Showing results by narrator "Ayesha" in All Categories

A Suitable Boy is Vikram Seth's epic love story set in India. Funny and tragic, with engaging, brilliantly observed characters, it is as close as you can get to Dickens for the twentieth century. The story unfolds through four middle class families: the Mehras, Kappoors, Khans, and Chatterjis. Lata Mehra, a university student, is under pressure from her mother to get married. But not to just anyone she happens to fall in love with.

You are SEMIRAMIS. You are orphaned and raised on the outskirts of an empire, born into a life of toil and anonymity. But dreams of power and potential course through your veins. You're strong, cunning and quick... and hungry for more. If you want the world to know your name, you will have to chart your path from your village of shadows and dust to the hallowed halls your emperors walk. Legend has it you will rise from nothing to rule kingdoms and command armies. But how far will you go to claim a throne no one promised you? And what are you prepared to sacrifice along the way?

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building's walls. By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

Dark, lanky, and bald, New York-raised photographer Sabre Cumberbatch can’t tell if she’s highly talented or just highly Instagrammable. Up to here with art critics and their gaseous praise, Sabre returns to Barbados, her childhood island home, to water her roots. She needs to quell self-doubt by doing something—anything—profoundly important. Welcoming her with bejeweled open arms is her aunt Aggie, a fearsome high-society attorney eager to show off her famous American niece. When Sabre witnesses Aggie unleash her wrath on the household staff over a minor mistake, Sabre finds her cause.

For fans of David Grann, Malcolm Gladwell, and Atul Gawande, Who Gets Believed? is a book as deeply personal as it is profound in its reflections on morals, language, human psychology, and the unspoken social codes that determine how we relate to one another.

Seventeen-year-old Kid doesn’t know where her parents are. They left her with her grandmother Lolly, promising to return soon. That was months ago. Now, Lolly is dead and Kid is alone, stranded 10 miles off the coast of New Hampshire on tiny Swan Island. Unable to reach her parents, and with no other relatives to turn to, Kid works for a neighbor, airbrushing the past - digitally retouching family photos and movies - to earn enough money to survive.

In The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula, one of seven 'unmade movies' available on audio, it is 1934, and young Englishwoman Penny is travelling by train across India in search of her missing sister. En route, she meets sibling artistes Prem and Lakshmi, who have been hired by a Maharajah and his wife, the Rani, to entertain their aristocratic European guest. But evil lurks in the hidden caverns beneath the ancient palace, where the acolytes of a fiendish blood cult await their next human sacrifice....

Yasmin Ghorami has a lot to be grateful for: a loving family, a fledgling career in medicine and a charming, handsome fiancé, fellow doctor Joe Sangster. But now the moment she has been dreading has arrived: it is time for her family to meet Joe's firebrand feminist mother. As the two families are drawn closer together, long-held secrets, lies and betrayals unravel on both sides—and Yasmin is forced to ask herself what she really wants in a relationship and what a 'love marriage' actually means ...

Brand Management. Bernice Summerfield needs a job. Professor Harry Burtenshaw thinks she’s just the ticket. But with the people of Lyndyaz celebrating their most important festival and the ruling Dominicci Corporation maintaining control with draconian glee, has Bernice turned up in the wrong place at the wrong time? Bad Habits. Meet Sister Bernice - newest initiate into the order of Saint Celestion.

Three years ago, bride-to-be Aoife died at her own hen party. Now the hens have returned to the villa where that terrible weekend unfolded. They long for closure. But the moment they step back inside, old wounds open and tensions begin to rise. Everyone has a different version of what happened that night. Who is keeping secrets? And how far will they go to keep them hidden?

An outbreak of "The Fever" has taken hold of Portland, Oregon, bringing the population to its knees. "The Fever" spreads and kills quickly, but the dead aren't staying dead. When her neighbor, Jordan, saves her from an infected, Alissa joins him in his plan to escape the city, the zombies and the threat of a quarantine that will lock the living in with the undead. What she doesn't tell him is that she has an illness of her own, one that plays tricks with her mind and makes her a dangerous companion.

Jessica Delancy is tired. Tired of being broke, tired of being bored. She wants more out of her life, and she doesn’t mind using her body to achieve it. The Eros Sex Club provides many opportunities for women, and Jessica is going for it. Whatever it takes...

Inspired by Oscar Wilde's classic story of hedonism and corruption, The Confessions of Dorian Gray imagines a world where Dorian Gray was real, and his friendship with Oscar Wilde once spawned the notorious novel. Starring Alexander Vlahos as Dorian Gray, this fourth series of supernatural horror stories comprises eight original half-hour episodes.

When struggling influencer couple Adele and Jack post a crowdfunding video online, they're amazed by a mysterious benefactor's offer: to buy them an idyllic 17th century French château. It’s the lifeline they need to leave all their troubles behind – and patch up their relationship after a rocky period. For Adele, it’s a dream come true. She will post videos from the fairytale setting, renovating the grand building as thousands of online subscribers follow their journey. But the château is not all it seems, and the local community is far from welcoming.

Nothing about Semiramis’s upbringing in ancient Assyria in the ninth century BC could have foretold her legacy. Born to a woman scorned by Aphrodite and raised as an orphan on the outskirts of an empire, Semiramis was never meant to hold power. But a path unfolds before her when she meets a young representative of the new Assyrian king, a path that puts her in the midst of a brutal world and at the heart of two men raised as brothers—one who just happens to be king.

In the final throes of the generations-long war with the alien Felen, smuggler Jereth Keeven's junk freighter breaks down in a strange rift in deep space, with little chance of rescue—until they encounter a science vessel that claims to be from 152 years in the future. Engineer Uma Ozakka has always been fascinated with the past, especially the desperate peace mission that ended the war with the Felen and ushered in a new age of collaboration—a mission Keeven's first mate, Leesongronski, is supposed to be leading right now.

Braiding together Western, South-Asian, and Qur'anic storytelling styles, the author illuminates what it means to exist in a world that demands something different from each of her identities. With lyrical prose and scholarly precision, she weaves her personal experiences with incisive social commentary to uncover the meaning of faith and belonging, love and betrayal, family and womanhood. In so doing, she offers us a vision of freedom that isn't measured in fabric.

When Helen Lehndorf moves to the city after a childhood living off the land in rural Taranaki, she can't help but feel different from her peers and professors. She finds solace in long walks foraging weeds and plants along the river, but something inside her still longs for home. Chasing a feeling of ancestral belonging, she travels to England with her new husband. There they learn about nature as the commons, shared between all who encounter it - a source of delight, food, medicine.

When food blogger Anna Matthews takes a vitamin supplement that thrusts her back in time to 1996—and into her 16-year-old body—she is naturally a little shocked. But after a hasty re-assimilation, she decides to take advantage of this amazing second chance to view her teenage years from a more mature perspective.

The gripping new thriller from the bestselling author of The Couple at No 9.