Showing results by narrator "Des Fitzgerald" in All Categories

Mary Brown is the star of the Adorable Fat Girl series: she's gorgeous, curvaceous, and wants to find a boyfriend. But where's she going to meet someone new? She doesn't want to hang around pubs all evening (actually that bit's not true), and she doesn't want to have to get out of her pyjamas unless really necessary (that bit's true). There's only one thing for it - she will launch herself majestically onto the dating scene.

President John F. Kennedy gave his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War, and among the most famous anti-communist speeches. Twenty-two months earlier, East Germany had erected the Berlin Wall to prevent mass emigration to West Berlin. The speech was aimed as much at the Soviet Union as it was at West Berliners. The speech is considered one of Kennedy's finest, delivered at the height of the Cold War and the New Frontier.

In a post-COVID19 world where redundancies are high, and job opportunities are low, never has it been so essential to learn how to be happy and healthy at work. Jumping from job to job will not provide you with the answers, unless you can first rework yourself and shed yourself of the burden of inherited cultures, past beliefs and historical mistakes. Reworked utilises neuroscience, evidence-based psychology and two decades of working in health and wellbeing to teach you how to be happy, healthy, safe and engaged at work.

1629. Embarking on a journey in search of her father, a young girl called Mayken boards the Batavia, the most impressive sea vessel of the age. During the long voyage, this curious and resourceful child must find her place in the ship's busy world and she soon uncovers shadowy secrets above and below deck. 1989. Gil, a boy mourning the death of his mother, is placed in the care of his irritable and reclusive grandfather. Their home is a shack on a tiny fishing island off the Australian coast, notable only for its reefs and wrecked boats.

Based on a real-life event, an epic historical novel from the award-winning author of Things in Jars, The Night Ship illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, 300 years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island.

A serial killer is stalking the streets of Sydney, hell-bent on recreating scenes from the Fabrica, the 16th-century foundation text of modern European anatomy. His cold, methodical attacks have the city on edge, but the serial killer may not even be the darkest player. Desperate for a breakthrough, decorated homicide detective David Murphy draws into the case his art-historian sister, Joanna, and his wife, Sylvia. Unravelling the mystery of who is behind the killings pushes each beyond the limits of what they thought possible.

A house perched impossibly on a cliff overlooking the stunning, iconic Bluebird Beach. Prime real estate, yet somehow not real estate at all, The Lodge is, like those who live in it, falling apart. Gordon Grimes has become the accidental keeper of this last relic of an endangered world. He lives in The Lodge with his wife, Kelly, who is trying to leave him, their son, Ben, who will do anything to save him, his goddaughter Lou who is hiding from her own troubles, and Leonie, the family matriarch who has trapped them here for their own good.

Our lives are earthen vessels fragile but unbreakable due to our self-determination and steadfast faith. Faith allows us the opportunity to make the needed changes in our lives so that life is worth the journey. Despite the regrets, failures, and misgivings in our past, we can still change. Faith is the foundation, anchor, and root of self-transformation. Self-transformation is the result of the significant changes we make to become authentic and lovable human beings..

Life can get dull when you feel like you aren't living on your own terms, and it can be difficult to shake off feelings of inadequacy when you aren't achieving your goals. In this book, you'll discover how to grow confidence and how to achieve your goals by shaking up your current situation through mindset, self-care, and action. This complete guide gives you His Map to confidence—the six pillars that enable you to tackle whatever's holding you back from becoming the best version of yourself.

In the fall of 2011, a heartbroken young man flees Australia for the USA. Landing in the excessive, uncanny-familiar glamour and plenitude of New York City, Will makes a vow to say yes to everything that comes his way. By fate or random chance, Will's journey takes him deep into the American heartland where he meets Wayne Gage, a fast-living, troubled Vietnam veteran, would-be spirit guide and collector of exotic animals. These two men in crisis form an unlikely friendship, but Will has no idea just how close to the edge Wayne truly is.

