Showing results by narrator "Humphrey Bower" in All Categories

Once upon a time that was called 1828, before all the living things on the land and the fishes in the sea were destroyed, there was a man named William Buelow Gould, a convict in Van Dieman's Land who fell in love with a black woman and discovered too late that to love is not safe. Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer, forger, fantasist, was condemned to live in the most brutal penal colony in the British Empire, and there ordered to paint a book of fish. Once upon a time, miraculous things happened....

Nicholas Duncan is a semi-retired shipping magnate who resides in idyllic Beautiful Bay in Indonesia, where he is known as the old patriarch of the islands. He is grieving the loss of his beautiful Eurasian wife, Anna, and is suffering for the first time from disturbing flashbacks to WWII, the scene of their first meeting and early love. His other wartime lover is the striking Marg Hamilton, a powerful and influential political player in Australia who has remained close to Nick.

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.

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.

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?

Mrs. Moses is a small woman with a big heart and enormous courage. The only survivor of a Cossack raid on her village, she takes with her a big cast-iron frying pan, so heavy that she can only sling it over her back. Yet this is no ordinary frying pan, it's The Family Frying Pan, blessed with a Russian soul.

An extraordinary story about a couple’s experience of moving into the remote Australian wilderness. Stan Parker, with only a horse and a dog for company, journeys to a remote patch of land he has inherited in the Australian hills. Once the land is cleared and a rudimentary house built, he brings his wife, Amy, to the wilderness. Together they face lives of joy and sorrow as they struggle against the environment.

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.

Peter Carey's first novel and first Miles Franklin winner, Bliss remains a work ahead of its time. It takes dying during a heart attack for Harry Joy to realise that the life he thought was happy is actually hellish. His wife is a cheat, his kids are a source of shame, his company spruiks carcinogens. While Harry is resuscitated, he will never be the same, for, having seen his own misery, he can no longer deny the injustice around him. But before he can be redeemed, a whole new perdition awaits him in this darkly funny and prescient fable about the idiocy of defiling nature.

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.

Each of us has a place to return to in our minds, a place of clarity and peace, a place to think, to create, to dream. For Bryce Courtenay this place was a waterhole in Africa where he used to escape to as a boy, in search of solitude. One evening, while lingering there, he witnessed the tallest of the great beasts drinking from the waterhole in the moonlight, and was spellbound. Ever since, he drew inspiration from this moment.

Waldo is the competent man of reason – he sees himself as the superior intellect. Arthur, accepted as a half-wit, is the innocent, God's fool, loving and outgoing in a blundering way. As they compete with and care for each other through half a century, their lives are inextricably intertwined – the two sides of man's nature forming a totality.

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.

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.

On a country property a man named Holland lives with his daughter Ellen. Over the years, as she grows into a beautiful young woman, he plants hundreds of different gum trees on his land. When Ellen is nineteen her father announces his decision: she will marry the man who can name all the species of eucalypt, down to the last tree. Suitors emerge from all corners, including the formidable, straight-backed Mr Cave, world expert on the varieties of eucalypt.

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.

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.

Born in a South Africa divided by racism and hatred, little six-year-old Peekay learns that small can beat big. Armed with this knowledge, he resolves to take on the injustices of his country, and sets his heart on becoming the welterweight champion of the world. Peekay starts to take boxing lessons, makes new friends, collects cacti, and plays the piano. Above all, he learns to think with his head and then with his heart. Peekay discovers that nothing can defeat the determination to be true to yourself: This is the power of one.

In this explosive Chaos Walking short story, discover what happened during Viola’s terrifying voyage to the New World. Best listened to immediately after The Knife of Never Letting Go, find out exactly what happened before Viola and Todd’s first meeting and get exciting hints of things still to come in the award-winning and best-selling trilogy.