Showing results by narrator "Nicholas Osmond" in All Categories

Diverse and moving, these six outstanding stories are meditations on grief and loss, love, communication and loneliness. Each one will take the reader on a brief yet unforgettable journey into private worlds and unexpected corners of the human heart.

Mark Webber was at the centre of one of the most captivating chapters in the history of Formula One. In 2010, while racing for Red Bull, he and his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, went head to head for the World Championship. There could be only one winner. Since retiring from Formula One, Mark has concentrated on endurance racing, including the legendary Le Mans 24-hour race.

Diverse and moving, these six outstanding stories are meditations on grief and loss, love, communication and loneliness.  Each one will take the reader on a brief yet unforgettable journey into private worlds and unexpected corners of the human heart. The shortlisted stories have all been chosen for this year's Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award - the world's richest and most prestigious prize for a single short story, dubbed the 'equivalent of the Man Booker for the short story' by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Matt Abbott, head ranger at beautiful Binburra National Park, is a man with something to hide. He confides his secret to nobody, not even his wife, Penny. The deception gnaws away at their marriage. Matt's father, timber and mining magnate Fraser Abbott, stands for everything Matt hates. Son disappoints father; father disappoints son - this is their well-worn template. But Fraser seems suddenly determined to repair the rift between them at any cost, and Matt will discover that secrets run in the family. 

It’s 1970, and young Annette Cooley is part of a small team working on an archaeological dig on the New South Wales south coast - a site that appears to prove that Aboriginal societies in the late Holocene were becoming less nomadic, even sedentary. The discovery is thrilling in its significance, and the atmosphere in the group is one of charged excitement. The team is led by a husband-and-wife pair, stars in their field, Aled Wray and Marilyn Herr, and working on their sites promises to be the making of Annette as an archaeologist. 

After enduring months of extreme drought on their modest freehold, farming couple Dimple and Ruthie face uncertain times on more than one front. Ruthie receives the news every woman dreads. Meanwhile, Wally Oliver, a wealthy landowner, appears on the local radio station warning small farmers that they are doomed, and the sooner they leave the land to large operators like him, the better. Bracing for a fight on all fronts, Dimple and Ruthie decide to take a road trip to confront Oliver. Along the way, not only is their resolve tested, but their relationship as well. 

After a lifetime of bad decisions, PI Caleb Zelic is finally making good ones. He's in therapy, his business is recovering and his relationship with his estranged wife, Kat, who is pregnant after a devastating history of miscarriages, is on the mend after heading for divorce. However, life has other plans in store for him. Soon Caleb is drawn into the tangled world of his troubled ex-partner Frankie, whose addictions had her working with criminals and endangering Kat - and this time their pairing leads to a confrontation with the cops. 

Tasmania, 1929: 10-year-old-twins Tom and Harry Abbott are orphaned by a tragedy that shocks Hobart society. They find sanctuary with their reclusive grandmother, growing up in the remote and rugged Binburra ranges - a place where kind-hearted Tom discovers a love of the wild, Harry nurses a growing resentment towards his brother, and where the mountains hold secrets that will transform both their lives. The chaos of World War II divides the brothers, and their passions for two very different women fuel a deadly rivalry. 

Young Luke Tyler has everything going for him: brains, looks and a larrikin charm that turns heads. The future appears bright, until he defends his sister from the powerful Sir Henry Abbott. His reward is 15 years hard labour on a prison farm in Tasmania’s remote highlands. Luke escapes, finding sanctuary with a local philanthropist, Daniel Campbell, and starting a forbidden love affair with Daniel’s daughter, Belle. But when Luke is betrayed, he must flee or be hanged. 

In the rural Tasmanian town of Dunton, the body of a former headmistress of a children's home is discovered, revealing a tortured life and death. Detective Jake Hunter, newly arrived, searches for her killer among past residents of the home. He unearths pain, secrets and broken adults. Pushing aside memories of his own treacherous past, Jake focuses all his energy on the investigation. Why are some of the children untraceable? What caused such damage among the survivors? 

Dan Ireland, a work-weary police crash investigator still hell-bent on punishing himself for his misspent youth, has ample justifications for not going home to Calingarry Crossing for the school reunion, but one very good reason why he should...Maggie Lindeman. Maggie is back in Calingarry Crossing trying to sell the family pub, while also dealing with a restless 17-year-old son, a father with dementia, a fame-obsessed musician husband back in the city and a dwindling bank account. The last thing she needs is a surprise houseguest for the summer. 

With DS Manolis on leave in Greece, Senior Constable Sparrow receives a phone call from a man who wants to turn himself in. Bob is sixty years old, confined to a Perth nursing home. But thirty years ago, he killed a man in the remote northern Kimberley mining region. He offers to show Sparrow where the body is, but there's a catch: Sparrow must travel north with him under the guise of being his carer.

In this mosaic horror/crime novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American Southwest. A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him toward final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos. A boy joins corpse destroyers to seek vengeance for the death of his father. These stories intertwine with those of a vengeful spirit and a hungry creature to paint a timely, compelling pulpy portrait of revenge, family, and hope.

Up-and-coming junior minister Gregory Buchanan has had a portrait painted of himself by the acclaimed artist Sophie White - a painting she intends to enter in this year's Archibald Prize. Until then, Gregory has hung it in pride of place on his dining-room wall. It's a life-sized standing portrait, practically photographic in nature. And it's a nude. His wife will be home soon and he thinks the painting will be a pleasant surprise. Even more surprising will be an unexpected accumulation of guests.

US exchange student Hieronymus Beck is Professor Jack Griffen's biggest fan. Why else would he inveigle himself into the English Literature course that Jack is running; or devote so much time to chatting with Jack after hours about the anatomy of crime fiction, the roles of heroes and villains, and his favourite true-crime book of all time, In Cold Blood? But everything changes when Jack Griffen picks up a list of five templates for murder that has been written by Beck.