Showing results by narrator "Kate Hood" in All Categories

Tim was a beautiful young man with the mind of a child. Mary Horton was a lonely and bitter middle-aged spinster. They were outcasts in a cruel, unbending world – until their lives were joined and forever altered by the forbidden promise of a very special love.

This House of Grief is a heartbreaking audiobook by one of Australia's most admired authors. Anyone can see the place where the children died. You take the Princes Highway past Geelong, and keep going west in the direction of Colac. Late in August 2006, soon after I had watched a magistrate commit Robert Farquharson to stand trial before a jury on three charges of murder, I headed out that way on a Sunday morning, across the great volcanic plain.

Blaze exposes the new order of women and power in the cut-throat arena of up-market magazines. The idealistic baby boomers have been pushed aside and it's every woman for herself. An intimate look at four women coping with their private and public lives in the world where scheming and fox cunning seem to beat skill and talent, where sexism and ageism in office politics label women over 30 over the hill. Blaze is the story of women trying to survive, to compete, while maintaining friendships and finding happiness. In this pressure-cooker world, something has to give and for some women it isn't worth the fight.

When English actress Vanessa Forsythe falls in love with Bren Selby, her life changes forever. Leaving behind her London apartment, she becomes mistress of Amaroo Downs, a remote cattle station in Western Australia. Not only does Vanessa have to adjust to a vastly different lifestyle in the outback, she must establish her place in the Selby family.

Kelly is 17. She's a scholarship girl, her dad drinks too much and her mom lives in another city. Her house isn't renovated like those of her friends. But Kelly has one thing her friends are envious of: Phil. Rich, devoted, handsome Phil. And it looks like their future together is all mapped out. Then, on a hot afternoon in a dingy little pizza shop, Kelly meets Con. He's unlike anyone she's ever known before.

He straightened his spine, raised his head, and extended his gun arm towards me in a slow, vertical arc. I saw then what he was, and stood still in front of him, for he was here on business. He was a small, serious, stone-eyed angel of mercy. Janet is a skeptic, a journalist; Maxine revels in New Age fantasies; and Ray, a drifter, is a born-again Christian. The common ground is the house they share. But their fragile domestic balance is about to explode amid the smashing of ukeleles, the unexpected ascension of an angel and a sudden shower of jonquils.

A footloose city slicker who couldn′t tell a bull from a cow was hardly the ideal candidate to answer an ad for a governess on a Mackay cattle station. But Alice Greenup was game for anything, until she was bowled over by a handsome young jackeroo with a devastating smile. It was the start of a whole new way of life as Alice gave up her city life to embrace the bush and all that came with it: horses, cattle, the obsession with rain - and the correct way to wear a hat.

In Craft for a Dry Lake, Kim Mahood embarks on an extraordinary journey to her heartland - the outback of her youth. Compelled to revisit the haunts of her childhood by the tragic death of her father, Kim seeks to lay his ghost to rest, but instead finds herself faced with many of her own. Her adventures are interwoven with the echoes of childhood memories and peopled by an intriguing cast of outback characters.

As Laura Beaumont struggles with the loss of love, her other life's passion comes under threat: someone is trying to sabotage Ashworths, the exclusive department store she set up. Is the company about to be taken over? The timing is bad for the Beaumont family because Laura's health is declining and they desperately need to find a successor to the business.

It's the psychedelic 70s and social conventions are being challenged. When Catherine Moreland from rural Australia goes on her first trip abroad, a handsome American naval officer sweeps her off her feet and she goes to live in beautiful, romantic Hawaii with her new husband. At first, the magic and loveliness of the Islands lead Catherine to believe she is living in paradise.

Continuing the history of the Irish Darcys begun in Missus and continued in The Harp in the South, this third novel of the trilogy re-acquaints listeners with the vicissitudes of slum life in a Sydney suburb. An unforgettable family and a cast of unforgettable characters enliven a story that is sometimes tragic, but often humourous, in a time of poverty and destitution, hope and promise.

Great Pioneer Women of the Outback profiles 10 female pioneers, from Jeannie Gunn, author of We of the Never Never, to equally remarkable but lesser known women, such as Emma Withnell in Western Australia and Evelyn Maunsell in Queensland. Building on the women's records and her own knowledge of Australian history, Susanna de Vries documents the grit and determination it took to build what many today would consider an extraordinary life.

Juliet's a worrywart, and no wonder! Her little sister, Oaf, follows her around taking notes and singing 'The Irritating Song' all day long. Her parents are always arguing about Dad's junk. Nana's so tired of craft lessons that she starts barbecuing things in the middle of the night. And Juliet's friends, Lindsay and Gemma, are competing to see which of them is Juliet's best friend. Juliet can't fit in any more worries!

A compelling story of three unforgettable young women, in the tradition of Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants. This is a wonderfully passionate and absorbing novel exploring the lives of three very different girls in their first year out of school, who share an inner city house.

Simone Fleurier is wrenched from her home on a Provencal lavender farm at the age of 14 after the accidental death of her father. Forced to become a maid at the boarding house of her Aunt Augustine in Marseilles, Simone's life is hard and impoverished. But one of her aunt's boarders, the beautiful Camille Casal, a star at the local music hall, gives Simone a dream: that one day she too will be a famous singer and dancer.

Missus takes us behind the lives of Hughie and Mumma, out of the gritty realism of inner city slum life and into the past of the stations,the bush and the country towns. We meet them as they were in the early 1920s, drifter Hugh Darcy, the unwilling hero who sweeps the dreamily innocent Margaret Kilker off her feet.

A young Australian woman leaves Sydney for a new world, Guyana, South America. Captivated by Guyana's wild, unspoiled beauty, Madison Wright joins the native Amerindians struggling to preserve their culture against corporate exploitation. But her new-found commitment soon plunges Madison into a mire of murder, drug smuggling and political corruption, and finally, an unexpected love that pits her heart against her beliefs.

Monsoon is a journey into the hearts and memories of those caught in a certain time in a particular place. Sandy Donaldson has been working for a volunteer organisation in Vietnam for the past four years. As her contract nears its end, she is reluctant to leave so she invites her oldest friend, Anna, to come for a holiday and discover its beautiful tourist destinations. Both girls have unexplored links to this country.

It's 1963 and Sally Mitchell, the daughter of a New Zealand sheep farmer, is on her way to England. On a stop-over in Sydney, she impulsively takes a job as a governess at Barra Creek, and finds herself in a different world: one dominated by John Monroe and his strict and proper wife, Lorna. Here, Sally's life changes forever. Only Lorna knows the truth of a mysterious death and a terrible injustice. Now, in 2003, she searches for the former governess to and share her horrific secret.

The Bay is a beautiful and peaceful town on the Australian east coast; a melting pot of city escapees, alternative lifestylers, feral dropouts, lost souls, backpackers, and men and women in search of love and a new sense of identity. When Sydney corporate wife Holly Jamieson turns 45 she shocks her husband by buying an old house in The Bay with plans to transform it into a charming B & B. What began as a gesture of independence changes her life.