Showing results by narrator "Zoe Carides" in All Categories

In the camps during the Second World War, prisoner Magda Hellinger Blau was selected by the SS as a Jewish prison leader and she eventually rises to the senior position of Lagerälteste (Camp Elder). Madga used her proximity to her fellow prisoners and the SS to engage in numerous acts of kindness, bravery and compassion to keep the prisoners alive in frightening and uncertain circumstances. Now, her daughter, Maya Lee, tells the definitive story of her mother, a woman who showed great bravery and compassion when stuck between worlds of authority and imprisonment.

Sydney, 1965: After a chance encounter with a stranger, mild-mannered tea lady Hazel Bates becomes an accidental sleuth, stumbling into a world of ruthless crooks and racketeers in search of a young woman she believes to be in danger. In the meantime, Hazel's job at Empire Fashionwear is in jeopardy. The firm has turned out the same frocks and blouses for the past twenty years and when the mini-skirt bursts onto the scene, it rocks the rag trade to its foundations. War breaks out between departments and it falls to Hazel, the quiet diplomat, to broker peace and save the firm.

Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. A boat means freedom—the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches—a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in a ruthless and distant war, becoming men on the battlefield, while Ned—too young to enlist—roams the land in search of rabbits to shoot, selling their pelts to fund his secret boat ambitions.

Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands to win back his ex-girlfriend, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. Told in seven parts, through the viewpoints of seven different characters Seven Types of Ambiguity is an engrossing psychological thriller and a literary masterpiece.

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading - and forgetting. But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a legendary creature, Ren is inexorably drawn into an impossible mission. As their lives entwine, unravel and erupt - as myth merges with reality - both Ren and the soldier are forced to confront what they regret, what they love and what they fear.

When the Bruny bridge is bombed, UN troubleshooter Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, her mother is fading and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go.

Former social worker Elle Castillo is the host of a popular true-crime podcast that tackles cold cases of missing children in her hometown. After four seasons of successful investigations, Elle decides to tackle her white whale: the Countdown Killer, or TCK. Twenty years ago, TCK established a pattern of taking and ritualistically murdering girls, each a year younger than the last. No one’s ever known why - why he stopped abruptly with his 11-year-old victim, or why he followed the ritual at all.

Welcome back to Zig Zag Lane in the heart of Sydney's rag-trade district, where our intrepid tea ladies, Hazel, Betty and Irene, have their work cut out. Solving a murder, kidnapping and arson case, and outwitting an arch criminal, earned them the respect of a local police officer. Now he needs their assistance to help solve a plot that threatens national security. As if that's not enough, Irene gets a coded message directing her to the spoils of a bank robbery, which sends the tea ladies on a treasure hunt with an unexpected outcome.

Alex Rainford has it all. He's sexy, charismatic and adored by fans the world over. But he is not all he seems. What spectre from the past is driving him ever closer to evil? And who will fall under his spell along the way?

Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. To Ned, a boat means freedom – the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches – a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in a ruthless and distant war, becoming men on the battlefield, while Ned – too young to enlist – roams the land in search of rabbits to shoot, selling their pelts to fund his secret boat ambitions.

In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young Slovakian women were deported to Poland on the second transportation of Jewish people sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The women were told they'd be working at a shoe factory. At Auschwitz the SS soon discovered that by putting Jewish prisoners in charge of the day-to-day running of the accommodation blocks, camp administration and workforces, they could both reduce the number of guards required and deflect the distrust of the prisoner population away from themselves.

Mia and Ben, an Australian couple in their early 30s, have relinquished one dream and embraced another, selling their Sydney flat and purchasing an old yellow house in the picturesque village of Cordes-sur-Ciel in southwest France. They soon meet sophisticated neighbours Dominic and Susannah, a British couple in their 60s who welcome them warmly but whose own relationship is in crisis. Mia and Ben are immediately starstruck and impressed by their lavish hospitality. However, things with Dominic and Susannah are not what they first seem.

1944. Emily Dean is sent to stay with relatives in rural Victoria. With grandmother determined to keep up standards despite the effects of the war; Della, the Bible-quoting cook, and her young and fearless aunt Lydia, who refuses to befriend her, Emily just wants to go home. But things start looking up when she encounters Claudio, the Italian prisoner of war employed as a farm labourer. And then Lydia’s brother, William, unexpectedly returns from the war. Wounded and bitter, he’s rude, traumatised and mostly drunk, yet a passion for literature soon draws them together.

The Life of Houses explores, with a poet's eye for detail, the hidden tensions in one of Australia's establishment families. These tensions come to the surface during a week in summer when Kit's recently divorced mother sends her away to stay with her estranged grandparents, and her unmarried aunt who cares for them, in their old and decaying house by the sea.

Six strangers from across the world converge on the tropical island of Bali to attend a course designed to help them face their fears.

Friendships and romance blossom as the participants are put through a series of challenges designed to test, but fun in the sun suddenly transforms into something far more serious when the unthinkable happens.... Shocking, powerful and utterly gripping, Fearless takes you to the edge and makes you look down.