Despite the modern day emphasis on physical appearance, there is an easier way to become a desirable person rather than dieting or buying expensive clothes. Regardless of outer appearance, if people have minds that are fascinating, creative, and exciting—if they are good thinkers—they can be beautiful. The clear, practical instructions in this guide demonstrate how applying lateral and parallel thinking skills to conversation can improve the mind. The greatest impact is made on others through speech, and by learning how to listen, make a point, and maneuver a discussion, anyone can become more imaginative, more engaging, and more beautiful.

Product Description: It is 1942 in the Dutch East Indies, and Nick Duncan is a young Australian butterfly collector in search of a single exotic butterfly. With invading Japanese forces coming closer by the day, Nick falls in love with the beguiling Anna van Heerden...read more

From Bryce Courtenay comes a new novel about Africa. The time is 1939. White South Africa is a deeply divided nation with many of the Afrikaner people fanatically opposed to the English.The world is also on the brink of war and South Africa elects to fight for the Allied cause against Germany. Six-year-old Tom Fitzsaxby finds himself in The Boys Farm, an orphanage in a remote town in the high mountains, where the Afrikaners side fiercely with Hitler's Germany.Tom's English name proves sufficient for him to be ostracised, marking him as an outsider. And so begin some of life's tougher lessons for the small, lonely boy. Like the whitethorn, one of Africa's most enduring plants, Tom learns how to survive in the harsh climate of racial hatred. Then a terrible event sends him on a journey to ensure that justice is done. On the way, his most unexpected discovery is love.Visit brycecourtenay.com

In 1980 Tom Keneally was in Beverley Hills returning from the Sorrento film festival where The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith had been showing. Looking for a new briefcase, Tom meets the Polish-Jewish Leopold Pfefferberg Page aka Poldek and his life for the next few years is taken over by this charismatic and driven man and the story he wants shared. "It's a story for you, I swear," he says to Tom. The story is of course that of 'The all-drinking, all-screwing, all black-marketeering Nazi. But to me he was Jesus Christ, Oskar Schindler". And Poldek shared with Tom the story of SCHINDLER'S ARK which went on to win the Booker Prize and ultimately to become the Oscar award-winning film SCHINDLER'S LIST.Schindler, the ruined Catholic hedonist, had something ambiguous about him that appealled to the ex-seminarian Tom Keneally who still struggled with his own Catholicism and his humanist view of the world. Oskar showed that virtue, regardless of race, creed or religion, emerged where it would. Tom was a small child during WWII and these memories, along with the appeal of Schindler and Poldek's insistence, influenced him to write the book SCHINDLER'S ARK. Oskar and his Jews reduced the Holocaust - an almost untellable story in its scope and devastation - to an understandable human scale. SEARCHING FOR SCHINDLER is very much Tom's journey, he reflects on his early days as a writer with quite a bit of success - but no confidence - and how this book, the people he met, and the film it became, changed his life. From his Sydney home, he tracked down the main player's in Poldek and Schindler's story. Tom and Poldek travelled across the US, Germany, Israel, Austria and Poland interviewing survivors and discovering extraordinary stories. SCHINDLER'S ARK took a huge toll on Tom, and his family, he had never been so overwhelmed by the writing of a story. It forced him to think about Australians and their attitudes to the Holocaust, to think about the Israel / Palestine situation and about families. Not ready to give up the story of Schindler and his Jews after the enormous success of the book, Tom is there for the film adaptation and on set for the filming. Filled with stories of Steven Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes and many other well-known and strong characters SEARCHING FOR SCHINDLER gives Tom Keneally scope to show the wonderful, warm, thinking, compassionate and very funny man that he is.

Brutally kidnapped and separated in childhood, Tommo and Hawk are reunited at the age of 15 in Hobart Town. Together they escape their troubled pasts and set off on a journey into manhood. From whale hunting in the Pacific to the Maori Wars of New Zealand, from the Rocks in Sydney to the miners'' riots at the goldfields, Tommo and Hawk must learn each other''s strengths and weaknesses in order to survive. Along the way, Hawk meets the outrageous Maggie Pye, who brings love and laughter into his life. But the demons of Tommo''s past return to haunt the brothers. With Tommo at his side, Hawk takes on a fight against all odds to save what they cherish most.