Showing results by narrator "Toby Webster" in All Categories

Most famous for his Hornblower series, iconic writer C. S. Forester tells tales of adventure like no other. This BBC radio collection features modern adaptations of five of his acclaimed novels, including The African Queen (famously adapted as an Oscar-winning film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn) and The Gun, which was turned into the hit Hollywood movie The Pride and the Passion.

On June 22, 1954, in the depth of a southern winter, teenage friends Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker went for a walk in a park with Pauline's mother. Half an hour later the girls returned alone. Honorah Parker lay in a sea of blood on a lonely track. She had been savagely murdered. In this mesmerizing audiobook, lawyer and true-crime writer Peter Graham tells the whole story for the first time, giving a brilliant account of the murder and ensuing trial, dramatic revelations about the fates of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker after their release from prison and their strange lives today.

Forthright and frank, Read's well-respected views on the game and its future are a must-listen for rugby fans, and his take on the myriad personalities and the peccadilloes of his teammates, coaches and opponents will be sure to surprise and delight. From the playing fields of Papakura to the summit of the sport, Read has faced every challenge head on. His life story is no exception.

Mr. Royston is driving his hansom through the night-time streets of Melbourne when he is hailed by a man supporting a slumped, intoxicated figure and requesting that the cabman take the unfortunate fellow home - before proceeding to drop his burden and make a rapid exit.

Anna and Will have been passing in and out of each other’s lives since they were just teenagers. Now 20 years later, Anna is married—she has a lovely house, a step daughter in university and a husband with a good job. What she doesn’t have is joy. When she runs into Will it sparks something in her, a longing for the Anna she used to be. Together they embark on a journey to find what brings them joy, to discard what doesn’t and to become the people they always wanted to be.

After graduating university, four friends - Peter, Avery, James, and Isaac - spent a golden summer working in a vineyard. Years later, Peter is brutally murdered in Martinborough. Meanwhile, north of Auckland, the long, hot summer is over and the tourists have left Matakana wine country. A tranquil atmosphere descends, and warm autumnal winds sweep across the valleys. With the harvest due, grapes sit bursting upon the manicured vines, awaiting the pick. Then a severed hand is discovered under Avery's house.

Lena just moved to Mandalay Close. She needed a new start, since her boyfriend cheated her out of the happy-ever-after she’d believed they were always going to share. But on the day Lena moves in, letters begin to arrive for all her new neighbours. Letters that promise to expose everyone’s deepest, darkest secrets. Every house has received one - except for Lena’s. Someone clearly wants to implicate her, to ruin her new life and turn everyone against her. She’s made an enemy, but who, and why?

One night in December, twenty-two year old Ted Green makes his way to Waterloo Bridge determined to end his life. Lonely, despairing and utterly hopeless, it seems the only choice to make. That same night in December, Marianne Cooper is running away from a party. Having found her boyfriend in a passionate clinch with someone else, Marianne can’t get away fast enough. But as she makes her way along London’s South Bank, a figure catches her eye on top of the bridge. Then she sees him, a man ready to jump.

It's a story that began in a rickety old home on a cold June morning in 1994, where five members of a seemingly ordinary New Zealand family were gunned down. There were two suspects. One lay dead from a single bullet to the head. The other was the only survivor: David Bain. Since then, the country has asked: Who killed the Bain family? David, or his father Robin? And why?

When a freshly mummified body is discovered at the Brighton Museum of Natural History, Detective Francis Sullivan is at a loss to identify the desiccated woman. But as Egyptian burial jars of body parts with cryptic messages attached start appearing, he realises he has a serial killer on his hands. Revenge, obsession and an ancient religion form a potent mix, unleashing a wave of terror throughout the city. Caught in a race against time while battling his own demons, Francis must fight to uncover the true identity of the Embalmer before it's too late.

When twenty-one-year-old builder Joe Wright meets Leo, he falls in love hard, and seemingly for ever. Mature, philosophical and intensely handsome, Leo teaches Joe an appreciation of music and literature, and, most importantly, a passion for the beautiful old buildings that are disappearing from Auckland's central city. But when Leo suddenly vanishes from his life, then drifts back again years later, Joe—now a powerful developer of heritage architecture—is unable to move on from this first affair.

Pio Morgan is waiting outside a pub on a cold winter's night. There is a debt he must pay and no options left. What he does next drags a group of strangers into a web of confusion that over the course of a few days changes all their lives. There's the young Maori widow just trying to raise her children, the corporate executive hiding his mistake, the gang of criminals that will do whatever it takes to recover what they've lost and the outsider sent to town to try and figure out who did what. Time is running out for all of them as events take an increasingly sinister turn.

Shocking real-life stories of murderous women who used rat poison to rid themselves of husbands and other inconvenient family members. After World War II, Sydney experienced a crime wave that was chillingly calculated. Discontent mixed with despair, greed with callous disregard. Women who had lost their wartime freedoms headed back into the kitchen with sinister intent and the household poison thallium, normally used to kill rats, was repurposed to kill husbands and other inconvenient family members.

For a commitment-phobe who's never taken a girl on a third date, Jack finds getting married to his old friend Maya pretty easy. He's a New Zealander in need of a visa to stay in the country, and she doesn't believe in marriage anyway. Simple. Maya and Jack live in wedded, sex-less bliss, until one day Jack starts to get serious with someone else.

Edwina is an old-school battler. Her life revolves around the church and her job unpacking vegetables early in the morning, while around her a new generation turns Ponsonby into a trendy, uber-chic suburb. It is a chance win in a church raffle - a gym membership - that changes her life. She meets different people; makes a new young friend named Rose and transforms herself: a metamorphosis, Rose calls it.

Worn down by a job he hates and a stressful family life, middle-aged, middle-class Bradley picks up a teenage escort and commits an unspeakable crime. Now she's tied up in his warehouse and he doesn't know what to do. Max is homeless, sleeping rough and barely existing - known for cadging a cigarette from anyone passing and occasionally even the footpath. Nobody really sees Max - but he has one friend, and she's gone missing. In order to find her, Max is going to have to call on some people from his past and reopen wounds that have remained unhealed for a very long time.

Jimmy Kokupe is a miracle: he's been cured. But he still carries the stigma, which makes life back on the mainland dangerous and lonely. To find a refuge, he's returned to the camp to care for his friend, fellow patient old Will, and disturbed young Charley. Healed of his physical ailments and dreaming of the girl he once planned to follow to a new life in Australia, Jimmy meets 'the lady', the island caretaker's beautiful but troubled wife who brings their food.

In an unspecified time and location, an unnamed boy is living what he feels to be an idyllic life in the faded and peeling lido where his father is a lifeguard. He idolises his father - never more so than when he saves the life of a suicidal man. The arrest of his sister Lilly later that summer brings the halcyon days to an abrupt end, however, and his family is torn apart, with Lilly sent to jail and the boy sent to a boardinghouse for dysfunctional boys: The Fell.

Helicopter paramedic Tama James isn’t afraid of hard work, danger or putting his patients first. And he expects nothing less from his team. But when his newest recruit arrives, the bubbly and beautiful Mikayla Elliot, he’s unimpressed to discover she didn’t earn her place. She’s the superior’s daughter. So, he’ll make it his mission to show her just how tough the job really is!

Single mum and Paramedic Fiona Murchison has made it her mission to protect her little boy. Her husband was a daredevil, a risk taker, with his life played out in front of the camera. But when he died, she vowed to keep her son away from the glare of the world’s media. Now her quiet and content life is about to come crashing down around her with the arrival of a new doctor in town…