Showing results by narrator "Zehra Jane Naqvi" in All Categories

G'day. I'm still here. Still Pet. Well, I'm only two thirds of a Pet these days, but you might as well call me Pet anyway. Everyone does: everyone but the vampire, that is. Life is more unbalanced these days - cases are cutting closer to home than usual. I thought I was the only one, but there are others like me: kids whose parents were murdered just like mine. Stuff that never fit into place before is beginning fall into place.

Don't get too close to humans. That's rule number one. Well, it is if you're an emotionally constipated fae lord. As far as I'm concerned, the vampire could do a better job of keeping his distance, but he's never been that good at following the rules. G'day. I'm Pet. Schrödinger's Pet, these days; depends who's asking. I'm human, but when you hang around with enough Behindkind, it starts getting dangerous for the other humans around you. Humans like my friend Morgana. I tried to stay away, but now she needs my help and don't-get-too-close-to-humans isn't exactly gunna cut it anymore.

Two fae is company, but a company of fae is trouble. Which is exactly what we've got. Trouble, I mean. Well, and fae. Lots of fae. Something or someone is stalking and killing high-level fae around Hobart-tearing out hearts and leaving a trail of bloody bodies behind. Fae don't like it when they're the ones getting killed, so of course they came to hire my owners. Owners, you ask? Hi. I'm Pet. No, that's not my name. I am a pet. My owners? They're fae. Well, two fae and one stroppy vampire. Welcome to the world Between.

Life is complicated. I mean, life has always been complicated, but there's a difference between monsters-are-trying-to-kill-you complications and monsters-are-in-love-with-you complications. I'm still not sure which is more dangerous. G'day. I'm Pet. Two-thirds of a pet, anyway: The vampire isn't claiming ownership these days, but he's definitely encroaching. On the list of other encroaching complications is the threat of heirling trials, a certain fae lord, and a mysterious librarian - not to mention the thing that's killing people on Hobart's waterfront.... 

G'day. I'm not really a pet anymore, but you might as well keep calling me Pet. It's not like I'm gunna tell you my name anyway. And if I sound stroppy, well, I am. First, I was threatened. Now, someone has cut off my house from the human world and left my emotional support vampire on the human side. On the inside, it's just me and an emotionally compromised fae; outside, a closed arena in the world Behind, where everyone is out to kill us and a few of that everyone might actually be capable of it.

Reginald, now king, is struggling against the rising tide of the Old God entities. He knows that his army alone cannot defeat them, even with cold iron that can contain them and free enslaved humans. But as cities burn and farmland is devastated, the people have been easily convinced by cultists to turn to the Old Gods. 

Viv has been living alongside behindkind and fae in the Historic Renner Tea House in Melbourne for nearly a month now. In that time, she's been almost killed by friends and enemies alike, discovered that the human world is not the only world on the edges of her reality, and become a glorified babysitter for Luca, an unstable assassin of otherworldly creatures who has nightmares that are a bit too...real.

Amber Gryce believes in magic the way anyone does: as a thing of the past, marked now only by the long reign of an ancient queen sworn to live until her stolen son is returned to her. Such stories are romantic but distant for Amber, surrounded by family and wealth. But like magic, wealth can disappear. Left destitute, Amber's family retreats to a forest holding far from their city home, where Amber's love of roses leads her into the heart of enchantment

Madeleine d'Leon doesn't know where Edward came from. He is simply a character in her next book. But as she writes, he becomes all she can think about. His charm, his dark hair, his pen scratching out his latest literary novel . . . Edward McGinnity can't get Madeleine out of his mind—softly smiling, infectiously enthusiastic, and perfectly damaged. She will be the ideal heroine for his next book.

Viv just wants work—any work. Well, not quite any work. But she's desperate enough to accept a job offer as personal assistant to Jasper Renner—the rich and mysterious owner of the Renner Tea House—even though odd things happen whenever he's around. She expects to deal with rich, entitled Melbournians and a full business schedule. Instead, Viv finds herself following Jasper into a strange new world where a murderous madman has been incarcerated in a secret floor at the old Kew Asylum that may or may not exist in the human world as she knows it.

Viv thought that her life was gaining some sort of equilibrium. Yeah, there's something dodgy in her family tree, and yeah, she's living in a magic Tea House in Melbourne that has fae residents and feathered-and-or-tentacled visitors; but at least she's starting to get the hang of it. She's been...

The world isn't the same as it was yesterday. In fact, Viv is no longer sure that she is the same as she was yesterday. She can do something she never knew was possible—and Luca tried to kill her, just like Jasper said he would if she let him get too close. At the teahouse, it's business as usual, however: tentacles in the top floor, an invasion of not-quite-real-but-nevertheless-terrifying spiders . . . and a new murderer to catch, of course. Someone is trying to make sure a Greek-Australian couple never makes it to the altar, and it's not just perfume they're sneaking into the bride's room.

The cosmic gods are about to strike, humanity is on the verge of losing its free will, and Carmella Hunter and her friends are the last line of defense. The task of being anchor between the witches and the skein is draining Carmella by the hour, but she isn't one to sit by and let her friends do the work. With the clock ticking toward the eclipse, Carmella is determined to wrestle a plan B into place. 

Disgrace is the first truly global history of sexual violence. The book explores how sexual violence varies widely across time and place, from nineteenth-century peasant women in Ireland who were abducted as a way of forcing marriage, to date-raped high-school students in twentieth-century America, and from girls and women violated by Russian soldiers in 1945 to Dalit women raped by men of higher castes today. 

Alien factions are tearing down the walls of human civilization. Men and women struggle to survive in a universe where humankind is considered an inferior species to all other sentient life. Leslie Folami presides over a clandestine council of world leaders bent on establishing the respect humanity deserves, even if it means starting a war that they cannot win. Unknown to her peers, Folami has sent her assassin on a perilous mission that might give them a fighting chance.

At a time when many proclaim the death of active investing, Rupal J. Bhansali, global contrarian, makes a clarion call for its renaissance. Non-consensus thinking has resulted in breakthrough successes in science, sports, and Silicon Valley. Bhansali shows how to apply it to the world of investing to improve one's odds of achieving above-average returns with below-average risks. 

When Payal Mehra's detached parents insist she marry fellow Londoner and serial dater Ayaan Malhotra in order to save their own company, she has a choice: get disowned from the luxurious life they've funded and put her dreams on hold while she works a soul-sucking day job...or get engaged to save her family's fortune and maybe rescue her own vision of a dream come true.

The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy organ, deliberating on the extent of its influence over cognition, mental wellbeing, and emotions, and wondering how the gut became so central to our sense of self. Traveling from ancient Greece to Victorian England, eighteenth-century France to modern America, historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system.

In 1942, when Mahatma Gandhi asks Indians to give one family member to the freedom movement, 10-year-old Anjali is devastated to think of her father risking his life for the freedom struggle. But it turns out he isn't the one joining. Anjali's mother is. And with this change comes many more adjustments designed to improve their country and use "ahimsa" - non-violent resistance - to stand up to the British government. First the family must trade in their fine foreign-made clothes for homespun cotton, so Anjali has to give up her prettiest belongings. 

How hard can it be to find a pair of Bollywood-dancing septuagenarians? LIFETIME'Laugh-out-loud funny from the very first page. Eva Reddy is immediately relatable and likeable as a main character. A fast-paced, easy read-funny and insightful-with a lovely dash of nostalgia for women of a certain...