Showing results by narrator "Peter Hosking" in All Categories

The woman was bad news; Cliff knew he shouldn't have taken the case. Now his gun's been stolen, he's wanted by the police and all he has to go on is a mutilated photograph. Cliff Hardy rubs elbows with Sydney's blue bloods in his latest case, involving murder threats received by a woman filing for divorce. The clues explode when the Australian private eye stumbles upon the high society husband and his mistress - just as the house bursts into a fireball. Now Cliff is fighting for his life.

Claudia Fleischman is beautiful, rich, intelligent, and has just been charged with the murder of her husband. Hardy, hired to look into the background of the case, is soon up to his neck in trouble. When his car is blown up and a friend is killed, Cliff finds himself with a personal stake in the action. His investigations introduce him to the shadowy world of corporate high flyers at Sydney's exclusive Washington Club and bring him into contact with loose cannon Haitch Henderson and his soft but unpleasant pimp of a son.

Hooked on the limitless profits of the drug trade, organised crime has grown so powerful that it now poses a major threat to Australia's national security. Clive Small and Tom Gilling show how Australian crime gangs, in partnership with violent international syndicates, have exploited lax law enforcement and corruption on the nation's waterfront to import narcotics on a vast scale from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

The controversial Battle at Xa Long Tan was not only a critical episode in Australia's Vietnam involvement; it was also a textbook nightmare in the history of jungle warfare. Reconstructing this dramatic action from secret documents and the vivid recollections of many diggers who fought at Long Tan, Terry Burstall challenges the official army version.

Cliff Hardy is stunned to get a phone call from his ex-wife Cynthia. It has been over 20 years since she last shouted she never wanted to see him again and she was never a woman to change her mind. But that surprise is nothing to the bombshell Cynthia is about to drop. Dying of cancer, she's desperate to get in contact with the daughter she gave up for adoption - and the daughter in question, she confesses, is also Cliff's! A shocked but sceptical Cliff agrees to search for their missing daughter. But this is never going to be a straightforward investigation....

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

Autumn 1990. The world is teetering on the edge of war in the Gulf, Germany is reunited and a crumbling USSR stares ruin in the face. In Japan, a group of powerful men and women gather to create a rescue plan that will bring all three countries together for the first time in 50 years. Polyglot international publisher Gill Langton is mediator-in-chief. Treading the highest wire of global power-broking, he alone can balance politics with intrigue, manoeuvre with counter-manoeuvre. But his love for the beautiful, enigmatic Martha could bring it all tumbling down.

It's a universal account of greed, ambition and the power of the political machine that crushes anyone who gets in the way. In much the same way that Bruce Beresford's award-winning feature film "Breaker Morant" captured the popular imagination, Shoot Straight, You Bastards! is an explosive read - as controversial an event today as it was 100 years ago.

Next door to us, crowded on the east and west by large houses, was the Mantles' narrow little brick place. It seemed to be subsiding crookedly into the earth like an ill-laid tombstone, and was a sunless warren, dim humidity in summer, dim moisture in winter. The laneway to its back door ran flush against our side wall, and beneath the Mantles' lounge-room window, a furze of moss grew a quarter of an inch thick on the mortar.

Sex, sport, and steroids - an explosive mix. They called him the Black Prince. Southwestern Uni's top athlete, Clinton seemed to have it all: He was destined for sporting stardom and lucky in love - then it all went horribly wrong. Now Clinton won't rest until he's avenged his girlfriend's death. He's after the dealer who sold Angie bad steroids and nothing's going to get in his way. Can Cliff Hardy find him before he ends up on a murder charge - or dead?

When it's only 24 hours into a new case and PI Cliff Hardy's already been heavied, you know that the job is going to get his full attention. Cliff has been hired by high-flying consultant Martin Price to find out who's been supplying heroin to Price's teenage daughter - who in turn has got her beautiful young stepmother hooked. The well-heeled suburb of Lugarno seems an unlikely hotbed of drug-dealing and corruption, but Cliff is finding out the hard way that crime and violence come calling even at posh addresses.

The final audiobook in Maitland's critically acclaimed Belltree Trilogy. Harry Belltree's obsessive pursuit of justice has cost him everything - his job in homicide, his marriage and his newborn child. He has nothing left to lose, or so he thinks. Then his estranged wife disappears, leaving their baby daughter behind. The police think Jenny has murdered a man. Harry thinks she's in danger.

Hooked on the limitless profits of the drug trade, organised crime has grown so powerful that it now poses a major threat to Australia's national security. Clive Small and Tom Gilling show how Australian crime gangs, in partnership with violent international syndicates, have exploited lax law enforcement and corruption on the nation's waterfront to import narcotics on a vast scale from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

Gracey's come home to Cunningham on holidays. But now she's a state athletics champion and a private school student, and everything looks different - even frightening. Part history, part mystery, Gracey is a challenging story about the past and the present, murder and compassion, and black and white identity.

An entertaining collection of insider yarns by an Aussie Test cricket legend. 'In the Test arena, Dennis Lillee was never beaten. West Indian champion Viv Richards had taken the sword to all the international bowlers of his era. But when he came up against Lillee, it was a heavyweight fight between unrelenting combatants. Their contests were always take-no-prisoners affairs.'

The Vietnamese looked on Long Tan as a key victory for them, and in the sequel to The Soldiers' Story, Terry Burstall makes a veteran's emotional journey back to the battlefield after 25 years.

Broken by his last case, homicide detective Joe Cashin has fled the city and returned to his hometown to run its one-man police station while his wounds heal and the nightmares fade. He lives a quiet life with his two dogs in the tumbledown wreck his family home has become. It's a peaceful existence - ideal for the rehabilitating man. But his recovery is rudely interrupted by a brutal attack on Charles Bourgoyne, a prominent member of the local community.

An elemental force present at the creation of Australian rock 'n' roll, Johnny O'Keefe converted incredible drive, a tremendous flair for showmanship and a comic spirit into status as Australia's first rock star and a national icon. Johnny was dead at 43 after 30 hit singles, 28 albums, and a succession of self-inflicted disasters. Today " Shout", "Wild One", "I'm Counting on You" and "Sing" remain as indelible hallmarks of the early years of Australian rock 'n' roll.

Mick McCreary is an oilman out of a job. His only possessions are a plane ticket to Singapore, a month's pay in Indonesian rupiahs and the luck of the Irish. When the mysterious Mr Rubensohn approaches him with the offer of a breathtaking salary for a drilling operation on a remote island - no questions asked - he thinks that luck is running with him once more. But then he meets the beautiful Lisette, and within 24 hours he is involved in murder, intrigue and an international fraud of frightening proportions.

Richard Ashley is a journalist who cares about the truth, and he's about to break the greatest story of his career. Italy's ruling clique is rotten to the core. A scandal centred around Vittorio, Duke of Orgagna, points to a web of corruption and deceit emanating from his estate in the south. But Ashley finds that the truth is not all it seems when he falls in love with Orgagna's wife. Everything is more complicated, more passionate, than before - and tainted by death. Suddenly Ashley's greatest story threatens to be his last.