Showing results by narrator "Zoe Carides" in All Categories

1967: Hazel's new job at the docks quickly turns perilous when she stumbles into the criminal underworld that lurks beneath the surface. A million in gold coins has vanished from a cargo ship and a dead body washed up. Suddenly, she's in over her head. Disillusioned with her life, Betty is led astray by a charismatic new friend and finds herself exposed in more ways than one - until a crisis drags her back to reality. Living in a high-class brothel, Irene gets wind of a threat that could destroy her livelihood.

In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young Slovakian women were deported to Poland on the second transportation of Jewish people sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The women were told they'd be working at a shoe factory. At Auschwitz the SS soon discovered that by putting Jewish prisoners in charge of the day-to-day running of the accommodation blocks, camp administration and workforces, they could both reduce the number of guards required and deflect the distrust of the prisoner population away from themselves.

Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. To Ned, a boat means freedom – the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches – a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in a ruthless and distant war, becoming men on the battlefield, while Ned – too young to enlist – roams the land in search of rabbits to shoot, selling their pelts to fund his secret boat ambitions.

When the Bruny bridge is bombed, UN troubleshooter Astrid Coleman agrees to return home to help her brother before an upcoming election. But this is no simple task. Her brother and sister are on either side of politics, the community is full of conspiracy theories, her mother is fading and her father is quoting Shakespeare. Only on Bruny does the world seem sane. Until Astrid discovers how far the government is willing to go.

Nic is a 45-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood's stray cats. She's also the owner of a decade's worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice. The person she's closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up. When Lena travels to her aunt's house to see if Nic's all right, she gets the shock of her life.

Welcome back to Zig Zag Lane in the heart of Sydney's rag-trade district, where our intrepid tea ladies, Hazel, Betty and Irene, have their work cut out. Solving a murder, kidnapping and arson case, and outwitting an arch criminal, earned them the respect of a local police officer. Now he needs their assistance to help solve a plot that threatens national security. As if that's not enough, Irene gets a coded message directing her to the spoils of a bank robbery, which sends the tea ladies on a treasure hunt with an unexpected outcome.

Mia and Ben, an Australian couple in their early 30s, have relinquished one dream and embraced another, selling their Sydney flat and purchasing an old yellow house in the picturesque village of Cordes-sur-Ciel in southwest France. They soon meet sophisticated neighbours Dominic and Susannah, a British couple in their 60s who welcome them warmly but whose own relationship is in crisis. Mia and Ben are immediately starstruck and impressed by their lavish hospitality. However, things with Dominic and Susannah are not what they first seem.

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading - and forgetting. But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a local myth, Ren is inexorably drawn into her impossible mission. As their lives entwine, unravel and erupt - as myths merge with reality - both Ren and the soldier are forced to confront what they regret, what they love and what they fear.

Sydney, 1965: After a chance encounter with a stranger, mild-mannered tea lady Hazel Bates becomes an accidental sleuth, stumbling into a world of ruthless crooks and racketeers in search of a young woman she believes to be in danger. In the meantime, Hazel's job at Empire Fashionwear is in jeopardy. The firm has turned out the same frocks and blouses for the past twenty years and when the mini-skirt bursts onto the scene, it rocks the rag trade to its foundations. War breaks out between departments and it falls to Hazel, the quiet diplomat, to broker peace and save the firm.

In the distant highlands, a puma named Dusk is killing shepherds. Down in the lowlands, twins Iris and Floyd are out of work, money and friends. When they hear that a bounty has been placed on Dusk, they reluctantly decide to join the hunt. As they journey up into this wild, haunted country, they discover there's far more to the land and people of the highlands than they imagined. And as they close in on their prey, they're forced to reckon with conflicts both ancient and deeply personal.

May 1941. German paratroopers launch a blitzkrieg from the air against Crete. They are met with fierce defiance, the Greeks fighting back with daggers, pitchforks and kitchen knives. During the bloody 11-day battle, Alenka, a young Greek woman, saves the lives of two Australian soldiers. Jack and Teddy are childhood friends who joined up together to see the world. Both men fall in love with Alenka.

Marnie Fairchild is the brains and talent behind Wish & Co, a boutique store that offers a bespoke gift-buying service to wealthy clients with complicated lives. Brian Charlesworth is Marnie's most prized customer, and today she's wrapping the perfect anniversary gift for his wife, Suzanne, and a birthday present for his mistress, Leona. What could possibly go wrong?

It's February 1939. As the Fuhrer edges towards an invasion of Poland, total war looms in Europe. However in Krakow, 17-year-old Marie Karska's primary concern is the unexplained disappearance of her mother 15 years ago, and her father Dominik's unbreakable silence on the matter. Even his wife's name is a secret he guards closely. Dominik, a well-respected and innovative doctor at the local hospital, has devoted his life to caring for his only daughter.

Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands to win back his ex-girlfriend, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. Told in seven parts, through the viewpoints of seven different characters Seven Types of Ambiguity is an engrossing psychological thriller and a literary masterpiece.

Alex Rainford has it all. He's sexy, charismatic and adored by fans the world over. But he is not all he seems. What spectre from the past is driving him ever closer to evil? And who will fall under his spell along the way?

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.

Ned West dreams of sailing across the river on a boat of his very own. A boat means freedom—the fresh open water, squid-rich reefs, fires on private beaches—a far cry from life on Limberlost, the family farm, where his father worries and grieves for Ned's older brothers. They're away fighting in a ruthless and distant war, becoming men on the battlefield, while Ned—too young to enlist—roams the land in search of rabbits to shoot, selling their pelts to fund his secret boat ambitions.

As a terrible pandemic rages through the country, a young girl, Teo, leaves her small village and sets off into the forest, in search of a cure for her sister who is infected with the pox. Her father Merdocai has surrendered himself to the evil Marquis to be experimented upon for the Greater Good; and with her mother long-dead, all Teo has to keep her going is the love of her sister, her father and her friend Rodrigo, a stuttering poet. As Teo ventures deeper into the forest, she encounters creatures and teachers who hold the answers to all the questions she has about who she is.

Australian soldier Toohey returns from Baghdad in 2003 with shrapnel in his neck, crippled by PTSD and white-knuckling life. In the Iraq of a decade earlier, aspiring pianist Nasim falls from favour with Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic son Uday, triggering a perilous search for safety. In Melbourne as the millennium turns, Robbie, faced with her father’s dementia and the family silences that may never find voice, tests boundaries. And in the present day, Gerry seeks to escape his father Toohey’s tyranny and heal its wounds.

1944. Emily Dean is sent to stay with relatives in rural Victoria. With grandmother determined to keep up standards despite the effects of the war; Della, the Bible-quoting cook, and her young and fearless aunt Lydia, who refuses to befriend her, Emily just wants to go home. But things start looking up when she encounters Claudio, the Italian prisoner of war employed as a farm labourer. And then Lydia’s brother, William, unexpectedly returns from the war. Wounded and bitter, he’s rude, traumatised and mostly drunk, yet a passion for literature soon draws them together.