Showing results by narrator "James Saunders" in All Categories

Belle Gibson convinced the world she had healed herself from terminal brain cancer with a healthy diet. She built a global business based upon her claims. There was just one problem: she'd never had cancer. In 2015, journalists uncovered the truth: this hero of the wellness world, with over 200,000 followers, international book deals and a best-selling smartphone app, was a fraud.

Oliphant's brilliance was not limited to atomic science, he was also central to the development of radar, which saved Britain from Nazi invasion. After the war, Oliphant's push against US nuclear dominance drew suspicion from the CIA. Based on his interviews with Oliphant, bestselling author Perry traces his life from his humble beginnings in Adelaide, his early triumphs alongside Sir Ernest Rutherford, and his breakthrough work on radar and the Manhattan Project, through to his key role in establishing the Australian National University and his controversial governorship of South Australia.

When we talk about racism, we often mean personal prejudice or institutional biases. Climate change doesn’t work that way. It is structurally racist, disproportionately caused by majority white people in majority white countries, with the damage unleashed overwhelmingly on people of colour. The climate crisis reflects and reinforces racial injustices. Author and environmental activist Jeremy Williams takes us on a short, urgent journey across the globe - from Kenya to India, the USA to Australia - to understand how white privilege and climate change overlap.

A riveting account of the hidden war in the mountains and cities of the world's most dangerous conflict and the comradeship between man and dog that has saved numerous lives. In Afghanistan, sometimes all that stands between coalition troops and death or serious injury is a dog. Highly trained dogs and their handlers search for improvised explosive devices or hidden weapons out on patrol with combat troops. It's a perilous job, often putting them right in the firing line and making them high-priority targets for the Taliban insurgents they're fighting.

At the Australian war crimes trials that followed World War II, one prosecution witness stood out: Warrant Officer Bill Sticpewich. During his three years in the infamous Sandakan POW camp, Sticpewich had seen hundreds of fellow prisoners die of starvation, sickness and overwork. Of more than 2400 Allied prisoners at Sandakan at the start of 1945, only six survived. It was Sticpewich's meticulous evidence that sent Sandakan's commandant and his murderous henchmen to the gallows. But to his fellow prisoners Sticpewich was not a war hero.

Joel Selwood’s remarkable leadership is well-known across AFL football. Selwood will not only go down in history as an icon of the game – a record breaker – but also as a selfless leader who supported his team through one of the club’s most successful periods in its history. After Selwood was made captain of the team in 2012, Geelong made the finals in all but one season, playing in seven preliminary finals and two Grand Finals – culminating in Geelong’s tenth premiership in 2022. Now, for the first time, Selwood tells his story in his own words.

In a world ruined by global warming, paranoid governments will do anything to crush dissent. Irith Hardey, a young gene researcher, is thrown onto the streets and, with nothing but the clothes on her back, fights to survive in a predatory world. Caught up in a battle between Security and a cabal of rebels, Irith has no choice but to help the rebels' assault on a secret data centre deep below London. They steal files containing the code for a deadly terminator virus, but no one can decipher it.

Sex workers in 19th-century Melbourne were judged morally corrupt by the respectable world around them. But theirs was a thriving trade, with links to the police and political leaders of the day, and the leading brothels were usually managed by women. While today a popular bar and a city lane are famously named after Madame Brussels, the identities of the other ‘flash madams’, the ‘dressed girls’ who worked for them and the hundreds of women who solicited on the streets of the Little Lon district of Melbourne are not remembered.

The world is devastated by catastrophic climate change. You have 100 days to save it.... Half a billion climate refugees are flooding into the West, the global depression is getting worse and democracies are being crushed by the neo-fascist Yellow Armbands. In a desperate attempt to avert catastrophe, the Great Powers embark on the most monumental gamble of all time. But climate scientist Irith Hardey is sure they’ve got it wrong - the US president’s pet scheme isn’t going to save the planet, but ruin it.

