Toxic
Billionaire beauty mogul Anura Hegarty has pledged to acquire as much of the rainforest as possible to preserve it. But when armed guards appear and bring in portable terrariums to capture wildlife, Jessica and her friend Renata realise something much more sinister is going on.
The rainforest holds a frog with a secret to staying young forever, and Jessica and Renata know they must find and save it first!
Danger and betrayal lurk in every corner, and soon they're running for their lives, dodging blow darts, poachers and giant snakes. Will the girls make it out of the forest alive?
A paradoxical paradise ...
The Amazon rainforest is fascinating. There are few environments on Earth that are so crammed with life – where plants, birds, animals, insects, and fungi thrive so exuberantly. But it is also a dangerous and deadly place. It is a paradoxical paradise, brimming with vitality and venom.
In recent decades, this place of breath-taking beauty has been transformed into a site of hideous devastation. Every minute of every day, 150 acres of rainforest are lost around the globe as a result of human activity. And with the trees go the animals. There is no way of knowing how many species may have been driven to extinction due to deforestation, but we can be certain that many marvellous creatures are being lost before we even become aware of their existence.
Rainforests are sometimes described as ‘Nature’s pharmacy’ due to the number of medicines and cures that can be derived from their resident species. And this got me thinking. What if, through our callousness and carelessness, we were eliminating species that had the power to solve some of our most enduring problems – problems like ageing? What would people do to find and capture a creature that could turn back the hands of time? How much would they be willing to sacrifice to secure such a power?
These are the questions that compel Jessica and her friend Renata to step into the rainforest, on a quest to find a rare frog before it is seized by billionaire beauty magnate, Anura Hegarty. Inspired by fairy tales and folklore, Toxic is a wild adventure that journeys deep into the dark heart of human desire.