Showing results by narrator "John Stretton" in All Categories

Lottie Fairchild has two loves: history and, well, history. She's fascinated by the legends of love and curses handed down through her own family. Owner of a successful antique shop in her small country town Banalla, Lottie is on the committee that is about to launch a new festival celebrating the town history and their local figure of fame, gentleman bushranger Jack McNally. Altogether, Lottie is happy. Mostly. But when festival guest speaker Professor Damian Loxley arrives, a week early and on a motorbike, Lottie is caught off guard.

The world is in economic meltdown, but a mining town on the edge of nowhere is booming. With the town's population exploding, it's easy enough to hide a crime—or even a dirty past. Banished to the stock squad after the fallout from a police frame-up, Detective Senior Sergeant Cato Kwong is brought in from the cold to solve the case of a torso washed up on the wild shores of the Great Southern Ocean. When Kwong's investigation lifts the lid on the exploitation of migrant workers and disturbs an even darker criminal mind, the fallen cop faces powerful opposition.

In January 1993, the Australian government sent just under one thousand young men and women to serve under American command in a violent, impoverished, starving society. Most males over the age of twelve either carried or had access to a gun, and most Somali men had been fighting a vicious civil war for years. Australian soldiers and their teams had to gain control of the streets of Baidoa and surrounding towns. This contest was not ‘find, fight and kill' warfare. There was no decisive victory or defeat.

As station leader at the Davis Research Station in Antarctica, David Knoff was leading 24 expeditioners in a standard six-month mission when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, international travel came to a standstill and their ride home was cancelled—indefinitely. What was supposed to be a routine mission became a high-pressure cauldron of uncertainty and anxiety where everyone was pushed to their mental limits.

Havoc-06 is the call sign of former Australian Combat Controller Troy Knight. As a Royal Australian Air Force Airfield Defence Guard, Troy had not found the military adventure he sought: combat operations. His thirst for overseas deployment saw him privately contract his services in Iraq and South East Asia, but when he got whiff that the Australian Defence Force was raising a new defence capability, he couldn’t help but want to be part of it.

When wealthy property developer Francis Tan and his family are found slain in their mansion, Cato Kwong is forced to recall a personal history that makes his investigation doubly painful. The killer is elusive and brutal, and the investigation takes Cato to Shanghai. In a world of spoilt rich kids and cyber dragons, Cato is about to discover a whole lot more about the Chinese acquisition of Australian land—about those who play the game and those who die trying.

Cato Kwong is back. Back in Boom Town and back on a real case – the unsolved mystery of a missing fifteen-year-old girl. But it's midsummer in the city of millionaires and it's not just the heat that stinks.

Detective Philip ‘Cato' Kwong is investigating the death of a retiree found hacked to pieces in his suburban Perth home. The trail leads to Timor-Leste, with its recent blood-soaked history. There, he reunites with an old frenemy, the spook Rory Driscoll who, in Cato's experience, has always occupied a hazy moral terrain.

Detective Sergeant Philip ‘Cato' Kwong is light on sleep but high on happiness with his new wife Sharon Wang and their baby girl. But contentment is not compatible with life in the Job, and soon a series of murders of Fremantle's homeless people gets in the way of Cato's newfound bliss. As New Wave journalist Norman Lip flirts online with the killer, it becomes apparent that these murders are personal—every death is bringing the killer one step closer to Cato.