Books

Its 1989 and a surf-loving Aussie teenager flukes a dream move to an English footballing giant. Problem is, its never been his dream, and in the brutal big leagues he has a fight on his hands to ensure his laidback life doesnt turn into one giant...

George Best is widely regarded as a brilliant footballer - one of the best in the world - with a troubled life. A European Cup and Ballon dOr winner with Manchester United, the Northern Ireland international had all the skills and panache to be at the...

The companion volume to the Encyclopedia of Socceroos Centenary Edition (2022), this is a 120,000-word Encyclopedia, with players and data to end March 2023 just in time for the Womens World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand. Make sure you know...

Adrian Alston, commonly  known as ‘Noddy’, was a key member of the semi-professional team that defied all the odds to become the first Australian team to reach the 1974 World Cup finals. Noddy: the untold story of Adrian Alston is a tell-all account by...

The First Matildas is the story of the women who played for Australia in the Asian Cup Ladies Football Tournament held in Hong Kong in 1975. Australia took part along with teams from Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand. The...

The first of two magnificent volumes from Emeritus Professor of History, John Maynard, on the Socceroos journey through World Cup qualifying campaigns. Volume 1 starts with the campaign to make the 1966 World Cup in England, which ended for Australia in...

In this second book of the Lucy Zeezou series, Lucy has finally come clean about her football ambitions but her elation is short-lived. Her parents are on the brink of splitting up over some earth-shattering rumours, her best friend Bella is angry with...

It's a truism that's true: there is no football without fans. In Football Fans in their own write, David Picken has invited some of the biggest names on the world stage, as well as those who are volunteers at community clubs who allow the game to thrive...

The companion volume to the Encyclopedia of Socceroos Centenary Edition (2022), this is a 120,000-word Encyclopedia, with players and data to end March 2023 just in time for the Women's World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand. Make sure you...

Dave Allenson, a gruff security guard, is no fan of football, but he takes his job seriously. When, in the 1997 play-off against Iran, Peter Hore tries to tear down the net of the Iranian goal, Dave tackles him and prevents the vandalism – setting off a...

"Get Your Tits Out for the Lads" is the story of one womans journey into the masculine and rather enigmatic world of football. Since an early age, Sally Freedman dreamt of working in football and finally landed her dream role as protocol manager for the...

From the oppressed shores of India to a racially charged Fiji, her mother’s death at her birth, early adoption, marital abuse, military takeover, and move to Australia, Shirley had already overcome a life of adversity when she was subjected to a...

Hear Us Roar is a series of long-form articles or short stories submitted as part of the Emerging Women Writers initiative of the 2023 Football Writers' Festival. Emerging women writers from around the world were invited to submit an article by the end...

A series of short stories profiling ten individuals, including the author, and the why, how, and when they came to love football and what it means to them personally. The stories demonstrate that 'the Beautiful Game' is home to the world’s biggest...

Aussie footballer Jarrod Black’s life in the English Football League is going well after his exciting adventures in Newcastle, but there’s no time to get complacent. The opportunity to play Harlowe Croft in the long-running action movie series has arisen...

Amanda never imagined that after uprooting her comfortable, stable life to make room for her soulmate that he would decide to go his own way. They agreed that their connection was unbelievably cosmic, but he said no. When A Soulmate Says No is a fearless...

From the not-so-well known to a world superstar, Australia has produced strikers who have not only excelled at home in domestic competition and playing for Australia, but also overseas. Green and Golden Boots - Australia's overseas golden boot winners...

A trip down memory lane. Journalist Philip Micallef has written on football (soccer) in Australia for more than 30 years. Now retired, this is a personally curated anthology of his top 100 football stories ranging from the Socceroos, the global game, the...

While many books have looked at one or other of the four professional football codes within Australia, none has so far considered all four of them together and in the context of one of the most competitive sports environments in the world. 'Code Wars'...

Who would think that a recipe for Butter Chicken could be so important? But to the Gujral family - owners of the eponymous Manjits Wharf restaurant at Darling Harbour in Sydney, it is. It is also symbolic of their brand and core values, evolving into...

Age range 9 to 14Emma Johnston AO FTSE FRSN is the Dean of Science at the University of New South Wales and President of Science & Technology Australia. She is an authority in marine ecology and a former Pro Vice-Chancellor at UNSW...

Age range 10 to 13Skye Blackburn-Lang is an entomologist and food scientist who has combined her two specialities and high energy entrepreneurial spirit to become a world leader in developing nutritious superfoods for a sustainable future from insects...

Age range 9 to 14Aussie STEM Stars is an inspiring children's series that celebrates Australia's experts in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.Professor Ajay Rane is the Director of Urogynaecology at Townsville University...

Age range 9+Growing up in London, Michelle's interests frequently bumped up against expectations of girls which she pushed through, including her love of playing soccer and chess, and later, her passion for science and technology. Professor Simmons is...

Age range 9 to 14Aussie STEM Stars is an inspiring children's series that celebrates Australia's experts in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.Gisela Kaplan's story begins in post-World War II Germany. Despite incredible...

