
The Things That Matter Most
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $18.12
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jo Van Es
-
By:
-
Gabbie Stroud
About this listen
The staff of St Margaret's Primary School are hanging by a thread. There's serious litigation pending, the school is due for registration and a powerful parent named Janet Bellevue has a lot to say about everything. As teachers they're trying to remain professional, as people they're fast unraveling. There's Tyson: first year out of Uni and nervous as hell, Derek the Assistant Principal who's dropped the ball on administration, Bev from the office who's confronting a serious diagnosis and Sally-Ann who's desperate for a child of her own.
Thank goodness for kids like Lionel Merrick. Lionel is the student who steals your heart and makes the whole teaching gig worthwhile: he's cheerful, likeable and helpful—and devoted to his little sister Lacey. But Lionel has a secret of his own. As his future slides from vulnerable to dangerous, will someone from St Margaret's realise before it's too late?
As secrets threaten to be exposed and working demands increase, each staff member begins to lose sight of the things that matter most. A moving and compelling novel about teachers and their students by the acclaimed author of the bestselling books Teacher and Dear Parents.
©2023 Gabbie Stroud (P)2023 W. F. Howes LtdListeners also enjoyed...
-
Teacher
- By: Gabbie Stroud
- Narrated by: Jo Van Es
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2014, Gabrielle Stroud was a very dedicated teacher with over a decade of experience. Months later, she resigned in frustration and despair when she realised that the Naplan-test education model was stopping her from doing the very thing she was best at: teaching individual children according to their needs and talents. Her groundbreaking essay 'Teaching Australia' in the February 2016 Griffith Review outlined her experiences and provoked a huge response from former and current teachers around the world.
-
-
Amazing!!!
- By Briana Pennington on 02-12-19
By: Gabbie Stroud
-
The Cuckoo's Calling
- By: Robert Galbraith
- Narrated by: Robert Glenister
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry - known to her friends as the Cuckoo - famously fell to her death a few months earlier.
-
-
Unbelievable debut mystery set in London
- By Tracey on 05-26-13
By: Robert Galbraith
-
Broken Bay
- By: Margaret Hickey
- Narrated by: Henry Nixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti has taken a few days' holiday in Broken Bay at precisely the wrong time. The small fishing town on South Australia's Limestone Coast is now the scene of a terrible tragedy. Renowned cave-diver Mya Rennik has drowned while exploring a sinkhole on the land of wealthy farmer Frank Doyle. As the press descends, Mark's boss orders him to stay put and assist the police operation. But when they retrieve Mya's body, a whole new mystery is opened up, around the disappearance of a young local woman twenty years before.
-
-
Just OK for Me
- By Lia on 05-28-24
By: Margaret Hickey
-
Detective Tom Janssen Hidden Norfolk, Books 1-3
- The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mystery Collections, Volume 1
- By: J M Dalgliesh
- Narrated by: Greg Patmore
- Length: 24 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Get three absolutely gripping crime thrillers set on the UK's atmospheric north Norfolk coast from number one best-selling British author J M Dalgliesh in this great value collection.
-
-
Good story with a great performance.
- By Roxane E. on 08-22-23
By: J M Dalgliesh
-
The Tea Ladies
- By: Amanda Hampson
- Narrated by: Zoe Carides
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
By: Amanda Hampson
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
Teacher
- By: Gabbie Stroud
- Narrated by: Jo Van Es
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2014, Gabrielle Stroud was a very dedicated teacher with over a decade of experience. Months later, she resigned in frustration and despair when she realised that the Naplan-test education model was stopping her from doing the very thing she was best at: teaching individual children according to their needs and talents. Her groundbreaking essay 'Teaching Australia' in the February 2016 Griffith Review outlined her experiences and provoked a huge response from former and current teachers around the world.
-
-
Amazing!!!
- By Briana Pennington on 02-12-19
By: Gabbie Stroud
-
The Cuckoo's Calling
- By: Robert Galbraith
- Narrated by: Robert Glenister
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry - known to her friends as the Cuckoo - famously fell to her death a few months earlier.
-
-
Unbelievable debut mystery set in London
- By Tracey on 05-26-13
By: Robert Galbraith
-
Broken Bay
- By: Margaret Hickey
- Narrated by: Henry Nixon
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Detective Sergeant Mark Ariti has taken a few days' holiday in Broken Bay at precisely the wrong time. The small fishing town on South Australia's Limestone Coast is now the scene of a terrible tragedy. Renowned cave-diver Mya Rennik has drowned while exploring a sinkhole on the land of wealthy farmer Frank Doyle. As the press descends, Mark's boss orders him to stay put and assist the police operation. But when they retrieve Mya's body, a whole new mystery is opened up, around the disappearance of a young local woman twenty years before.
-
-
Just OK for Me
- By Lia on 05-28-24
By: Margaret Hickey
-
Detective Tom Janssen Hidden Norfolk, Books 1-3
- The Hidden Norfolk Murder Mystery Collections, Volume 1
- By: J M Dalgliesh
- Narrated by: Greg Patmore
- Length: 24 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Get three absolutely gripping crime thrillers set on the UK's atmospheric north Norfolk coast from number one best-selling British author J M Dalgliesh in this great value collection.
-
-
Good story with a great performance.
