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George Harrison
Dear Village George Harrison $39.99
From the author of the million-copy selling Shout!: The Beatles in Their Generation and the bestselling John Lennon: The Life comes a revealing portrait of George Harrison, the most undervalued and mysterious Beatle. Despite being hailed as one of the best guitarists of his era, George Harrison, particularly in his early decades, battled feelings of inferiority. He was often the butt of jokes from his bandmates owing to his lower-class background and, typically, was allowed to contribute only one or two songs per Beatles album out of the dozens he wrote. Now, acclaimed Beatles biographer Philip Norman examines Harrison through the lens of his numerous self-contradictions. Compared to songwriting luminaries John Lennon and Paul McCartney he was considered a minor talent, yet he composed such masterpieces as ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and his solo debut album ‘All Things Must Pass’ achieved enormous success, appearing on many lists of the 100 best rock albums ever. Modern music critics place him in the pantheon of Sixties guitar gods alongside Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards and Jimmy Page. Harrison railed against the material world yet wrote the first pop song complaining about income tax. He spent years lovingly restoring his Friar Park estate as a spiritual journey, but quickly mortgaged the property to help rescue a film project that would be widely banned as sacrilegious, Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Harrison could be fiercely jealous, but not only did he stay friends with Eric Clapton when Clapton fell in love with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, the two men grew even closer after Clapton walked away with her. Unprecedented in scope and filled with numerous colour photos, this rich biography captures George Harrison at his most multi-faceted: devoted friend, loyal son, master guitar-player, brilliant songwriter, cocaine addict, serial philanderer, global philanthropist, student of Indian mysticism, self-deprecating comedian and, ultimately, iconic artist and man beloved by millions.
Girl, 1983
Dear Village Girl, 1983 $45.00
Girl, 1983 is a heart-rending work of autofiction from one of Norway's most prominent literary writers. 'By writing down what happened, by telling the story as truthfully as I can, I'm trying to bring them together into one body - the woman from 2021 and the girl from 1983. I don't know if it can be done.'Paris, a winter's night in 1983. She is sixteen years old, lost in unfamiliar streets. On a scrap of paper in her pocket is the address of a photographer, K, thirty years her senior. Almost four decades later, as her life and the world around her begins to unravel, the grown woman seeks to comprehend the young girl of before.Set in Oslo, New York, and Paris, Girl, 1983 is a genre-defying and bravura quest through layers of memory and oblivion. As in her landmark previous work, Unquiet, Linn Ullmann continues to probe the elegiac sway of memory as she looks for ways to disclose a long-guarded secret. A delineation of time and place over the course of a life, this remarkable novel insistently crisscrosses the path of a wayward sixteen-year-old girl lost in Paris.Girl, 1983 is a raw and haunting exposure of beauty and forgetting, desire and shame, power and powerlessness.
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God Is An Octopus: Loss, Love And A Calling To Nature
Dear Village God Is An Octopus: Loss, Love And A Calling To Nature $42.99
'Intensely readable, poetic, truthful, wise and wonderful.' STEPHEN FRY'An extraordinary book.' SUNDAY TIMESStruggling to comprehend the shocking death of his teenage daughter, Ben Goldsmith finds solace in nature by immersing himself in plans to rewild his farm.In July 2019, Ben Goldsmith lost his fifteen-year-old daughter, Iris, in an accident on their family farm in Somerset. Iris's death left her family reeling. Grasping for answers, Ben threw himself into searching for some ongoing trace of his beloved child, exploring ideas that until then had seemed too abstract to mean much to him. Missing his daughter terribly and struggling to imagine how he would face the rest of his life in the shadow of this loss, Ben found solace in nature, the object of a lifelong fascination. As Ben set about rewilding his farm, nature became a vital source of meaning and hope. This book is the story of a year of soul-searching that followed a terrible loss. In an instant, Ben's world had turned dark. Yet, unbelievably to him, the seasons kept on turning, and as he immersed himself in the dramatic restoration of nature in the place where it happened, he found healing. In God is an Octopus, Ben tells a powerful, immersive and inspiring story of finding comfort and strength in nature after suffering loss and despair.
