Showing results by narrator "Homer Todiwala" in All Categories

It's 1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who took that fateful trip and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.

On Saturday, 26 November 1983, an armed gang stole gold bullion worth almost £26 million from the Brink's-Mat security depot near London's Heathrow Airport. It was the largest robbery in world history, and only the start of an extraordinary story. For forty years, myths and legends have grown around the Brink's-Mat heist and the events that followed.

Finn's world is turned upside down when he and his older brother, John, are ripped from their normal lives and sent to Alyxa, an island school that doesn't appear on any map. As the unusual lessons at Alyxa begin, the brothers learn about their super-senses, but nothing can prepare them for the perils to come.

When Finn returns to Alyxa's school after the holidays, sinister guards patrol the hallways. They're supposed to be there to protect the students, but Finn believes they're looking for traces of the forbidden sixth sense. Finn is immediately in their sights, because he shows signs of the dangerous gift. And not only that: he suddenly has a vision of Morvan, the dark druid and master of the sixth sense! Coincidence or Revelation?

Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers who shared everything. They shared the symptoms of pregnancy, they shared the son that they all claim to have borne on the same night. Raised at their six breasts, Omar's mothers teach him to live a life without shame. And it is training that proves very useful when he leaves his mothers' fortress and makes the fateful mistake of falling in love. For he finds himself an unwitting player in an ongoing duel between the families of two men.

Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are famous for solving murder mysteries. But there are many other intrigues in the pages of Hazel's casebook, from the macabre Case of the Deepdean Vampire, to the baffling Case of the Blue Violet, and their very first whodunit: the Case of Lavinia's Missing Tie.

As riots erupt on the streets of Lahore, Inspector Faraz returns to his birthplace, the red-light district in the ancient walled city where women still pass on the profession of courtesan to their daughters. Plucked from it as a small boy by his influential father, Faraz has kept his roots well hidden. Now his father has sent him back: to cover up the murder of a young prostitute. It should be a simple task in the marginalised community, but Faraz finds himself unable to obey orders or to resist searching for the mother and sister he left behind.

Haroun's father is the greatest of all storytellers. His magical stories bring laughter to the sad city of Alifbay. But one day something goes wrong and his father runs out of stories to tell. Haroun is determined to return the storyteller's gift to his father. So he flies off on the back of the Hoopie bird to the Sea of Stories - and a fantastic adventure begins.

Based on six years of detailed research and on-the-ground reporting, the book builds - authoritatively, vividly, indelibly - to become the story of post-colonial India. Using hundreds of interviews, and letters, diary entries, Partition-era police reports, and an astonishing range of sources, Bhatia shows how history plays a recurring role in the present: in politics, in the minds of citizens, in notions of justice and corruption.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian state in the novel on Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany.

The Words of My Perfect Teacher is the classic commentary on the preliminary practices of the Longchen Nyingtig—one of the best-known cycles of teachings and a spiritual treasure of the Nyingmapa school—the oldest Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Patrul Rinpoche makes the technicalities of his subject accessible through a wealth of stories, quotations, and references to everyday life. His style of mixing broad colloquialisms, stringent irony, and poetry has all the life and atmosphere of an oral teaching.

The Alyxa School - this is where young people are trained who can hear, smell, taste, feel or see supernaturally well. But a dark force threatens to rise within the walls of the school: Morvan, the dark druid, master of the forbidden sixth sense. Can Finn and his friends finally defeat the mighty druid?

Beneath the stars, on a stony beach, stand two brothers. They are wearing lifejackets that are too big for them and their most precious belongings are sealed in waterproof bags tucked inside the rucksacks on their backs. Turkey is behind them. Two or three kilometres' swim away is the Greek island of Samos, now only a smudge in the moonlight.

A man is burnt at the stake in a London park. His smouldering corpse is a message of the most violent kind. The victim is Davey Caine. He is the heir to the criminal empire created by his father, William ‘Billy’ Caine. Billy is a notorious and violent gangster who controls South East London. But he’s not the man he used to be and the sharks smell blood in the water. Detectives Ray Paterson and Johnny Clocks must find the killer before Billy extracts his own brand of justice. They are drawn ever deeper into London’s underworld.

Based on real questions from children, expert author Dr Matt Bothwell has created the Supervillain Academy to teach astrophysics to middle graders. At the Supervillain Academy, listeners will learn about the solar system, galaxies, the universe, and, most importantly, the answer to the question “Which planet is entirely populated by robots?”.

Ramesh Kumar grew up deprived and unloved, working on his father's tea stall in the Old City of Delhi. Now, brilliant but poor, he makes a lucrative living taking tests for the sons of India's elite. When one of his clients, the sweet but hapless 18-year-old Rudi Saxena, places first in the All Indias, the national university entrance exams, Ramesh sees an unmissable opportunity. Cashing in on Rudi's newfound celebrity, all goes well for both boys for a while. But Rudi's role on a game show leads to unexpected love, blackmail and finally, a dangerous kidnapping.

Prince Leander of Alinor boarded a ship to make his family’s traditional pilgrimage to the Isles of the Gods, to strengthen the goddess Barrica. The Mellaceans had other ideas. Only Selly, the prince and I survived from that ship. We fled from Laskia and her crew, were chased across the Crescent Sea, and arrived at the Isles with only moments to spare. There, at the Isle of the Mother, we believed we witnessed Laskia’s death. We were wrong.

In this provocative manifesto, Assaad Razzouk shows that for too long our ideas about what's best for the environment have been unfocused and distracted, trying to go in too many directions and concentrating on individual behavior. While some of these things can be useful, they are dwarfed by one big thing that simply has to happen very soon if we're to avoid major environmental breakdown: curtailing the activities of the fossil fuel industry.

When Hamed Amiri was 10 years old, he watched his mother give a speech in his home town of Herat, Afghanistan, speaking out for women’s rights and education and against the ruling Taliban. That night, an order was given for her execution. The family packed up their most precious belongings and escaped in darkness, starting what would be a long and dangerous journey. But his mother's was not the only life in danger. Hamed’s older brother suffered from a rare heart condition, and this escape offered a chance of life-saving treatment in the West.

Bedi and Sushma's marriage is arranged. When they first meet, they stumble through a faltering conversation about happiness and hope and agree to go in search of these things together. But even after their children Selena, Tara and Rohan are grown up and have their own families, Bedi and Sushma are still searching. Years later, the siblings attempt to navigate life without their parents. As they travel to the Ganges to unite their father's ashes with the opaque water, it becomes clear that each of them has inherited the same desire to understand what makes a life happy.