An embittered eco-terrorist. A deadly secret. The fate of the world rests on a most unlikely hero. Jemma Hardey dreams of a quiet life and starting a family with her partner, Ryn. Poor fool! Because Ryn’s embittered friend Hercus is planning the ultimate crime: the destruction of western civilisation. And he expects Ryn to help him, for they share a dangerous secret from their student days. A secret that would send them to prison for a long time. Now Ryn has another urgent problem. His work on Antarctic ice sheet melting is showing alarming results and he can’t work out why.

Wannabe detective plus (top-secret) ghost sidekick equals a brilliant team! You'd think a ghost grandad would be a great sidekick for a wannabe detective. Unfortunately, if there was a 'being a good ghost' exam, Jay’s grandad would fail spectacularly - he hates walking through walls, he can't touch anything and he's rubbish at haunting.

This story is inspired the term Ulysses Contract, which is a commitment device that helps us to build and maintain good habits and decisions despite future temptations. In The Ulysses Contract, Michael Kemp uses the Ulysses analogy to warn of the ‘sirens’ that tempt investors to part with their money and demonstrates how to put in place a successful investment plan that embodies discipline, consistency and patience. Armed with this knowledge you will become empowered to make sound investment decisions and obtain your own slice of financial freedom.

When a young Japanese fighter pilot is shot down and captured in the 1942 Darwin bombing, he knows in his heart he should be dead. Duty is heavy as a mountain, death as light as a feather. That’s the Military Code and it means fight to the death, never surrender or you’ll bring a bitter shame on yourself and family. He conceals his true name to protect his family. Suicide is a possibility, but he’s drawn away from his military indoctrination by experiences with ordinary Australians, drawn towards living out his own individuality.

One man's truth. A nation's downfall. Speedbird 117, a Boeing 787 flight to New York, takes off like any other flight from Heathrow. Except this plane will never reach its destination. The cause? Taher, an utterly ruthless terrorist with a score to settle. With the country’s Secret Service on red alert, senior analyst Stephen Holm is given an ultimatum - find Taher, confiscate his devastating surface-to-air missiles and bring him to justice, or witness his nation’s descent into disaster.

When Campbell & Clark, Scottish merchants based in India, dispatched an Indian ship hurriedly renamed the Sydney Cove to the colony of NSW in 1797, they were hoping to make their fortune. The ship's 'speculative' cargo included all kinds of products to entice the new colony's inhabitants, including 7,000 gallons of rum intended to be sold to the Rum Corp. But when the ship went down north of Van Diemen's Land, cargo master William Campbell and 16 other crew members decided to walk the 600 miles to Sydney Town to get help and rescue crew and cargo.

He's the only one who can stop a massacre ... The unputdownable action thriller from Australia's no.1 true crime writer. Riley Jax, convicted murderer. Once a promising engineer in the army, he lost everything in a single night when he killed a man – an act he cannot remember. It's a...

Racer and broadcaster Neil Crompton has had the best seat in the house for the last 40 years of Australian motorsport, an amazing lifetime upgrade to a first-hand, front row seat to see the biggest names, machines and events of this high-speed, high-octane sport. A kid from Ballarat in country...

An old witch is losing her power, her husband is in a living death and a criminal mastermind is dying: what if the immense life force in one very special girl could save them all? It’s the mid-1970s, and when young Lía Munro moves into a big country house in Australia after moving from Hong Kong with her father, Paul, things start to happen that make her question who she is and what she might really be. The old house has ghosts; her father, Paul, has a past that links him to both this rural hideaway and the ancient Italian witch named Adelina Russo who once held sway....

Stories from when life was so bad it was funny. We've all had days when if we didn't laugh, we'd cry. Whether it's a domestic drama, a career cock-up or just a run-of-the-mill disaster, we've all been there - no matter who we are. In this hilarious and moving collection, well-known Australians from all walks of life share their stories as a kind of mass therapy: a feel-good tonic for when the proverbial s--t hits the fan.

The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich. On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a...