Showing results by narrator "Jerome Pride" in All Categories

Hedley Hopkins has a few problems: he is the new kid at school, straight off the boat from England in the 1950s. The only friends he has made are the kids at the Loony Bin. But if he could just fulfill a dare and dig out the hideous skull hidden in a grave in the sand dunes, he could impress the bullies at school and become their friend. But Hedley is not so sure. Weird things are happening to his body. Is he being punished for his terrible actions?

Eleven-year-old Novi just wants to blend in - not easy when you're named after a silkworm and have the most eccentric family in town. A descendent of the first Italian silk growers in northern New South Wales, he is an obsessive artist with a habit of drawing the stories of the people around him, and a secret conviction that the river murdered his grandfather. Young teacher Dom Best is new in town and must overcome his lack of confidence to support Novi's talent.

Part biography, part forensic jigsaw puzzle, part cold-case detective investigation, The Eagle in the Mirror is the astonishing untold story of an Australian-born intelligence officer accused by some espionage experts of being the traitor of the century: Charles Howard 'Dick' Ellis. The longest serving spy for the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Ellis helped set up the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), now known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).

In the caged depths of an urban reservoir lives a monstrous creature. Its existence is unknown to anyone except the teenage boy who feeds it. Six years ago it was a vicious little baby, now it has grown enormous, and its rusting pen can't hold it much longer. Stephen has kept the Beast a secret against all the odds. He's got other painful secrets - like why he never sees his mother, or mentions his brother, Selby, and wishes his father was dead.

Trapped in a violent marriage to Sir Fulk de Enderby, a veteran of the wars against Robert the Bruce, Lady Johanna FitzHenry has one last chance to escape. If a stranger can be found who is willing to swear to a court that she was secretly wed to him before her match to Fulk, Johanna will be set free.

When 15-year-old Chas finds a website asking people to write to prisoners on Death Row, he thinks it would be funny to get letters from a murderer. He writes to an inmate, pretending to be his mum. When his new pen-pal is unexpectedly released, Chas' already problematic life spirals horribly out of control...

John Franklin always wanted to be a sailor. As a volunteer in the Royal Navy at age fourteen, he found himself in the Battle of Copenhagan, but nothing could prepare him for the adventure of a lifetime, when he set off in 1801 with his cousin Matthew Flinders on HMS Investigator as it sought to chart the first circumnavigation of Australia. Taking on responsibility for the chronometers, under the jealous eye of Flinders' younger brother, the young midshipman found all the action, adventure and excitement he'd hoped for in his new life at sea.

Cal's got this thing about fire. It's nothing big at first, just lighting matches, watching matches burn, enjoying the calming effects of the flame... It helps him cope with stuff. Then he meets Abby, and things start to get out of control. She winds him up, playing with him until he thinks he might lose his santiy, and suddenly the matches just aren't enough anymore.

Ferdinand Mlambo, the youngest boy ever to become senior kitchen toto at State House, is in deep trouble. Disloyalty to Kuwisha's Life President Nduka has not only cost him his prestigious job: the sinister chief steward to the president, Lovemore Mboga, has humiliated Mlambo by stripping him of his name. Word goes out: henceforth, he will be known as Fatboy. But with the help of Titus Ntoto, leader of the notorious Mboya Boys gang of street children, Mlambo sets out on a quest to recover his name and dignity.

Charity Mupanga, the resilient and maternal proprietor of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot) faces her toughest challenge in Dizzy Worms, the final novel in Michael Holman’s acclaimed trilogy set in the African slum of Kireba. Faced with a Health and Safety closure, Charity has a week to appeal and the chances of success seem negligible: elections are imminent, and Kireba is due to become a showcase of President Josiah Nduka's "slum rehabilitation program", backed by gullible foreign donors.

Charity Mupanga is the widowed owner of Harrods International Bar (and Nightspot) - a favourite meeting place for the movers and shakers of Kibera. Well-meant but inept efforts to foil the lawyers who are sending her threatening letters are made by Edward Furniver, a former fund manager who runs Kibera's co-operative bank and who seeks Charity's hand in marriage, bring Harrods International Bar to the brink of disaster, and Charity close to despair.