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Going Under
Dear Village Going Under $32.99
From the outside, Seana Smith lived an enviable life. An Oxford graduate, a successful career with the BBC and Sydney’s Channel 9, a bestselling author, happily married. But behind this perfect life she had a secret: Seana was a drinker, and alcohol was slowly taking away her life, destroying her health, her emotional well-being, her world. With engaging style and wit, Going Under reveals the true story behind Seana’s lifelong battle with drink. It lays bare a confusing childhood of Scottish sailing adventures and also brutal violence from her bullying, alcoholic father; where punches were thrown, broken bones hidden and her family lived in fear. Learning from the best, Seana drank her way through tutorials at Oxford University (which were held in the pub), through the sexual misadventures of her twenties and through the intensity and mundanity of motherhood. It took the death of her parents and a tree-change to Orange in regional NSW for Seana to find the courage to break free; a new life in a new world. She had finally left the past behind. <ul><li> Growing up with an abusive alcoholic father and finding the courage to escape. </li> <li> Crosses between Edinburgh, Oxford University, Sydney and Orange, NSW. Compelling combination of women’s quit lit and memoir. </li> <li> The intensity and loneliness of motherhood laid bare. </li> <li> Explores the pain of emigration and finding belonging in a new world. </li> <li> This is a memoir long in the making and is a powerful testament to resilience, acceptance and ultimately love. </li> <li> A story of recovery and sobriety for fans of The Sober Diaries, Beyond Booze and A Thousand Wasted Sundays. </li> <li> LARGE SCALE PR CAMPAIGN BY PITCH PROJECTS </li> </ul> "Going Under is funny, insightful and inspiring. This is like hanging out with a really brilliant friend who, you know, will make you a better person. Seana Smith is the real deal - a truth-teller and a writer of immense integrity." Kathryn Heyman Author of Fury "With a tender touch, Smith contemplates the two truths of her childhood: the wild island adventures and the brutal eruptions behind closed doors. Standing on the precipice of her own alcoholism, she realizes that reckoning with the past is the only way to shape the future." Jenny Valentish Author of Woman of Substances "With sparkling, musical prose and unflinching generosity of spirit, Seana Smith lays bare the facts of a life stalked by alcohol. A life that ricochets ‘between privilege and terror, between adventure and fear. So much more than a book about the booze, Going Under is an intricate, often beautiful mosaic of family, the individuals caught inside its sharp-edged cracks, and the self-yearning to make sense of all it all. The story of a woman emerging from the brokenness of the past and the never-ending pressures of the present to reclaim joy. Honest. Tender. Laugh-cry funny. Walking with Seana through her year of Going Under is to make a new and wise friend." Kim Kelly, author of Ladies’ Rest and Writing Room
Gough Whitlam
Dear Village Gough Whitlam $55.00
Gough Whitlam A commanding biography of one of Australia's greatest and most visionary prime ministers by an acclaimed political journalist and author.There has been no one like Gough Whitlam in public life - a charismatic, inspirational and visionary leader who ushered in a reform revolution to modernise Australia, which endures to this day. But Whitlam's immense self-belief, relentless determination, misjudgements and blunders were truly Shakespearean and help to explain his downfall.Drawing on thousands of pages of newly discovered archives and interviews with more than one hundred people, Troy Bramston, Australia's leading political biographer, gives the most comprehensively researched account of Whitlam's life and career ever published. It is an epic story of triumph and tragedy, filled with revelations that will surprise and shock, and offers new insights into Whitlam's family and upbringing; wartime service and legal career; ascendancy through Labor ranks; prime ministership; and life after politics.This is the definitive biography of Australia's twenty-first prime minister, and the first since his death in 2014, providing an unvarnished analysis of his achievements and failures, how he governed, and the dramatic story of his dismissal on Remembrance Day, 1975. Fifty years later, it could not be timelier.PRAISE'A bunker buster of a biography, smashing through partisanship and legend in search of truth about our most controversial prime minister' LAURIE OAKES, former political journalist and author'A fresh portrait of Whitlam emerges from this work, using previously unseen personal and official archives. Bramston gives a new take on Australia's most revered and reviled prime minister' SARAH FERGUSON, journalist and host, ABC 7.30'Superbly captures the largeness of vision, formidable achievement and the flaws and failures of Whitlam. Affectionate and critical, and on a grand scale worthy of its subject, this is a model biography' FRANK BONGIORNO AM, Professor of History at the Australian National University
Guts
Dear Village Guts $34.99
A gripping, incisive and darkly funny memoir from food and style icon and MasterChef Australia's first female judge, Melissa Leong.
Heartstrong
Dear Village Heartstrong $24.99
HeartstrongELLIDY PULLIN is a popular podcaster and influencer. She loves the ocean, animals, the outdoors, sewing, cooking, camping, surfing, travelling, yoga, food and wine. Ellidy is determined to keep the memory of her partner Chumpy Pullin strong, to honour his spirit and for their daughter, Minnie.
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Hetty
Dear Village Hetty $19.99
A remarkable and largely untold account of the Holocaust, this work is an inspirational story of the enduring spirit of children.  An extraordinary story of the struggle and survival of a group of children in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, this autobiographical tale details the motherly role adopted by the adolescent author during her time in the camp.
