AustLit

'Kerry Stokes came into the world with no advantages. Unlike his rival magnates, he built his empire from nothing. Kerry Stokes: Self-Made Man is the real, fascinating story behind the rabbits-to-riches ascendancy of one of Australia's most powerful men.

'Plucked from an orphanage as an infant, Kerry Stokes grew up in the slums and streets of post-Depression Melbourne with his itinerant, adoptive parents. As a boy he trapped, skinned and sold rabbits to make ends meet, and seemed destined to a life of hardship and poverty.

'Today Stokes is one of Australia's most successful business moguls, with interests in property, mining, construction equipment and media. He picked the boom in China ahead of the pack, and has forged strong relationships in that country. He is a recipient of Australia's highest civil honour, and in 2013 he was a nominee for Australian of the Year. He owns what is probably the finest private art collection in the country, and has sat on the governing bodies of some of our leading cultural institutions. As the Packer family departs the media and the Murdoch clan tackles damage to its reputation on three continents, Stokes is emerging as the single most influential media proprietor in Australia.

'Yet Stokes has remained relatively low-profile, and is notoriously private. Mysterious and elusive, Stokes is the archetypal self-made man, driven by the determination to escape his past and the legacy of disadvantage. But at what cost?' (Publisher's blurb)

'Elizabeth Jolley was a fine writer. Her publishing career began when she was in her 50s in Australia, but as author Brian Dibble demonstrates, her writing developed through the decades in England and Scotland, from her family of origin, to boarding schools and hospital wards, and into her independent adult life. The array of wild characters in her fiction - misfits and those on the edge of society - can also be found in the Jolley's remarkable life. It could be said that the times suited Jolley's rise as a major Australian writer, when old habits - of who and what could be published - were broken. Brian Dibble was given complete access to the writer's private papers and has spent more than a decade travelling the world to follow leads on the story of Elizabeth Jolley. This is a lyrical and readable biography, one that presents a world of family and pleasures, but is always infused somewhere with an unexpended sadness.' (Publication summary)