Böcker av Leigh Straw

In August 1925, Audrey Jacob shot dead her former fiancé, Cyril Gidley, in full view of hundreds of guests at a charity ball in Perth's Government House. When she was arrested, she still held the gun in her hand. It was a open and shut case of wilful murder--that is until Jacob assigned prosecutor Arthur Haynes to her defence. His ability to play the press and the jury for sympathy would lead to a sensational result. Not only did Jacob escape the gallows, she was found not guilty of Gidley's murder. Straw, the author of a number of books about notable Australian female criminals, tells a story that is rich with first-hand newspaper accounts from the day.

Madam Marie Monnier (aka Josie de Bray) owned most of Roe Street from World War I up to the 1940s. But her business prowess was not appreciated by everyone because Madam Monnier reigned over 'Tail-light Alley' - the centre of Perth's brothel district. In the course of her life, Madam Monnier would survive a shooting, and incarceration in a concentration camp. She was just one of many colourful friends and competitors who lived and worked in the notorious precinct. This immensely readable and lively history explores the private world of the madams, brothel keepers and prostitutes who kept the secrets of the city even as they paraded in their petticoats on the verandas of the Ruse de Roe.

In Collie in 1929, a murder-suicide took place. The killer was identified as Andrew Straw. Dressed in war uniform and a slouch hat, a hauntingly familiar face stared out at me from the front page of Truth. Andrew Straw bore a striking resemblance to my husband. I had unearthed an unexpected family story. Of the 330,000 Australian men who enlisted and served in World War I, close to 60,000 never returned home. As much as it is important to commemorate the war dead, it is also imperative that we remember the survivors as they moved into peacetime. Of the 32,000 West Australian men who enlisted, 23,700 returned from the war. These men tried to create a semblance of a civilian life following on from the traumas of war. War receded from immediate view as these men readjusted to civilian life, but its impacts endured. Many returned with disabilities, mental health problems and a lowered sense of self-worth that led some to take their own lives. In this deeply personal account, historian and writer Leigh Straw seeks a better understanding of what soldiers experienced once the fighting stopped. After the War uses the personal struggles of soldiers and their families to increase public understanding of the legacies of World War I in Western Australia and across the nation. The scars of war - mental and physical - can be lifelong for soldiers who serve their country. This is a story of surviving life after war.

The legend of Kate Leigh, Sydney's famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer, has loomed large in every account of Sydney's criminal history from the 1920s to the 1960s. But she has never had a biography of her own. Novelist and historian Leigh Straw teases out the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl made a fortune in eastern Sydney and became a leading underworld figure.