John Derum has narrated 9 audiobooks on Listento.it by 10 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 5 ratings. The most-rated is High Voltage.
A Royal Abduction
Summary
Arthur Upfield, creator of the Aboriginal detective 'Bony', followed his classic crime novel The Sands of Windee with this historical romance. During a state visit to Australia in 1928, Her Royal Highness Princess Natalie, heiress to the throne of Rolandia, is abducted from the transcontinental train at Cook on the Nullarbor Plain by a gang led by two brilliant Americans, Earle Lawrence and Van Horton. They hide her in caves near Eucla on the Great Australian Bight, until the search is called off and a ransom is arranged....
©2015 William Upfield (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
High Voltage
Summary
The first biography to focus exclusively on Angus Young - from his remarkable rise from working-class Glasgow and Sydney to the biggest stages in the world. Angus Young, the cofounder and the last remaining original member of AC/DC, has for more than 40 years been the face, the sound and sometimes the exposed backside of the trailblazing rock band. In his trademark schoolboy outfit, guitar in hand, Angus has given his signature sound to songs such as 'A Long Way to the Top', 'Highway to Hell' and 'Back in Black', helping AC/DC become the biggest rock band on the planet. High Voltage is the first biography to focus exclusively on Angus. It tells of his remarkable rise from working-class Glasgow and Sydney to the biggest stages in the world. The youngest of eight kids, Angus always seemed destined for a life in music, and it was his passion and determination that saw AC/DC become hard rock's greatest act. Over the years Angus has endured the devastating death of iconic vocalist Bon Scott, the forced retirement of his brother-in-arms, Malcolm Young, and more recently the loss from the band of singer Brian Johnson and drummer Phil Rudd. Yet somehow the little guitar maestro has kept AC/DC not just on the rails but at the top of the rock pile.
©2018 Jeff Apter (P)2018 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
Gripped by Drought
Summary
A powerful story of Australia's great sheep farms from one of our greatest writers. Gripped by Drought is a story of a man's battle not only with the elements of nature which threatened the ruin of his huge Australian sheep-farm, but also with a loveless and unhappy marriage.
For Frank Mayne, master of well-nigh a million-acre sheep station, life assumed its most dreary aspect. No rain for his farm, a wife who involved him in an orgy of spending and entertainment and with disaster just round the corner, there seemed little prospect of happiness.
Yet in the darkest hour of all, after the many unexpected and sometimes thrilling situations, the darkest hour of the drought gave way to rain and Mayne's tribulations became of the past.
©1932, 2017 William Upfield (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
Heritage
Summary
They came to change the course of a river. And changed the course of their lives.... In a time when desperate people were seizing with both hands the chance for freedom, refugees from more than 70 nations gathered beneath the Southern Cross to forge a new national identity. They came from all over war-torn Europe to the mountains of Australia to help realise one man's dream: the mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. People of all races and creeds tunnelled through a mountain range to turn the course of a majestic river, trying to put to rest ghosts from the inferno of history: buried memories, unimaginable pain and deadly secrets. From the ruins of Berlin to the birth of Israel, from the Italian Alps to the Australian high country, Heritage is a passionate and fast-paced tale of rebirth, struggle, sacrifice and redemption and a tribute to those who gave meaning to the Australian spirit.
©2006 Judy Nunn (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Ghost and the Bounty Hunter
Summary
Just after Christmas 1803, convict William Buckley fled an embryonic settlement in the land of the Kulin nation (now the Port Phillip area), to take his chances in the wilderness. A few months later, the local Aboriginal people found the six-foot-five former soldier near death. Believing he was a lost kinsman returned from the dead, they took him in, and for 32 years Buckley lived as a Wadawurrung man, learning his adopted tribe's language, skills and methods to survive. The outside world finally caught up with Buckley in 1835, after John Batman, a bounty hunter from Van Diemen's Land, arrived in the area, seeking to acquire and control the perfect pastureland around the bay. What happened next saw the Wadawurrung betrayed and Buckley eventually broken. The theft of Kulin country would end in the birth of a city. The frontier wars had begun. By the best-selling author of The Ship That Never Was, The Ghost and the Bounty Hunter is a fascinating and poignant true story from Australian colonial history.
©2020 Adam Courtenay (P)2020 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The Desert Column
Summary
One of the most popular accounts by an Australian veteran of WWI - written entirely from the private soldier's point of view.
©2017 Idriess Enterprises Pty Ltd (P)2017 Bolinda Publishing Pty Ltd
The House of Cain
Summary
A first-rate thriller about an American millionaire who owns the House of Cain, a haven for murderers wanted by the law.
Austilene Thorpe is accused of murder but then disappears from gaol. Her fiance, Martin Sherwood, goes blind from shock. His famous adventuring brother Monty learns that Austilene is in a refuge for murderers in the far north-east corner of South Australia, and together the Sherwoods set out to find her and bring her back to Melbourne....
©1929, 2013 William Upfield (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
The Great World
Summary
A novel of intense perception and formidable power from one of Australia's most celebrated authors. Every city, town and village has its memorial to war. Nowhere are these more eloquent than in Australia, generations of whose young men have enlisted to fight other people's battles - from Gallipoli and the Somme to Malaya and Vietnam. In The Great World, his finest novel yet, David Malouf gives a voice to that experience. But The Great World is more than a novel of war. Ranging over 70 years of Australian life, from Sydney's teeming King's Cross to the tranquil backwaters of the Hawkesbury River, it is a remarkable novel of self-knowledge and lost innocence, of survival and witness.
©1990 David Malouf (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing
Pills, Powder, and Smoke
Summary
Like the never-ending war on terror, the drugs war is a multi-billion-dollar industry that won’t go down without a fight. Pills, Powder, and Smoke explains why.
The war on drugs has been official American policy since the 1970s, with the UK, Europe and much of the world following suit. It is at best a failed policy, according to best-selling author Antony Loewenstein. Its direct results have included mass incarceration in the US, extreme violence in different parts of the world, the backing of dictatorships and surging drug addiction globally. And now the Trump administration is unleashing diplomatic and military forces against any softening of the conflict.
Pills, Powder, and Smoke investigates the individuals, officials, activists, victims, DEA agents and traffickers caught up in this deadly war. Travelling through the UK, the US, Australia, Honduras, the Philippines and Guinea-Bissau, Loewenstein uncovers the secrets of the drug war, why it's so hard to end, and who is really profiting from it.
In reporting on the front lines across the globe - from the killing fields of Central America to major cocaine transit routes in West Africa - Loewenstein reveals how the war on drugs has become the most deadly war in modern times. Designed and inspired by Washington, its agenda has nothing to do with ending drug use or addiction but is all about controlling markets, territories and people. Instead, Loewenstein argues, the legalisation and regulation of all drugs would be a much more realistic and humane approach. The evidence presented in this book will persuade many listeners that he's right.
©2019 Antony Loewenstein (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing