Showing results by narrator "Humphrey Bower" in All Categories

Jessica is based on the inspiring true story of a young girl's fight for justice against tremendous odds. A tomboy, Jessica is the pride of her father, as they work together on the struggling family farm. One quiet day, the peace of the bush is devastated by a terrible murder. Only Jessica is able to save the killer from the lynch mob: but will justice prevail in the courts? Nine months later, a baby is born...with Jessica determined to guard the secret of the father's identity.

Prentisstown isn't like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise. Just a month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd and his dog, Manchee - whose thoughts Todd can hear, too, whether he wants to or not - stumble upon an area of complete silence. They find that in a town where privacy is impossible, something terrible has been hidden - a secret so awful that Todd and Manchee must run for their lives. But how do you escape when your pursuers can hear your every thought?

Hurtle Duffield, a painter, is incapable of loving anything except what he paints. The men and women who court him during his long life are, above all, the victims of his art. He is the vivisector, dissecting their weaknesses with cruel precision: his sister's deformity, a grocer's moonlight indiscretion and the passionate illusions of his mistress, Hero Pavloussi.

In 1980 Thomas Keneally walked into a shop in Beverley Hills to buy a briefcase, an impulse that was to change his life. For the owner, Leopold Pfefferberg, had a story he'd been trying to interest writers and Hollywood in for years. It was the story of Oskar Schindler. In Searching for Schindler, Keneally describes how he went on to discover the full, extraordinary tale of the Aryan who risked his life to save hundreds of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, interviewing many of the survivors around the world.

Widely regarded as a classic in Australian literature, Richard Flanagan's debut novel takes us on a swirling journey into Tasmania's past and our river guide's own violent ancestral secrets. Beneath a waterfall on the Franklin, Aljaz Cosini, river guide, lies drowning. Beset by visions at once horrible and fabulous, he relives not just his own life but that of his family and forebears.

Here is the story of two families, branches of the Solomons, transported to an alien land. Both branches eventually grow rich and powerful. But through three generations, the families never, for one moment, relinquish their hatred for each other. This novel is also the story of Australia, from its beginnings to its coming of age as a nation.

Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor's new order. But what secrets are hiding just outside of town? And where is Viola? Is she even still alive? And who are the mysterious Answer? And then, one day, the bombs begin to explode....

The controller stood back. 'Right,' he said. 'Spin 'em!' The man flipped the piece of wood and the coins spun up into the air above his head and dropped down on to the carpet. There was silence. Wake in Fright tells the tale of John Grant's journey into an alcoholic, sexual and spiritual nightmare. It is the original and the greatest outback horror story. Bundanyabba and its citizens will forever haunt its listeners.

After a lifetime of research and debate on Australian and international history, Geoffrey Blainey is well-placed to introduce us to the people who have played a part and to guide us through the events which have created the Australian identity: the mania for spectator sport, the suspicion of the tall poppy, the rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, Sydney and Melbourne, new and old homelands, the conflicts of war abroad and race at home, the importance of technology, the recognition of our Aboriginal past and Native Title.

This is Bryce Courtenay's moving tribute to his son, Damon, a hemophiliac who died from medically acquired AIDS on April 1, 1991, at the age of 24. April Fool's Day is controversial, painful and heartbreaking, yet has a gentle humor. It is also life-affirming, and, above all, a testimony to the incredible regenerative strength of love: how when we confront our worst, we can become our best. This tragic yet uplifting story will change the way you think.

Considered one of the all-time great American works of fiction, Fitzgerald’s glorious yet ultimately tragic social satire on the Jazz Age encapsulates the exuberance, energy and decadence of an era. After the Great War, the mysterious Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, pursues wealth, riches and the lady he lost to another man with stoic determination. He buys a mansion across from her house and throws lavish parties to entice her. When Gatsby finally does reunite with Daisy Buchanan, tragic events are set in motion.

Todd Hewitt lives in a town unlike other towns. There are no women, and everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise. But one day Todd meets someone who should exist—a girl. Even in a town where privacy is impossible, there is a secret so terrible, the pair must run for their lives. But how do you escape when your pursuers can hear your every thought?

It's the 1960s and the world of advertising is coming alive - and it's an exciting world to be part of. Simon Wong, a Chinese-Australian and promising young advertising executive, is sent to Singapore to establish an office. He finds himself thrust into an environment that is at once strangely familiar and profoundly different; one where the rules that govern behaviour - both in business and in personal life - differ wildly from what he is used to. And where all is not what it appears to be.

A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see, standing before him, the most extraordinary little fellow. "Please," asks the stranger, "draw me a sheep." And the pilot realizes that when life's events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to succumb to their mysteries. He pulls out pencil and paper... And thus begins this wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of what is really important in life, has changed forever the world for its readers.

The War Collection: Essential Battlefield Classics is a collection of 13 works of fiction, philosophy, military strategy, and epic poetry, read by esteemed cast of award-winning narrators. Included here are novels from Ernest Hemingway; military strategy from Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz; essays from Orwell; philosophy from Freud, and epic poetry from Homer, amongst much more.

We spend most of our waking lives at work - in occupations often chosen by our unthinking 16-year-old selves. And yet we rarely ask ourselves how we got there or what it might mean for us. Equally intrigued by work's pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton heads into the office, the factory, the fishing fleet, and the logistics centre, ears and eyes open to the beauty, interest, and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace. Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? And why do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also the planet?

Arthur and Waldo Brown are twins and destined never to grow apart. They share everything, except their views of things. This is the story of two people living one life. Arthur and Waldo Brown were born twins and destined never to to grow away from each other. They spent their childhood together. Their youth together. Middle age together. Retirement together. They even shared the same girl. They shared everything - except their view of things. Waldo, with his intelligence, saw everything and understood little. Arthur was the fool who didn't bother to look. He understood.

The new novel from the internationally acclaimed, best-selling writer Richard Flanagan.A young Aboriginal girl, Mathinna, is adopted by the most celebrated explorer of the age, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, to show that the savage can be civilised. When Sir John disappears while looking for the fabled Northwest Passage, Lady Jane turns to the great novelist Charles Dickens for help.

Born and raised in a poor, working-class family in Toronto, Jack Spayd is the son of an unhappy marriage. After being taken under the wing of "Miss Frostbite", the owner of a local jazz club, Jack becomes a gifted musician, playing piano and harmonica. Fame and the allure of gambling takes him to Vegas, and prospects of fortune take him to the Belgian Congo, where he's heard it's possible to earn big money working in the most dangerous parts of the local copper mines.

When foreign correspondent Tony Maniaty goes back to Timor for the first time since he fled for his life 30 years before, he discovers a land of ghosts - some he left behind, and some he's brought with him. He's there to watch five young actors play out the last days of five friends of his - men who were murdered by the Indonesian army in one of the most infamous incidents (and cover-ups) in Australian foreign affairs.