Showing results by narrator "Zehra Jane Naqvi" in All Categories

A stunning fantasy inspired by familiar fairy-tales, complete with cursed princesses, thieves-turned-soldiers, and an orphan girl transformed into an immortal, shapeshifting heroine. The Nissera Chronicles start here.... Bristal, a 16-year-old kitchen maid, finds herself in a gritty fairy-tale gone wrong when she discovers she has elicromancer magic in her blood. Elicromancers are an ancient breed of immortal people, but only two remain in Nissera after a bloody civil war. Bristal joins their ranks without knowing that one of them has a dark secret.

Inanna is an impossibility. The first full Anunnaki born on Earth in Ancient Mesopotamia. Crowned the goddess of love by the twelve immortal Anunnaki who are worshipped across Sumer, she is destined for greatness. But Inanna is born into a time of war. The Anunnaki have split into warring factions, threatening to tear the world apart. Forced into a marriage to negotiate a peace, she soon realizes she has been placed in terrible danger.

"I didn't realize how much I would miss grocery shopping until it was gone." Life was pretty good. The love of Alice's life had proposed, they were proud new homeowners, and she'd just landed a great promotion at work. Things were going to plan. Well, they were, until the Red Death struck. Billions dead in a matter of weeks. The survivors are few and far between. No one is safe. Life will never be the same again.

When you get up in the morning, the last thing you expect to see is a murdered guy hanging outside your window. Things like that tend to draw the attention of the local police, and when you're squatting in your parents' old house until you can afford to buy it, another thing you can't afford is the attention of the cops. Oh yeah. Hi. My name is Pet. It's not my real name, but it's the only one you're getting.

Return to Nissera, land of three kingdoms and home to spectacular magic. An uneasy peace reigns now that Valory has vanquished the Moth King and settled into her rightful place as queen of Calgoran. New leaders Glisette and Kadri hope to usher the neighboring kingdoms into an era of healing and prosperity. All should be well. But there's a fourth queen in charge: Ambrosine, banished overseas to Perispos. Driven by vanity, she vows to become the most powerful and beautiful ruler in the world, even if it means oppressing the mortal kingdom she is meant to protect.

Elaine is an orphan girl who has grown up in a world where magical ability brings power. Her limited talent was enough to ensure a magical training, but she's very inexperienced and was lucky to get a position working in the Great Library. Now, the Grand Sorcerer - the most powerful magician of them all - is dying, although initially that makes little difference to Elaine; she certainly doesn't have the power to compete for higher status in the Golden City. But all that changes when she triggers a magical trap....

The stomach is notoriously outspoken. It growls, gurgles, and grumbles while other organs remain silent. For centuries humans have puzzled over this rowdy organ, deliberating on the extent of its influence over cognition, mental wellbeing, and emotions, and wondering how the gut became so central to our sense of self. Traveling from ancient Greece to Victorian England, eighteenth-century France to modern America, historian Elsa Richardson leads us on a tour of the gut, exploring all the ways that we have imagined, theorized, and probed the mysteries of the gastroenterological system.

The Buddhist saint Nāgārjuna, who lived in South India in approximately the second century CE, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher. His greatest philosophical work, the Mūlamadhyamikakārikā - read and studied by philosophers in all major Buddhist schools of Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea - is one of the most influential works in the history of Indian philosophy. Now, in The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Jay L. Garfield provides a clear translation of Nāgārjuna's seminal work.

Elaine and Johan are preparing to leave Golden City, with Daria and the travelers, in order to search for the Witch-King. The Grand Sorceress instructs Inquisitor Cass to help them. But before Elaine can leave she is arrested by two Inquisitors on the orders of the Emperor. When she resists she is hit with a powerful spell that forces her to concentrate all her efforts on protecting her mind from its intrusion. Taken to the palace she finds that the Grand Sorceress has been removed and the Throne has accepted an heir to the Empire.

As more and more people align themselves with the Palestinian people, Palestine in a World on Fire provides the global perspective and analysis needed to inform how we forge ahead on this path of newfound solidarity. Editors Ilan Pappé and Katherine Natanel have gathered a collection of interviews that are intimate, challenging, and rigorous—many of them conducted before October 7th but still startlingly prescient.

Emily H. Wilson presents Book 2 in the Sumerians Trilogy.

Journey to the Dark Goddess will lead you on a powerful, healing path. In the stories of ancient Goddesses, you will hear your own soul, calling out to you. The Dark Goddess is the creatrix of healing, change, and renewal. She offers connection with the core of yourself. If you have been unable to shake off depression, or fear its return; if you have inexplicable "blank patches" in your life, if you know that something is missing, or something is calling to you, if you seek the source of women's power - it's time to journey to the Dark Goddess.

On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother's response only intensifies a sense of shame: "You exist too much," she tells her daughter. Told in vignettes that flash between the US and the Middle East, we trace her progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer.

Kiran Mathur knows firsthand how dangerous love can be. After all, her sister's marriage in India nearly destroyed Kiran's family. So she's decided to redeem romance herself - by not falling for anyone who might disappoint her parents. That is, that was her plan right up until she met her new neighbor, Nash Hawthorne. Nash is a dedicated psychologist and committed to being alone. His family life has taught him the inevitability of abandonment, and he isn't ready to question his beliefs. But spending time with Kiran makes him start to experience emotions he's never felt before.

A century after her legendary ancestors overcame a bloodthirsty tyrant, 17-year-old Valory Braiosa attends a training academy for elicromancers, immortal beings with magical gifts. Yet Valory's immense power seems impossible to tame, and she faces imprisonment by the Nisseran authorities. Then a forbidden resurrection spell awakens a long-dormant evil, and Valory may be the only one who can vanquish this terrifying villain.

Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, while also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings.

They tried to hide the truth. But the camera never lies… Blackwood Bay. An ordinary place, home to ordinary people. It used to be a buzzing seaside destination. But now, ravaged by the effects of dwindling tourism and economic downturn, it’s a ghost town—and the perfect place for film-maker Alex to shoot her new documentary. But the community is deeply suspicious of her intentions. After all, nothing exciting ever happens in Blackwood Bay—or does it?

At a time when many proclaim the death of active investing, Rupal J. Bhansali, global contrarian, makes a clarion call for its renaissance. Non-consensus thinking has resulted in breakthrough successes in science, sports, and Silicon Valley. Bhansali shows how to apply it to the world of investing to improve one's odds of achieving above-average returns with below-average risks.

Having escaped from the Golden City, Elaine, Johan, and their friends - including some strange allies with goals of their own - race desperately towards Ida, hiding place of the ancient Witch-King. Behind them, the armies of the new Emperor - a man permanently poised on the verge of madness - give chase, unleashing monsters and spells from the long-buried past on everyone who stands in their way. Ahead of them, the Witch-King waits, biding his time as he prepares for his ascension.

I have a lot of names these days—including my own, real name. Unfortunately for me, someone else knows that name too; not to mention the names of my other heirling friends. Now those heirling friends have disappeared, stolen by the current King Behind for a fight to the death where only one contender to the throne remains.