Showing results by narrator "Stanley McGeagh" in All Categories

Fred Scully waits at the arrival gate of an international airport, anxious to see his wife and daughter. After two years in Europe, they are finally settling down. He sees a new life before them, a stable outlook again, a fresh start, a cottage in the Irish countryside that he's renovated by hand. He's waited, sweated on this reunion. He does not like to be alone—he's that kind of man.The flight lands, the doors at the airport hiss open...Scully's life falls apart.

First published anonymously in 1929 because its language was considered far too frank for the public circulation, The Middle Parts of Fortune was hailed by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, by Lawrence of Arabia and Ernest Hemingway, as an extraordinary novel. Its author was in fact Frederic Manning, an Australian writer who fought in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and who told his story of men at war from the perspective of an ordinary soldier.

In 1839, John Harrington voyages 12,000 miles from Ireland into the unknown to take up a sheep-run in the southern regions of Australia. From a distinguished family of Anglo-Irish aristocrats who have fallen on hard times, the youngest son has been sent to the remotest part of the world to make his fortune. For 20 years, Harrington prospers, but he is plagued by a sense of dislocation and loneliness in a hostile place. When he is joined by his drunken brother and married sister, tragedy and violence ensue.

Charles Parnell Cassidy is a powerful politician. Martin Gregory is his disenchanted protégé, who, having married Cassidy's daughter and become a success on his own terms, scorns his father-in-law. When the terminally ill Cassidy arrives in London to die, he makes Gregory the executor of his will and sets a complex trap by offering him the keys to a vast empire of wealth and corruption, spanning Australia and Southeast Asia.

Rediscover the adventures of a very unique little horse in this wonderful audio edition of the classic children's tale. Dashing, proud and brave, Uncle Peder had never made so fine a horse before. The little wooden horse loves Uncle Peder like a father and hopes never to leave him. When the toymaker falls upon hard times, the little wooden horse must go out into the world to seek his fortune.

When the king of Norway sells the rights to Christmas to Mr Thrane, it looks like the holidays aren't going to be very merry. Mr Thrane says that the only people who can celebrate are those who buy 10,000 crowns' worth of presents from his department store. For anyone who doesn't - or can't - spend that much, it's no tree, no presents, no carols and no Christmas pudding.

Just as Jaide and Jack Shield are settling into their crazy new lives in Portland, The Evil threatens another Ward, and the twins will need to put their growing powers to the test!

From the author of the best-selling Inspector Wallander Mysteries, this is the story of young Lucas, who gets a most precious present for his birthday: a black kitten that he calls Night. He becomes very attached to Night, but one day Lucas comes home from school and discovers that his beloved cat has disappeared. He is desperate, and no one is able to console him. He searches for Night everywhere and doesn't stop hoping for his return. It's only sometime later that Night appears in his dreams....

When Mr. Tipkins, a gift-giver from the Department of Wishes of Faerie, arrives to give a wish to a newborn baby in the village of Widdershins, he isn't in the best of moods. His uncharacteristic burst of bad temper begins a chain reaction that has consequences no one can foresee. The Truth About Magic is a story of mistakes and of deception, of wizards (good and bad), and of what happens when perfectly ordinary wishes go wrong.

Piccolo is waiting at the dock for his friend Stella to arrive home from her holiday cruise on the glittering Sea Princess. What arrives instead is a smoky, stinky steamer. Piccolo is the only one who can see that the scruffy sailors are actually demons. Even worse, they're heading for the zoo with their cargo of stolen African wildlife. What if they discover the fallen angel Elspeth, imprisoned at the zoo in the form of a baboon? Piccolo has to stop them!

Great Aunt Annabelle has passed her very messy inspection and can stay on as Piccolo's guardian angel - for now. But with a newfound passion for entering and winning competitions, will Annabelle be too busy to notice if Piccolo is in danger? When Annabelle wins a party, who is the beautiful but mysterious visitor who arrives unannounced in a sleek silver limousine - is she friend or foe, angel or otherwise? Only a disastrous party will reveal her secrets and Annabelle's curious past.

Furious about his banishment from Faerie, Rathalorn's one aim is to go back and wreak his revenge. To do this he needs something he no longer has: powerful magic. He finds what he is looking for in the Magical Twins, a pair of mysterious young fairground wizards. But with great power comes great danger.

Derrick "Taffy" Rees was a 12-year-old Welsh boy when he saw a newspaper advertisement which offered children a free passage to Australia. So in 1938 Derrick set sail for Australia, with his mother's permission, and took along his two young sisters - aged eight and ten. Derrick "Taffy" Rees is now 75, and he tells his story in By Then I Was Thirteen.

Young Piccolo Grande lives in his fine old family home. But one fateful afternoon his neat and ordered life is turned upside down and inside out when noisy, round, and red-faced Annabelle bursts into his life. She claims to be his great aunt but Piccolo recognizes her for the angel she is - a guardian angel, sent to mind Piccolo. But where Annabelle goes, disaster follows, and in two shakes of a feather it is the boy who is minding the angel.

When eccentric Young Master Rourke dies in suspicious circumstances, troubletwisters Jack and Jaide are sent on a mission by their father to retrieve a lost Golden Card from somewhere within the vast Rourke estate. But secret agents for The Evil are also in pursuit of the card, and the troubletwister twins know that whoever finds it first will gain access to a Gift more powerful or terrible than any other.

The parping pantpiper is on the rampage in Pete's classroom. This stinky little ickimal must be stopped and fast! Binko the alien and Pete are back in their second adventure, and this time it's a tale of killer wedgies, mouse sausages, and pants aplenty. The second in this super-fun series, at the heart of which is the friendship between a human boy and an alien child who share a passion for mischief and a talent for causing havoc.

Pete Perkins is a normal little boy who loves nothing more than making mischief and pulling practical jokes. But when he wakes up one night to find a tiny green alien called Binko crawling out of his belly button, Pete finds himself caught up in a prank that’s gone all wrong - with cosmic consequences! Binko lives on the planet Pok, where his parents are Head Keepers at the Galactic Zoo. Unfortunately, while trying to play a trick on them, Binko manages to let loose a whole enclosure of Ickimals. These yucky creatures cause mess and mayhem wherever they go, and Binko has tracked them to Earth!

Jaide and Jack have yet to meet the strangest resident of Portland. It’s a creature that comes out only at night, a beast that defies human description. Jaide and Jack have never seen it...but they’re about to. And when they do, destruction and disaster won’t be too far away.

Hugo has to choose who to stay with while his mum’s having a baby. Who will care for him and his dog Henry the best? Will it be Granny? Mrs Mariposa next door? Or Uncle Jack?

One small, yellowed photograph of a man on horseback. Old files from Stalin's time, mouldering in the Kremlin archives. An Israeli prime minister who seems determined to throw his people into further war. A trail of murder and terrorism across Australia, the Middle East and Europe.... Whoever holds the photograph holds the key to unlock many secrets - as Miriam Davis, a Sydney lawyer, and her journalist partner Paul Sinclair, discover when Miriam's grandfather is murdered. But what are the secrets? What does the photograph mean?