Penguin Books Australia

Recalling the important stories ('World Trade Centre Janitor Declares: Best Sickie Ever' and 'Bali trial mix-up: Vanessa Amorosi...

You've seen him wearing speedos, kissing babies, driving a mining truck and chatting to his flock. But who is the real Tony Abbott? As the Bible says, by his words you shall know him.

He's a concerned parent: 'I won't be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated [against cervical cancer].'

A philanthropist: 'We just can't stop people from being homeless if that's their choice.'

A nature lover: 'Environmentalism...

What happened when Bob Hawke locked horns with Frank Sinatra, when Lionel Rose sparred with Elvis, when Nicole Kidman first clapped eyes on Tom Cruise, and Norman Gunston leapt on stage with Frank Zappa?

With abundant humour, Australian Encounters records these and other unexpected meetings.  In the great tradition of Australian yarning, Shane Maloney tells the tale and Chris Grosz paints the...

'Despite all the big talk and fancy press releases, let's face it, Swine Flu, you're more Babe than razorback.  Twenty dead?  Come on!  More die choking on ham sandwiches every week.  Sure, I won't be pashing any pigs for a while, but here's a tip from an old media hack: under-promise and over-deliver.'

At 2 a.m., everything seems like a good idea . . .

In 2008 the Pope came to Sydney, petrol prices soared and Australia proudly became the fattest nation on earth. Big Brother got the chop, Sam Newman mauled a mannequin and the Logies were as wonderfully bad as ever. Thank goodness for Catherine Deveny: always ready with a salty aside or a provocative question. Each week in the Age she brings her passionate...

Demetri Martin is a Very Important Award-Winning Comedian, so spends a lot of his time travelling around, with a notebook, filling it with jokes and incredibly long palindromes (over 500-words long, in fact). The very best of those are collected here, from his acclaimed comic drawings and the world's worst comeback lines, to brilliant charts and graphs (Incidence of Lung Cancer in Dragons, a Sad Clown/Happy...

Come sit down beside me I said to myself,
And although it doesn't makes sense,

I held my own hand
As a small sign of trust
And together I sat on the fence.

The bestselling memoir by one of Australia's best-loved comedians

Judith Lucy has been cracking jokes about her parents for much of her career.   But when a birth relative's casual comment implied that she must despise them, Judith was shocked.   Sure, for years she had been talking about Ann and Tony Lucy like they were one-dimensional Irish nut bags who'd ruined her life, but who –...

Jeremy Clarkson, it has to be said, sometimes finds the world a maddening place. And nowhere more so than from behind the wheel of a car, where you can see any number of people acting like lunatics while in control (or not) of a ton of metal. In Born to be Riled, Clarkson takes a look at the world through his windscreeen, shakes his head at what he sees – and then puts the boot in.

No one in the business is taller.

Here, he's collected his best car columns and stories in which he waxes lyrical on topics as useful and diverse as:

Jeremy Clarkson has seen rather more of the world than most. He has, as they say, been around a bit. And as a result, he's got one or two things to tell us about how it all works – and being Jeremy Clarkson he's not about to voice them quietly, humbly and without great dollops of humour.

In The World According to Jeremy Clarkson , he reveals why is it that: