Showing results by narrator "Shiromi Arserio" in All Categories

Pippa is an Australian writer who longs for the success of her novelist teacher and eventually comes to fear that she "missed everything important." In Paris, Celeste tries to convince herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka, but blots out the memory of a tragedy from that time and can't commit to his trusting girlfriend, Cassie. Sri Lankan Christabel, who is generously offered a passage to Sydney by Bunty, an old acquaintance, endures her dull job and envisions a brighter future.

Her name is Emerson Hart and she is the love of his life. Unfortunately, he's not the only love of hers. And therein lies the problem.

In The Ape's Wife and Other Stories - Kiernan's 12th collection of short fiction since 2001 - she displays the impressive range that characterizes her work. With her usual disregard for genre boundaries, she masterfully navigates the territories that have traditionally been labeled dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fiction, steampunk, and neo-noir.

The duke of Wittaker has been living a lie.... He’s been spying on the dissolute, discontented noblemen of the ton, pretending to share their views. Now, he’s ready to step out of the shadows and start living a real life...but when the prime minister of England is assassinated, he's asked to go back to being the rakehell duke everyone still believes he is to find out more.

Equipped with a new identity and a new family, Ally shut the door on her past and refused to look back. But when her new life falls apart, she discovers the key to protecting her future lies in the hands of the very man who forced her into hiding. Eddie stayed away for her sake and his own. But when elements beyond his control come into play, he has no choice but to step in before she winds up dead. Eddie and Ally find themselves sucked into an international game of cat and mouse where the line between love and hate becomes blurred.

In her fourth year at the Academy, Elena should be focused on final exams and graduation. Instead, she has no choice but to stop a decades-long war—at least if she wants any future with Lucas. But it’s hard to stop a war when you’re nowhere near the front lines. And an unexpected invitation—one she can’t refuse—only complicates the matter further. Embroiled in political machinations beyond her experience, Elena will have to plumb the depths of her remarkable power and new abilities.

Abandoned by her mother and neglected by her scientist father, timid Elizabeth Murmur has only her fearless friend, Zenobia, for company. And Zenobia's company can be very trying! When Elizabeth's father takes them to live in his family home, Witheringe House, Zenobia becomes obsessed with finding a ghost in the creepy old mansion and forces Elizabeth to hold séances and wander the rooms at night. With Zenobia's constant pushing, Elizabeth investigates the history of the house and learns that it does hold a terrible secret.

Leyla McQueen has finally reunited with her father after breaking him out of Broadmoor - the illegal government prison - but his freedom comes at a terrible cost. As Leyla celebrates his return, she must grapple with the pain of losing Ari. Now separated from the boy who has her heart and labeled the nation’s number one enemy, Leyla must risk illegal travel through unchartered waters in her quest for the truth behind her father's arrest.

London, 1890. The city is ruled by the nobility and the Watch, or so it seems. When an underground organization pursues the alchemical formula to create a soul, bodies begin to pile up, and important figures begin to go missing. Masked men turn the gears of fate, pushing London into a new era where artificial life is only the beginning. Arhyen is the self-declared finest thief in London. The mission was simple. Steal a journal from Fairfax Breckinridge, one of the greatest alchemists of the time. He hadn't expected to find Fairfax himself, with a dagger in his back.

The Olander family embodies the modern American Dream in a globalized world. Jaya, the cultured daughter of an Indian diplomat and Keith, an ambitious banker from middle-class Philadelphia, meet in a London pub in 1988 and make a life together in suburban California. Their strong marriage is built on shared beliefs and love for their two children: headstrong teenager Karina and young son Prem, the light of their home. But love and prosperity cannot protect them from sudden, unspeakable tragedy.

Sanah would do anything to protect her little sister, even if it means taking refuge with ruthless pirates. But the psychically talented pirates terrorizing Commonwealth space are not quite the monsters she has been led to believe. When Sanah's empathic gift shows her the truth behind the stories, she is no longer certain who the villains are in her world.

Once, a shadow dragon ravaged the Island-World. Insatiable. Unstoppable. A dragon-killer. Now the shadow dragon has reappeared, on a collision course with Aranya and King Beran's campaign to liberate the islands from the scourge of Sylakian tyranny. He is dark, beautiful and deadly, a predator of untold power.

Weeks have passed since Liliana and Arhyen first met. The formula that gave Liliana her emotions are still in the hands of the LN, and the threat is ever looming as to how they might be used. Yet the pair of thieves has bigger fish to fry. Bodies are turning up all over the city, victims of surgical experimentation by an unknown assailant. Everything is connected, and Arhyen will have to unravel the mystery of the serial surgeon...before he ends up on the operating table himself.

The mind of Alessandra, the Oracle of Delphi, is under the control of the Supreme Magistrate, a brilliant politician determined to use her goddess-like powers to conquer deities and humans alike. With her thoughts and powers compromised, she begins to question her ability to stop the apocalyptic future revealed to her in cryptic visions - and who her enemy really is.

Eden's entire world has become a living nightmare. Banished from the Dream World for a crime she didn’t commit, Eden is torn from all she's come to love and forced to live in a world of darkness. The longer she remains, the more her true self slips away. As Eden ventures on a bleak and twisted journey exploring the darker side of her powers, she must find a way to maintain her strength and her identity, for the thing she fears most is not the nightmare she's currently living, but herself - and the nightmare she could become.

After the Last War destroyed most of the world, survivors formed a new society in four self-sustaining cities in the Mojave Desert. To halt extinction, everything in the Four Cities is carefully predicted and carefully controlled … even love. But how can you control love and freedom? In the engrossing prequel to Reset, Preset weaves the tales of Eleanor, the Crone, and Eli, the Planner, before and after the creation of the Four Cities. Much has changed in the world and their relationship, but there are some truths that have yet to come to light.

In journal entries alternating between two timelines―before and after a tragic accident―Jennie Englund’s heartfelt coming-of-age story follows the year that changes one girl’s life forever. Through everything, Taylor has her notebook, a diary of the year that one fatal accident tears her life apart. In entries alternating between the first and second semester of her eighth-grade year, she navigates joy and grief, gain and loss, hope and depression.

Tommy Beresford and Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley are broke. What are two young people in post-WWI London to do in such a situation except start up a new and exciting business: Young Adventurer’s Ltd. Almost as soon as they make the leap into self-employment a case falls into their lap. A mysterious man wishes to hire Tuppence for a job. All she has to do is impersonate a young American woman in Paris. Easy!

Originally published in 1994, When the World Was Steady is award-winning author Claire Messud's first novel.

When calamity destroyed most of humanity, the Four Cities survived by carefully predicting and meticulously controlling everything in the survivors’ lives—even love. As part of this new normal, every four years the citizens face down Tabula Rasa, a process that wipes away their memories of each other.