Audiobooks narrated by Steve Shanahan

The Golden Gang: Bushranger Frank Gardiner and the biggest gold robbery in Australian history

The first comprehensive biography of the godfather of Australian bushranging - Frank Gardiner - leader of the Lachlan gang and mastermind of the largest gold heist in Australian history. Atop the hierarchy of Australian bushrangers sits Ned Kelly - the ultimate outlaw - and just below him, the tragic figure of Ben Hall, who joined a gang led by a man whose name today is less well known, but in his time was much more famous than any other: Frank Gardiner. Mastermind of the largest gold robbery in Australia's history, Gardiner led an extraordinary life, the full telling of which is long overdue. In a tough country and among a group of tough men, Gardiner was the toughest of them all. But while he engaged in gunfights with police to evade capture, he was always courteous and could lay claim to never killing anyone, and never stole from those who couldn't afford to be robbed. He went by three different surnames in his lifetime and spent almost half of it behind bars, including at some of the colonies' most notorious penal institutions: the Pentridge Stockade, Cockatoo Island and Darlinghurst Gaol. But if Gardiner was never quite the Robin Hood he sometimes imagined himself to be, he was nevertheless a natural leader, and a man capable of inspiring a motley bunch of stockmen and drifters to become the most effective and successful bushranging gang in the country's history. His Lachlan gang operated with a clockwork efficiency that culminated in the robbery of the Gold Escort at Eugowra Rocks, and from 1861 to 1863 it held reign over the roads of the Western Plains of New South Wales. Richly detailed, The Golden Gang shines a new light onto Gardiner's remarkable life - one that ended in shocking tragedy - and reinstates him in the pantheon of Australian outlaw heroes.

Ian W. Shaw (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Saving Port Moresby: Fighting at the end of the Kokoda Track

Powerfully written by Australia's leading military historian, Saving Port Moresby commemorates the 80th Anniversary of the Battles in New Guinea. Japanese Major General Horii TomitarO, commanding the South Seas Force, was after taking Kokoda Plateau in late July tasked with entering the Owen Stanley Range to capture Port Morseby. After the battles for Deniki and Isurava, his troops were pushing south through the mountains. The Australians under Brigadier Arnold Potts, however, were not in rout, but were involved in a determined fighting withdraw. After fighting a delaying action at Templeton's Crossing, the Australians took up a position along Mission Ridge, just south of Efogi Village. Horii and his battalions attacked and after two days of bloody hand-to-hand fighting, the Australians were forced to again withdraw. To the veterans who fought here the battle would become known as ‘Butcher's Corner'. After several further delaying actions, Potts and his men took up a position on Ioribaiwa Ridge, just 50-kilometres north of Port Moresby. His brigade by now numbered fewer than 300 men. Here they were reinforced with the men of the 25th Brigade. Horii decided that he would establish himself of Ioribaiwa Ridge as his base for operations against the township. After a week of fighting the Japanese cut through the centre right flank of the Australian 25th Brigade, forcing the Australians to fall back to Imita Ridge, the last defensible ridge in the Owen Stanleys immediately behind lay Port Moresby.

David W. Cameron (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

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Retaking Kokoda: The Battles for Templeton's Crossing, Eora Creek and the Oivi-Gorari positions

Japanese Major General Horii TomitarO, commanding the South Seas Force, had the Australians on the back foot. Australia was holding the last defendable ridge in the Owen Stanley ranges, Imita Ridge. Horii to his distress was then given orders from Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo that he was to fall back across the mountains to the Japanese beachheads at Gona, Sanananda, and Buna, leaving a force between Templeton's Crossing and Eora Creek to stop any Australian advance through the mountains. The Japanese, unknown to the Australians evacuated Ioribaiwa Ridge just before they launched their attacks and to their amazement on storming the heights, the Australians encountered no resistance – the Japanese had gone. This, however, did not mean the fighting on the Kokoda Track was over, far from it. Three more desperate actions would be fought by the Australians and Japanese, before the decisive battles for the Japanese beachheads could be decided – the battles for Templeton's Crossing, Eora Creek, and finally the Oivi-Gorari positions on the northern lowland plains. Just 15-kilometres east lay the Kumusi River, the last geographical barrier before reaching the strongly fortified Japanese beachheads themselves.

David W. Cameron (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Scot Free

Welcome to Scot Free. It’s the show bringing reality TV to a murderous new low. Ten strangers – five convicted killers and a relative of each victim – are thrust together under the watchful eye of unseen host Scot. To escape the studio house alive, each player must identify their match and eliminate them. Permanently. Grieving Jay is snatched away from his pregnant girlfriend to join the deadly game. Desperate to learn who murdered his estranged sister, Harriet, he leaps headfirst into the lives of his fellow contestants. As they start falling one by one, he must race to decipher the clues and avenge Harriet’s death. But this is television, and producer Adolpha Martin knows her bloodthirsty audience all too well. For season six, she’s pulling more than one rabbit out of a hat in search of a heart-stopping finale. Can Jay survive long enough to discover who killed Harriet?

