Showing results by narrator "Saskia Maarleveld " in All Categories

Growing up in a religious cult, Tempest could only dream of the world outside. Once free, Tempest is determined to live her life to the fullest, and to check off each item on her bucket list. First on her agenda - to meet an honest-to-goodness vampire. It's just a shame the one she finds doesn't understand how the whole Dark Ones thing is supposed to work. Luckily for him, she's patient.

In the last 350-odd years, the international “scientific community” has come to be the bastion of consensus and concerted action, especially in the face of two global crises: disastrous climate change, and a deadly pandemic. How did “the scientific community” come into existence, and why does it work? Rivals is an attempt to answer these questions in the form of a brief historical overview, from the late seventeenth to the early twenty-first centuries.

For years Echo Raintree has battled against the uncontrollable visions of disaster that sweep over her. Now she's determined to vanquish them - and there's only one man who can help her. But not just a man - Ryder Duncan is a fearsome wizard determined to protect those he loves against all who threaten them...no matter the personal cost.

Eva must return to Cassia with Lark in chains or forfeit her life and her crown. But Lark proves to be elusive prey, and Eva will do whatever she must to wrap her claws around Lark’s neck. Devastated by her loss and adrift in her new life, Lark begins a journey to find freedom and family. When Lark and Soren cross paths once more, she is forced to conceal what she is to keep her freedom. But her pyra’s power is growing, and she doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to stay in control. Only their lies keep this crumbling empire from burning.

Vienna, 1954 After losing everyone she loves in the final days of World War II, Ingrid Bauer agrees to a hasty marriage with a gentle Soviet embassy worker and follows him home to Moscow. But nothing within the Soviet Union’s totalitarian regime is what it seems, including her new husband, whom Ingrid suspects works for the KGB. Inspired by her daughter’s birth, Ingrid risks everything and reaches out in hope to the one country she understands and trusts—Britain, the country of her mother’s birth. She begins passing intelligence to MI6, navigating a world of secrets and lies, light and shadow.

For eleven-year-old Esme, ballet is everything - until her four-year-old sister, Lily, vanishes without a trace and nothing is certain anymore. People Esme has known her whole life suddenly become suspects, each new one hitting closer to home than the last. Unable to cope, Esme escapes the nightmare that is her new reality when she receives an invitation to join an elite ballet academy in San Francisco. Desperate to leave behind her chaotic, broken family and the mystery surrounding Lily’s disappearance, Esme accepts.

Robin is a YouTube celebrity gone-viral with her intensely-realistic witch hunter series. But even her millions of followers don't know the truth: Her series isn’t fiction. Her ultimate goal is to seek revenge against the coven of witches who wronged her mother long ago. Returning home to the rural town of Blackfield, Robin meets friends new and old on her quest for justice. But then, a mysterious threat known as the Red Lord interferes with her plans....

The Black Land is a myth: Centuries have passed since that Great Enemy was slain. Yet old fears linger, and on the longest night of the year, people in the South still light ritual bonfires to banish the dark. In her village, this duty falls to Solveig, a girl favored by the gods with powerful fire magic. But when her brother kills a Northern lord’s son during the ritual, it is Sol who faces punishment, by being weregild—part hostage, part guest—in the North for a year and a day.

It has been almost two years since she defeated the vengeful spirit of her mother, but Vanja Ros - no longer Schmidt - has finally made a name for herself. She is a God Daughter, a (reformed) thief, and now a folk hero. She stands up for those with nothing, bringing justice and prosperity where she can. But members of the royal families are turning up dead, found with Vanja's calling card on the bodies. And as old flames, adversaries, and allies resurface, Vanja must face what it took to become the Pfennigist once and for all.

While the high-profile murder of a young country singer turns Nashville inside out, danger lurks in the woods beyond the city’s border. There was a witness to the terrible crime, a college student who stumbled onto the scene. When the girl goes missing, the police don’t know if she’s run for cover or been taken…or if something more sinister is happening. The truth will shatter Taylor’s career and bring her face to face with a deadly assassin who wants nothing more than to finish what they started.

