Showing results by narrator "Dorje Swallow" in All Categories

Martin Scarsden's new life seems perfect, right up until the moment it's shattered by a voice mail: a single scream, abruptly cut off, from his partner, Mandalay Blonde. Racing home, he finds an unconscious man sprawled on the floor and Mandy gone. Someone has abducted her. But who and why? So starts a twisting tale of intrigue and danger, as Martin probes the past of the woman he loves, a woman who has buried her former life so deep she has never mentioned it.

For half a lifetime, journalist Martin Scarsden has run from his past. But now there is no escaping. He'd vowed never to return to his hometown, Port Silver, and its traumatic memories. But now his new partner, Mandy Blonde, has inherited an old house in the seaside town and Martin knows their chance of a new life together won't come again. Martin arrives to find his best friend from school days brutally murdered, and Mandy the chief suspect. With the police curiously reluctant to pursue other suspects, Martin goes searching for the killer. And finds the past waiting for him.  

In Riversend, an isolated country town brought to its knees by endless drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest steps out of his church and calmly opens fire on his congregation, killing five parishioners before being shot dead himself. A year later, troubled journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend to write a feature on the anniversary of the tragedy. But the stories he hears from the locals about the priest and incidents leading up to the shooting don't fit with the accepted version of events his own newspaper reported in an award-winning investigation. 

When a school group of teenage girls goes missing in the remote wilderness of Tasmania's Great Western Tiers, the people of Limestone Creek are immediately on alert. Three decades ago, five young girls disappeared in the area of those dangerous bluffs, and the legend of 'the Hungry Man' still haunts locals to this day. Now, authorities can determine that the teacher, Eliza Ellis, was knocked unconscious, so someone on the mountain was up to foul play. Jordan Murphy, the local dealer and father of missing student Jasmine, instantly becomes the prime suspect. 

Some people just work better alone. Wyatt’s one of them. He’s been getting by on nice quiet little burglaries - one-man jobs - when he gets wind of something bigger. A corporate crook, notorious Ponzi schemer, set to face court and certain jail time. He’s about to skip bail the old-fashioned way: on a luxury yacht with a million dollars in cash. Wyatt thinks it sounds like something he should get into. He’s not alone.

History is always written by the winners and about the winners. But what about the poor souls lurking in the shadows of history, the ones who were just as remarkable but perhaps didn’t stick their chests out as they crossed the line? In Second Best, Australia’s foremost historian and comedian Ben Pobjie celebrates the nobility and altogether more fascinating stories of the silver-medal getters.