Showing results by narrator "James Saunders" in All Categories

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. Since his dad literally did a vanishing act (he's a magician), Jay Patel has turned detective, and now, with the help of his granddad, he's on the case of a dead body that vanished from the library of his Glasgow primary school. But what do diamonds, blackmail, and dodgy launderettes have to do with it?

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.

We're used to feeling stressed, rushed and overwhelmed. At work and at home, there are endless calls on our attention and time. We're constantly playing catch-up. But if we want to perform optimally and reach our full potential, we must learn to pause and create space in even the busiest day. Informed by over a decade of hands-on experience at the most senior levels of business, this audiobook shows how to push back against the tide and create space in your life to think, relate and act on a deeper level.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. Jay is investigating a murder in a fancy country hotel where the cause of death appears to be – soup! While Jay is surrounded by suspects, Grandad has his own informants – the ghosts haunting the hotel. But will they catch the killer before it's too ladle?

As a boy living in a tribe in what is now South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Ayik Chut Deng was a member of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). During his time as a child soldier, he witnessed unspeakable violence and was regularly tortured by older boys. At age 19, he and his family escaped the conflict in Sudan and resettled in Toowoomba, Australia. But adjusting to his new life in small-town Queensland was more difficult than he anticipated.

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.

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.

Popular culture has mythologised the Dunera Boys–but who were the real men who sailed on the infamous ship, and how did the voyage transform their lives? Art historian Tonia Eckfeld draws on a deeply personal history to tell the story of her father and her uncle, Jewish refugees whose lives were shaped indelibly by their wartime experiences and internment–each to very different outcomes.

Doug Heywood was a teenager when he discovered, in a shoebox hidden in a wardrobe, hundreds of letters, all written by his father, Scott Heywood. As a POW on the infamous Burma Railway, Scott wrote almost daily to his young wife, Margery, on scraps of paper that had to be hidden from guards. These letters tell of an enduring love – and also, intriguingly, of how Scott dealt with the most brutally testing circumstances.