Age range 9 to 14Aussie STEM Stars is an inspiring children's series that celebrates Australia's experts in Science, Technology, Engineering and MathematicsEddie Woo has already packed a lot into his short life. Australian High School...

Age range 9 to 14'Life is about making a difference,' Munjed says. 'We all have a mission in life, to leave behind a legacy.' His resilience, determination and view of the world as a glass half full, not half empty,...

This second edition of The Cherry Picker's Daughter is an exquisite portrait of growing up Aboriginal on the fringes of outback towns in NSW in the mid-twentieth century. Its an important book for school libraries and classrooms, with profound insights...

Age range 9 to 14Georgia Ward-Fear is most famous for her research into shifting ecological paradigms and animal behaviour. She is also an adventurer, travelling extensively in her sea kayak.Georgia Ward-Fear's conservation journey has seen her...

Age range 10-13Aussie STEM Stars is an inspiring children's series that celebrates Australia's world-leading experts in Science, Technology, Engineering and MathematicsScientia Professor Sahajwalla, 2022 NSW Australian of the Year, is founder and...

*Shortlisted for the Small Press Network 2021 Book of the Year Award*The Tiniest House of Time is more than a family saga, ranging across continents and decades seamlessly, from colonial Burma in the 1930s to nationalist Malaysia in the 1990s and beyond,...

An extraordinary life, from ordinary beginnings.Optimism, resilience, audacity, hope, surviving daily challenges for themselves and those they love; carers embody all of these qualities. Cheryl Koenig's fifth book, a memoir, deals with all those human...

This epic book, spanning two continents, recounts the story of three generations of two families whose lives unexpectedly intersect in their adopted country. Beautifully capturing the loss faced when war dislocates families, it also tells of the...

This is a memoir of an Aboriginal woman, Tjanara Goreng Goreng, who began life without any of the advantages of her fellow non-Indigenous Australians except for grit, humour and diverse talent in spades. Through one woman's story, this book...

'The poems in Sometimes's collection deftly transcend both spatial scales and time scales. From one line to another we careen across the universe. We fast-forward from the first picosecond of stuff forming in the universe to a Christmas card,...

'Alex Creece's Potty Mouth, Potty Mouth is a reckless, glorious, grotty revolution. It's an insubordinate 'kissyface of cobwebs' that sticks it to capitalism, heteronormativity and the patriarchy.Quotably horny and delightfully vulgar, Potty...

For Varatharajan, all communication is an art defined by authenticity rather than decadence. These poems do not drink and dial, hey do not hit 'send' too soon. In this manner they are a balm to current hyperactive expectations of social responsiveness...

Gibson's fragmentary style favours standalone single lines or short sentences to exemplify episodic thinking and the discontinuities of broken narrative. He engages cultures in scraps and shards in this savvy and unique collection.Where does it take...

Omar Sakr's poetry consists of rich and convincing detail charged with presence and particularity; his poetic voice is so firmly planted and immersed in the world around him that the urgency of his images and rhythms is completely convincing. His complex...

'Hemensley reads his poetry in a warm accent of old Hampshire and more recent Dorset overlaid with Melbourne, unconsciously abstracting his past. This book is not a harvest of words but a mapping of fields, and paths, from impressions distilled through...

They are not just words whistling on the wind. They come laden with other gifts. With a whole place: Melbourne. It makes you wonder what elements must thus congeal to sustain the songs, the poems, across all these pages without once faltering, without...

Eh? You want bodies, blood, sex, gore, damning gods, raw uppercuts?Why, yes. Pooja Mittal Biswas welcomes you into the ring of identity and the hunt for an honest and rapier self.Glove up.'Confessional poetry can deteriorate into fetishism, in Biswas's...

A collection, written in English and Scots, that explores immigration, home and place.'When I first left my home, the gnawing ache for all I'd left behind family, friends, my land, my whole life made me numb and thrawn. Weeping and sobbing bubblin an...

**Shortlisted, NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2023, Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry**In this new collection by a seasoned master, Kim Cheng Boey moves between Singapore and Australia, youth and middle age places and times rendered in vivid,...

Dan Hogan's Secret Third Thing is a hyper-real comment on this hyper-real moment: it is suffused with internet culture and reections on the lives we live, now, largely online. What characterises Hogan's poetry is the way that, each time we come close to...

The author's playfulness is to the fore in this strange, charming book. It is a game which invites the reader to roll the dice, take a card from the deck, gain points, lose a turn, and, one way or another, advance around a notional game board: a pirate's...

'The only Sundays I looked forward to were spent with my beloved Australian nanna Kathleen Mary McCarthy. I would sit with Nanna McC - listening to her stories unwind - and watch her pickle onions and brew ginger beer for Sister Kate's fte. She...

Says O'Keefe about her collection: 'Held under an incorrect adverb, the slowness of this book is expressed as intransigent buffering and refusal of optimisation. The book is shaped by a stubborn commitment to inclusive imprecision which seeks...