Showing results by narrator "Jessica Douglas-Henry" in All Categories

The Kelly family's idyllic holiday in the south of France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing. She's discovered several hours later with no visible signs of injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy. Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member of the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the south of France? And what's wrong with her now?

Ren lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup d'état. She survives by hunting, farming, trading, and forgetting the contours of what was once a normal life. But her quiet stability is disrupted when an army unit, led by a young female soldier, comes to the mountains on government orders in search of a legendary creature called the rain heron - a mythical, dangerous, form-shifting bird with the ability to change the weather. Ren insists that the bird is simply a story, yet the soldier will not be deterred, forcing them both into a gruelling quest.

There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Night after night Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge. Until he doesn’t. When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral...Did the victim jump? Was she pushed?

Stephen Aston is getting married again. The only problem is, he's still married to his first wife, even though she is in a care facility for dementia. But he'll take care of that easily, by divorcing her—even if his adult daughters protest. Tully and Rachel Aston look upon Heather as nothing but an interloper. Heather is the same age as Rachel and even younger than Tully. Clearly she's a gold digger and after their father's money. Heather has secrets that she's keeping close, and reasons of her own for wanting to marry Stephen.

In 1940, as the Nazis sweep toward Lithuania, Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara defies his own government and secretly issues thousands of visas to Jewish refugees desperate to flee. After the war, Sugihara is dismissed and disappears into obscurity. Three decades later, in Australia, Rachael Margolin, her father and her grandmother live disconnected from one another and haunted by unspoken tragedies. When Rachel announces her engagement to a Greek Orthodox man, it detonates a long-held secret.

Koalas regularly appeared in Australian biologist Danielle Clode's backyard, but it was only when a bushfire threatened that she truly paid them attention. In vivid, descriptive prose, Clode embarks on a delightful and surprising journey through evolutionary biology, natural history, and ecology to understand where these enigmatic animals came from and what their future may hold. She begins her search with the fossils of ancient giant koalas, delving into why the modern koala has become the lone survivor of a once-diverse family of uniquely Australian marsupials.

Handywoman Barb Young has lived in the sleepy coastal town of Bullford Point for over fifty years - and frankly, in that time, not much has happened, unless you count that business where a bush turkey managed to board the ferry a couple of years ago. When Joe Griffiths returns from Sydney after six years of drug addiction, jail and, eventually, rehab, Barb offers him a job, hoping to help him turn his life around. However, when another new resident of Bullford Point is murdered, Joe becomes the prime suspect.

Over 500,000 years ago, a single gene mutated. It spread over time, becoming critical in the journey transforming our earliest ancestors into fully modern humans, capable of navigating the entire planet and beyond. Then just a few thousand years ago, humans gradually outsourced knowledge to writing, and we displaced art and music from the heart of learning. This is the extraordinary story of the discovery of a supergene that makes us uniquely human.

Recently widowed, Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother. She was thrilled when her younger daughter Ally married her true love, but as time goes by Miriam wonders whether all is well with Ally, as she moves to the country and gradually withdraws, finding excuses every time Miriam offers to visit. Their relationship has always had its ups and downs, and Miriam tries to give her daughter the distance she so clearly wants. But is all as it seems?

Twenty years ago, ornithology student Jessica Weston filmed a lyrebird mimicking the dying screams of a woman in the Barrington Tops National Park. Terrified, she took her recordings to the Maitland police to report a murder. Despite support from newly minted detective, Megan Blaxland, no one was reported missing in the area and no body found, so Jessica's claims were mocked and dismissed. Twenty years later, a body is unearthed. Exactly where Jessica said it would be.

In 1960, when the legendary icebreaker Magga Dan set sail for Antarctica, it contained a secret. Hiding on board was Nel Law, wife of expedition leader Phillip Law. She would make history by becoming the first Australian woman to set foot on the icy continent, but it was her art that would change everything. Though a talented artist, Nel has always been defined by her role as ‘the explorer's wife', but in the clear expanse of the Southern Ocean, her true self is finally allowed to emerge. Despite misogyny from the all-male crew and resentment from her husband, Nel's art begins to flourish.

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.

Tully and Rachel Aston are murderous when they discover their father has a new girlfriend. The fact that Heather is half his age isn't even the most shocking part. Stephen is still married to their mother, who is in a care facility with end-stage Alzheimer's disease. Announcing his plan to divorce and then remarry, the news of Stephen and Heather's engagement sets a chain a family implosion. With their mother unable to speak for herself, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets and what this new woman really wants.

July 2014, a lonely road at twilight outside Croppa Creek, New South Wales: 80-year-old farmer Ian Turnbull takes out a .22 and shoots environmental officer Glen Turner in the back. On one side, a farmer hoping to secure his family’s wealth on the richest agricultural soil in the country. On the other, his obsession: the government man trying to apply environmental laws.

Lili’s family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager. Now, in the 1980s, she’s teaching in the south of France. She makes friends, observes the treatment handed out to North African immigrants, and is creeped out by her downstairs neighbor. Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation. He’s also preoccupied with his ambitious wife, his wayward children, and his strong-minded mother. Islam has been banned, the air is smoky from a Permanent Fire Zone, and one pandemic has already run its course.

Before the woman went over the cliff, Pippa and Gabe were happy. They have the kind of marriage that everyone envies, as well as two sweet young daughters, a supportive family, and a picturesque cliff-side home - which would have been idyllic had the tall beachside cliffs not become so popular among those wishing to end their lives. Gabe has become somewhat of a local hero since they moved to the cliff house, talking seven people down from stepping off the edge.

Scottish-born Robert Wales sailed into Sydney Harbour during WWII, but in 1953 he was choking in the city, and doctors prescribed fresh country air. With no experience and only knowledge he'd picked up from a few books, he uproots his family and sets out to establish a sheep farm in the bush. When they arrive on a lonely hill in northern New South Wales, they have no electricity, no running water, no telephone and no choice but to make this their home.

Author Deb Hunt sets out to discover what makes our Australian farming families tick. Travelling to properties across the country - from a vast, dusty cattle run in outback Queensland to the wheat belt of Western Australia and dairy farms in Tasmania - and introducing us to eight different families who survive and thrive on the land, these stories provide a window into a way of life that defines the Australian spirit at its best.

Growing up in the 1950s, the three Doherty children were trained by their parents to memorise car number plates, to spot unusual behaviour on the street and most important of all, to avoid drawing attention to themselves. The children became unwitting foot soldiers in Australia's battle against Soviet infiltration in the Cold War. They attended political rallies, stood watch on houses owned by communist sympathisers and infiltrated the UFO Society.

As the climate crisis threatens more extreme bushfire seasons, droughts and floods, many Australians are demanding their leaders answer the question: ‘Why didn’t you do something?’ The Carbon Club reveals the truth behind Australia’s two decades of climate inaction. It’s the story of how a loose confederation of influential climate-science sceptics, politicians and business leaders sought to control Australia’s response to the climate crisis.