Ross Richdale's Novels
I am a New Zealander and the author of over forty novels, contemporary, historical and science fiction. Latest news and pictures about my books will be brought to you here.
When the remote settlement of East Ridge in the South Island of New Zealand is isolated during a snowstorm, Renee and Tyler take in three travellers. Without electricity or mobile phone contact and with all the roads around closed, the five are completely cut off from the world. There, they begin to bond and help one another with problems in their lives.
Renee is now living with her partner Tyler at East Ridge after a violent marriage to a Larry Brooks and the loss of an unborn child. Tyler, who has a tractor to patrol the local section of highway, rescues Aza and Sofia after their car slides off the road in a heavy snowstorm. As well, Ian, a lawyer who was actually coming to visit Renee is also found in a separate accident where his motorbike skidded off the road.
Aza is a lecturer and researcher at Auckland University who has had her work on genetic profiling, plagiarised from her PhD thesis by Professor Joseph Hardy who becomes an enemy when she can prove his crime.
Ian is a lawyer who works for the Crown Prosecutors Office in Auckland. He tells Renee that her ex-husband is being investigated for murder of his child and attempted murder of a partner after a car crash. However, there is not enough concrete evidence to prove that it was not an accident and circumstantial evidence is needed to show Larry Brooks violent past. Several of the man’s previous partners are too scared to testify. Ian came down to the South Island to try to persuade Renee to be a witness at a trial that may eventuate.
During their isolation at East Ridge, the five find they are being stalked and later attacked by an armed criminal, obviously employed by someone to assassinate one of them.
But who is being targeted? Is it Aza who is a threat to the professor at the university, Renee by the violent Brooks or Ian, the lawyer out to build up a case against him?
And how does being isolated from the world by the snowstorm add to the problems? Romance enters the equation in an unexpected way after Sofia is shot and wounded in the assassination attempt. Was she the target of the mysterious assassin or was it a mistaken identity with Renee or Aza being the intended target?
All will be revealed in this romantic thriller set in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
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When snow isolates East Ridge
Pasts are revealed
Acquaintances become friends
And Friends lovers
Rivals become ruthless
Stalkers murderous
And human nature is exposed
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Silence reigned on that winter’s day in 1999. Everywhere Niana looked there was nothing but virgin snow, with no footprints or tire marks beyond where the vehicle turned. A watery sun cast its light from a pale blue sky. The rest of the morning was but a numb memory as the hungry, freezing, pregnant woman staggered along the mountain road. Every bend lead to another and every step crunched through icy snow. By noon the temperature was still barely above freezing. Niana was so cold she was certain her cheekbones had frozen. The woollen gloves barely managed to keep her fingers from being completely numb, while walking helped to keep her feet from freezing.
After four hours, the exhausted refugee came to one more bend and another patch of nothingness. Thoughts turned to her family, husband, father, mother, elder brother and almost everyone else she knew. They were all dead. Her only other friends were those at the army camp. If for no other reason, she owed it to them and the unborn child within her to survive and to tell NATO of the atrocities that had befallen her people.
God, she was hungry. Her stomach rumbled while the unborn baby kicked. She staggered as the scene in front became blurred and the trees above began to spin. No, she was not about to give in. Somewhere ahead was her own kind, someone to help.
She took another shaky step, staggered and fell to her knees. “Oh, Zymer,” she cried but by now not even the tears came. “I’m so, so sorry. Our baby.”
Niana gritted her teeth and rose once more to her feet. Another bend was ahead, more snow, more trees, the weak sunlight and another bend. She stumbled forward and blinked. There was something else. A farm wagon covered in snow was parked on the roadside as if it had pulled over, perhaps to let an oncoming vehicle pass. Linked to the front of it, looking so bright in the white world, stood a tractor; a red tractor.
Hope surged through her. The depression and fatigue of a second before disappeared as she broke into a slithery run.
“Hello,” she screamed. “Is anyone there? Hello.”
But all was quiet. Not a sound returned.
She reached the wagon and grabbed a canvas cover tied to the wooden side. Shaking with anticipation, she lifted the corner of the flap and gazed into the dim interior.
Four enormous brown eyes ringed in terror gazed up at her and children’s sobbing filled the air.
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Transmigration: (of the soul) pass into a different body- Concise Oxford Dictionary.
Four humans find themselves in a small village of Betaham without knowledge of where they come from or who they are. It is a pleasant little town but disturbing memories of a brutal war and a different life flash spasmodically into their minds.
Their dreams seem so real but are quite unrelated to their present lives … that is until they meet a strange farmer and a violent sandstorm arrives at Betaham. They find the farmer isn’t even human. Furthermore, they may not even be human themselves.
A bombed out city is on the other side of the hills and can be reached though a railway tunnel. The trouble is that the city was destroyed a millennium before and is an archeological site visited by the farmer’s race who arrived from another planet.
Only then do the four learn the truth about themselves…
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The armlet Kolina Lagerfelt is given by her dying grandmother is more than a piece of jewellery. It has been handed down through the family for countess generations.
Kolina places the armlet on and is connected to Eboff, a voice in her mind. Eboff is an advanced computer with news that she is the descendant of a starship crew that crashed on the planet a millennium before. Only when other ancestors of this crew are found that technology far superior to that now known on the planet can be accessed to save the world from nuclear annihilation.
But is it too late? Their world is at war and the nuclear holocaust has already begun.
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Doctor Reid Tucker’s intention to spend the summer at a remote cabin at Eagle’s Claw Lake in northeast Washington State with only his dog, Cinders, never eventuates.
On the trip there, pilot Kate Meltz calls in with the amphibian to a commune at the other end of the lake. While there, Reid pulls a desperate teenage girl, Lorie Somerville, from the water. This begins a frightening time as fanatical commune leader, Peter Littlejohn, tries to find Lorie and prevent her from leaving.
Though Littlejohn doesn’t find her on the aircraft, he sabotages it so the trio are left stranded at Reid’s cabin.
It becomes obvious that the place is more than just a remote religious commune. The girl is terrified of being caught and begs Reid to look for Jennifer and Sassy, two of her friends who have also escaped. Though pursued by Littlejohn, Lorie leads Reid and Kate to a cave where the girls are waiting.
But why has Erika Somerville, Lorie’s elder sister, returned to Eagle’s Claw Lake and is found savagely beaten in the commune’s cabin cruiser?
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When the Longships Came | The Druid’s Daughter | Meztli- Sacrificial Maiden
Countess in Exile | Azure Sea Gold | Broken Silence
Wisps of Cloud | Wisps of Snow | Wisps of Wisdom
