You don't need to be reading from the fantasy shelves to stretch your imagination – these nonfiction books are full of unbelievable true stories! Discover uplifting stories of survival and heroism, as well as shocking insights into the underbelly of celebrity and social media empires.
Forty Days in the Jungle
Mat Youkee
In June 2023, four Indigenous children were found alive in the Colombian Amazon, forty days after the light aircraft they had been travelling in crashed into deep jungle, killing the three adults on board.
For weeks the Colombian public had been transfixed by clues of the children's survival, but most now despaired of ever finding the children.
Thirteen-year-old Lesly Jacobombaire Mucuty never gave up hope.
Forty Days in the Jungle tells the incredible story of how Lesly kept her siblings safe and fed during their time in the wilderness.
Careless People
Sarah Wynn-Williams
Shocking and darkly funny, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to the decisions that are shaping our world and the people who make them. Welcome to Facebook.
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a young diplomat from New Zealand, pitched for her dream job. She saw Facebook's potential and knew it could change the world for the better. But, when she got there and rose to its top ranks, things turned out a little different.
From wild schemes cooked up on private jets to risking prison abroad, Careless People exposes both the personal and political fallout when boundless power and a rotten culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative, Wynn-Williams rubs shoulders with Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and world leaders, revealing what really goes on among the global elite – and the consequences this has for all of us.
The Woman Who Fooled the World
Beau Donelly & Nick Toscano
Entrepreneur. Inspiration. Guru. Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson shot to fame after she convinced the world she had cured her terminal brain cancer with just a healthy diet. But there was one problem – she lied. She'd never had cancer.
Written by the two journalists who assiduously uncovered the details of Gibson's lies, The Woman Who Fooled the World unravels the mystery and motivation behind this deception. It follows the public reaction to the scandal, which included headlines in Time magazine and Gibson being named as a top-ten villain of the year by The Washington Post.
The Woman Who Fooled the World also explores the lure of alternative cancer treatments, the cottage industry flourishing behind the wellness movement, and the rise of social media. It documents not only Gibson's folly but the devastating impact this con had on hers fans and on people suffering from cancer.
The Promise
Arnold Dix
Arnold Dix became an unlikely hero when he promised to save forty-one men trapped after a tunnel collapse in the Himalayas. This is his unforgettable story.
In rural Victoria, Arnold Dix is known to locals as a farmer and a part-time truck driver. But his name reached global recognition when he played a pivotal role in rescuing forty-one Indian workers trapped after a deadly tunnel collapse. What many don't know is that Arnold is also a barrister, scientist, engineer – a 'quirky' Aussie bloke who proves that extraordinary courage can come from the most unexpected places.
In vivid detail, Arnold recounts the unlikely rescue that transformed him into a global hero. But his incredible story goes far beyond this one remarkable event. It's a tale that explores what it truly means to defy the odds and challenge the status quo in pursuit of the impossible.
The Friday Afternoon Club
Griffin Dunne
At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion's legendary L.A. party for the publication of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early 20s, he shared an apartment in Manhattan's Hotel Des Artistes with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher, while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars.
In the midst of it all, Griffin's 22-year-old sister Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the 1980s, which ended in a travesty of justice that also somehow marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne's career as a bestselling author of true crime narratives.
The Mermaid Chronicles
Megan Dunn
Forty, freckled and facing infertility, writer and disgruntled project manager Megan Dunn hears the siren call that reawakens her lifelong obsession and sets off in pursuit of mermaids. Real mermaids.
Diving into the caves of her own life, Megan loses the plot but finds her voice and hears the mermaids singing.
Shimmeringly intellectual and devastatingly deadpan, tragicomic and true, The Mermaid Chronicles is an off-the-hook tale about sex and marriage, mothers and daughters, middle age, women's work, obsession, the stories we tell ourselves and the myths that define us all. (And Daryl Hannah, too.)
Madam
Antonia Murphy
An ex-pat from San Francisco, Antonia Murphy is living on a farm in rural New Zealand with her husband and two kids, bored and isolated, when her husband leaves her. Suddenly, she has to figure out how to survive.
Upon discovering the decriminalisation of sex work in New Zealand, Antonia’s mind starts to wander, and she reaches out to the international sex worker community online to learn more about the business. This group of smart, anonymous, sassy women open Antonia’s eyes and inspires her to open her own agency: The Bach.
Over the next three years, she encounters more than she could have imagined: domestic abuse, theft, drugs and a stream of silly, horrific and sometimes touching requests from her clients. More than anything, she sees fire in the women who choose sex work: they refuse to give up, even when the odds are stacked against them.
In Madam, we follow Antonia through the turbulent years of her agency, as she toils to keep both her business and family afloat, and to keep the women of The Bach safe and thriving as they practice the world's oldest profession.
Outrageous Fortunes
Megan Brown & Lucy Sussex
When Mary Fortune arrived in Melbourne with her infant son in 1855, she was determined to reinvent herself. The Victorian goldfields were just the place.
After a bigamous marriage to a policeman and a side-line selling sly-grog, Mary became a pioneering journalist and author. The Detective's Album was the first book of detective stories to be published in Australia and the first by a woman to be published anywhere in the world. Her work appeared in magazines and newspapers for over forty years – but none of her readers knew who she was.
When Mary died in 1911, her identity was nearly lost. In Outrageous Fortunes, Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex retrieve Fortune's astonishing career and discover an equally absorbing story in her illegitimate son, George. While Mary was writing crime, George was committing it, with convictions for theft and bank robbery. In their intertwined stories, crime fiction meets true crime, and Melbourne's literary bohemia consorts with the criminal underworld.
