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Jo Buchanan

Jo's new book is now available – enquiries to Jo Buchanan at jcairomoon@optusnet.com.au

A practical self-help handbook for those whose role it is to care for mentally ill, elderly or disabled relatives, Copping it Sweet (Zeus ISBN 978 1 921 240 17 1) addresses the problems faced by those charged with caring for a relative suffering physical infirmity or mental illness and provides practical coping strategies for those carers.

Jo Buchanan's first book, The Wings of Madness (New Holland, 2004) is the moving story of how the author unearths the historical truth about mental illness in her family. In June 1990, at the age of 23, her son, Logie winner Miles Buchanan was at the pinnacle of an outstanding career in film, theatre and television. His battle with depression was masked by alcohol and drugs and led to a breakdown and attempts at suicide that became public and brought his career to an end. Jo sought answers to her son's problems and the process led her to some startling discoveries about her family history in the archives of Kew and Sunbury lunatic asylums.

Jo Buchanan has been a primary and secondary teacher of children with special needs and an on-set tutor of child actors; a clinical hypnotherapist, counsellor and psychotherapist. She has been a keynote speaker at Mind Body Spirit festivals and has appeared on television and radio. Since the publication of Wings of Madness, Jo has undergone training with SANE Australia to become a professional speaker on the subject of carers and families affected by mental illness. She has just completed a handbook for carers entitled Copping it Sweet.

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Craig Cormick

Craig is an award-winning Canberra author and journalist. He has published and edited several books with both small and mainstream publishers and his writing awards include the Queensland Premier's Award (Steele Rudd Award) in 2006 for A Funny Thing Happened at 27,000 Feet ... and the ACT Book of the Year Award in 1999 for Unwritten Histories. He has also won the Max Harris Literary Award (1998), and was short-listed both for a Queensland Premier's Literary Award in 2004 and also for The Australian/Vogel Award in 1994 for the novel Of One Blood, which was published in 2007.

Craig has published ten books and over 100 short stories in anthologies, literary journals and newspapers, including Meanjin, Island, Westerly, Scarp, Overland, 4-W, Redoubt, and The Phoenix Review. He has also published over a dozen literary articles and essays and has taught creative writing and public relations at the University of Canberra. He has been Chair of the ACT Writers' Centre for several years and in 2006 was a Writer in Residence at the University Sains Malaysia in Penang and in 2008 will be an Antarctic Arts Fellow, travelling to Antarctica.

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Christine du Fresne

Chrstine is an artist and the author of Where Heaven & Earth Meet: a Journey through Central Asia (Lothian Books, 2004). Christine began travelling at the age of 48 and in 1999 her trip to Central Asia took on another dimension when she decided to film her five-month journey, as well as documenting it in her journal and sketching people she met. With her filmmaker daughter Kylie she created a documentary, Shambhala: a Central Asian Journey that was screened on ABC television.

Travelling alone through remote areas and along parts of the ancient Silk Road she was able to rely on the kindness of the local people and the ancient wisdom of Eastern masters to guide her. Her journey soon became a personal odyssey as she searched for the mythical paradise, Shambhala - the place Buddhists believe heaven and earth meet.

Christine du Fresne was born, raised and educated in New Zealand and moved to Sydney in her early twenties.

Where Heaven & Earth Meet is now out of print but some copies are available from the author. Enquiries re purchase should be directed to Calidris. sallybird@calidrislitagency.com

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Dr Sarah Edelman

Dr Sarah Edelman's book Change Your Thinking (ABC Books, 2003) is a practical and reassuring guide to help overcome stress, negative emotions and self-defeating behaviour using CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy). It demonstrates how to dispute that nagging voice in your head and deal more rationally with feelings of anger, depression, frustration and anxiety.

The UK edition of Change your Thinking will be published by Vermilion, an imprint of Random House in April 2006.

Rights available: Asia (excluding China); Middle East and South America.

Sarah Edelman is a researcher, trainer and psychologist in private practice in Sydney, Australia. She also works as a research psychologist at the Health Psychology Unit, University of Technology in Sydney and teaches 'Change Your Thinking' at the Centre for Continuing Education at Sydney University's Continuing Education Centre.

