’s death, the disease reared up in Josie’s own cells. She was 35, and her high-needs son was not yet one.As the daughter of a woman who had sought out alternatives to conventional medicine, Josie used her own knowledge and her mother’s experience to find solutions for herself. Later, with what she’d learnt, she also helped her son rise out of his autistic state.Capturing Josie’s energy and force-of-nature personality, In Danger tells of her journey through breast cancer, exploring disease and the human condition, and shedding light on life’s darker aspects. At its heart, this moving memoir delves deep into how it feels when everything you love is in danger.

She''s big.She''s smart.She''s mean.She''s the bully on the bus.She picks on me and I don''t like it.But I don''t know how to make her stop.The bully on the bus taunts seven-year-old Leroy, then silences him with threats of worse to come. To distract him, his teacher introduces him to the adventures in The Big Bad Book of Fairytales. Hidden throughout are the clues that Leroy needs to overcome the bullying taunts once and for all.

Former Greens leader Christine Milne tells her story through 18 objects, interweaving the personal and political to recount a truly inspirational life.

The first published collection of poetry by literary legend Thea Astley

Winner of the 2016 Thomas Shapcott Prize for Poetry.

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, how do you plan for the best death possible?

This is more than a book about soccer - it is the story of Australia's national identity.

An innovative, imaginative work of biography, examining Bertha and Henry Lawson's marriage through a modern lens.

Nothing is as it seems in this twisted fairytale of moral ambiguity and corrupted innocence. Just as the tropical beauty of The Frangipani Gardens conceals its inherent menace, watercolour painter Doll lives a prim, respectable existence belying her wildest fantasies. But when her young niece and nephew come to stay, Doll’s true self threatens to be exposed.Barbara Hanrahan was a prolific Australian visual artist and author, publishing fifteen books in under two decades. The Frangipani Gardens, first released in 1980, was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year, her second shortlisting for the award in as many years. Her bestselling semi-autobiographical novel The Scent of Eucalyptus remains in print.

In Scoundrel Days Brentley Frazer tells the story of his youth – wild, disillusioned, impassioned and desolate. Born into a Christian cult in outback Queensland, Frazer escapes through literature and poetry, drugs and violence, sex and alcohol; and his ensuing rejection of religion, authority and the 'way things are' leads to adventures, desperation and, just possibly, redemption.Beautifully written and urgently told, Scoundrel Days is a visceral, compelling assault on the senses. An at times brutal story articulated with a poet’s sensibility, it portrays a walker of edges exploring the dark side while searching for the love essential to build a soul.

On 10 January 2011, after weeks of heavy rain and as floodwaters began to overwhelm much of south-east Queensland, a ‘wall of water’ hit Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley.The Torrent tells the extraordinary stories of survival and loss that emerged from that terrible day. Official figures state that twenty-four people died. Many escaped death only because they were rescued by members of the community or through sheer good fortune.Based on exclusive interviews with survivors, rescuers and with the families and friends of victims of the disaster, The Torrent is a unique and powerful account of human courage in the face of the devastating forces of nature.In this expanded and updated new edition, Gearing re-interviews the survivors to discover how they are getting on, recounts the traumatic findings of the Grantham inquiry, and captures the enduring and resilient spirit of the communities affected.

In this captivating memoir, Linda Neil shares stories of travel, taking us from the glitz of Shanghai to wintry London, from the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar to inner-city Sydney. Writing songs and playing music as she traverses the globe, Linda finds her life enriched in ways she never could have imagined. As she forges unexpected connections with people, places and even her past, she discovers that everyone everywhere has their own story to tell.

Me, Antman & Fleabag is packed to the roof with wicked black humour, eccentric aunties, six-fingered redheads, and martyrs to the cause of sheep well-being – all carried along with a dose of Slim Dusty for good measure. Gayle Kennedy has a gift for telling tales and making them sparkle with warmth and pathos in equal measure.Me, Antman & Fleabag is a funny and incisive look at contemporary Indigenous Australian life and the family and friends that make it up. So hold on to your boongalungs; this’ll be a crackin ride.

What is going on in the often troubled town of Alice Springs?On the streets of Alice Springs, in town camps, drinking camps and out on the highway, in gatherings awash with alcohol, men kill one another in seemingly senseless acts of aggression and revenge. Men kill their wives, families feud, women join the fighting and, in the wings, children watch and learn. From the ordered environment of the courtroom, Trouble lays out in detail some of this deep disorder in the town''s recent history.Drawing on her decades as a journalist in Central Australia, as well as experience of its everyday life, Kieran Finnane recognises a story beyond the horror and tragedy of the events, the guilt or innocence of perpetrators, to witness a town and region being painfully remade. In this groundbreaking book, we hear the voices from Australia''s troubled heart and gain a unique insight into the challenges and potential of this hard and beautiful place.

Jack & Mollie (& Her) is an exuberant, original and wildly inventive verse novel, which tells the story of 'J' through the eyes of her two dogs, Jack and Mollie. The dogs are adopted by J at a time when she is downcast, and their presence in her life proves vivifying and redemptive. In between the dogs' adventures, they provide observant commentary on her life.

Ava Langdon is often not herself. Having fled her early life in New Zealand and endured the loss of her children, she now lives as a recluse in the Blue Mountains. Regarded by locals as a colourful eccentric, she dresses in men's clothes and fearlessly pursues her artistic path. All that matters to Ava is her writing. Words offer beauty and a sense of possibility when so much else has been lost. But can they offer her redemption in her last days? Poetic, poignant, and at times bitingly funny, The Last Days of Ava Langdon takes us into the mind of a true maverick.

With a foreword by Quentin Bryce, AD, CVO 'This island, this solitude, this rainy day, this stack of blank paper, I shall transform you, by these sorceries I have learned, into the stuff of friendship.' Barbara Blackman has been a muse and an iconic Australian arts identity throughout her long life. This collection of essays, All My Januaries, is both insightful and memorable. Ranging from her Brisbane childhood to her marriage to renowned artist Charles Blackman, her time in London and Paris, and her life beyond, these essays capture her love of language and her acerbic wit. Blind since her twenties, Barbara Blackman has been an artist's model, broadcaster, poet, librettist and essayist. All My Januaries celebrates this remarkable journey as she reflects on food, travel, friendships, family and the many unexpected pleasures of life.

The role of Aboriginal servicemen and women has only recently been brought to the forefront of conversation about Australia's war history. This important book makes a key contribution to recording the role played by Indigenous Australians in our recent military history. Written by two respected historians and based on a substantial number of interviews with Indigenous war veterans who have hitherto been without a voice, it combines the best of social and military history in one book. This will be the first book to focus on this previously neglected part of Australian social history.