Greg Moriarty (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Scot Free

WELCOME TO SCOT FREE It’s the show bringing reality TV to a murderous new low. Ten strangers – five convicted killers and a relative of each victim – are thrust together under the watchful eye of unseen host Scot. To escape the studio house alive, each player must identify their match and eliminate them. Permanently. Grieving Jay is snatched away from his pregnant girlfriend to join the deadly game. Desperate to learn who murdered his estranged sister, Harriet, he leaps headfirst into the lives of his fellow contestants. As they start falling one by one, he must race to decipher the clues and avenge Harriet’s death. But this is television, and producer Adolpha Martin knows her bloodthirsty audience all too well. For season six, she’s pulling more than one rabbit out of a hat in search of a heart-stopping finale. Can Jay survive long enough to discover who killed Harriet?

Greg Moriarty (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Destination Buchenwald: The astonishing survival story of Australian and New Zealand airmen in a Naz

The harrowing story of the Allied airmen who experienced the true horrors of Nazism firsthand. It was the summer of 1944 as liberating Allied forces surged towards Paris following the D-Day landings. For a large group of downed airmen being held in that city's infamous Fresnes Prison, they were about to face evacuation into the blackest, bloody heart of Germany and experience the most acute evil of the war. Amid great secrecy, those 168 airmen – including several from Australia and New Zealand – were transported on a filthy, overcrowded nightmare train journey which ended at the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, accompanied by orders for their execution. At Buchenwald they witnessed extreme depravity that would haunt them to the end of their days. Yet, on returning home, they were confronted by decades of denials from their own governments that they had ever been held in one of Hitler's most vile concentration camps. In conducting his original deep research for this book – now completely expanded and updated – Colin Burgess personally interviewed or corresponded with dozens of the surviving airmen from a number of nations, including their valorous leader, New Zealand Squadron Leader Phil Lamason. Destination Buchenwald tells a compelling story of extraordinary bravery, comradeship and endurance, when a group of otherwise ordinary servicemen were thrust into an unimaginable Nazi hell. 'This was the first book to provide an insight into our experiences as a group of captured allied airmen, betrayed to the Gestapo, tortured and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp. I consider it to be one of the best interpretations of the events as it reflects the voices of the survivors and their challenges to stay alive in such dehumanising circumstances.' Sqn Ldr Stanley Booker, RAF (Rtd.), MBE, Légion D'Honneur: Last surviving member of the Buchenwald airmen

Colin Burgess (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

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The Battle for Isurava: Fighting in the clouds of the Owen Stanley 1942

'You are trying to survive, shirt torn, arse out of your pants, whiskers a mile long, hungry ... you carry your boots because there's no skin on your feet. But when you look around at some of the others - hell! They look crook! ... you dig a number of holes in the ground and bury your dead. Nothing would be said, but you think 'maybe it will be my turn next'. Within 24 hours of the Japanese invasion of northern New Guinea at Gona in July 1942, the Australian militiamen of 'B' Company, 39th Battalion, spent four weeks fighting a delaying action against a crack Japanese force outnumbered by three to one. By mid-August, the rest of the battalion had arrived, and these men took up a position at Isurava, in the heart of the cloud covered mountains and jungles of the Owen Stanley Range. The battle for Isurava would be the defining battle of the Kokoda Campaign and has rightfully been described as Australia's Thermopylae. It was here that Australia's first Victoria Cross in the Pacific war was awarded when the Japanese conducted several ferocious attacks against the Australian perimetre. The outnumbered and poorly equipped Australians managed to hold back the Japanese advance for almost a week; only then did these battle scared and weary men begin a month long fighting withdraw towards Ioribaiwa Ridge just north of Port Morsby. However, their sacrifice provided time for the Australian 25th Brigade to be brought forward - finally forcing the Japanese to withdrawal just as they glimpsed the lights of Port Morseby. Using diaries, letters and other first-hand accounts and following on from The Battles for Kokoda Plateau, leading military historian David W Cameron continues his detailed and riveting account of the war in the Owen Stanleys in 1942.

David W. Cameron (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bitter Wash Road

Hirsch is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan officer, now hated and despised. Exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. Threats. Pistol cartridge in the mailbox. So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he's found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his 'backup' is about to put a bullet in him. He's wrong on both counts. But the events that unfold turn out to be a lot more sinister. 'One of ¬Australia's best-written crime fictions to date.' Australian 'Bitter Wash Road is superb.' Weekend Australian 'Peter Temple and Garry Disher will be identified as the crime writers who redefined Australian crime fiction in terms of its form, content and style...'Disher's eye for detail is acute and his poetic analogies precise...Bitter Wash Road continues the work of re-imagining the crime genre in a very Australian way, and does it beautifully.' Age/Sydney Morning Herald 'Disher is definitely not to be missed.' Globe & Mail 'Smooth, assured mastery.' New York Times Book Review 'Exceptional crime fiction.' Courier-Mail 'Not a word is wasted: here the ancient, bare, distinctive landscape of the hardscrabble country bordering Goyder's Line is conveyed with admirably atmospheric economy.' Adelaide Advertiser 'A top-class writer.' The Times 'Disher turns out to be a superb chronicler of macho cop culture.' Sunday Times 'An absolute corker of a crime novel and puts him up there with the likes of Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin and John Harvey...This is a superbly well-plotted thriller, beautifully written-especially the descriptions of the harsh outback-and with an intriguing hero, an honest cop faced with dishonesty at every turn.' Shotsmag 'Fast-paced, funny, and believable.'Bookmunch

