Showing results by narrator "Abbe Holmes" in All Categories

Melbourne's gangland war was an era dominated by murders, stings, hits, drug busts, corruption and greed - inspiring best-selling books and even a popular TV series, Underbelly. It took the police a decade to curtail the violence and bring down criminal kingpins Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel, and their accomplices.

Early 1800s. Thomasina Trelora is on her way to the colonies. Her fate: to be married to a clergyman she's never met. As the Australian coastline comes into view a storm wrecks the ship and leaves her lying on the rocks, near death. She's saved by an Aboriginal man who carries her to the door of a grand European house, Willowbrae. Tom is now free to be whoever she wants to be, and a whole new life opens up to her. But as she's drawn deeper into the intriguing life of this grand estate, she discovers that things aren't quite as they seem.

Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation...until one night her granddaughter rows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept to herself - with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl - unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these.

When Winona Dalloway begins her day—in the peaceful early hours before her children, that ‘tiny tornado of little hands and feet', wake up—she doesn't know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed. On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices—a mind both wild and precise. And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …

Lenny Spinx is the sister of a giant. Her little brother, Davey, has a rare form of gigantism that puzzles his doctors and astounds his friends, neighbours and teachers. Together, Lenny and Davey escape to a more wondrous reality by obsessing over the entries in their monthly instalment of Burrell’s Build-It-at-Home Encyclopedia set. They lose themselves in passages about abominable snowmen, jellyfish, peregrine falcons and quicksand. Lenny vows to become a beetle expert, while Davey decides he will run away to Canada and build a log cabin.

Pip never wants to be at home nowadays. There’s no laughter anymore, and her mum isn’t happy. She spends most of her time alone, daydreaming and digging for treasure by the dirty creek. But one night, Pip finds something incredible - a dragon. Tiny, possibly dying, but definitely a dragon. She quickly realises that dragons don’t come with instructions - what do you feed a dragon? Where could it have come from? And how can Pip cope with the enormous changes this creature will bring into her life?

Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Shortland, on the outskirts of Newcastle, New South Wales. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' highs schools: Glen to Marist Brothers and Steven to St Pius X. Both did well: Steven became a journalist, Glen a priest. But when Glen discovered another priest was sexually abusing boys, he reported the offending to police, breaking Canon Law and his vows to the Catholic 'brotherhood' in the process.

Australian journalist Juliet Rieden grew up in England in the 1960s and 70s always sensing that her family was different in some way. She longed to have relatives and knew precious little about her Czech father's childhood as a refugee. On the night before Juliet's father died, in 2006, Juliet's father suddenly looked up and said: 'The plane is in the hangar.' In the years after his death, Juliet comes to truly understand the significance of these words. On a trip to Prague she is shocked to see the Rieden name written many times over on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue memorial.

Indulged and wealthy Kat Fitzhubert is sold in an arranged marriage to a colony across the world. Lady Viola Montefiore is the dark-skinned changeling of a ducal family, kept hidden and then shipped away. Titania Boot is as broad as a carthorse and as useful. On the long sea voyage from their homeland of England, these three women are fast bonded in an unlikely friendship.

When Melbourne lawyer Nathan Smithson takes on the case of mad, wealthy Edward Fonçeca's inheritance trial against his ruthless brother in 1902, he must unearth long-buried family secrets to have any chance of winning. Brazil, 1852: François, the Count de Castelnau and French Consul to Bahia falls dangerously ill on a naturalist expedition and is delivered by a Tupi Indian to the Fonçeca household.

When Winona Dalloway begins her day—in the peaceful early hours before her children, that ‘tiny tornado of little hands and feet', wake up—she doesn't know that by the end of it, everything in her world will have changed. On the outside, Winona is a seemingly unremarkable young mother: unobtrusive, quietly going about her tasks. But within is a vivid, chaotic self, teeming with voices—a mind both wild and precise. And meanwhile, a storm is brewing …

Alice had not expected to spend most of the twenty-first century writing about Leonard Woolf. When she stood on Morell Bridge watching fireworks explode from the rooftops of Melbourne at the start of a new millennium, she had only two thoughts. One was: the fireworks are better in Sydney. The other was: is Y2K going to be a thing? Y2K was not a thing. But there were worse disasters to come: Environmental collapse. The return of fascism. Wars. A sexual reckoning. A plague.

Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Shortland, New South Wales. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' highs schools. Both did well: Steven became a journalist; Glen a priest. But when Glen discovered another priest was sexually abusing boys, he reported the offending to police. Just weeks before he was due to give evidence at a key trial against the highest cleric to ever be charged with covering up child abuse, Father Glen Walsh was dead.

Following the tragic early death of her sister, Maddie, Kitty is forced into a hasty marriage of convenience to Maddie’s husband, Ted. She has also just lost the only man she has ever loved. Can she make a new life from the ashes of all she has lost? Kitty’s sons, Edward and James, are as different as they could be. Edward, the eldest, finds only unhappiness in love and escapes to war to forget the past, while James’ enduring love for his childhood sweetheart stops him from embracing the future.

Pip never wants to be at home nowadays. There’s no laughter anymore and her mum isn’t happy. She spends most of her time alone, daydreaming and digging for treasure by the dirty creek. But one night, Pip finds something incredible - a dragon. Tiny, possibly dying, but definitely a dragon. She quickly realises that dragons don’t come with instructions - what do you feed a dragon? Where could it have come from? And how can Pip cope with the enormous changes this creature will bring into her life?

Robyn Ayres works as the camp caretaker on Finch Island, a former leper colony off the coast of Queensland. Her current clients are a group of ex-military men who run a tough-love program for troubled teens. The latest crop looks like the usual mix of bad boys and sad boys. Then Robyn takes a second look at a kid called Darren. Last time she saw him, his name was Aaron and Robyn was his primary school teacher. And she was somehow at the centre of a vicious small-town custody battle involving his terrifying grandmother.

For years Kitty Hawke has lived alone on Wolfe Island, witness to the island’s erosion and clinging to the ghosts of her past. Her work as a sculptor and her wolfdog Girl are enough. News of mainland turmoil is as distant as myth until refugees from that world arrive: her granddaughter Cat, and Luis and Alejandra, a brother and sister escaping persecution. When threats from the mainland draw closer, they are forced to flee for their lives. They travel north through winter, a journey during which Kitty must decide what she will do to protect the people she loves.

Out of the Silence is the stunning tale of three women from very different worlds: Maggie Heffernan, a spirited working-class country girl, Elizabeth Hamilton, whose own disappointment in love has served only to strengthen her humanity and the remarkable Vida Goldstein, the suffragist who was to become the first woman to stand for Parliament. When Maggie's life descends into darkness after a terrible betrayal, the three women's lives collide.

Robyn Ayres works as the camp caretaker on Finch Island, a former leper colony off the coast of Queensland. Her current clients are a group of ex-military men who run a tough-love program for troubled teens. The latest crop looks like the usual mix of bad boys and sad boys. Then Robyn takes a second look at a kid called Darren. Last time she saw him his name was Aaron, and Robyn was his primary school teacher. And she was somehow at the centre of a vicious small-town custody battle involving his terrifying grandmother.