Showing results by narrator "Sean Kelly" in All Categories

There may be no more joyous iteration in all of music than 1980s hard rock. It was an era where the musical and cultural ideals of rebellion and freedom of the great rock 'n' roll of the '50s, '60s, and '70s were taken to dizzying heights of neon excess. Attention to songcraft, showmanship, and musical virtuosity (especially in the realm of the electric guitar) were at an all-time high, and radio and MTV were delivering the goods en masse to the corn-fed children of America and beyond.

Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the ’40s and ’50s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he...

In Quarterly Essay 100, Sean Kelly considers the enigma of the Albanese government. With wide yet shallow support, will it change the country? Does it have big ideas, or is it content just to become "the natural party of government"? Kelly gives a definitive account of Albanese's political style and asks what lies behind it. In speaking to a fragmented, disengaged electorate, the Prime Minister places a high value on moderation.

The Irish are known the world over as friendly and engaging talkers with a word here and a few words there to each and every soul they meet. Their poets dazzle with talent and verse that few other nations dare compete with. What follows demonstrates why.

Golden girl Zoe’s been dead for 10 years, her body dragged from the River Black after a night out to celebrate the end of school. But now a woman who says she’s Zoe has turned up in her hometown of Blackwater, on the Irish border, with no memory of the last decade. She claims she woke up in a forest nearby, bruised and bleeding, and doesn’t know where she’s been all this time. What happened to her? Is she really Zoe? And if so, who is in her grave?

This ghost story is set on the wild Atlantic coast of North Devon and is told through the eyes of Jenny, a girl of nearly 19, whose recently deceased grandmother Mary has bequeathed her Windover, the cottage where she is staying with her father and his girlfriend during summer vacation. Before long, Jenny is troubled by visions of two teenage girls and learns from a photograph taken in 1934 that these girls are her grandmother Mary and Mary's friend Cathy. As the days go by, Jenny finds herself drawn into tragic events that occurred nearly 80 years earlier.

A chilling collection of psychological suspense and literary horror from the multiple award-winning author of the national bestseller The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts. A masterful anthology featuring nineteen pieces of short fiction, Growing Things and Other...