Thanks to the help of Jacob’s Titan Mechs, much of Belldorn survived the battle that ravaged its shores. But the war is far from over. Demands to chase Ballern’s surviving forces across the sea meet more resistance than Jacob could have imagined when Lady Katherine ignores her allies’ protests and shifts her focus to reinforcing the city.

A people pleaser through and through, Christy Manning takes off work to drive from Seattle to Cougar Point, Montana, for the birth of her sister’s first child. But when the blessed event arrives early, her brother-in-law is M.I.A. and her sister refuses to leave without him. Things are looking hopeless, until Christy calls Sheriff Cody Franklin. Even before he saves the day, sparks are flying between them. There’s just one problem: She’s reluctantly accepted a proposal from another man.

In the winter of 1941-1942, Leningrad is under siege, and Karen Hamilton, a seventeen-year-old American musician, finds herself trapped and struggling to survive. Throughout the city, people are dying of starvation and frostbite, and Karen knows that if she doesn't escape immediately, she will share their fate. If she has any hope of leaving Russia and reuniting with her fiancé, Bobby, in New York, she must do the impossible: cross enemy lines and then stow away.

Seventeen-year-old Kenna Marsden has a secret. She's haunted by a violent tragedy she can't explain. Kenna's past has kept people - even her own mother - at a distance for years. Just when she finds a friend who loves her and life begins to improve, she's plunged into a new nightmare: Her mom and twin sister are attacked, and the dark powers Kenna has struggled to suppress awaken with a vengeance. On the heels of the assault, Kenna is exiled to a nearby commune, known as Eclipse, to live with a relative she never knew she had.

The man she has been waiting for... Jake Logan may be ex-military, but recently he'd been more at home among Hollywood's finest. So different from where he is right now: seeking shelter from a powerful storm with the most beautiful woman he's ever met. Ellie Sutton doesn't trust easily; but with nowhere to run, for some reason she feels safe with the handsome, enigmatic stranger. As rescue draws closer, they realise they don't want their time together to end.

Dee Matthews is the cohost of the smash-hit podcast Did I Forget to Tell You?, where she interviews family, friends, and past lovers. Nothing is off-limits, except for one man (known on the show only as Name Redacted) who happens to be her high school best friend Ben. During their senior year spring break, Dee and Ben took a road trip to visit Ben’s grandma. They buried a time capsule in her backyard, pledging to return in 10 years to open it. Then their friendship fell apart in spectacular fashion. They haven’t spoken to each other since.

Every fifty years, the most powerful ethereal and infernal beings convene on Earth to resolve conflicts with mediation by kopides - humans born to police relations between Heaven and Hell. They're meeting in Elise Kavanagh's territory this year, and she used to be the greatest kopis in the world. But she's not invited. An old friend, Lucas McIntyre, asks her to attend the summit in his place. But when she arrives, she discovers that a human faction called The Union has taken charge of the summit, and they're not playing nice.

Verity Wolf dreams of being a poet - not that she'd ever admit it to anyone. Her best friend, Jess, thinks she's definitely got what it takes while her cat, Zorro, is characteristically indifferent. As for the cute boy she's just met, he's about to discover her best-kept secret. When Verity stumbles on an old, mysterious book, Poemsia, she finds herself suddenly thrust into the dizzying world of social media stardom, where poets are the new rock stars and fame is sometimes just a click away.

In 1949, Lloyd Wilkinson Petrie has returned as a trustee to live in the long-defunct boarding school that he had attended as a child. There he is preparing a memoir. He writes, with faltering recall, of the subtle anti-Semitism that pervaded the school's ethos and of his fascination with the Egyptian archaeological adventures of his distant cousin, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie. Memories return, too, of the passions of a boyhood friendship with named Ben-Zion Elefantin, a mystifying older pupil who claims descent from Egypt's Elephantine Island.

Some call it a monster, laying waste to the villagers and their homes. Some say it is an invulnerable demon summoned from the deepest abysses of the Immortal Realm. Many soldiers from the royal guard are sent out to hunt it down. Not one has ever returned. When Asterin Faelenhart, princess of Axaria and heir to the throne, discovers that she may hold the key to defeating the mysterious demon, she vows not to rest till the beast is slain. With the help of her friends and the powers she wields - though has yet to fully understand - Asterin sets out to complete a single task. To kill it.