Ever need to grab food and go without time to prepare a big meal? Wish you could quickly prepare a few delicious snacks in Ziploc bags, then have premade snacks that are ready to grab for the rest of the week? Healthy Ziploc Snacks is packed with 40 healthy and irresistibly delicious snack recipes you can keep in a Ziploc bag and bring with you wherever you go.

When her estranged brother passes, Missy is suddenly an unwanted co-owner to Ocean View Stables by Florence, Oregon. Missy wants to start over somewhere new after her old boss burned her. She's jobless and has a wrongly ruined reputation, so this works out perfectly...until she meets the cowboy running the place. Brent built his dream with determination and his two hands; he's responsible for everything that happens there. Secretly, he feels responsible that his former partner died. He also doesn't hide his belief that Missy won't stick around. Women tend to take off on him so why would she be any different?

You've spent the first twelve years of your child's life guiding, disciplining, and playing, only to transition into the teenage years where you feel like none of this mattered. It does matter! The teenage years can be a struggle for most parents because trying to connect with your teenager as a parent can feel hopeless at times. Trying to understand your teen's logic, choices, and actions is more than a full-time job; it is a commitment to chaos and hoping you come out alive when it is all over.

The Kane family, Lorcan, Naiyana and their young son, relocate from Perth to Kallayee, an abandoned mining town in the Great Victoria Desert to start over again, free from their chequered past. The town seems like the perfect getaway: peaceful, quiet, remote. Somewhere they won’t be found. But life in Kallayee isn’t quite as straightforward as they hope. There are noises in the earth, mysterious shadows and tracks in the dust, as if the town is coming back to life. But the family can’t leave. No one can talk sense into them. And now, no one can talk to them at all.

Awkward, hapless Marick is still struggling with the loss of his wife, his child and his faith when he is reluctantly thrust into the position of chaplain at a large public hospital. Shortly after arriving, he meets Hugo, a hospital scientist and a man almost as lost as Marick himself, who is working in a forgotten lab, deep in the subterranean realms of the hospital. Hugo is convinced that the bacteria he uses for protein production have - unbelievably - begun to produce gold. Is it alchemy, evolution, a hoax or even ... possibly ... a miracle?

Coral "Memory" Holmes, a young female genius, wakes up in front of a log cabin in the woods with two bullet holes in her left buttock and retrograde amnesia wiping out this day of her life. Not knowing who is trying to kill her or why, she has to survive in the wilderness while on the run.

Step back into the shadow cast by the world again in this collection of 24 eclectic short stories ranging from satire through to horror and science fiction.

Dublin, 1816. A young nursemaid conceals a pregnancy and then murders her newborn in the home of the Neshams, a prominent family in a radical Christian sect known as the Brethren. Rumours swirl about the identity of the child’s father, but before an inquest can be held, the maid is found dead after an apparent suicide. When Abigail Lawless, the 18-year-old daughter of the city coroner, by chance discovers a message from the maid’s seducer, she sets out to discover the truth.

On an ordinary night in an ordinary year, Tommy Llewellyn's doting parents wake in a home without toys and nappies, without photos of their baby scattered about, and without any idea that the small child asleep in his crib is theirs. That's because Tommy is a boy destined to never be remembered. On the same day every year, everyone around him forgets he exists, and he grows up enduring his own universal Reset. That is until something extraordinary happens: Tommy Llewellyn falls in love. Determined to finally carve out a life for himself, Tommy sets out on a mission to finally trick the Reset.

What would the city of the future look like if we tried to build a better life from the ground up? And would anyone want to live there? Here, Des Fitzgerald takes us on an urgent, unforgettable journey into the future of urban life, from shimmering edifices in the Arizona desert to forest-bathing in Japan, and from rats in mazes to neuroscientific studies of the effects of our surroundings. Along the way, he reveals the deep-lying and often problematic roots of today's green city movement, and offers an argument for celebrating our cities as they are.