Showing results by narrator "Taylor Owynns" in All Categories

From Australia's master storyteller comes an endearing and engaging novella about a journey as unexpected, painful, intriguing and character-filled as life itself. A cruise was the promise. To cruise away from their troubles. To cruise towards the place where they first met, on the banks of the Thames. A cruise to dwell in their memories together and plan their next chapter. Paddy and Jenny Davern have had a long and happy marriage together in Sydney. Together they embark on a cruise to London, for the last leisurely journey in each other's company.

A notorious unmarked track through outback Australia, the 'Wire' crosses slabs of lawless land, body-dumping grounds and mobile phone blackspots. Harvey Buck is certainly desperate. Racing to be with his dying girlfriend, he encounters Clare Holland, whose car has broken down. He offers the hapless traveller a ride. And then their nightmare begins. The pair are ambushed by a vengeful crew - and strapped into bomb vests. As part of a deadly game, Harvey and Clare are forced to commit a series of increasingly murderous missions - or be blown to smithereens.

An unexpected death finds Lizzie, Alice and Margot at various crossroads in their lives, torn between looking back and moving on. Lizzie is reeling from a decades-old discovery that changes everything she thought she knew about her friends, her family and her marriage. Alice has always been the good-time girl, as charismatic presenting the weather on television as she is working as a life model. But decades of piecemeal gigs have left her with a safety net that is rapidly unravelling.

To give them hope she must tell their story. It's 1946. The war is over, and Juliet Ashton has writer's block. But when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - a total stranger living halfway across the Channel, who has come across her name written in a secondhand book - she enters into a correspondence with him, and in time with all the members of the extraordinary Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

A young Anne flees Wattle Island in 1950, heartbroken and desperate to make her own way in the world. As she begins to forge a life for herself in the city, a forbidden love returns, and she is faced with a choice that could destroy all she has built. When disaster changes her life forever, starting the Wattle Island Book Club is the only thing that offers her solace.

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.

Grief-stricken and on the verge of a breakdown, Luda Managan and her two teenaged children try to make a home for themselves on a collection of harsh and haunted Scottish islands. Luda, a photographer, is mesmerised by the extraordinary magic of the islands but soon finds herself condemned by the local community after publishing images documenting the death of a local child. Alienated, Luda turns her attention to the records from the 17th-Century island witch-hunts and the fragmented life stories of the executed women.

Alice is only nine years old in 1910 when she is sent to the feared Coast Hospital Lazaret at Little Bay in Sydney, a veritable prison where more patients are admitted than will ever leave. She is told that she's visiting her mother, who disappeared one day when Alice was two years old. Once there, she learns her mother is suffering from leprosy and that Alice has the same disease.

Growing up in a rambunctious family in Rockhampton, Mary discovered an extraordinary early passion for ballet. Then right at the height of her international career, Mary seemingly disappeared from view, leaving the fans aghast. What could have happened to cause a woman so committed, so talented, to give it all away in a heartbeat? Now, almost 20 years on, fans finally get their answer about what happened next to this inspiring family and learn why it is Mary's turn to tell a truly remarkable tale.

Tess is feeling burnt out from her uninspiring job and her busy city lifestyle. Even her personal relationships make her feel as if she's simply drifting through life rather than living it to the full. Her godmother Luna, who leads a very simple existence in a rustic cottage in the North Queensland rainforest, is also at something of a crossroads. Keen to expand her jewellery-making business, she needs the new connections that a bustling city offers. When she suggests to Tess that the two of them might swap homes for an extended period, it seems the perfect solution.

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims' families, but its impact travels even further—into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes. Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more. Fiona McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

From the Winner of the 2016 Stella Prize for The Natural Way of Things. Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. Can they survive together without her? They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur, Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual, and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they've remained close all these years, the grieving women gather for Christmas at Sylvie's old beach house.

Beth doesn't feel like she belongs in her rambunctious, bohemian family. Apart from the special relationship she shares with her grandma, Elise. When Beth wins the lottery (on a ticket she bought to prove she could be spontaneous), she decides to spend it on treating Elise. But instead of anything material, Elise wants Beth to help her track down her first love, Gerry.

Dolly Jamieson is not homeless, she's merely between permanent abodes. The 78-year-old spends her days keeping warm at the local library, where she enjoys sparring with the officious head librarian and helping herself to the free morning tea. It's not so bad, really. But it's certainly a far cry from the 1960s, when this humble girl from Geelong became an international star of the stage. As the acclaimed lead in the Broadway production of The Rose of France, all Dolly's dreams had come true. So how, in her old age, did she end up here?

This is the first biography of Greer for two decades, drawing on unprecedented access to her extensive personal archive, opened at Melbourne University in 2016. Kleinhenz has interrogated Greer's personal and professional files, spoken to people who have known her from her school days onwards, and read every word written by and about her. Beginning with Greer’s troubled early life in 1940s Melbourne, it traces her career, relationships with men and women, her travels and her home life and examines Greer’s work and ideas from The Female Eunuch to the #MeToo movement.

Since her sister died, Meg has been on her own. She doesn’t mind, not really - not with Atticus, her African grey parrot, to keep her company - but after her house is broken into by a knife-wielding intruder, she decides it might be good to have some company after all. Andy’s father has lost his job, and his parents’ savings are barely enough to cover his tuition. If he wants to graduate, he’ll have to give up his student flat and find a homeshare.

When Maggie, Fran and Rose met in their youth, they had dreams and ambitions. Forty years later, the three friends are turning 60, all of them restless and disenchanted with their lives. In an attempt to recapture the sense of freedom and purpose they once possessed, they decide to retrace the steps of their 1978 backpacking trip through Europe. What could possibly go wrong? As they set off on their trip, it will prove to be an odyssey that will test their friendship, challenge their beliefs and redefine the third age of their lives.

Barbara McClymont walks the cane fields searching for Janet, her sixteen-year-old daughter, who has been missing for weeks. The police have no leads. The people of Quala are divided by dread and distrust. But the sugar crush is underway and the cane must be burned. Meanwhile, children dream of a malevolent presence, a schoolteacher yearns to escape, and history keeps returning to remind Quala that the past is always present.

Ester is a family therapist with an appointment book that catalogues the anxieties of the middle class: loneliness, relationships, death. She spends her days helping others find happiness, but her own family relationships are tense and frayed. Ester is yearning to fall in love again. Meanwhile, her ex-husband's past decisions are catching up with him, her sister is struggling through her own directionless life and her mother is about to make a choice that will profoundly affect them all.

On beautiful Fraser Island in 1882, the population of the Badtjala people is in sharp decline following a run of brutal massacres. When German man Louis Müller offers to sail 18-year-old Bonny to Europe, along with 22-year-old Jurano and his 15-year-old niece, Donordera, the proud and headstrong Bonny agrees. Accompanied by Müller’s bright and grieving daughter, Hilda, the group begins their journey to perform in Hamburg, Berlin, Paris and eventually London in the hope of seeking help from the Queen of England.