Hillbilly Elegy
Dear Village Hillbilly Elegy $24.99
Hillbilly Elegy  THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER / OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD  THE AMERICAN VICE PRESIDENT'S ORIGIN STORY ‘Essential reading for this moment in history’ New York Times 'You will not read a more important book about America this year' Economist ‘Brilliant … offers an acute insight into the reasons voters have put their trust in Trump’ Observer J. D. Vance grew up in the hills of Kentucky. His family and friends were the people most of the world calls rednecks, hillbillies or white trash. In this deeply moving memoir, Vance tells the story of his family’s demons and of America’s problem with generational neglect. How his mother struggled against, but never fully escaped, the legacies of abuse, alcoholism, poverty and trauma. How his grandparents, ‘dirt poor and in love’, gave everything for their children to chase the American dream. How Vance beat the odds to graduate from Yale Law School. And how America came to abandon and then condescend to its white working classes, until they reached breaking point. ‘A beautiful memoir but it is equally a work of cultural criticism about white working-class America … Vance offers a compelling explanation for why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to make it … a riveting book’ Wall Street Journal ** Now a major-motion picture directed by Ron Howard and starring Amy Adams, Glenn Close, and Gabriel Basso **
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Hope
Dear Village Hope $36.99
The groundbreaking, intimate and inspiring memoir from Pope Francis.The wish of Pope Francis was for HOPE, on which he has been working for six years, to be published posthumously. However, with the Jubilee Year of Hope coming in 2025 and the pressing needs of our times have urged Pope Francis to share this personal legacy now.HOPE is the revelatory first-ever autobiography to be published by a sitting Pope. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, Pope Francis tells the story of his life from his childhood in Buenos Aires to his calling and the whole of his papacy to the present day, while reflecting on controversial questions from global conflicts to the future of the Church, and discussing his personal passions from football to tango.HOPE is both powerful and intimate, inspiring and full of stories never told before. It is the story of a life and, at the same time, a touching moral and spiritual testament that will fascinate readers throughout the world and will represent his legacy of hope for future generations.
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How Not To Become A Grumpy Old Bugger
Dear Village How Not To Become A Grumpy Old Bugger $36.99
How Not To Become A Grumpy Old BuggerThey are the unhappy husbands, the disengaged grandfathers and the angry ‘letters to the editor’ writers.They sneer at generational change, know exactly where that bloody apostrophe should go and gather in sad groups bemoaning the modern world.They are Grumpy Old Buggers.Geoff Hutchison became determined not to turn into one himself upon retirement from a career in journalism.So he wondered: what is it about ageing that tends to have this effect on Australian men, and what can be done to arrest that development?Consulting a wide range of experts and mining his own experience and that of the other men in his life, Geoff has discovered how we can all live a happier, healthier and less grumpy life.
How The World Made The West
Dear Village How The World Made The West $27.99
How The World Made The West LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2025A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR- The Times/Sunday Times, Observer, Economist, Guardian, BBC History Magazine, i-paper and History Today'One of the most fascinating and important works of global history to appear for many years' William Dalrymple'Quinn has done a lot more than reinvent the wheel. What we have here is a truly encyclopaedic and monumental account of the ancient world' The TimesAncient Greece and Rome are considered the parents of Western civilisation. But the ancient world was much more interconnected than we realise - a place of constant exchange, commerce and theft, sex, war and enslavement.Journeying from the Levant of 2500 BC to the dawn of the Age of Exploration, Josephine Quinn argues that the roots of the West can be found in everything from Indian mathematics to the chariots of the Steppe, from Arabic poetry to the Phoenician art of sailing. The result is an epic and revelatory history of our shared past.'Superb, refreshing and full of delights, this is world history at its best' Simon Sebag-Montefiore'Full of little gem-like shifts of perspective' Guardian'Scintillates with its focus on the unexpected' Economist'A work of great confidence, empathy, learning and imagination' Rory Stewart'This is, in every way, a big book' TLS
How To Lose Your Mother
Dear Village How To Lose Your Mother $36.99
Molly Jong-Fast is the author of three books, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and host of the Fast Politics podcast.
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How We Love
Dear Village How We Love $34.99
A deeply personal exploration of love in all its forms from a feminist icon and bestselling author of Fight Like a Girl and Boys Will Be Boys.
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I Am Ozzy
Dear Village I Am Ozzy $24.99
I Am Ozzy People ask me how come I'm still alive, and I don't know what to say. When I was growing up, if you'd have put me up against a wall with the other kids from my street and asked me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of sixty, with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and California, I wouldn't have put money on me, no f**king way. But here I am: ready to tell my story, in my own words, for the first time. A lot of it ain't gonna be pretty. I've done some bad things in my time. But I ain't the devil. I'm just John Osbourne: a working class kid from Aston, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a good time.