Garry Disher (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

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Australia's Dambusters: Flying into Hell with 617 Squadron

Colin Burgess (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

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Outback Creed

A city lawyer and an Aboriginal boy become targets in a high-stakes conspiracy. Award-winning narrator Steve Shanahan (Jane Harper's Bestsellers The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man and more) delivers a riveting performance, bringing the Australian outback and its characters to life in a heart-stopping thriller loaded with action and shocking twists. Tom McLaren is the go-to negotiator for a corporate law firm, and is accustomed to success and all its trappings. His skills are put to the test when he and his colleagues head to the outback, hoping to persuade Aboriginal Elders to give up their land to a powerful mining company. The land is worth billions, but the Elders won’t budge, and Tom faces the rare prospect of failure. Yet there are hidden forces at play that will stop at nothing to make sure a deal is done, even if that means taking the life of an Aboriginal boy. When Tom and his colleagues discover the shocking plot, they also become targets, and the result is murder. In his frantic hunt for answers, Tom realizes his most dangerous enemy may be closer than he feared. With relentless killers closing in fast, Tom must uncover the truth…before it’s too late!

Jonathan Macpherson (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

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Consolation

* WINNER OF THE NED KELLY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD * SMALL CRIMES CAN HAVE TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES Winter in Tiverton, and Constable Paul Hirschhausen has a snowdropper on his patch. Someone is stealing women's underwear, and Hirsch knows how that kind of crime can escalate. Then two calls come in: a child abandoned in a caravan, filthy and starving. And a man on the rampage at the primary school. Hirsch knows how things like that can escalate, too. An absent father who isn't where he's supposed to be; another who flees to the back country armed with a rifle. Families under pressure can break. But it's always a surprise when the killing starts.

Garry Disher (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Secret and Special

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to 'obtain and report information of the enemy ... weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories.' In 1943 it became known under the cover name Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) and included some British officers who had escaped from Singapore. After arriving in Australia, they assembled in Melbourne, forming the nucleus of ISD and together with some Australians established what became the Z Special Unit. Training began in a number of locations around Australia including on Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, In Broken Bay near Sydney, at Careening Bay in Western Australia, at the 'House on the Hill' in Cairns and at East Arm near Darwin. From these training areas and bases, Z Special undertook intelligence gathering and raiding missions throughout Southeast Asia including New Guinea, Singapore, Timor, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam and the Dutch East Indies. The first operation was Jaywick in September 1943. Led by a 28 year old officer from the Gordon Highlanders, Captain Ivan Lyon. Using an old Japanese fishing boat renamed Krait this captured vessel was re-fitted and provisioned for a voyage from Australia to just south of Singapore where it released six commandos in three folding kayaks to attack Japanese shipping in the harbour. They placed limpet mines on several Japanese ships sinking 40,000 tons of shipping. After the successful attack, they paddled south, were picked up by the Krait and successfully returned to Australia. This was followed by Operation Rimau again led by Lyon but this time things went very wrong very early. Identified, they made a fighting withdrawal but all of the raiding party were shot or captured, with the last ten being executed just before the end of the war. Important in Z Special operations were a number of vessels designated 'snake boats'. Four 66' modified trawlers were constructed as well as a range of Asian vessels that allowed their operation in South East Asian areas of operation. One Z Special, the last in PNG, set out on the night of the 11 April 1945. Eight operatives were landed on the Japanese held island of Muschu about five kilometres off the coast near Wewak to determine the status of two 140mm Japanese naval guns that had been placed there. These guns would prove dangerous to planned naval landings at Wewak, and allied command needed to know if these were operational. The operatives were launched in four double folding kayaks from a HTML fast crash boat but the current carried them away from their landing position and the surf capsized their boats. The men swam ashore but both their radio and their signal torches had been destroyed and the men had no way of connecting with the return crash boat. Soon their lost equipment was found by the Japanese and a massive search with 1,000 troops scoured the island. Quite soon seven of the eight men had been captured, killed or died trying to swim to the mainland and only one man, Sergeant 'Mick' Dennis remained. Over the next three days he continued a one man war, fighting off Japanese patrols and living off the land. Unable to do this for long, he took to the dangerous shark and crocodile infested waters and with the aid of a log, paddled to the mainland. Landing on a Japanese controlled beach, he snuck ashore and after further firefights and a difficult journey travelling west, he finally was found by an Australian patrol. Mick Dennis was able to provide valuable information and for his service and bravery, was awarded a Military Medal. During the course of the war, Z Special Unit carried out 81 covert operations in the Southwest Pacific theatre. While the unit was disbanded after the end of the war, many of its techniques would be modified and used by Australian Special Forces to this day.

Will Davies (Author), Steve Shanahan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Steve Shanahan