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Monica Geti

Monica’s book, The Year of Sunshine (New Holland, 2004) is her first. Her husband wanted to retire and live on a boat in the Mediterranean. She did not. They fought. He won. It was as simple as that. Or was it?

This is a romantic tale of two people discovering a renewed passion for life and for each other during a sun-drenched and turbulent summer in the beautiful ports of the Italian and French rivieras. What began as a tour of duty for Monica would become a voyage of love and understanding, and a summer that would never be forgotten.

Monica Geti was born and educated in London, where she worked as PA to the Managing Director of a film company at Pinewood Studios. At the age of 21 she met her Italian husband and two weeks later they eloped to Switzerland. They lived in South America, Canada, South Africa and Italy before settling in Sydney. They retired in 1990 when they bought their boat Sunshine, and now divide their time between Europe and Australia. Rights Available - World Rights.

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Howard Goldenberg

Howard Goldenberg uses his magical story-telling skills in My Father's Compass to record and celebrate the long and fruitful life of a man with many roles: healing the sick, growing olives, sailing the seas, harvesting foreskins, serving synagogues and raising his brood of difficult children. Myer was a rare combination of dinkum Aussie and devout Jew.

Through the pages of this beautifully written book, his son honours the deep faith and vitality of his father; while bringing to life the intimate family relationships across generations between intense fathers and sensitive sons.

This memoir – poignant, entertaining and at times hilarious - will evoke tears and laughter, grief and joy. A book to be treasured!

'Howard Goldenberg writes with verve and humour. He also writes with deep compassion. It is this unusual marriage of qualities which makes him a rare and valuable witness to our times.'

Martin Flanagan

'Howard Goldenberg is a fine wordsmith and a wonderful storyteller. He explores his father's life with great compassion and honesty. His compass has served him well both as a doctor and a writer.'

Paul Jennings

Click here to read an extract of My Father's Compass

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Alan Gould

Alan Gould's latest book is The Past Completes Me: Selected Poems 1973 - 2003 (University of Queensland Press, 2005). He is a poet, essayist and novelist and the recipient of many awards. In 2001 he was co-winner of both the Courier-Mail Book of the Year and ACT Book of the year for his novel The Schoonermaster's Dance (HarperCollins, 2000).

Alan was born in London of English-Icelandic descent. He has a special interest in maritime art and ship-modelling. He lives in Canberra and is a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council.

For more information on The Past Completes Me, please visit the University of Queensland Press. For full details of Alan’s publications and biographical details please visit www.alangouldwriter.com

World Rights are available for the following titles: Close Ups, The Enduring Disguises, The Schoonermaster’s Dance, The Tazyrik Year.

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Anthony Gunn

Anthony Gunn's first book Fear is Power: Turn Your Fears into Success was published by Hardie Grant in 2006.

No matter what the challenge we all feel fear. Incorporating interviews with high-profile personalities such as Kostya Tszyu, Layne Beachley, Alan Jones and Dick Smith, Fear is Power uncovers ten simple secrets you can use to harness your fear and make it work to your advantage.

Hardie Grant will publish his new book Walking Tall on 1 March 2008. In it Anthony puts his years of combating fears into 100 simple tips and inspirational messages. From things as simple as 'Write down your fears' to the surprising 'Chocolate can help fear' Walking Tall offers a reassuring way to take control of your life. Illustrated by Natalie Winter.

Anthony Gunn is a registered psychologist, specialising in treating anxiety and phobias. He has been helping people to overcome their fears since he treated his own phobia, of medical procedures - after enduring an operation without anaesthetic in Honduras. Anthony speaks regularly to sporting and social clubs, schools and professional institutions about psychology and fear and has appeared on television with his carpet python, Ernie. For more information go to: www.fearispower.com.au

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Gill Heming Shadbolt

Gill Heming Shadbolt's latest book New Guinea Engineer: the memoir of Les Bell MBE - as told to Gill Heming Shadbolt (Rosenberg Publishing, 2002) is World War 11 Royal Australian Air Force Flying Officer Les Bell's startling account of settlement in Northern Queensland, the equatorial coconut and gold empires of German and Australian New Guinea and its island archipelagos.

