Showing results by narrator "Kate Hosking"

The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind's student years and then again when she returned to teach drama. As much as Rosalind's life was a mystery to Gemma when they were students together, her death presents even more of a puzzle.

After backpacking her way around India, Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. When a beggar at the airport reads her palm and insists she will one day return, and for love, she screams "Never!" and gives the country, and him, the finger.

Dulcie Bodsworth was the unlikeliest serial killer. She was loved everywhere she went, and the townsfolk of Wilcannia, which she called home in the late 1950s, thought of her as kind and caring. The officers at the local police station found Dulcie witty and charming, and looked forward to the scones and cakes she generously baked and delivered for their morning tea. That was one side of her. Only her daughter Hazel saw the real Dulcie. And what she saw terrified her.

She watches; she dreams. She sees more than they realize. She has worries and fears, hopes and desires. She is troubled; she is angry. Above all, she is lonely. She may be someone you know. She may be you. In So Much to Tell You she tells her story. With humor and insight, with sensitivity and strength, with painful honesty. You will never forget her.

When Gemma Woodstock, homicide investigator in the large rural town of Smithson, views the body of her old school friend Rosalind splayed open on the autopsy table, she suffers the same feeling of inscrutability that has coloured her relationship with Rose for so long. Gemma, however, is hiding her own secrets. She has a four-year-old son, Ben, and has recently moved in with the boy's father, Scott. But the relationship is troubled, and she is having an affair with a colleague that she works closely with.

"You can't have a party without music," said Dad. "You can't have a fire without smoke," said Whacka. It went from bad to worse after that. A barbecue from hell. Spuds on the roof. A visit from the police. It was war, a fight to the finish between Dad and Whacka. And Chris was right in the middle of it. All because Dad vomited in the cabbage patch. It could only be a Paul Jennings story narrated by Kate Hosking.

Philadelphia (Delie) Gordon is in the twilight of her years. Finally, it seems, she has found some peace. With the power of the Murray River finally harnessed and the advent of train and rail, the great paddle steamers of the past are redundant. With time to paint and to ponder the continuity of life, she contemplates the randomness of her existence. However Delie's contentment is shattered when fate, with the advent of WWII, is once more to intervene in her life.

Philadelphia (Delie) Gordon, with her husband Brenton cruelly incapacitated by a stroke, continues to defy tradition by becoming first mate and skipper of the paddle steamer Philadelphia. Rising to this new challenge, Delie is happy with her activity-filled days, and with a growing awareness of the beauty of the river and its slowly paced life, she begins to find some contentment. However, Delie, though espousing the equality of the sexes, is all woman and is to be sorely tempted by the men who enter her life.

Whilst living in Echuca, Philadelphia Gordon has developed a strong attachment to the river, and a fascination for paddle steamers. When she becomes owner of a paddle steamer she wishes that she had been born a male and not bound by the conventions society imposes upon females. When Delie meets a young handsome riverman, Brenton Edwards, she falls hopelessly in love with him. However, the future is not the idyll she had foreseen.

When you meet the love of your life, the one person you want to spend the rest of your days with, what do you do when they're ripped away? Vashti and Andy Whitfield fitted together like the missing pieces of a perfect jigsaw. From the moment they met, they were inseparable. Vashti inspired Andy to fight fearlessly to achieve whatever he dreamed, and he gave her a love so deep that they both knew their life together would be nothing less than extraordinary.

In 1962 Cindy drops out of college to impulsively marry an Australian grazier, moving from the glamorous world of Palm Springs, California, to an isolated sheep station on the sweeping plains of the Riverina in New South Wales. Cindy's new life at Kingsley Downs station is not what she'd imagined, as she is flung into a strange and challenging world. Natural disasters and the caprices of the wool industry shape her destiny and though she tries hard to fit in, she finds she is always the outsider.

Australian swimmer Petria Thomas won the hearts of millions around the world with her triple gold-medal-winning triumph at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004. Having overcome the pain and anguish of three shoulder reconstructions and two ankle reconstructions over the length of her glittering 12-year career, Petria is admired and respected for her grit, determination, and steely will to win.

In a small town near Port Arthur in Tasmania in the mid-90s, Kate Byrne is having an affair with the father of her most gifted student. As the young teacher's sexual life is awakened by the father in scenes of escalating eroticism, the guilt she feels towards the son is compounded. Meanwhile, Veronica, her lover's wife, has just published Murder at Black Swan Point, a true crime book about the brutal slaying of a young adulteress some years before, set in a nearby town.

Philadelphia Gordon is an artist, a riverboat skipper, a beautiful and independent woman. Orphaned by a shipwreck, Philadelphia grows up on the banks of her beloved Murray River, seemingly destined for a conventional life. But tragedy leads her first to a successful career as a painter, then to marriage to the dashing captain of the paddle-steamer that bears her name.

A new story in an ancient landscape from Australia's favourite storyteller. In The Red Coast, Di Morrissey returns to the red earth of the Kimberley with a passionate story of resistance and resilience under its soaring blue skies. After the upheaval which separated Jacqui Bouchard from her beloved son, she has finally settled in Broome, a magical remote town on the northwest coast of Australia.

What about all that stuff you keep reading about: the moonlit walks, waves softly kissing the sandy shore? It doesn't exist. Does it have to be a problem just because you don't want to hold your mother's hand anymore and you're not ready to hold anyone else's? Before you try to give yourself a hickey tonight, read this!

"I burst out of a clump of bushes and froze. Silhouetted against the moonlit sky were several massive shapes. What if Eileen had infected something else? What if the hospital had cockroaches? Or bedbugs? What if the frogs weren't all dead? I stifled a scream."

Indiana O’Meara is no stranger to the forces of evil. Now a policewoman, Indy is always fighting to redeem herself and defeat the dark. So when girls begin to go missing at a remote cattle station in Tasmania, she agrees to go undercover to investigate chief suspect Logan Atherton, the owner of Calico Mountain Lodge. But her early encounter with Logan reveals a man full of contradictions. His deep empathy for horses and those he cares for is obvious but he is also taciturn to the point of rudeness, and there is a strange atmosphere at the lodge. It doesn’t add up.

"'There he is', Gramps shrieked. 'The Spy. The scumbag spy.' I looked up and saw a monstrous white hairy face disappear into the drain. I had never seen such a frightening sight. White hair covered its entire head. I couldn't even see any eyes. In a flash Gramps splashed into the drain after it."

Finding yourself in hospital, in a bed full of shattered glass, is traumatic. Coming to terms with multiple fractures and probable long-term difficulties is something else again - slow, painful, full of obstacles and questions with no clear answers. Anna is used to being athletic, popular, 'normal'. Now she feels the layers of her familiar self being peeled away; nothing is normal or easy. Can she pick up the pieces of her life? What part will Hayden and Luke play? And who, now, is Anna Duncan?