Showing results by narrator "Grant Cartwright" in All Categories

In House of Matches (2024) the poet fashions and gives life to diverse voices of refugees, immigrants, exiles, as well as victims of war, human trafficking, and pandemic. Collectively, in their stories of struggles, losses, and triumphs, the voices evoke the dramatically intense world of our decade a world compared in the title poem to a house of matches.

A young girl comes to live in the slums of New Delhi. It is a place of danger where street gangs rule. Through the initiative of a blind beggar, she is taken to work in the home of a rich businessman and his dysfunctional son. There, she observes a world of education and privilege - a world that is out of her reach. But danger still stalks her. A kidnap attempt forces her to flee to her childhood home in the tropical backwaters of Kerala - a land of wooden boats, fishing, and elephants. But she cannot hide forever.

Sebastian, a young farmhand living in the Australian mallee, is being watched covertly by Val, a fugitive hiding in the forests on the banks of the River Murray. Val has an official document that confirms his death 14 years ago. There is no official document that confirms his particular skill: assassin.

Chris Norman's dreams of being a commercial pilot are shattered when he crashes his plane in central Australia. His life hangs in the balance—a balance that is swayed by the intervention of an Aboriginal bushman bent on his own murderous mission. The bushman leaves Chris with a mysterious and incongruous legacy, a Celtic cross made of stone. Partly blinded and in deep grief at no longer being able to fly, Chris finds his way to the Hebridean islands off the west coast of Scotland, where he seeks to unravel the secrets of the Celtic stone.

Rydian Holt is nothing, nobody. Just another human from the streets of Talamh. Or at least, that's what he thinks - until his mother is caught up in a fledgling resistance group. Branded a traitor and sentenced to fight in the arena, now Rydian must face hardened gladiators in single combat. To survive and advance through the ranks, he'll need the help of an enigmatic weapons master - and more than a little luck.

Chelsea is part of an international team of archaeologists who are making the most of a tenuous cease-fire in the Syrian civil war to excavate and conserve the historic remains of the ancient kingdom of Ebla. The dramatic discovery of a new library of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing brings to the surface international tensions between Syria and Israel. Will the revelations in the ancient tablets be hijacked by vested interests?

In the dead of night, a figure flits through the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey, searching for a hidden document he knows could change the course of history. The journal he discovers, by a young soldier, David Erskine, records an extraordinary story.

Like most of us, Mark Wakely had always put death in the too-hard basket. Around death he was painfully awkward, strangely self-conscious: death-shy. He was curiously distanced from his own parents' deaths. Thirty years later, he went on a journey to confront one of the most intensely personal yet universal experiences: our own mortality. With Mark as our guide, we are introduced to morticians and embalmers, rabbis and doctors, coffin makers and gravediggers.

Rydian Halt has defeated one of the immortal Alfur, the alien species that has ruled over humanity for generations. With newfound power burning in his veins, for a brief moment, anything seemed possible. Freedom for himself, for his people, for all of Talamh. Until the Haze struck. Now cast into the wildlands of Talamh, Rydian struggles for survival—and his very sanity. Each time he uses his new power, the Haze threatens, tearing at his mind. But without its aid, Rydian won't last a day against the beasts that stalk him. 

Elliot is hiding in his world of boats from a past that has wounded him. He is anti-authoritarian, lacking direction and broke. Emma is terrified of life outside the studious, ordered world of Oxford. But circumstances propel her into the dangerous world of international subterfuge. Kai is a Chinese triad gang leader, who is all too familiar with violence. However, he is now questioning his life, and seeking redemption. The three of them meet in Hong Kong, a place where money is king, corruption is rife, and the secret societies of the triads are flourishing.

Aaron Hodges presents Book 3 in the Alfurian Chronicles.