2026 Best True Debut Award

Realising they are being sucked into a life of Sunday afternoons mowing the lawn a young Australian couple decide to backpack the length of Africa. The true story of an old-style journey from the 1990s about animals, love, and adventure… and the lengths a person will go to for the sake of an idea…

Blue Lights, Dark Mind - A powerful true story of trauma, determination, and the journey to rebuild a life beyond the uniform.

In the post-COVID era, a nineteen-year-old law student clings to denial and substances to ignore her crashing academic performance, and the notion that this bizarre party across the street might have noticed her.

A near–high school failure finds his calling as a hospital chaplain, guiding others through death and grief while confronting his own past—revealing how a flawed, uncertain man grows into purpose through hard-won self-awareness.

What happens when a young, hopeful teacher lands in a remote Iñuit village, with a culture vastly different from her own? “Teaching in the Dark” is a heartfelt, humorous, and poignant story of a teacher challenged with no curriculum, no plumbing, and a lot of power outages, but who ultimately learns...

Born at the dawn of the Second World War, a German girl comes of age under Nazism and communism, her quest for freedom carrying her from behind the Iron Curtain to the shores of California.

A notorious gunfighter protects the sole survivor of a brutal killer, but when the law fails, her courage pushes him to choose between legal justice and the justice no one else can deliver.

We express how our unique travel style--house sitting for months at a time--has changed our perception of ourselves and the world.

Faint, distant, a warbling fragment of what sounded like a 1960s rock song, distorted as if drifting through miles of jungle air. The collector frowned. That was impossible. The US Vietnam War radio's frequencies were long obsolete. It shouldn't be able to receive modern transmissions—if any at all...

Gripped by her grandmother Lucy Ker’s dramatic stories of her life in China from the Boxer Rebellion to the deposing of the Last Emperor, Kate follows in her footsteps a century later.

Professional woman is diagnosed as neurodivergent and then starts work in a chaotic law firm. She encounters comical, enlightening and tragic characters, while learning about her ‘new’ disabilities in an unconducive environment. Prepare to experience a gamut of emotions from start to finish.