Later she travelled to New Zealand and worked on a provincial newspaper before moving on to become a general reporter on the Evening Post in Wellington. She left the Post to travel overseas with her then husband, the author Maurice Shadbolt. She retired from teaching journalism several years ago and lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

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Noeline Kyle

Dr Noeline Kyle has published widely in the fields of women's history, educational history, biography, Australian history and family history. Since semi-retirement from academe she teaches family history writing courses within the continuing education program at the University of Sydney, through the New South Wales Writers' Centre and continues to offer seminars and workshops to family history societies throughout Australia.

Noeline has maintained a strong interest in supporting the research and writing of family historians and published Tracing Family History in Australia (Methuen, 1985); We Should Have Listened to Grandma: Women and Family History (Allen & Unwin, 1988); and The Family History Writing Book, (1993, 2001), which was the first book to focus specifically on writing family history.

Family historians are enthusiastic and skilled researchers but the writing task too often defeats them. Most are not trained or confident writers. Noeline's new book Writing Family History Made Very Easy aims to help overcome this common writing barrier. It is a comprehensive step-by-step guide that includes easy-to-follow instructions and straightforward advice on the writing process. This book draws on Noeline's long and productive work with family historians over the last twenty-five years. It is written for family historians but will also be useful for beginning students of history.

Writing Family History Made Very Easy was published by Allen & Unwin in March 2007 and is available as an eBook.

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Terence Lindsey

Terence Lindsey is a zoologist and ornithologist who has written and produced an extensive range of books, articles and encyclopaedia entries for leading natural history publishers around the world as well as a number of films. Terence was born in England, raised in Canada and has travelled widely throughout Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific over the past thirty years.

Terence’s latest book is Albatrosses. Published in June by CSIRO in their Natural History Series, it outlines the life histories of these spectacular birds whose most distinctive characteristic is that they ride storms. Aside from a few of their close relatives among petrels and shearwaters, they are the only animals that do this.

Other recent publications available by Terence Lindsey include The Collins Field Guide to New Zealand Wildlife (HarperCollins New Zealand, 2000), an extensive guide to both native and introduced fauna and three titles in New Holland’s Green Guide series: Parrots of Australia; Spiders of Australia and Mammals of Australia.

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Norman McGreevy

Norman McGreevy was brought up and educated in Glasgow, Scotland, and now lives quietly in Melbourne, Australia, with his wife, and a small menagerie. For the past ten years Norman has worked with universities, corporations, and government agencies, writing, designing and delivering information technology training and communication for groups of often bewildered executives. He now tries to combine his passion for information technology with his passion for relaxation and walking, with so far limited success.

His book, just published by Allen & Unwin is entitled Mr McGreevy's Absolute Howlers and is a side-splitting collection of schoolchildren's English grammatical and spelling howlers. This is the perfect gift for those with a love of language and a sense of humour. Note: Please heed the warning on the cover — reading too many in one sitting may cause injury!

Mr McGreevy's Absolute Howlers is now available as an eBook.

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Jodi Panayotov

Jodi Panayotov's book In Vitro Fertility Goddess is a true and often hilarious account of the absurd drawn-out process she had to go through in order to have a child. At the age of 37 she discovered her fertility had gone missing and after engaging the help of a gay gynaecologist, a one-legged psychiatrist, a famous naturopath, some long-suffering nurses and a move to a high fertility coastal town she miraculously managed to have a child. What is a serious issue, at times fraught with anxiety and grief, has been dealt with in a humorous manner that distinguishes this book from others in the genre.

Born in Brisbane, Jodi has lived in London, Oxford and Sydney before recently moving back to Queensland, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She has worked as an Occupational Therapist in psychiatric hospitals and a flight attendant for the now defunct Ansett, both jobs which have given her ample and often unwitting insight into the human condition.

