دانلود رمان انگلیسی “دریای سرخ”

Billie McKennan hurried from the laboratory, hastily dusting her hands on her trousers, blinking in the bright San Diego sun. The summons from the zoo director had been urgent—urgent enough to interrupt her examination of the algae recently fouling the sea lion dam. It was unlike Tom Faulconer to be so insistent. In the year that Billie had worked at the zoo, he’d never called for her like this. She wondered what she’d done wrong. She couldn’t afford to lose this job; it had been hard enough to get it. The zoo visitors were out in force today. Men in their straw boaters and summer suits, women with their light dresses quivering in the faint breeze, children racing about in delight. For June, it wasn’t too hot, a perfect day to tour the zoo. While a small contingent gathered at the sea lion dam, it wasn’t the main attraction. Faulconer had recently brought in koalas from Australia, and they’d been drawing crowds. It was, Billie hoped, a harbinger of greater things to come for the zoo. Though Billie was only an assistant zookeeper, she hoped the success of the koalas would open the director up to other ideas. Don’t get your hopes up, she told herself. In fact, she should assume that she’d failed. Already June, and she’d heard nothing about the expedition she’d applied for. She shouldn’t want so much. She was bound to be disappointed. Yet after the last two years, she needed some luck, and this was the opportunity of a lifetime—why shouldn’t she get it? Why shouldn’t she want it? She deserved it. Maybe today she’d go home to her dingy bungalow to find a letter waiting. Maybe. She’d known when she’d chosen to pursue marine biology that it would be difficult. Her professor father had discouraged her. “You’re so smart, Billie, but for a woman . . . maybe choose something easier. I hate to see you make your life so hard.” “It won’t be hard for me,” she’d told him. “I’m going to change the world, Dad. Watch me do it.”