Showing results by author "Aly" in All Categories

My enemy is The Apocalypse Society: Three brothers, a hidden agenda, distorted masks, and minions who do their dirty work. They tried to kill the rabbit. They injured two of the men I love. They thought they could cut me down. Not only my life, but the lives of my four men, are now in danger. Time is running out. The rabbit is almost in their trap. The next time, they may succeed in killing me. Or worse, someone I love.

Long before the world bowed down to the band, Whispered Words bowed down to me. I was a simple girl in a small town, working two jobs and juggling college full-time—all in the name of a better future. Until them...Kieran. Cal. Ash. Rad. They marched into my world like a hurricane, infiltrating every aspect of my life and taking control until they owned every inch of me. I became their obsession, their toy to use, and I ate up every second of it.

Bachar Houli is as accomplished an AFL footballer as they come. He's been part of two Richmond Premiership sides, he was an All-Australian in 2019, and with more than 200 games to his name he remains a key part of a champion team. Picked at number 42 in the 2006 National Draft by Essendon, Houli played 26 games for the Bombers before moving in 2011 to Tigerland, where rookie Coach Damien Hardwick was assembling the team that six years later would achieve the seemingly impossible and claim Richmond's 11th Premiership.

My enemy is the Apocalypse. Anonymous. Faceless. Shrouded in cloaks and deception. They are the true puppeteers of East Point, pulling the strings of their minions and controlling the masses of sheep. They're cowards hiding behind false identities and blank addresses. And guess who's still their number one plaything? Yep, that's me. When I came to East Point, I had one mission in mind: find the people responsible for killing my best friend. And boy, did I get more than I bargained for. Everything I've looked into twists and turns into dead ends. No one is who they say they are.

Long before the world bowed down to the band Whispered Words, they shattered me to pieces when they walked away. Now, after five years apart, they're back to fix what they broke. If I let them... Before our fall, Callum, Rad, Kieran, and Asher were mine. My everything. My rock stars. My future. Until they weren't. All it took was one night. One massive lie. One false accusation. And they were gone. Leaving me with a broken heart, a restraining order, and a baby on the way.

Is our democracy corroding? In this original, eloquent essay, Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens explore the ethics and politics of public debate—and the threat it now faces. In a healthy society we need the capacity to disagree. Yet Aly and Stephens note a growing tendency to disdain and dismiss opponents, to treat them with contempt. This toxic partisanship has been imported from the United States, where it has been a temptation for both left and right.

When I transferred to East Point Prep, I had one mission in mind: find the people responsible for murdering Magnolia. Someone within these entitled walls killed my only friend and threw her overboard like she was human trash. Now, they'll pay. My best friend told me everything through weekly emails, leaving coded clues in her simple messages. I know every incident, and I have the names of her bullies—her murderers. Seger, Chase, Zeppelin, Carter, and Ainsley.

The consequences of my actions have finally caught up to me, and I'm staring the devil in the eyes. And he wants revenge. When I woke up bound to a chair on Shadow's mysterious island with Shepp unconscious and my sister standing beside me, I knew I was in trouble. And boy, was I right. Between the fight pits, new enemies, new allies and separations, secret loves, betrayals, and revenge, I'm thrust into a whole new world of survival. But it doesn't stop there.

I had a plan. It was simple. Find my sister, bring her home, and then disappear where no one could find us—especially him. But you know what they say about plans? They have a tendency to go awry, like a train off the tracks barrelling in the wrong direction… toward the wrong people. That's what happened. Them. Jericho. Sheppard. Arrow. The mafia heir and his two best friends. They came into my life with obsession bleeding through their veins, and the only person they saw—was me. Theirs.

When I was 15, a single bullet changed my life. I spent the next decade trying to outrun the devastation of my past, building an empire that would shield me from whatever life could throw at me. But all the money in the world couldn’t help me when I found a screaming newborn abandoned on my doorstep. I’d never wanted to be a father. Passing the sludge that ran through my veins down to an innocent child seemed like a tragedy. But there she was - pink cheeks, red hair, and mine.

When I was eight years old, Caven Hunt saved me from the worst kind of evil to walk the Earth. It didn’t matter that I was a kid. I fell in love with him all the same. But that was where my fairy tale ended. Years later, a one-night stand during the darkest time imaginable gave us a little girl. It was nothing compared to the pitch black that consumed me when I was forced to leave her with Caven for good. At the end of every fairy tale, the happily ever after is the one thing that remains consistent. It wasn’t going to be mine.

When I was nineteen years old, I was faced with a choice that changed my life. Keep the safety of what I already knew or risk losing everything with the young, hotheaded soldier who stole my heart. I chose the wrong man, and for seventeen years, I paid in tears, blood, and shattered dreams for that decision. Now, there’s a man in my house, holding a gun to my head on the order of my ex-husband—given from his prison cell. That hotheaded soldier I was too afraid to choose? He’s now a six-foot-three wall of muscle who works at the country’s most premier bodyguard agency. I’ve always wanted him, but now, I’ve never needed him more. It’s the call I’m terrified to make. I’m sure he still hates me… Even though I’ve never stopped loving him.

Sound is an abstract concept for most people. We spend our lives blocking out the static in order to focus on what we believe is important. But what if, when the clarity fades into silence, it's the obscure background noise that you would give anything to hold on to?

The world owes you nothing. It took losing the woman I loved, and facing the paralyzing task of moving on without her, for me to truly understand that. I’d resigned myself to a life of loneliness, until a survivor from the same plane crash that took my fiancée stormed into my life. Remi Grey was chaos and sunshine, fire and freedom. I began to believe that fate had other plans for me. But it seemed the only thing fated about our relationship was that I had been destined to lose her from the start. The world owes you nothing. But for Remi, I would risk it all. No matter the cost.

I met Sarah Kate Erickson when I was 21 years old. I was lucky enough to keep her for seven years before a tragic accident stole her from me. She didn't die, but sometimes I think it would have been easier if she had. I lived in a haze for those four years after the accident. Catering to her every need, even though she hated the very sight of my face. I tried to hold on to her and the future that we were supposed to build together. But you can't hold on to someone that doesn't exist anymore.

London, 1881. Lily Raynor, owner of the World's End Investigation Bureau, is growing increasingly worried. Work is drying up, finances are tight and she cannot find enough for her sole employee, Felix Wilbraham, to do. So when schoolteacher Georgiana Long arrives, with a worrying tale of runaway pupils, it seems like the answer to her prayers. Disguised as the new Assistant Matron, Lily joins the Shardlowes School staff. But there are undercurrents at Shardlowes, and the shadowy, powerful men who fund the school's less fortunate pupils loom larger as Felix's own investigations unfold.

I proposed on our first date. She laughed and told me I was insane. Less than a day later, she said yes. It was a whirlwind, but we were happy. Until we got greedy and wanted a family. It was a life I couldn't give her, not for lack of trying. Fertility just wasn't on our side.

Death had been chasing me my entire life. I survived the horrors of war, but it was the aftermath that truly destroyed me. People called me a recluse, but the only time I didn’t feel like I was suffocating was inside that house. For my daughter, I kept some semblance of normalcy by implementing a rigid routine. Once a week, I forced myself to walk to the diner at the end of the block—a ritual I despised but relied on as my last anchor to the real world.

Here is a tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries - many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today. Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history.

If she builds it, they will come. A sex toy engineer with one big secret finally meets her match, and together they’ll put their own products to the test in this steamy romantic comedy. Scout Porter is screwed. Not literally, of course. Literally, she’s a twenty-six-year-old virgin, thanks...