Showing results by narrator "Roshina Ratnam" in All Categories

A chic Parisienne, Françoise never expected to find herself living on a South African game reserve. But then, she fell in love with conservationist Lawrence Anthony, and everything changed. After Lawrence’s death, Françoise faced the daunting responsibility of running Thula Thula without him. Poachers attacked their rhinos, their security team wouldn’t take orders from a woman, and the authorities were threatening to cull their beloved elephant family. On top of that, the herd’s feisty new matriarch, Frankie, didn’t like her.

Françoise Malby-Anthony is the owner of a game reserve in South Africa with a remarkable family of elephants whose adventures have touched hearts around the world. The herd’s feisty matriarch Frankie knows who’s in charge at Thula Thula, and it’s not Francoise. But when Frankie becomes ill, and the authorities threaten to remove or cull some of the herd if the reserve doesn’t expand, Françoise is in a race against time to save her beloved elephants. The joys and challenges of a life dedicated to conservation are vividly described in The Elephants of Thula Thula.

I know you don’t want to talk sometimes. Sometimes because it hurts and sometimes because you’re just not supposed to talk about what you want to talk about. Sometimes it can be hard to say, “this is beautiful,” when no one else can see what you see. Or, “Here, this is where the pain is.” But some part of you knows, the truth about the words you cannot say is that they only hurt until you say them. They only hurt until the person who needs to hear them, hears them.

Spell-slinger. Vampire-slayer. Magical albino ferret-rescuer. Meet Jacqueline Denna Knight, the best wizard detective in the city. Jax turns vampires to ash and pain into magic. She also has a knack for finding things. So, when a distraught - and obscenely wealthy - elf calls Jax at midnight to hire her for an intriguing job, she grabs the opportunity with both hands. But what Jax doesn’t know is that this case is going to unravel her life.

Vividly set against the backdrop of 19th-century India and the British-owned sugarcane plantations of Natal, written with great tenderness and lyricism, Children of Sugarcane paints an intimate and wrenching picture of indenture told from a woman’s perspective.

Jax is the only girl wizard in the Copperfield Institute, a magic academy. Will she ever fit in? And with the kind of sharp wit and potent power she possesses, does she even want to? Jax has a troubled past and an uncertain future. The rotten witch coven at the Copperfield Institute won’t let her forget it. Isadora Crowe - spiteful, smug Izzy - in particular, is making her life hell.

It'll take more than a lie to keep Kirsten safe. A creative assassin. A hit list hidden in a Doomsday seed vault. A woman with an unusual gift who has to untangle the conspiracy...before it kills her. When Kirsten digs into her mother’s past she discovers a shocking betrayal that derails her life. Will she uncover the mystery before the hitman finds her?

Is there ever a good time to face an old enemy? Everyone knows that witches have a flair for melodrama, and Jax has enough to deal with, without babysitting her old arch-rival, Isadora Crowe. But when the StarDust Coven bodies start showing up, Jax begins to believe that the High Priestess’s jeopardy is real. To add to the detective wizard’s unease, the band of Hammerskins are becoming more ruthless by the day. It’s just a matter of time before they seize power and raze the Realm.

Why would a butler gatecrash a wizard funeral? It sounds like the first line of a joke, but what Jax sees when she gets to Abarim Manor is as serious as a heart attack. The butler’s employer, old wizard Blimaex Abarim, is being slowly tortured to death by contagious black magic, and she needs to stop the person responsible.

A creative assassin. A hit list hidden in a Doomsday seed vault. A woman with an unusual gift who has to untangle the conspiracy … before it kills her. Kirsten is desperate for a baby, but when she digs into her mother’s past, she discovers a shocking betrayal that derails her life. Will she uncover the mystery before the hitman finds her?

There’s something different about Kate’s four-year-old son. He wasn’t created the old fashioned way. Now a violent cult wants him dead and Kate will do anything to protect him – until they take her daughter. Glimpse JT Lawrence’s chilling vision of the all-too-near future in this dark kidnapping thriller with a twist that will send you reeling. How We Found You is the second book in the futuristic dystopian series When Tomorrow Calls.

Daiki finds a flash drive in his office, which leads him to a truth he is not ready to hear.

“Maybe,” says Margaret, “when you see this place you’ll understand. It’s like Club Med! There’s a heated pool and a rec centre and a cocktail bar and everything. They have 24-hour room service!” Andrew guffaws. “A cocktail bar? At a nursing home? What’s next? Happy Hour?”

A man makes a horrific discovery in the crim colony silo he's imprisoned in.

The groomer shook her head, her stubborn silence adding fuel to my fury. She glanced at the dog as if he would back her up in some way, but I could tell he was beginning to get the idea. He was starting to understand that, despite his excellent breeding, he currently looked like a mangey pavement special. I wondered if I should get him a cone for his neck so that he wouldn't have to witness this new, burning humiliation.  

The last thing I remember is Lorin’s scream as my roadster smashes into the guardrails and flips into the air. There was Lorin’s terrible wail, and then being silently airborne. Then there was nothing. Later, some bright lights shone through - hospital ceilings, I guess - and doctors' terse commands. I piece together the clues I overhear. The crash, the rocks, the fire. Agony like I've never experienced before burns my every organ and bone. Pipes and palpations. Needles, catheters, and a heart monitor that sounds like a ticking time bomb.

Red Riding Hood, retold by the (fictional) AI Millenniarellabot after being fed fairy tales and texts on euthanasia.

A man knows he deserves to be haunted for what he has done; he just didn't expect it to happen this way.

“There’s the drive back home, invariably in the dark. Not safe.” “She has plenty of space. We could have just stayed over.” Linda shook her head. “No. Not allowed. Against the rules.” “What do you mean?” Andrew took off his glasses and frowned at her. “Hodgey was always begging us to stay the night. I’ve never understood - " Linda drummed her fingers on her knees.“It’s just a thing, okay? An agreement.” Andrew’s furrows deepened. “Between you and Hodge?” “Between Peter and I. We sibling-swore.”

We pulled into a makeshift parking lot in the middle of a huge herd of sheep. There were two or three cars, but not a cave or another person in sight. We watched the sheep for a while, not sure what to do, when we saw people walk past us, making their way up the hill. That’s when we realized that we would be working hard for our little bit of fertility magic: We had to hike to get to the cave.