At the age of six, Kerry McGinnis lost her mother. Her father, left with four young children to raise, gathered up his family and left the city to go doving. For the next fifteen years, the McGinnis clan traveled the continent, droving, horse breaking and living off the land. Kerry grew up in the harsh outback, and the animals that inhabit the land became her closest friends. With the memory of her absent mother ever present, Kerry begins her difficult journey into young womanhood. https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/heart-country-kerry-mcginnis/
-
-
Mayada was born into a powerful Iraqi family. When Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath party seized power, the devastation on her life made her a divorced mother of two alone in Baghdad, earning a meagre living printing brochures - until one morning, in 1999, she was arrested by Saddam's Secret Police and taken to the notorious Baladiyat Prison, accused of producing anti-government propaganda. She and seventeen other women were imprisoned, tortured without trial and threatened with execution. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
The life and times of Billy Connolly. Billy was a battered and neglected child and he turned himself into the classroom clown as a way of survival. As an adult he built on that early experience, his provocative and outrageous brand of humour making him one of the best loved comedians of his generation. On the way up, Connolly has collided with trendies, booze, women, the press, the Royals and even Fyffes bananas. Although he now enjoys that status of a comic institution, Glasgow pundits accused him of 'selling out' and forgetting his roots amid the big houses, smart cars, friendships with royalty and Hollywood. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
Amanda Barrie was a star of the English stage, screen and the occasional Carry On film. She was believed to be a slow learner for years as she could not read, so she would have a friend repeat her lines over and over to her until she was word perfect and completely cued-in! She was finally diagnosed with dyslexia. Here she recounts anecdotes from her packed professional life and talks frankly and without self-pity about her disrupted childhood, disastrous schooldays and her relationships with both men and women, including remarkable threesomes with her husband Robin Hunter. An ideal piece for any Carry On fan. Illustrated with black and white and colour photographs.
-
An erudite guide to twelve of the most famous sites of myth and legend: Atlantis; Pyramid Hill; Stonehenge; Troy; the Queen of Sheba; King Solomon's Mines; Tintagel and the Round Table; Angkor; Tikal and the Feathered Elephants; Machu Piccu; Nan Matol and Rapa Nui. Each site is described, factual and legendary history is reviewed and theories and controversy examined. Illustrated with black and white photographs. -
The star of stage, screen and Carry On gives us humourous pages from his diary, including his trip to Australia in 1983 (which he enjoyed very much) and his life long friendships with the other members of the Carry On gang. -
A complicated childhood in Australia, a bold move to London, being a woman in a man's world on Not the Nine O'Clock News, becoming Mrs Billy Connolly, motherhood, career changes and then Strictly Come Dancing - told in her own inimitable style, The Varnished Untruth is Pamela Stephenson's own story: a challenging story and one that can only engender respect and admiration. Illustrated with colour and black and white photographs. -
Twas the night before Christmas when a self-described curmudgeon rescues a bedraggled feline from a snowy New York City alley. Thus begins this tale of a man and his cat or, rather, of a cat and his man as told by Amory in The Cat Who Came For Christmas. This is the sequel and Book II of The Compleat Cat. Despite his hard-knock beginnings, Polar Bear is finicky about his newfound fame. Will nine lives be enough for him to answer all his fan mail? This tale of two curmudgeons will tickle the fancy of everyone who has ever been owned by a cat. Cleveland Amory has devoted a tremendous amount of his time and energy to The Fund for Animals. -
The Darwin Awards, for the uninitiated, are given to those who have removed themselves from the human gene pool in a variety of unusual ways. Such as... the guy who playfully pulled a stripper's pastie off with his teeth - then choked to death on it; the two blokes who found conventional fishing a bit slow and decided to liven it up using dynamite; and the missionary who fearlessly forged into the jungle depths with his wife and two daughters to convert a tribe of satan-worshippers and ended up treating them to lunch. (Detectives on that case say the banquet was quite a lively one.) Plus 177 more stories you would think are tall tales, but are actually true. Walt Disney said that the animal kingdom is the wackiest kingdom of them all, but after reading this, we at the Cauldron think he had it wrong!
