Showing results by narrator "Humphrey Bower" in All Categories

It has been two years since the events in Shantaram, and since Lin lost two people he had come to love: his father figure, Khaderbhai, and his soul mate, Karla, married to a handsome Indian media tycoon. Lin returns from a smuggling trip to a city that seems to have changed too much, too soon. Many of his old friends are long gone, the new mafia leadership has become entangled in increasingly violent and dangerous intrigues, and a fabled holy man challenges everything that Lin thought he'd learned about love and life.

A novel of high adventure, great storytelling and moral purpose, based on an extraordinary true story of eight years in the Bombay underworld. In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over in an Indian jail.

Tandia is a child of all Africa: half Indian, half African, beautiful and intelligent, she is only 16 when she is first brutalized by the police. Her fear of the White man leads her to join the Black resistance movement. With her in the fight for justice is the one White man Tandia can trust, the welterweight champion of the world, Peekay. Now he must fight their common enemy in order to save both their lives.

From the author of The Power of One comes an inspiring human drama of three lives brought together and changed forever by the extraordinary events of recent history. Inspired by real events, Bryce Courtenay's new novel tells the story of three people from vastly differing backgrounds. All they have in common is a tough beginning in life.

Brutally kidnapped and separated in childhood, Tommo and Hawk are reunited at the age of 15 in Hobart Town. Together, they escape their troubled pasts and set off on a journey into manhood. From whale hunting in the Pacific to the Maori wars of New Zealand, from the Rocks in Sydney to the miners' riots at the goldfields, Tommo and Hawk must learn each other's strengths and weaknesses in order to survive.

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.

Now published in over 70 languages, this number one international best seller gently offers answers to life's biggest questions as well as a practical process to help you create prosperity, vitality, happiness and inner peace. This is the incredible story of Julian Mantle, a superstar lawyer whose out-of-balance lifestyle leads him to a near-fatal heart attack in a packed courtroom. His collapse brings on a spiritual crisis, forcing him to seek answers to life's most important questions.

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.

The acclaimed best-selling classic of Holocaust literature, winner of the Booker Prize and the inspiration for the classic film Schindler's List. In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. A stunning novel based on the extraordinary true story of German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler, who came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II.

Born in a South Africa divided by racism and hatred, this one small boy will come to lead all the tribes of Africa. Through enduring friendships with Hymie and Gideon, Peekay gains the strength he needs to win out. And in a final conflict with his childhood enemy, the Judge, Peekay will fight to the death for justice.

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.

The Persimmon Tree opens in Indonesia in 1942 on the cusp of Japanese invasion and the evacuation of Batavia (Jakarta) by the Dutch. Seventeen-year-old Nicholas Duncan is on holiday there, in pursuit of an exotic butterfly known as the Magpie Crow. It's an uncertain, dangerous time to be in Indonesia, and Nick's options of getting out are fast dwindling. Amidst the fear and chaos he falls in love with Anna, the beautiful daughter of a Dutch acquaintance, and she nicknames him 'Mr Butterfly'.

In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcements and supplies within eight weeks... Eight months later these heroic, gallant, determined 'Rats of Tobruk' were rescued by the British Navy having held the fort against the might of Rommel's never-before defeated Afrika Corps.

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.

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.

The four fires in this story are passion, religion, warfare, and fire itself. While there are many more fires that drive the human spirit, love being perhaps the brightest flame of all, it is these four that have moulded us most as Australian people. The four fires give us our sense of place and, for better or for worse, shape our national character.

Use the power of creative thinking to become more attractive with a makeover of your mind! It doesn't need a high IQ, or reams of knowledge, or a great personality. All it needs is creativity, imagination and empathy - all techniques that anyone can learn. Here Edward de Bono, world-famous for changing the way people think, shows you in a clear, practical language how to impress people with simple conversational tactics. Want to be irresistable? Then follow de Bono's advice.

Three armies march on New Prentisstown, each one intent on destroying the others. Todd and Viola are caught in the middle, with no chance of escape. As the battles commence, how can they hope to stop the fighting? How can there ever be peace when they’re so hopelessly outnumbered? And if war makes monsters of men, what terrible choices await? But then a third voice breaks into the battle, one bent on revenge …

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.

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?