HarperCollins Media Bites May 2021

12 Rules for Living a Better Life R E V E R E ND B I L L CR EWS He’s been named one of Australia’s 100 most influential people, yet he’s often considered a thorn in the side of his own church. He’s a fierce campaigner against poker machine gambling yet it was the proceeds of a horse race that first established his soup kitchen that now feeds thousands across the city. His Sunday-night radio show is the most widely listened to across the nation, but he often makes the news himself. He is a 75-year-old minister and regularly inspires news article headlines that read: ‘What if we were all like Bill Crews?’ He is the epitome of compassion and often controversial. He is Bill Crews, the charismatic shepherd of Ashfield in Sydney’s inner-west. Operation Pedestal was a crucial relief mission that became an epic, bloody naval battle and a pivotal moment in the Second World War. In 1942, the Luftwaffe had a stranglehold on Malta. In the months of April and May, they dropped more bombs on the island than on London in the entire Blitz. British attempts to bring in supplies and reinforcements were failing with heavy losses, and the people on Malta were closing in on starvation as the Axis attempted to force their surrender. Released: 19/05/21 TPB | 336pp Operation Pedestal MA X HAS T I NGS

Flash Jim K E L R I CHARDS If you wear ‘togs’, tell a ‘yarn’, call someone ‘sly’, or refuse to ‘snitch’ on a friend then you are talking like a convict. These words, and hundreds of others, once left colonial magistrates baffled and police confused. So comprehensible to us today, the flash language of criminals had officers complaining about the need for an interpreter in the colonial court. Luckily, by 1811, that man was at hand. James Hardy Vaux – conman, pickpocket, absconder and thief, born into comfortable circumstances in England – was so drawn to a life of crime he was transported to Australia ... not once, but three times! Vaux’s talents, glibness and audacity were extraordinary, and perceiving an opportunity to ingratiate himself with authorities during his second sentence, he set about writing a dictionary of the criminal slang of the colony, which was recognised for its uniqueness and taken back to England to be published. Kel Richards tells Vaux’s story brilliantly, with the help of Vaux’s own extraordinarily candid memoir of misdeeds – one of the first true-crime memoirs ever published. Kel’s book combines two of his favourite subjects: the inventiveness, humour and origins of Australian English, and our history of fabulous, disreputable characters.

Released: 05/05/21 TPB | 288pp AU $34.99 NZ $36.99 Imprint: HarperCollins

Released: 05/05/21 NSP | 320pp AU $34.99 NZ $36.99 Imprint: HarperCollins

AU $34.99 NZ $39.99 Imprint: HarperCollins

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