- By Roxane E. on 08-22-23
By: J M Dalgliesh
-
The Tea Ladies
- By: Amanda Hampson
- Narrated by: Zoe Carides
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
By: Amanda Hampson
-
Tom Lake
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Meryl Streep
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
-
-
So incredibly boring
- By Rhonda Morrison on 08-05-23
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Imperfection of Us
- A Story of Beginnings, Endings and Everything in Between
- By: Nick Alexander
- Narrated by: Imogen Church, Chris Harper
- Length: 11 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An emotional, thought-provoking, and refreshingly honest exploration of relationships, The Imperfection of Us will have your vision blurred by tears of sadness and laughter, desperate to find out what the future holds for feisty Dawn and sweet, reliable Rob. Oh, and Billy, of course. Let’s not forget Billy. Because Dawn certainly never has.
By: Nick Alexander
-
Lowbridge
- By: Lucy Campbell
- Narrated by: Anthea Greco
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1987: It's late summer and a time of change when a 17-year-old girl leaves the local shopping center in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again. Her unsolved disappearance is never far from the town's memory. There's those who grew up in the shadow of her loss whose own lives were altered forever, and those who know more than they're saying. It just takes an outsider to ask the right questions.
-
-
Wow found me a treasure!!
- By Jay on 11-08-23
By: Lucy Campbell
-
Foster
- By: Claire Keegan
- Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.
-
-
A story that will stay with me a long time
- By CTKG on 11-01-22
By: Claire Keegan
-
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
- By: Holly Ringland
- Narrated by: Louise Crawford
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After her family suffers a tragedy, nine-year-old Alice Hart is forced to leave her idyllic seaside home. She is taken in by her grandmother, June, a flower farmer who raises Alice on the language of Australian native flowers, a way to say the things that are too hard to speak. Under the watchful eye of June and the women who run the farm, Alice settles, but grows up increasingly frustrated by how little she knows of her family’s story.
-
-
Beautiful story
- By Julia Blackburn on 08-19-23
By: Holly Ringland
-
Limberlost
- By: Robbie Arnott
- Narrated by: Zoe Carides
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Powerful coming of age story
- By Kerry on 08-10-24
By: Robbie Arnott
-
The Dentist
- DS Cross, Book 1
- By: Tim Sullivan
- Narrated by: John Heffernan
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. So when his police colleagues dismiss the death of a man as a squabble among Bristol's homeless community, Detective Sergeant George Cross is not convinced.
-
-
Unique Detective Story
- By Lia on 06-11-22
By: Tim Sullivan
-
The Other Son
- By: Nick Alexander
- Narrated by: Imogen Church
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alice has been lying to herself for years, holding fast to the belief that the needs of her family far outweigh her own. But her outwardly successful marriage hides dark secrets, and for much of her life the children were the only reason she stuck around. These days, though her successful banker son lives nearby, his young wife seems to do everything she can to keep Alice at bay. As for Alice's other son, he has always been something of a stranger and has been traveling for so long that Alice isn't even sure what continent he is on anymore.
-
-
Wonderfully Done!
- By Ann on 11-06-16
By: Nick Alexander
-
How to Be Remembered
- By: Michael Thompson
- Narrated by: Lewis Fitz-Gerald
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Tommy Llewellyn’s first birthday, his doting parents awoke in a home without baby blankets and bottles in the fridge, without the photos of their newborn once scattered about, and without any idea that the one-year-old sleeping in their home was their child. That’s because Tommy Llewellyn is a boy who, in the very cosmic sense of things, will never be remembered—stuck in a universal Reset that causes everyone to forget he exists when the clock strikes midnight on his birthday each year.
-
-
Touching struggle to be remembered
- By David D on 04-24-24
By: Michael Thompson
-
The Summer Party
- By: Rebecca Heath
- Narrated by: Casey Withoos
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Summer, 2000. In the tranquil town of Queen's Point in southern Australia, the Whitlam family marks the end of every season with a lavish party in their clifftop mansion. Here, clutching her first glass of real champagne, the summer breeze intoxicating on her skin, sixteen-year-old Lucy Ross is kissed for the very first time. And then, in the shadows of the rose garden, she sees something she shouldn't.
-
-
Lots of twists and turns
- By Liz Noffsinger on 04-14-25
By: Rebecca Heath
-
Outback
- By: Patricia Wolf
- Narrated by: Adam Fitzgerald
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
DS Lucas Walker is on leave in his hometown, Caloodie, looking after his dying grandmother. When two young German backpackers vanish from the area on their way to a ranch, he finds himself unofficially on the case. But why all the interest from the Federal Police, when they have probably just ditched the heat and dust of the outback for the coast? As the number of days the couple are missing climbs, DS Walker is joined by the girl's sister. A detective herself from Berlin, she is desperate to find her before it's too late.
-
-
Ok I guess…
- By Jay on 01-21-23
By: Patricia Wolf
-
Boys Don't Cry
- By: Fíona Scarlett
- Narrated by: Ronan Raftery
- Length: 4 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joe is 17, a gifted artist and a brilliant older brother to 12-year-old Finn. They live with their Ma and Da in a Dublin tower block called Bojaxhiu, or 'the Jax'. It's not an easy place to be a kid, especially when your father, Frank, is the muscle for the notorious gang leader Dessie 'The Badger' Murphy. But whether it's daytrips to the beach or drawing secret sketches, Joe works hard to show Finn life beyond the battered concrete yard below their flat. Joe is determined not to become like his Da. But when Finn falls ill, Joe finds his convictions harder to cling to.
-
-
Really well written
- By joan on 12-23-23
By: Fíona Scarlett
-
The Rachel Incident
- A Novel
- By: Caroline O'Donoghue
- Narrated by: Tara Flynn
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.
-
-
Best narration
- By LG on 01-12-24