Showing results by narrator "Humphrey Bower" in All Categories

Snowscape: set shortly after the events of Monsters of Men, this gripping story tells of a scout ship that discovers a monstrous creature lurking in the arctic wastes of the New World’s final frontier. As the crew, including two much loved characters from the trilogy, face up to the monster, sensational new truths about Todd and Viola’s world are revealed.

Rossamund Bookchild has successfully negotiated the treacherous route to High Vesting. But even within the sturdy walls of the great city he is far from safe. For the path to becoming a Lamplighter is fraught with dangers – and not just from the dread monsters who lurk in the wilds. Rossamund will need all his wits to survive his training. And he must watch his back too, for enemies from his past are never far behind.

The year is 1977 and Adrian is nine. He lives with his Gran and his uncle Rory; his best friend is Clinton Tull. He loves to draw and he wants a dog; he's afraid of quicksand, shopping centres, and self-combustion. Adrian watches his suburban world, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not for instance, know why three neighborhood children might set out to buy ice-cream and never come back home.

Thomas Keneally pulls no punches in this powerful novel about the Catholic Church's attempts to cover up cases of child abuse, and a priest who decides help its innocent victims' fight to be heard. Expelled from the archdiocese of Sydney as a young priest for his outspoken views on the Vietnam...

Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for companions, journeys to a remote scrubby patch of land that he has inherited in the Australian hills. When the land is cleared enough for a rudimentary house to be built, Stan brings his new wife, Amy, to the wilderness. Together they struggle to establish a home for themselves and their growing family.

Love, sex, death, family, friendship, betrayal, tenderness, brutality, sacrifice and revelation. This incendiary collection of stories from acclaimed writer Christos Tsiolkas, best-selling author of The Slap and Barracuda, takes you deep into worlds both strange and familiar, and introduces you to characters who will never let you go and situations that will haunt you forever.

Now entering his 67th year, Chris McCool can confidently call himself a member of the Happy Club: he has an attractive and exceedingly accommodating Croatian girlfriend and has been told he bears more than a passing resemblance to Roger Moore. As he looks back on the glory days of his youth, he recalls the swinging 60s of rural Ireland: a decade in which the cool cats sang along to Lulu and drove around in Ford Cortinas, when swinging meant wearing velvet trousers and shirts with frills.

It was 80 years ago, on the publication of The House at Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin said good-bye to Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. Now they are all back in new adventures, for the first time approved by the Trustees of the Pooh Properties. This is a companion volume that truly captures the style of A. A. Milne - a worthy sequel to The House at Pooh Corner and Winnie-the-Pooh.

Rossamund has always dreamed of a career in the Navy, fighting tentacled monsters and rescuing damsels from hook-handed pirates. But fate has chosen him for a different path. He is being sent to train as a Lamplighter – to bring light to the inland roads of the Half-Continent, to shine the way for travellers through lands peopled by outcasts, monsters and worse. But for Rossamund to begin his education, he must first undertake a journey of his own – to the great city of High Vesting.

In 2012 retired South African general Johan Jooste was parachuted into the seemingly unwinnable war against rhino poaching in the Kruger National Park. With poaching spiralling out of control, Jooste was given the mandate to 'go military', to convert Kruger's ranger corps into a para-military force capable of taking the fight to poachers. Aged 60, white, and a veteran of 35 years of military service, Jooste's controversial appointment was immediately met with resentment and hostility by elements of South African National Parks, the police, and even the military he had served with.

From the author of the classic novel Wake in Fright comes a chillingly brilliant short novel that's part Wolf Creek and part Duel. Fear Is the Rider is a nail-biting chase into the outback, towards the devil lurking at its centre. It was quite silent in the scrub. No breeze stirred the leaves and no bird moved, except for the kite hawks wheeling silently, eternally, high in the hot air. She smelt her attacker before she saw him.

A fourth child abduction, an anonymous letter to a mother making a promise - kill yourself and your child will be released - and two women are dead already. Solomon Glass has just survived his own nightmare: a tragedy, an internal investigation and a spell off the force. In his race to uncover the kidnapper, Glass must enter the darkest side of himself.

The Odd Angry Shot is the seminal account of Australian soldiers in the Vietnam War. Brief and bracing, tragic yet darkly funny, the novel is an award-winning commentary on Vietnam, following a close-knit group of knockabout SAS fighters: their friendships, homesickness and fears; and their practical jokes, drinking and fighting. Chronicling their experiences over one year, we learn that their enemy is not just the Vietcong, but their superiors, the mud and torrential rain, and boredom.

Spanning three generations‚ Capricornia tells the story of Australia's North. It is a story of whites and Aborigines and Asians‚ of chance relationships that can form bonds for life‚ of dispossession‚ murder and betrayal. In 1904 the brothers Oscar and Mark Shillingsworth‚ clad in serge suits and bowler hats‚ arrive in Port Zodiac on the coast of Capricornia. They are clerks who have come from the South to join the Capricornian Government Service.

Born in Shanghai and shipped to England as a child, Peter Whitehead then made his way to Australia, solo, at the age of 13 in 1938, in order to save his family money. Alone and working in near slave-like conditions as a farm labourer, Whitehead learned the art of breaking wild horses and so began a lifelong love affair with animals. After wartime service as a horse breaker for the army and a gunner on a Liberator bomber, Whitehead headed to Africa and had a richly varied career as an agricultural officer, national parks ranger, big game hunter, animal wrangler and rancher.

When Horace the Elephant turns 11 he celebrates in grand style by inviting his other animal friends to a splendid party. There are games, fine music and the promise of a magnificent feast to come. But little does Horace know that when the time comes for the birthday banquet, a most curious mystery will be revealed.

Two branches of the McAllister family lead very different lives on cattle stations in Central Australia. Rob, a stickler for correctness, manages a wealthy, company-owned property while his easygoing brother Sandy struggles to support his wife and son on an impoverished leasehold. When tragedy throws the families together, ultimately driving them even further apart, it's Sandy's young son Jim who suffers the most.

An Afghan refugee’s extraordinary journey - from his early life as a shepherd boy in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, to his forced exile after being captured and tortured by the Taliban, to incarceration in an Australian detention centre...and finally, to freedom. This moving and poignant work gives the listener a rare insight into the contented ‘milk and honey’ life of a simple Afghan family before the civil war ripped their country apart. The lives and centuries-old livelihood of farmers, craftsmen and small business owners were destroyed in just weeks and months.

The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea allows us a precious glimpse into a simpler kind of childhood in a country that no longer exists. In 1941, Rob Coram is six. The war feels far removed from his world of aunties and cousins and the beautiful, dry landscape of Geraldton in Western Australia. But when his older favourite cousin, Rick, leaves to join the army, the war takes a step closer. When Rick returns from the war several years later, he has changed, and Rob feels betrayed.

The world's toughest car race. Twenty-one days of searing heat and rock-hard desert tracks; of blowouts and breakdowns; of subterfuge and sabotage. Ten thousand miles of dust and glory. Driving at breakneck speed over Australia's roughest roads and through the most appalling conditions imaginable, six competitors break free from the pack and fight for the lead, gradually finding themselves entangled in a web of deceit, betrayal and danger. Dust and Glory is best-selling author Evan Green's stirring account of the most grueling race of them all.