Showing results by narrator "Ayesha" in All Categories

Liverloin is a fractured man, a collection of personas—artificial constructs of wants, fears and needs—created by underground science-artists to help him hide in a hyper-connected world. But he can't hide from Big Momma. She is the living internet, a benevolent AI who knows everything and everyone...and somehow is in love with Liverloin. Agent Stevly works for DAIS, an AI on the other side of the internet: the darkness to Big Momma's light. DAIS's agents manipulate news, information and media and pull the strings behind world events, but DAIS cannot control Big Momma.

'Better opportunity'—that's why Angela's dad sailed to England from America in 1948 on the Empire Windrush. Six months later her mum joined him in his one room in Earl's Court. Twenty years and four children later, Mr Jacob has become seriously ill and starts to move unsteadily through the care of the National Health Service. As Angela, his youngest, tries to help her mother through this ordeal, she finds herself reliving her childhood years, spent on a council estate in Highbury.

This award-winning collection of Barbadian stories showcases the controversial and often hidden aspects of a Caribbean paradise. Love, relationships, and the human condition are explored through surprisingly humorous narratives on politics in the rum shop, sex-tourism, domestic abuse, and much more. Shakirah Bourne writes in a satirical and humorous style that is brilliantly realised through the voice talents of Levi King, Janelle Gilkes, and Ayesha Gibson-Gill.

Gothic outcast Natalie Sugarman bartered her soul for her dying mother's life 16 years ago to a boy demon who could stop time. Now, days before her 21st birthday, the lifelines on her palms are slowly vanishing, and she knows it's just a matter of time before Satan's little helper collects.

Ruby Schmidt has the talent, the drive, even the guts to enroll in art school, leaving behind her childhood home and the beau she always expected to marry. Her life at the academy seems heavenly at first, but she soon learns that societal norms in the East are as restrictive as those back home in West Texas. With the Panic of 1893, the nation spirals into a depression, and Ruby's career takes a similar downward trajectory. After thinking she could have it all, Ruby now wonders how she can salvage the remnants of her life. Pregnant and broke, she returns to Texas.

In 21st century Britain, what does it mean to be working class? This book asks 24 working class writers to examine the issue as it relates to them. Examining representation, literature, sexuality, gender, art, employment, poverty, childhood, culture and politics, this book is a broad and firsthand account of what it means to be drawn from the bottom of Britain's archaic but persistent class structure.

As the Advent season approaches, Bernice finds herself faced with the prospect of an old-fashioned family holiday, surrounded by her loved ones on a world they now call home...a time to forge new memories, together...and for a bitter enemy to claim what is rightfully hers. Life is never straightforward, however. The most haunted planet in the galaxy is requesting an archaeologist, and something very peculiar is happening at the last manned shipyard in the cosmos.

'Vesuvius Falling. Written by Tony Lee. Things aren't going great for Bernice Summerfield. Her one time comrade-cum-adversary, Irving Braxiatel, isn't the man she knew; her long-lost teenage son, Peter, isn't exactly pleased to see her; and she's woken up with one hell of a hangover....

AhSeya's Cooking Adventures is about an active over-helpful, 2-year-old little girl who creates a series of mishaps as she goes about her day trying to help her family with meals. Your children will love this book filled with excitement and relatability. Join in as her compassionate parents and siblings encourage her along the way.

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.

The Kraken's Lament by Mark Wright. Gather round, wretched peoples of Atlantis, for Acanthus the Talesmith has a story to tell! A story of adventure, of courage, of a Winged Goddess searching for truth and sanctuary in a friendless city... On the streets of this fair city, the Goddess searches for a path to the child of two worlds but finds instead only questions and danger.

Neither Jon nor Alice feels like they are getting enough and the frustration is tangible. If the other can’t help then who can? Best friends? Colleagues? The corner shop/kebab house owner? Fighting for the remote are Jon and Alice, a twenty-something couple living together in London. Alice enjoys socialising; Jon hates meeting people. While Alice is climbing her career ladder, Jon is quite content on the bottom rung of his.

"God, I need to be bereaved. I could do with losing a few pounds". Jon, Keren, and Grub accompany Alice to the funeral of a uni friend called Boris. Jon wants to know how good a friend the deceased was; Alice wants to know how he died. Will their respective quests for knowledge end in tears or laughter?

Tiger Hills is a sweeping multigenerational story set in a coffee plantation in Coorg, southern India, in the 19th Century. The novel begins with the birth of Devi, a special child, who befriends a young boy whose mother has died in tragic circumstances. Devi and Devanna become inseparable as they go to school together and learn more about the extended family that surrounds them. Things change when Devi meets Muthi, a young man who has killed a tiger and is feted as a hero.

I remember when we used to have a life and not just a "Lovefilm" account" Jon and Alice’s latest dinner party attempt results in some guests glad to get away. Alice is nostalgic for the past, but realises some things have always been the same.

Alice gets her one client, Camp Raymond, a career-boosting gig reading his best-selling children’s novel on tape, leaving Jon at home to clean the house (with a little help from his sci-fi fan friends). While Jon is embroiled in an all-day Star Wars marathon, Alice battles with Camp Raymond’s expressive eccentricities to distract her from wondering where her life is going.

The dangling testicles of fate have tea-bagged me yet again." Alice and Keren are coming to the end of the three-hour getting-ready ritual, in preparation for a rare big night out with old mates. Jon is trying his best to get out of it with the help of the not-so-bright Grub. As the countdown begins, the wine is drunk, the hair sprayed stiff, and Jon made to change his shirt, but who will make it out of the house in time?

Nazneen's inauspicious entry to the world, an apparent stillbirth on the hard mud floor of a Bangladeshi village hut, imbues in her a sense of fatalism that she carries across continents when she is married off to Chanu. Her life in London's Tower Hamlets is, on the surface, calm. For years, keeping house and rearing children, she does what is expected of her. Yet Nazneen walks a tightrope stretched between her daughters' embarrassment and her husband's resentments.

A bitter round of Pictionary ends in a drink-to-the-vomit drinking game after Alice claims she can beat Jon at anything. The rug of Alice and Jon’s host gets in the firing line, rekindling rivalries from the past as well as the present. Jon declares he is not a loser and embarks on a mission to prove it by any means possible.

The Future Mother-in-Law Predicament: "Why did we have to let her in? Could we not have just posted her a duvet through the letter-box?" Alice’s Mum comes to stay and Jon is not happy. A house-proud woman with a bosom as pronounced as her carefully annunciated consonants, she cleans, criticises, pokes and potters until not even Alice can take it anymore, forcing her to call on reinforcements with equally masterful diction.