Jodi has written freelance articles, short stories and, as well as In Vitro Fertility Goddess, has just completed a book about her years working for Ansett.

Her website is invitrofertilitygoddess.com. Purchases of In Vitro Fertility Goddess may be made via the website now or in bookstores nationwide from 10th September 2007.

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Robin Parisotto

Robin is the author of Blood Sports – the Inside Dope on Drugs in Sport (Hardie Grant, February 2006). Blood Sports is a gripping and provocative insider's look at the issue of drugs in sport – the deaths, the scandals, the conspiracies, and the on-going race to beat the cheats.

Coincidence or cover-up? Between 1987 and 1990, eighteen professional athletes died. Some while competing, some while sleeping. All from heart failure. Why? The answer was EPO – a lethal new drug designed to increase oxygen – and for which no test was available to detect it.

Robin Parisotto was the Australian Institute of Sport's principal researcher in the EPO 2000 Project, which led to the development of the first ever blood tests to be used at an Olympic Games (Sydney) for the blood doping agent known as EPO. He has over twenty years' experience in blood testing laboratories and has had numerous articles published in scientific journals and magazines.

For more information about Blood Sports, visit Hardie Grant.

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Dr Julian Pepperell

Dr Julian Pepperell's first book is a collection of his magazine articles entitled Fish Tales: The Mystery of the Snapper Bump & Other Stories from Australian Waters (Random House, 2001). The waters that surround Australia are full of weird and wonderful fish: jellyfish that impart stings from the uncomfortable to the lethal; tuna with the head of a dolphin; fish that fly; 'cookie cutters' that inflict crater-like wounds on their victims. Fish Tales investigates these and many more unusual marine stories in a series of articles by Australian marine biologist Julian Pepperell.

Julian Pepperell is probably Australia's best-known marine biologist, especially in the world of recreational fishing. He is the author of numerous popular and scientific articles on marine fishes and still writes popular columns in national fishing magazines. He has made many radio and television appearances including having his own segment on Rex Hunt's Fishing Australia among many others.

To purchase a copy of Fish Tales email: julianp@internode.on.net

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Peter Rowland

Peter Rowland is the author of A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Australia, New Holland 1996 (Reprinted 1997, 1999 & 2001) and the Whitely Award Winner, Green Guide to Birds of Australia, New Holland 1998 (reprinted 1999, 2000 & 2002) as well as many scientific papers. He was also a contributor to Cuckoos, Nightbirds & Kingfishers of Australia, R. Strahan (Ed) Angus & Robertson/Australian Museum Trust 1994, Finches, Bowerbirds and other Passerines of Australia, R. Strahan (Ed) Angus & Robertson/Australian Museum Trust 1996 and The Encyclopaedia of Australian Wildlife, L Egerton (Ed) Reader’s Digest, 1997.

Peter worked as an assistant in the Ornithology department at the Australian Museum, Sydney, for almost twenty years.

Peter's latest book Bowerbirds was released in late May. Published by CSIRO in their Australian Natural History Series, it condenses published knowledge into a format that will suit natural history enthusiasts at any level.

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Stephany Steggall

Dr Stephany Steggall has a PhD in Australian literature from the University of Queensland. She is the author of Can I Call You Colin?: The Authorised Biography of Colin Thiele (New Holland 2004); The Loved and the Lost: the Life of Ivan Southall (Lothian 2006); and she has compiled and edited Yours sincerely, Colin Thiele (Crawford House 2008). She is also a regular freelance contributor to major metropolitan newspapers and magazines.

Colin Thiele nurtured children for fifty years. He not only wrote for them, he wrote to them. As part of her research for his biography, Stephany worked her way through large folders and boxes of correspondence at the National Library and the Colin Thiele Research Collection at the University of South Australia. She was astonished at the huge number of letters written to Colin from children and the equally large volume that he wrote back. The letters are engaging and delightful to read, revealing a great deal about the lives of generations of young Australians and the man to whom they wrote.

With Colin Thiele’s help Stephany compiled this book to share some of the children’s letters and to show how young readers respond to a favourite writer.

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