Showing results by narrator "Edwina Wren" in All Categories

Late one evening, en route to visit a relative, an accident leaves Tory - the attractive, twenty-something daughter of a prominent history professor – stranded near a ring of stones in Britain. Tory resolves to spend the night at the stone circle and seek help in the morning... But across the vortex of time and space, she is taken back to the Dark Age.

The extraordinary and best-selling journeys of one woman throughout time... An enormous vortex spiralled above the Earth, out beyond the orbit of the moon. Its centre was expanding to form a huge glowing corridor through the fabric of space. This brilliant mass shot forth thousands of glowing balls of light that proceeded to descend toward our planet.

The soldiers called her the Angel of Waterloo...Henrietta Bartlett, the esteemed surgeon's daughter who was born on a battlefield, lost her mother on a battlefield, and was widowed on the battlefield, where she worked alongside her father on that fateful day in June 1815. But after the carnage of war, Hen dreams of peace, and her own home, and a society that would allow a woman to practice medicine. The new and faraway colony of New South Wales seems a paradise, where even convicts have a chance of a good life.

1942. Japan has bombed Sydney Harbour. Sixteen-year-old Ossie lies about his age to protect his country, even though it means abandoning his only family, a one-eyed dog named Lucky. Kind-hearted Mrs Plum is already looking after forty-six dogs for soldiers. She's becoming desperate because there are no wartime rations for dogs. Help arrives when thirteen-year-old Kat Murphy volunteers to take Lucky and persuades the girls at her school to also help. As Kat grows to love Lucky, she realises he can still see his master.

When Mair McCrae follows her island tradition and hunts for a husband cast up on the beach, she has no notion that the naked, half-drowned man she rescues is not just Captain Michael Dawson, heir to a major shipping firm, but that he's obsessed by a 'ghost ship' carrying golden cargo.

During a brush with the Sons of the Long Knives, Gwion earns the trust of Keridwen and is offered employment at her Castell in Gwynedd. There the goddess is brewing a potion of prophetic insight and secret wisdom, destined for her monstrous, shape-shifting son, Morvran. But an ill-timed accident on the final day of his task sees Gwion inherit all the potion's supernatural abilities. In a shapeshifting battle, Gwion is swallowed by Keridwen, and upon her return to human form the Goddess discovers that she is pregnant.

The narrow stairway inside the mountain led to a door that opened into a huge marble plateau. Upon this stood a stone circle of nine of the largest hunks of polished crystal Tory had ever seen. A turbulent cloud erupted overhead, its core alive with electromagnetic activity. For 20 years the kingdoms of Prydyn, Dumnonia and Dalriada have prospered in peace under the guidance of their High King, Maelgwn of Gwynedd, and his good Queen, Tory.

Claverton Castle, 1940. Eagles and Spitfires fly in the skies of England as Lady Deanna, the aristocratic granddaughter of the Duke of Claverton, spends her days shovelling manure and her evenings in blue satin, attending dinner parties to gather intelligence from the many Nazi sympathisers among Britain's powerful upper classes. She is an excellent spy: the information she gleans may prove vital in the months ahead. But when she becomes enmeshed in the German plot to restore the Duke of Windsor to the throne of England, she must feign cooperation and risk her life for the sake of her country.

Far North Queensland, 1993: at 74, former cane farmer Grace Maud is feeling her age, and her isolation, and thinks the best of life may be behind her. Elsewhere in town, high school teacher Patricia has given up on her dreams of travel and adventure and has moved back home to look after her ageing parents, while cafe owner Dorothy is struggling to accept that she may never have the baby she and her husband so desperately want. Each woman has an unspoken need: reconnection. And that's how they find themselves at Orange Blossom House, surrounded by perfumed rainforest.

The once impoverished medical student Agnes Glock is now the fabulously wealthy Mrs Mulberry. Her estate in the mountains is magnificent, a haven for those too ravaged by the Great War to cope with the society that first condemned them to battle and which now shuns them. The War has, however, stolen Agnes's chance to graduate as a doctor, as well as the fiance she adored. Her husband, Douglas Mulberry, remains shellshocked and unable to speak. Their scandalous marriage is a farce, an act of kindness to keep Douglas's fortune from his uncle's grasp.

