Novels by ThatReader

PARISA DREW IN a shallow breath and curled her hands into tight fists, bunching up the silken material of her dress between her fingers to still the diminutive quivers that coursed through them. They shook on their own accord, with or without an audience.She sat ramrod-straight and perched on the edge of the low padded bench, her knees pressed together, one ankle laced over the other and slightly hidden beneath the bench as her eyes fixated on the black and white keys before her.The piano had returned from Germany where it had been taken for restoration. Its silken black colour glossed beneath the afternoon rays of light that slipped through the open window in the parlour.Parisa studied the

IMPORTANT GUESTS would be arriving today.News of their arrival, unbidden to Parisa, would not have had much of an effect had she not woken to an eerily silent mansion at dawn.Lying corpse-still beneath the layers of blankets, she peered at the ceiling in a drowsy haze, her consciousness still drifting beneath a permeable membrane of sleep.The ritualistic sound of children thundering on the grounds had been replaced with a noiselessness that bordered on empty. Was it morning yet?Her head lolled to the side as she inquired the time with a puzzled expression from the clock. The design was minimalistic: a wooden square frame with white luminous numbers.