The old music box has been handed down through Leo's family for hundreds of years. An astounding secret is hidden beneath its gleaming black lid. Now it is Leo's music box, and although he respects the rules, his cousin Mimi Langlander does not. When the rules are broken, Leo's life is changed forever as he and Mimi plunge together into a thrilling quest in the fantastic world of Rondo.

Blue Laurence has escaped the prison of her aunt's mansion to join the Magnifico Family Circus, a travelling troupe that brings glamour and laughter to country towns gripped by the Depression. Blue hides her crippled legs and scars behind the sparkle of a mermaid's costume; but she's not the only member of the circus hiding a dark secret. The unquenchable Madame Zlosky creates as well as foresees futures. The bearded lady is a young man with laughing eyes. A headless skeleton dangles in the House of Horrors. And somewhere a murderer is waiting...to strike again.

In 1894, 12-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to find her unknown father and his farm. But drought grips the land, and the shearers are on strike. Her father has turned swaggie, and he's wanted by the troopers. In front of his terrified daughter, he makes a stand against them, defiant to the last. "You'll never catch me alive," said he....

From master storyteller Bryce Courtenay comes a colorful, lusty story set in the 13th century, an epic tale of a Europe torn by religious intolerance. The story centers around Sylvia Honeyeater, who sings like an angel and can literally charm the birds from the trees. The narrative also features the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Francis of Assisi, the Muslim Sultan and his harem, and the fervor that becomes the Children's Crusade and then, later, the Crusades.

In 1996, Hanna Heath, a rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna discovers a series of artifacts in its ancient binding, she begins to unlock the book's mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed past, tracing the book's journey from its salvation back to its creation.

The impeccably dressed Miss Kate Cocks might look more like a schoolmistress than a policewoman, but don't let that fool you. She's a household name, wrangling wayward husbands, seeing through deceptive clairvoyants, and rescuing young women (whether they like it or not) with the help of a five-foot cane and her sassy junior constable, Ethel Bromley. When shop assistant Dora Black is found dead on a city beach, Miss Cocks and Ethel are ordered to stay out of the investigation and leave it to the men. But when Dora's workmate goes missing soon after, the women suspect something sinister.

Trainee psychiatrist Doctor Hannah Wright has only just got her head above water in the acute psychiatric ward at Menzies Hospital when she's thrown into the deep end of the outpatient clinic. Keen to develop her skills in talking therapies, she finds herself up against a boss who's focused on medication and a senior colleague with a score to settle. Hannah's fellow first-years face problems of their own: on-and-off flame Alex is being bullied, Ndidi's marriage is in trouble, Jon feels isolated and Carey is concerned their autism will be a career barrier.

In 1917 sixteen-year-old Jean McLain is working as a post-office assistant in England. But when she wins a national Morse code competition, the British army makes a request Jean cannot refuse – to take a secret position as a signaller in France. If Jean can keep the signals flowing between headquarters and the soldiers at the Front, Britain might possibly win the war.

The year is 1919. Thirty years have passed since the man from Snowy River made his famous ride. But World War I still casts its shadow across a valley in the heart of Australia, particularly for orphaned 16-year-old Flinty McAlpine, who lost a brother when the Snowy River men marched away to war. Why has the man Flinty loves returned from the war so changed and distant? Why has her brother Andy "gone with cattle", leaving Flinty in charge of their younger brother and sister and with the threat of eviction from the farm she loves so dearly?

England, 1918. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora's life. Rather than secretly making cosmetics in her father's chemist shop to sell to army nurses such as Joan, her adventurous Australian friend, Leo hopes to now display her wares openly. Instead, Spanish flu arrives in the village, claiming her father's life. Determined to start over, she boards a ship to New York City. On the way she meets debonair department store heir Everett Forsyth....